Part 4
“Yes,” Wyatt said. He had expected to feel relief when someone else saw her. Instead his knees began to shake. “She has a bad leg and a fever. We need the clinic.”
Jim came closer, took one look at Clara’s face, and turned toward his truck. He offered to help lift her down, but Wyatt shook his head. The doctor could decide how to move the leg once they arrived. Jim turned the truck around on the wide part of the road, ready to lead them into town, and let Wyatt keep Clara where she had managed to stay all morning.
“Call ahead if you can,” Wyatt said. “And somebody find Tom.”
Jim nodded and got behind the wheel. He had been checking his fence lines after the storm and knew the way back through the snow. Wyatt led Adrian behind the truck, calling to Clara whenever the road jolted her in the saddle. She did not seem aware of the engine ahead. Wyatt watched for an answer and kept his hand near her good leg in case she began to slip.
The town clinic was small. Its staff met them at the doors after Jim’s call. Wyatt loosened the lariat, carried Clara inside, and set her down where the nurses directed. The doctor examined her leg while the nurses brought water and blankets. Wyatt answered what he knew: the flood, the shelter, the night of fever, the climb down. When the doctor asked about the first injury, he directed her to Clara, who managed a few words about the rock before they moved her to a treatment room.
Jim took Adrian’s reins so Wyatt could stay until Clara was settled. He came back to say the horse was tied at the rail, safe out of the way of the clinic doors. Wyatt thanked him and asked him once more about Tom. “He’s on his way,” Jim said. The answer gave Wyatt a different kind of worry. He had seen Tom beside the empty casket. He could not imagine what it would take for the man to trust the call he had just received.
Wyatt stayed in the hall. Meltwater from his boots spread across the floor. Through the room’s small window he could see a nurse cut away the old wrappings and another draw a curtain. He stepped back. There was nothing left he could usefully do for Clara, and for the first time since the cave he could feel how tired he was.
He sat for a moment, then stood because sitting made his knee stiffen. The sounds on the other side of the door were ordinary clinic sounds: a drawer opening, a voice asking for a clean bandage, the wheels of a cart. After the storm and the silence of the pass, their ordinariness helped him believe she was truly inside. He did not know what the doctor would be able to save. He knew Clara had reached someone who could try.
The outer door opened hard enough to strike the wall. Tom Hayes came in without a coat. He looked at Wyatt, then at the doors behind him.
“Where is she?”
Wyatt pointed. Tom was already moving. He reached Clara’s bedside, stopped as if afraid a hurried touch might hurt her, and sank to his knees. Wyatt saw Tom put his face beside hers. Clara raised one thin hand and laid it against the back of his neck.
It was the first time Wyatt had seen her reach for someone without fear. He turned away and went outside, leaving the two of them and the clinic staff to the work ahead.
The storm had cleared. Adrian stood tied at the rail, head low, a little frost drying in the hair along his shoulder. Wyatt rubbed the place behind his ear where the horse always leaned into his hand. Beyond the roofs, Cutter’s Pass held its new snow in the bright afternoon light.
“You had your reasons,” Wyatt told him.
Adrian shifted closer. Wyatt untied the reins and climbed into the saddle, his knee protesting all the way up. The ranch stove was still waiting. So was a bucket of sweet feed. They took the road home at a walk.