“What has happened?” Belle asked when she reached Abel. “Was it you who screamed?” She patted him on his arms and back, then reached down to pat at his legs.
“Not me,” the boy gasped as he struggled to catch his breath and tried to wriggle out of her grasp. “Not me. Robbie fell on the steps. You have to come, Belle! I think he broke his leg, the bad one. There is a bone sticking out! I think it is more than one, so it is a bad, bad break,” he added in a soft, panicked voice. “It is bleeding a lot. You have to come now.”
Belle grabbed Geordie’s arm as he started to move. “I need you to get my bag. I will need to tend him some, if only to stop the bleeding, so we can move him. My bag is just inside the front door, on the right, on a small table. The bag is black leather with blue trim.”
Geordie ran for the house. He looked back to see Mehitabel and Abel racing toward the stairs. Once inside, he found the bag easily. It was a large, well-used bag and had probably been her father’s. The blue trim was something lacy that had been knitted or tatted.
Picking up the bag, which was surprisingly heavy, he headed out the door only to nearly walk into a tall, black-haired woman. It took only one good look to guess that she was probably related to Mehitabel and Abel.
“Ye must be Auntie,” he said.
She smiled, transforming her stern face into something beautiful. Geordie saw the future Belle in her sparkling silver eyes and finely drawn features. The woman’s long black hair was only lightly streaked with gray. She was much taller than her niece as well, plus had a lusher figure.
“Yes, I am Mary Magdalene Ampleford-Murphy, hyphenated name like the rich.” She grinned when Geordie couldn’t stop his eyes from widening slightly at her name. She then nodded at the bag. “Is someone hurt?”
“Aye. My brother. It appears he fell and may have opened an old wound.”
“Best get going then. I will follow with the body cart.”
“The what? Robbie is still alive.”
“Not that kind of body. It is for ones who should not be up and walking around.”
“Oh, all right then.”
He waited as she dashed into the house. He could hear her moving things around in the infirmary. Thinking he should get down there to Belle, he took a step just as she came out the door pulling a large cart. He helped her get it off the porch, then turned to make his way down to the beach.
As they started on their way, moving at a brisk pace, Mary said, “My brother Noah put this together so he could move his patients around more easily. He needed it, as he was not some big, strapping fellow like you. My brother was constantly putting things together to make life easier.” She shook her head. “Then he is taken from us because his heart fails.” She shook her head and sighed, a sound weighted heavily with sorrow.
“I am sorry for both you and Belle. From what little she has told me about him, he sounded like a verra good mon.”
“He was. And he was too young to collapse like that. Where do you come from? I have been trying to place the accent since I met you at the door.”
“Scotland. Lost our croft when the laird got too English and decided sheep would bring him more money, so why keep his promises to his clan. They let us take only a few things. So after a sad time spent wandering, doing what work we could, and living in whatever hovel we could find, we came to America like so many others have.”
“But you didn’t stay here.”
“My folks wanted a piece of their own land, and most of the tales they heard about America implied it was a place where that could happen. But what we could find on the shore that we could afford wasnae what they were looking for. They were farmers and shepherds and wanted enough land to plant some crops and run some sheep. My da heard about all the folk going west and he wanted to go too, was sure we would find a good place. So, he got a wagon and supplies and packed all seven of us up, grabbed my mither, and hit the trail. Then we got attacked and my parents were killed so we, my brothers and me, went on despite the reluctance of the others in the wagon train to take us with them, and we found a good place. Iain and Matthew went back, found where our folks were buried, and brought them back to the place we had found, to bury them proper and near to us.”
They reached the stairs and Mary stopped to take a look behind her. “You go on. I see my boys coming around the house, so I will wait for them and we’ll deal with this.” She slapped her hand against the cart. “I will need them to help me get this down there. Just give us a yell when you need us.”
Geordie hurried down the steps to where Robbie was sprawled. His first look made his heart skip with alarm as his brother was linen white and sprawled across the steps. Belle was bent over his leg, so Geordie could not immediately see the injury. Abel sat with Robbie’s head cushioned in his lap. Belle turned when he reached her and handed her the bag.
“Your aunt is here and said her lads can bring the cart down when ye say ye need it.”
“Oh, good. Robbie will need to be carried back to the house.”
When she sat up straight and began to search through the bag, Geordie finally got a look at his brother’s leg, but it was heavily wrapped in what Geordie suspected were strips torn from Mehitabel’s petticoat. It was his bad leg, and Geordie could not even imagine how much worse this would make it for him. He feared this time it would have to be cut off, quietly muttering it to himself and hoping Belle did not hear him.
“Well, thereisa bit of good news,” Belle said when she saw the despairing look on Geordie’s face. “You remember that business I said I did not think I could do?”
He struggled to clear his mind of all the fear and worry for Robbie and suddenly recalled her speaking of a procedure she knew of but was not sure she could do, one that might help his brother. “Aye. Ye cannae do it now, can ye?”
“Well”—she bit her lip and looked at Robbie—“he has done most of the work for me. He has opened the wound and broken the bones. It looks as if they broke right in the same places they had been broken before. Proof that the bones had not really healed well. It was the weakest spot. At least I can now set them right, and that might be enough. It is going to pain him. A lot, I am sorry to say. But, unless some horrible infection sets in, I don’t foresee any need for hacking his leg off.”
“Sorry, didnae realize I had said that loud enough for ye to hear me.”
“Just muttered it, but since I am sitting right next to you.” She shrugged. “But I am serious when I say this will pain him a lot.”
