Chapter 3
The clinic was a modest, single-story building on the edge of Silver Cross. Its weathered wooden walls were stained by years of sun and smoke. A faded sign above the door readDr. Abigail Monroe, Physician & Surgeon.
Despite its simplicity, the place was a beacon of hope for many, especially the Shoshone families who lived nearby.
Anthony had been riding for hours. The sun was high and relentless above the dusty trail. His legs were stiff. Just as he was about to press on past the outskirts of town, something caught his eye.
A thin wisp of smoke was rising gently behind the clinic’s roof. It wasn’t the usual campfire smoke; it was faint, like the kind that rises from a stove fired up indoors.
Curious and drawn by a flicker of hope, he guided Spirit toward the building.
He tethered Spirit outside, his gaze fixed on the door. He hesitated, the weight of the confrontation in town still pressing on him, but the need for answers drew him forward.
The clinic smelled of boiled water, carbolic acid, and faintly of blood. It was a sharp and almost metallic scent that Anthony remembered from battlefield tents during the Mexican War—a war his father had died fighting in. Anthony himself had not fought in that war.
Still, he knew that it was a smell that meant life and death were standing shoulder to shoulder, daring each other to blink.
The building was small, with just two rooms. Its whitewashed walls were already stained in places by smoke from the iron stove in the corner. The front room held a desk littered with papers and instruments, a few rough chairs for patients, and a long bench pushed against the wall.
The back room was where the work happened. Anthony stepped into it.
And there she was.
Dr. Abigail Monroe.
Not that he knew her name for sure, but she did look like she ran this place.
She stood over a crude wooden table with her sleeves rolled high. Her hands were slick to the wrist with red. A child that couldn’t have been older than seven lay on the table, his bare chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven breaths.
The boy’s skin was darker than Anthony’s—the copper-brown of the Shoshone. A sheen of fever-sweat covered him from brow to belly.
The woman didn’t look up when the door swung shut behind Anthony. She had the kind of focus that made the rest of the world irrelevant.
“You’re dripping mud on my floor,” she said, her voice low.
Anthony glanced down. She was right. His boots were caked from the street outside.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I thought you—”
“I can’t talk now,” she interrupted, still not meeting his gaze. “Unless you want to stand there watching a boy die, pick up that basin and hold it steady.”
Anthony hesitated only a heartbeat. She wasn’t asking to be polite; she was ordering, the way a sergeant might in the thick of a fight. He crossed to the table, took the enamel basin from the edge, and steadied it as she rinsed her hands.
“What happened to him?” Anthony asked.
“Rancher’s men found him out near the creek,” she said, picking up a pair of long, thin forceps. “Arrow wound to the side. But that’s not what’s killing him.”
Her hands moved with practiced precision, probing gently around the boy’s ribs. The child whimpered faintly but didn’t wake.
“Something’s inside,” she said. “Metal, I think. If I don’t get it out now, the fever will take him before morning.”
“You’ve done this before?” Anthony asked, leaning forward slightly.
That earned him the first flicker of eye contact. Her eyes were green—not the bright emerald of cheap jewelry, but deep forest green, flecked with gold too. They were eyes that had seen too much and weren’t impressed by what they saw now.
“Plenty,” she said. “But never without help.”
She handed him a folded square of cloth.
