She was breathing in a rather shallow but reassuringly steady fashion. Doc turned her head so that her cheek was in the dust, making sure she was out of the direct heat of the sun. That done, he felt able to move his attention to the bloody wound.
It had obviously been caused by a knife of some sort, though Doc’s combat experience was too limited for him to make much of a guess at what kind of a blade had been used.
He fetched some water and soaked his favorite swallow’s-eye kerchief with it, knelt down with much creaking of knees and began to mop away the blood. The cut was very recent, still weeping a copious amount of blood. But as he worked at it, Doc realized that it wasn’t too deep or too serious.
The wound ran from the left collarbone, diagonally down, across the sternum, disappearing under the collar of the blouse, over the swell of the right breast.
Doc cleared his throat, peering intently at the woman’s face, trying to see if she was showing any sign of recovering from the faint. Close up, he could see that she had spent much of her life in the open air. Though he was aware of how lacking in skill he was, Doc figured her age to be somewhere in the late thirties or the early forties.
Nervously, fingers trembling, he began to unbutton her blouse, opening it up, seeing, as he had suspected, that she wore no sort of undergarment.
He ignored the slight feeling of tightness and discomfort at the front of his breeches, concentrating on cleaning away all of the blood.
Judas whickered quietly, just behind him, but Doc ignored the animal.
A wide trickle of crimson filled the valley between the woman’s breasts and Doc slid his kerchief into the canyon, wiping away the blood as best he could.
The voice, right in his ear, made him jump so much he nearly dropped the wet cloth.
“You don’t have to make too much of a meal of it, Doc.”
“I was I mean to say that It was not my intention, madam, to interfere with”
Sukie Smith laughed. “I can see that. I journey all the way from wind-washed Wisconsin and end up being cut across my tits by a rabid dwarf. And then I pass out, come around to find I’m being groped by some goatlike animal beater.”
“Goatlike!”
She patted his hand. “Sorry, Doc. Tongue runs away with me sometimes.”
“Dwarf?”
“What?”
“I bethought that I heard you say that you had been attacked by a dwarf with rabies.”
“Yeah. Called himself the best guide west of the Pecos, or some such cheap-vid nickname.”
Doc sat back on his heels, absently squeezing the pink water from his kerchief. “Some wretch that you had hired as a guide did this to you? By the Three Kennedys! But if the running dog were still close by I would take the greatest pleasure in teaching him a lesson he would never forget.”
“I did.”
Carried away by his own anger and oratory, Doc didn’t hear her speak. “I would have him whipped at the tail of a cart, clean back to his birth parish. Have him branded upon the shoulder. Nay, the forehead, so that all might witness his roguery. Perhaps he should also be”
She laid a hand on his forearm. “Doc.”
“Yes?”
“He’s deader than last year’s hopes.”
“Dead?”
She drew a finger across her throat. “Kneed him in the balls. Grabbed his knife. Opened him up from ear to shining ear.” There was a silence. She smiled at the expression on Doc’s face. “Like to get on with mopping away the blood from where he cut me? I was kind of starting to enjoy it.”
THEY FINALLY AGREED that the wound wasn’t deep enough or serious enough to need stitching. Doc had an old shirt in his pack, and he tore off strips to make a rough bandage for the injured woman.
“I heal well,” Sukie insisted. “Not much risk of infection. Funnily enough, his knife was about the only clean thing about the sick little runt. Never saw him wash, all the days we were together.”