Chapter Text
The cows were restless again. Shaw’s father had always said animals had a sixth sense, that they could tell when something bad was going to happen. In Shaw’s opinion, it was probably coyotes. She watched for telltale flashes of brown fur from the saddle. She watched the cattle chewing. They would have to be moved to a new pasture tomorrow or the day after.
She watched the sun getting lower in the sky. With the ranch a mile or so behind her, the view was just open grassland, with a few blurred trees away to the south. Her horse shifted restlessly beneath her and Shaw unconsciously ran her hand over it’s fur, soothing the animal.
A soft rain began to fall, and Shaw tugged her hat down and pulled her coat tighter. The evenings were still cool this early in April. She watched a bird take flight from the ground, off to seek better shelter. Her fingers twitched on the rifle which lay across her lap, but this wasn’t the time for hunting.
Shaw turned her horse and walked it slowly around the herd. In the distance, the evening train blew its whistle. It had taken a while to get used to that when the railroad was finished up a couple of years ago. Shaw still didn’t like the fact that it had brought more people to the ranch, but as Cole often reminded her, she alone couldn’t stand in the way of progress. Not that laying some explosives across the track when it was under construction hadn’t crossed her mind. In Shaw’s opinion, one of the perks of being a rancher was being as far away from other people as possible.
The sun was glowing red when Shaw heard the thud of hooves getting nearer. She loosened her pistol in its holster, just in case. When the rider came into view though, Shaw let her hand drop from her hip. It was just Jen.
She was out of breath as she reined her horse in next to Shaw.
“Cole sent me to fetch you,” she gasped, “someone’s been shot and they need you.”
“Up at the house?”
Jen nodded. “A stranger Miles and Jake found on the road. It looks bad.”
Shaw wordlessly handed the rifle over to Jen, knowing the girl would stand watch for her. She put her heels to her horse and set off at a gallop. She blamed her parents for this, she reflected as she rode. They were both too intelligent for their own good and had wasted far too much time on Shaw’s formal education for ranch owners. Now she was stuck being the resident ‘doctor’ on the ranch, despite no formal qualifications, which meant interacting with people.
Though it was kind of funny when the actual doctor came around and was begrudgingly forced to admit that Shaw was decent at it.
She was back at the ranch in no time at all, and headed straight for the big house that had been her parents, and was now hers. She hitched her horse, strode up the path, climbed the the porch and stepped into the house. She knew where Cole would have had the boys carry the patient in, they had sent the front parlor up as a makeshift doctor’s office a while back. When Shaw pushed open the door she found Cole standing over the bed, his face crinkled with worry.
“What the problem Cole?”
She could see relief flood his face at her words. Cole was great at a lot of things, but dealing with blood was not one of them.
“Shit Sam, she’s shot up pretty bad, I dunno if she’s gonna make it.”
“Ok, stand aside Cole. Get my bag.”
Shaw stepped up to the bed and looked at her would-be patient. The woman was pale and thin and red blood had bloomed across her shirt. Shaw checked her pulse as Cole hurried behind her.
“Scissors, Cole.” She held out her hand and felt the cool metal in her palm a second later. She made short work of the woman’s ruined shirt and undershirt, revealing a nasty look bullet wound underneath. Well, it was lucky the woman was already unconscious.
She turned to Cole. “I’m gonna need the iodine. You ok to prep while I wash up?”
Cole swallowed and nodded. All credit to the guy, he was there when you needed him. That’s one of the reasons Shaw kept him around.
***
Shaw’s feet tugged her in the wrong direction. She was supposed to be heading to the barn to talk to Nate about repairing the roof, and yet her feet were taking her to the house. Specifically to the room in the house where their still unconscious guest was holed up.
It had been three days and Shaw had found herself checking on the patient more than she thought was probably necessary. The woman was so pale and thin though, that Shaw thought she might expire at any moment. So far she’d stayed firmly in the land of the living, much to Shaw’s pride. She’d extracted quite a few bullet fragments from the woman’s body and hadn’t know if she’d make it through that first night. Shaw and Cole had taken turns keeping a watch on her.
She thought that Cole might be checking on her too. Maybe he was harbouring hopes of being there when she woke, so she could thank him in person for saving her. Shaw couldn’t blame the guy, their unconscious guest had a pretty face. Well, kind of mesmerizingly beautiful actually, not that Shaw would ever say so out loud. Hell maybe this was going to be the story that Cole told in future years when people asked him how he met his wife. Shaw smirked at the thought. Cole was such a softie.
Shaw was far from convinced that their patient would be a good match for Cole anyway. Not only had she come in with a bullet wound, she’d also been carrying pistols of her own and a sizeable purse of money. Not to mention the fact she was dressed like a man. The whole ensemble didn’t exactly scream ‘proper lady’. It was almost intriguing.
Reaching the door to the stranger’s room, Shaw paused outside to listen for a moment, before pushing the door open and peering in.
The woman was awake. Awake and sitting up in bed prodding at the bandages Shaw had wrapped around her. Her eyes moved to meet Shaw’s.
“Howdy,” she said, “have I got you to thank for saving my skin?”
Shaw shrugged and stepped more fully into the room. “Well, you could start with the boys who found you on the side of the road and hauled your sorry ass back here, but I got the bullets out and stitched you up.”
She saw the woman’s eyebrow raise, and decided that it was an impressed look the woman was giving her.
“Beautiful and talented,” the woman murmured, “it’s my lucky day.”
Cole, Shaw thought, might not be as successful in wooing this woman as he hoped.
“So you got a name?” she asked. It would be nice to stop internally referring to this woman as ‘the woman’ or ‘the patient’.
The woman eyed her for a moment and then smiled. “You can call me Caroline. Miss Caroline Turing to be precise.”
“Shaw.”
Caroline grinned. “Just ‘Shaw’? You ain’t got a first name?”
Shaw rolled her eyes. “Sam.”
“Well Sam Shaw, thank-you very much for saving me.”
“It wasn’t personal. You can work off the cost of the medical treatment on the ranch, when you’re well enough.”
“We’re on a ranch?” Caroline looked around the room like it would give her a clue, but the shades were across the windows and the room was pretty bare.
Apparently dissatisfied, Turing began wriggling out of bed. Shaw watched her movements as she stood up for the first time, checking for indications of pain or bleeding through the bandages.
Caroline stretched experimentally, wincing. “Well, that hurts,” she said with a grimace. “Any idea what happened to my shirt?”
“It was ruined even before I cut it off you.”
“I see. And was I wearing anything else when your fellas brought me in?”
As it was, Turing was dressed only in loose fitting long underwear courtesy of the housekeeper. Shaw had turned up the morning after the surgery to find Emily carefully washing and dressing the woman, and despite backing out of the room slowly Shaw hadn’t been able to avoid a lashing from Emily’s tongue about the state she’d left the patient in. Since then Caroline’s remaining clothes had been washed and neatly put away in the bureau. Emily had even darned one of her socks.
Shaw herself had been more interested in Turing’s pistols. Nice pair of six shooters, even if the idea of using two guns at once was pretty laughable. She’d hidden them before Emily found them.
“Your clothes are in the bureau,” she nodded in that direction. “Also a shirt that isn’t ruined.”
Caroline smiled at her and wandered over to the bureau, hunched a little from the pain, and for some reason Shaw couldn’t quite fathom, she just stood there and watched. Nate would be getting irritable. She sighed.
“Listen I gotta go take care of some stuff. I’ll come by later and show you the ranch.”
Caroline turned and looked over her shoulder. “That’d be nice,” she smiled.
Shaw nodded awkwardly and turned on her heel. That barn wasn’t fixing itself after all.
***
When Shaw came back to pick up Caroline, she couldn’t find her. She wasn’t in the room. She wasn’t in the bathroom, or the kitchen, or the library, or the sitting room. She wasn’t in any room in the house.
She asked Emily, and Emily hadn’t seen her. She asked Jen, and Jen hadn’t seen her. She tracked down Cole in the foreman’s office and asked him, but he hadn’t seen her either. In fact no-one seemed to have seen her. It was true, most people Shaw stopped to ask didn’t know what she looked like, but still, how unobservant were these people.
It occurred to Shaw soon after, that if she’d been up to no good, had been shot and taken in by strangers, then she may well have gotten the heck out of there as soon as possible too. Shaw went to check the drawer where she’d hidden Turing’s pistols. They were gone too.
She was about to start checking the stables for missing horses, when the evening train let out an ungodly shriek of steam as it barrelled down the tracks away from the ranch. Oh.
For a moment or two, Shaw thought about sending a telegraph through to Blueberry where the train would stop next. Could be the Sheriff over there had a wanted poster that would look almighty like Turing. In the end though, Shaw just turned away and went back to work. She was done with the woman. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as her ma had been wont to say.