Mending His Wounded Heart (Preview)

Outskirts of Cooper’s Rest, Nevada 1890

Bounty hunter Dale McCandless edged along the tree line, carefully avoiding dry pinecones and loose pebbles in the gritty soil as he crept along the gradual downslope of a hill through the wooded area on the western edge of Washoe Lake. He’d left his horse tied to a tree twenty yards back in the woods. Rifle in hand, he slowly crept forward, following the sounds of voices near the edge of the lake.

Finally, he’d found his prey. Blake “Aldie” Aldrin and his outlaw gang had made a temporary camp near the lake’s shore. The aroma of frying fish and low conversation wafted toward him on the early morning breeze. The sun had just risen over the horizon, the sky turning ever-changing shades of orange and pink as the stars faded. The lake still looked dark and foreboding as the sun rose incrementally higher, casting deep purple shadows across the valley floor behind the lake. At his back, the tree-studded foothills of the Carson Range of the Sierra Nevada Mountains stood dark and still, only the occasional sound of a skittering of a squirrel scrambling up a tree trunk breaking the silence. 

His heart thudding with excitement, he continued forward, his eyes constantly sweeping the terrain, his ears attuned to the sounds of the morning. Though he couldn’t pick up the words that he heard floating on the breeze, he did recognize that harsh bark of laughter that broke the silence—definitely Blake Aldrin. Dale couldn’t hold back a grin. After tracking the outlaw gang nearly six hundred miles from Colorado City in Arizona, through southwestern Utah, and into Nevada, his journey was at its end and his reward in sight. With a thousand-dollar bounty on each of the gang and a two-thousand dollar bounty on Blake Aldrin, plus a reward for recovering any of the bank money they’d stolen in Arizona, he was not about to give up the chase.

Blake ”Aldie” Aldrin was a man with a very bad temper and no self-control. Nearly forty years of age, the man had no conscience. He pulled his gun without a second thought, and though intelligent, rarely thought things through, which had prompted Dale to start trailing him in Arizona after their semi-successful bank robbery there. If Dale were asked to describe the huge, dour-looking man with the scar running along the left side of his jaw, he would describe him as a bully. He not only intimidated everyone he met but his own gang members too.

Dale didn’t know much about Aldrin’s past other than he was the illegitimate son of a Texas saloon girl. He’d been pretty much left to himself growing up, hence his early experiences being a town bully. He got used to taking what he wanted, and without any discipline or guidance from any adults in his life, had become quite the pickpocket and burglar by the time he reached his twelfth birthday. At fifteen, he’d graduated to armed robbery. He robbed small stores and businesses back then, but since his early twenties had focused his efforts on robbing banks, traveling from town to town, spending the money as fast as he stole it.

In Colorado City, Blake had grown impatient with the bank teller, who was “taking his own sweet time” gathering the money the outlaw had demanded. So Blake shot him and three other bank hostages before he’d escaped with nearly five-thousand dollars in cash with his fellow gang members. 

Dale had wanted posters folded up in his jacket pocket for every one of them. First, there was Benjamin “Benny” O’Reilly, who had hooked up with Blake three years ago. Dale didn’t know much about him other than he was the only person who ever managed to get what you could call close to a friendship with Blake. From what the sheriff in Arizona told him, Benny O’Reilly had a bit of medical training that he had learned during the War Between the States. If he’d put his mind to it, he could’ve been a doctor by now. Instead, he was running with Blake’s gang.

Dale edged closer, trying to keep the trunks of pine trees between him and the group seated around the small campfire. He recognized Danny Jepson and his younger brother, Sullivan, “Solly” Jepson. The brothers had joined Blake’s gang down in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They both seemed to be impatiently eyeing the two fish frying in the skillet over the small campfire. 

Dale turned his gaze to the tall man standing by the lakeshore, staring out over the water, hands on his hips, his right hand never far from his Colt, hanging low on his right hip. That was Alan Norris, the most recent member of the gang, apparently joining the crew just before they reached Colorado City. Just in time to join in on the bank robbery that had gone bad, with innocent blood on their hands. While Dale knew that Blake Aldrin probably didn’t much care about that, perhaps Norris, maybe even the Jepson brothers, would.

Five against one. Dale, woefully outnumbered, wasn’t too concerned. He had the element of surprise. For a couple of weeks after the robbery in Colorado City, he had only been able to track the gang by the faint trail they left behind and the witnesses that had commented on the unfriendly gang as they passed through one town after another, making their way westward and then northward toward Salt Lake City and then west into Nevada. At first, Dale had thought maybe they were heading for Stockton or Sacramento in California, but then they had turned northward again. That left Carson City, Reno, or maybe even Virginia City as their ultimate destinations.

He watched the group for several more minutes. The horses were tethered to the left, between the lakeshore and a copse of young alders. The horses stood calmly, their ears still, heads down. They hadn’t caught his scent or heard his approach. Good.

Dale had a reputation himself, one that seemed to precede him wherever he went. He was known to be fast with a gun, and once he was on someone’s trail, he never gave up. He was good with his fists and not afraid to use them. Of course, there were plenty of lawmen who didn’t like him or his kind, many of his fellow bounty hunters gaining a negative reputation of taking the law into their own hands, especially when the bounty said ‘Dead or Alive.’ Sometimes, dead was just easier. Most people thought Dale was more concerned about the money he received for chasing down outlaws, but he was just as concerned with justice. But the money didn’t hurt. He had to make a living.

In most cases, Dale wouldn’t have tracked an outlaw gang as far or as long, but the bounty on each of the gang members for bringing them in either dead or alive, plus the reward offered by the bank in Colorado City would amount to a tidy bundle of money that he just couldn’t turn down. Though only in his mid-thirties, Dale didn’t plan on being a bounty hunter forever. Although he didn’t have much formal education, he was intelligent, quick-witted, and stubborn. All he needed was a stake, and then he could finally buy his own land and raise some cattle. Somewhere. Maybe even back in Colorado. Fiercely independent, he had left northern Colorado years ago, where he lived with his family until he was in his mid-twenties. He—

“I say we go to Virginia City,” the youngest member of the group, Solly Jepson, commented. “Maybe we could hit the bank there.”

“Naw,” Danny Jepson grumbled. He scowled at his brother, shaking his head as if he should know better. “The silver mines played out their loads about ten years ago. There will be no money there.”

Blake Aldrin spoke in a deep, gravelly voice. “He’s right.” He turned to glare at each of them, and then his gaze riveted on the back of Alan Norris, still standing by the water. “Al! What you doing over there? We got enough fish. Get over here and eat and then let’s get out of here.”

Al turned around, his expression bland as he began to slowly walk back toward the campfire.

“What’s the hurry?” Benny O’Reilly asked. He made a wide, sweeping gesture with his hand. “There’s nobody out here, nothing ‘cept snakes and rabbits. We gave that bounty hunter the slip days ago.”

Dale’s heart skipped a beat. Though he had known that the gang was aware of his presence, especially when he got within a day’s ride of them, his dust trail impossible to hide out on the open flatlands, he had hoped that they wouldn’t know it was him. But word traveled fast along the trail and had apparently gotten ahead of the gang as they headed toward Reno and then down toward Carson City.

By now, Blake Aldrin probably knew as much about Dale as he cared to know. Dale’s father had been the town sheriff near Fort Collins, Colorado. His two older brothers had followed in their father’s footsteps as deputies. When his father hung up his guns and retired his badge, his brothers would take his place, which would have left Dale with no job prospects in law enforcement there, nor down in Denver, which was growing a bit too civilized for his taste.

As far as he was concerned, he only had one choice. At seventeen years of age, he had tracked down and wounded the man who had shot his father one night as he patrolled the town. When the posse had given up, his brothers had returned to town to look after their father, and Dale had kept going. For three days he had tracked the man who had shot his father, a short gunfight ensued, and two days later, Dale rode into town, the outlaw tied to the saddle, moaning and groaning over the non-fatal bullet wound in his shoulder, complaining about ‘the young ‘un who didn’t know when to quit.’

It was then that Dale had realized that there was no room for him in the organized law-enforcement environment in larger cities like Denver or the growing Colorado Springs to the south. So he’d made up his mind. Though he hated to leave, he decided on a life as a bounty hunter. While not exactly condoned by his father and brothers, Dale realized that at least for the time being, it was as close as he was going to get to wearing a sheriff or deputy’s badge, at least for the time being.

What he had meant to be a temporary job had turned into a fifteen-year-long career of sorts. Dale had earned a reputation throughout the mountain states and down into Arizona and New Mexico as a relentless tracker with a spine of steel and an intense need to not only hunt down his prey but to capture them and bring them to justice. He brought back most of his bounties alive, but there were times over the years where he had brought them back to the local sheriff draped face-down over a saddle. Sometimes, he didn’t much care as long as he received his reward at the end.

It was a living, but truth be told, he yearned to settle down. Someplace. He wasn’t sure where yet, but he had time to figure that out. Bounty hunting was a hard life, and though he was up to the task, he knew he wouldn’t be up for it forever. He already had more scars than he could count, and on some mornings when the weather was especially damp and chilly, he felt his hard life in his bones. So much so that he wondered what his future would bring.

“I said knock it off!”

Dale focused on the group, all five of them now sitting around the campfire eating fried fish and what looked to be cornbread cakes with their fingers. Now was as good a time as any. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and stood. He reached for his revolver, wrapped his palm around the smooth walnut grip, pulled the Colt .45 from its smooth and well-used holster, and stepped forward, half his torso hidden behind the trunk of a Ponderosa pine.

 He spoke in a non-threatening, casual tone. “You boys might want to hurry up and finish that meal because it’s the last decent one you’re going to get for quite some time.”

Chaos ensued. All five men gathered around the campfire startled and glanced wildly around, not sure where his voice had come from. Three of them scrambled upward to their feet, grabbing for their guns. Shouting and gunshots ensued. While Dale tried to keep his eyes on Blake, the man he considered the most dangerous, he also kept the others in his line of sight as best he could.

A gunshot ricocheted against the pine tree three feet above his head. He fired and saw Benny O’Reilly stumble, but he didn’t go down. Another bullet ricocheted off the tree next to Dale, and he turned his gaze back to the campfire. He saw Blake squinting in a half-crouch, firing his gun quickly, one hand brushing back the hammer, the finger of his right hand pulling the trigger just as fast. Dale fired his gun at Blake and saw him go down with a wound in his thigh. Cursing, Blake shouted at the others.

“It’s McCandless! Bring him down, boys!”

The gunfight seemed to go on forever, although Dale knew it probably only lasted seconds. Solly Jepson was down on the ground, not moving. Al Norris lay moaning on the ground, one hand clasping his side. Suddenly, Dale was struck by something against his forehead, and he half-fell, a nearby sapling halting his crash to the ground. He had barely regained his footing when something hard hit him low in his left shoulder, and then he felt the bite of something in his outer right thigh.

Before he even hit the ground, he heard the sound of the horse’s hooves and knew that any surviving members of the gang were hightailing it away from the campfire. He swore under his breath, berating himself for his failure. Then, though he struggled mightily against it, darkness hovered on the edges of his vision, pain bloomed through his body, and a growing darkness consumed him.

Chapter One

“But Father, I don’t want to go!” Marcia exclaimed, hands on her hips as she frowned up at her father. “I’m perfectly happy here in Cooper’s Rest, helping you!”

Doctor Samuel Cooper, commonly known by the townspeople as Doc Sam, also frowned at his daughter, shaking his head in exasperation. Standing roughly five-foot-three-inches tall, Marcia faced her father, her chin set stubbornly as she looked up at the tall, lean, and almost bald man. His bright blue eyes stared down at her, unblinking. If there was one thing that could be said about the father and daughter, they were both stubborn to a fault.

Marcia was a bit on the spoiled side as the only daughter of the town’s doctor, something she readily admitted, but not overly so. Because of her rather delicate features and soft voice, and the fact that she rarely was driven to anger, she’d often been underestimated by others, especially her overprotective father. As far she was concerned, her only fault was that she was overly independent, at least according to the constraining standards of the male population in Cooper’s Rest. Was it the same everywhere else?

Marcia had been one of the first children born in Cooper’s Rest after its founding by her father and his two brothers. Uncle James Cooper, the youngest brother, owned the Cooper’s Rest Silver Mine and Ore Company, the richest man in town and, unfortunately, also one of the least trusted. Uncle James was often considered a harsh taskmaster who, although he provided most of the jobs in the town and the surrounding area, was also the source of a lot of grumbling from those very same people. He didn’t mind spending money and didn’t care who knew it. He made no excuses for his stature in town. At the same time, the miners and others in town didn’t believe he paid enough attention to the safety and well-being of his employees.

Marcia’s father, the middle brother, had never hesitated to remind Uncle James of the importance of safety. Their arguments had led to a rather tense estrangement between him and his younger brother. Her other uncle, Aaron, the oldest of the three brothers, was the mayor of Cooper’s Rest, and even in her opinion, could be rather pompous, though he was basically a good-hearted man who did his best to guide and support his town. Uncle Aaron had a good relationship with her father and got along well enough with her uncle James.

Marcia didn’t talk to Uncle James too much, not wanting to get in between an ongoing sibling rivalry. Still, she knew that both her uncles felt the same way as her father, at least about her. No woman of her upbringing had any business being involved in doctoring or undertaking. Such old-fashioned opinions frustrated her to no end.

“… besides, you can get professional training to be a nurse back east, Marcia, even a doctor if you want. But first, you need formal schooling—”

“You didn’t have formal medical training, Father, and you’re one of the smartest doctors I’ve ever met—”

Her father offered a patient smile. “You’ve only met two other doctors in your entire life, Marcia, and you know it.” He paused, a slight frown marring his brow. “Besides, I was trained by some of the best doctors and surgeons on the battlefront. I don’t need a blamed certificate from a fancy, expensive school to tell me how to doctor anybody!”

Marcia regretted her words. It didn’t take much to upset her father these days. For so long, her father had been one of the stalwart backbones in the growing community. He still was, but at home, she could see that he didn’t take stress quite as well as he used to. She didn’t want to add to his burdens. Though not quite fifty years of age, she swore up one side and down the other that her father had aged ten years practically overnight following her mother’s death. Though only fifteen at the time, she recalled the event clearly, as if it had happened yesterday. Her father had gone to sleep that night with dark brown hair. In the morning, it had gone nearly completely gray.

She sympathized with her father’s grief and his desire to protect her, but she was smart enough to know that she couldn’t wallow in her own grief over the loss of her mother forever. She needed to take care of her father, who somehow seemed a little less confident, a little less focused in those days and months following the ‘incident.’ She missed her mother every day, but she knew her mother would want her to continue living her life to the best of her ability. Unfortunately, it was as if the day her mother died, her father had stopped putting much thought into living. He simply existed. He fulfilled his duties as the town doctor and undertaker, and he did them well, but what would happen if she left? Who would take care of him? Who would help him in the doctor’s office, assist during autopsies, or help with burials if she wasn’t here? Where would he be without her help?

“Father, you know as well as I do that I’m perfectly capable of teaching myself anything I want to know. I can remember everything that I read, my recall is amazing – you said so yourself – and I’ve gone through your entire medical library and—”

“And you always want to know more,” Samuel Cooper interrupted. “But let’s be honest. How many books are left in town that you haven’t read yet? Listen to me, honey. You’ll have better access to all the books that you can imagine. Why, I recall libraries in Boston that were bigger than the town courthouse, filled from the floor to the ceiling with shelves and shelves of books. Can you just imagine—”

Marcia stomped her foot on the floor. “Father, I want to stay here. You need help. I know you don’t want to hear it, but you’re not getting any younger, you know. Between your position as the town doctor and your duties as the undertaker, you’re always busy. Too busy, and I worry about you.”

Samuel sighed. “But it’s not proper for a young lady of your tender age,” he continued. “You shouldn’t be helping me dig inside a man’s innards or helping me prepare a body for burial. It’s just not right! No young fella in his right mind is going to want to court you when you do such things. Don’t you see, Marcia?”

“I don’t care!” She didn’t see. All she knew was that her father was extremely overprotective and had been ever since her mother had been shot and killed by an outlaw eight years ago. He constantly worried about Marcia’s safety, sometimes to the point that Marcia wanted to scream in frustration. She knew her father had been shattered by her mother’s death, and he constantly lived with the guilt of his inability to save her. Because of it, he was not only overprotective but fell into occasional bouts of depression. Both were stubborn to a fault, and they often had conflicting feelings about things, such as this business about him sending her back east.

She liked helping her father in his doctor’s office, attached to the side of the house. She also enjoyed being his assistant when he performed autopsies and even in his duties as an undertaker. Sometimes – though her father didn’t know – she ventured into the small room behind the doctor’s office where bodies were prepared for burial. There, by the light of the lantern, she often studied anatomy in his medical tomes. Someday, maybe she would become a doctor. She didn’t care what any man said about that. She was just as smart, if not smarter, than any man in town, and she wasn’t being conceited about it either. Of course, getting any man to agree to such an opinion was a waste of breath.

She placed a hand on her father’s arm. “I’ll think about it, Father, so please don’t get upset.” She didn’t like to disappoint or anger her father, but there were times when she knew she had to stand up for herself. Now it was time to back away. “You were going to take inventory of your supplies this morning, weren’t you?” He nodded. “I’ll be there in just a few minutes to help, all right?”

Her father gazed down at her, a smile on his lips and a knowing expression in his eyes. “Quit trying to distract me, child. I know very well what you think about going back east. But as a father, it is my responsibility to remind you once in a while whether you want to listen to the old man or not.”

Marcia smiled and hugged her father. “I love you, Father, you know that.”

He turned and strode through the kitchen toward the side door of the house, which led directly into the main room of the doctor’s office. Another small room opened off of that to serve as a patient’s room when needed. “Don’t be too long.”

“I won’t.” After her father had left the house, she heaved a sigh and strode from the kitchen and down the short hallway into the parlor the front of the house. She gazed out the window at the front yard, beyond the picket fence, and down the wide dirt street that cut Cooper’s Rest in half. Across the way and down the street a little, she saw Abner Williams step from the mercantile, a long white apron tied around his waist, a broom in hand. He began to sweep the boardwalk in front of his store. 

The Cooper home and medical office were located on the southwest end of town on the corner, away from much of the activity in town but not far enough away to be an inconvenience to the townspeople. Marcia loved the town and had watched it grow throughout her life, first starting out as a tiny settlement created by a band of people traveling west by wagon train. The group had arrived too late in the year to even attempt passing the Sierra Nevada’s to California. 

No one in this part of the west had failed to learn or heed the lessons of the ill-fated Donner party back in the winter of 1846 and into 1847. They had attempted to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains in early November of ’46. It was a fatal decision, as they were trapped in the mountains during an early yet heavy snowfall high up in the mountains. Over the coming days and weeks, the snow kept falling, sometimes reaching depths of nine or ten feet, with snowdrifts even deeper.

Unfortunately, help didn’t arrive until the following February, after many of them died of starvation and sickness. They had resorted to eating boiled ox hide rugs and had boiled and re-boiled the bones of their horses and oxen for watery soup. If they were lucky, they might catch a mouse or two, but one by one, they died. There were rumors that some of the survivors had resorted to the unthinkable… eating the human flesh of those who died before them…

At any rate, the Coopers knew enough to stop and make camp, which soon became a fortress of sorts, and then from that, a small town had sprung. The town had started with maybe fifty inhabitants. It now was probably close to two or three hundred, many of them families, farmers, and ranchers scattered throughout the valley. Half of them were miners who still managed to pull ore out of the mine. Though the main silver vein had gradually declined, her uncle still managed to process some silver and other ore to make the mine profitable. The town had grown rapidly once the mine was established, but along with that growth came the less savory aspects of society.

Crime had risen along with the population. When she was fifteen years old, her mother had been killed in a crossfire between two drunken cowboys fighting over who knew what. Ever since then, her father had grown quite overprotective. Mature at a young age, Marcia had taken over much of the household chores and had insisted on helping him with his practice and responsibilities as much as possible, learning a good deal about basic medicine along the way.

Brushing her hands down the front of her gray, lightweight woolen skirt and ensuring that she hadn’t spattered bacon grease on her cream-colored broadcloth blouse, she sighed and headed for the doctor’s office.

Just after she joined her father in front of the shelves filled with jars of pills and powders, and herbs and liquids, she heard shouting from outside. She and her father both turned to the door as it burst open.

“Doc! Doc!”

Marcia turned to find a miner entering the office, casting a frantic gaze around before he spied them in front of the shelf. “Stop shouting!” she exclaimed. “We’re right here! What is—”

Another man rushed into the room, followed by two other miners carrying a wounded man between them. One of them, red in the face from exertion, had his arms hooked under the man’s arms, head lolling forward onto his chest, while the other had the wounded man’s legs hooked under his arms at the knees. Marcia took one look at the bloodied man and pointed to the examination table. “Put him there. Gently!”

She stepped to the table as the miners did as they were instructed, she on one side, her father on the other. The man’s face was bloodied, caused by a gash near his hairline over his right eye. His shirt was blood-stained as well, and so too was his right pant leg. Her father gave her quiet instructions as he reached for a pair of scissors to cut loose the man’s shirt.

“Marcia, get me a basin of warm water and a cloth. We’ll see what we have here.”

Heart pounding, excitement surging through her veins despite herself, Marcia quickly hurried into the house, reached for a basin on the side table, and poured water from the always-filled warming teakettle on the back of the stove into it. She quickly returned to the doctor’s office and opened a cabinet beneath the shelves of medicines to retrieve three cloths of varying sizes and thickness. Carefully, she placed the basin and the clothes on a smaller table next to the one on which the stranger lay.

“I don’t know this man,” her father muttered.

“We don’t know him either,” one of the miners said. “We found him by the trail leading up to Pulpit Peak. On the shore of the lake, we also found a dead man, and a few pools of blood and then blood trails and a bunch of horse tracks leading away from the area headed south.”

Doctor Sam simply nodded, his gaze focused on the man lying on the table. He was seriously wounded; Marcia knew that much. He’d lost a lot of blood. His breathing was shallow and ragged. His face was a sickly grayish-white. She began to help her father clean him up so that they could get a better look at his wounds. As she did, her heart sank. In addition to the graze on his head, he’d been shot in his upper chest and again in his thigh. It didn’t appear as if either of those bullets had nicked an artery, or the man would be dead by now. Still, he had lost so much blood—

“What’s going on in here?”

Marcia looked up to find the sheriff standing in the doorway. Sheriff Terrence Chase was in his mid-thirties, a dedicated yet woefully underhanded lawman responsible for a vast territory. He’d not been a very experienced lawman before arriving in Cooper’s Rest a couple of years ago, although he claimed that he had briefly worked as a deputy someplace back in Kansas years before.

Though he wasn’t exactly inept, he often acted like he didn’t know what he was doing or what to do in certain situations. Marcia figured he was more deputy material than sheriff material, but what did she know? Marcia gave the man credit for at least trying. The job of a lawman out here was a daunting task. Numerous outlaw gangs were rampant, many of them taking advantage of the trains that now nearly crisscrossed the country bearing gold, money, and passengers who made easy prey for robberies. Not to mention the routine and criminal issues surrounding any western town filled with miners and travelers heading west – drunken brawls, fights over the most ridiculous of things, thievery, roadside robbery, and at times, murder.

The stranger lying on the examination table wasn’t the first man that had been found lying in the wilderness and left to die, and he wouldn’t be the last. Why the exploits of the outlaw Butch Cassidy had made the papers in Reno lately. Just last summer, he had robbed a bank in Colorado and made away with over twenty-thousand dollars! They were supposedly hiding out in a popular outlaw refuge known as Hole-in-the-Wall, in Wyoming somewhere. Marcia enjoyed reading the papers and tried to keep up on current events.

Needless to say, because of the death of lawmen in the region, despite their proximity to Reno and Carson City, Cooper’s Rest often found itself as a stopping-over waypoint for many of these outlaws. Was the stranger lying on the table, gunshot and bleeding, one of those men? Was he an innocent that had been robbed as he rode the trail?

“He looks pretty bad off,” her father mumbled.

Marcia agreed. She didn’t have much optimism for his survival, but she knew that her father would do whatever he could to save the man regardless of who he was or what he might’ve done. Marcia assisted in tending him. “I wonder what happened to him.”

Samuel lifted the gun belt that he had removed from the man’s waist and gestured at the Colt .45 in the holster. “The handle of that gun doesn’t look brand-new to me,” he commented. “He obviously has experience using it, so regardless of who or what he is, keep your distance and curiosity about him to yourself.”

Sheriff Chase eyed the man, a frown marring his brow. He agreed. “I’ll go look at my wanted posters in the office, just in case—“

“There are some papers in the saddlebags.”

Marcia and her father turned to watch as another miner entered the exam room, lifting a pair of saddlebags in his hand. He handed them to the sheriff. As the sheriff dug into the saddlebags, Marcia finished cleaning around the wound on the man’s upper chest while her father tended to the leg wound. She slid her hand beneath the man’s back, feeling for an exit wound. “The bullet’s still in him, Father,” she commented.

He nodded. “This one too.” He grunted. “Well, we’ll leave them in there for the time being. If they don’t get infected, they might as well stay. No sense in digging around and making things worse than they already are.”

Marcia said nothing but simply nodded, focusing on her task of wiping blood and dust from around the wounds. She felt eyes watching her and glanced up to find the miners and the sheriff staring at her, then her father, then back at her and the man on the table, his shirt unbuttoned and open, displaying a thick and muscled chest and flat abdomen.

She frowned, then realized why they were staring. “What?” she snapped. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, haven’t you men ever seen a man’s chest before? Go on, get out of here now, and let the doctor do what he can to save this man.”

The miners backed toward the door, glancing uncertainly at her father, who also nodded, gesturing with his hand toward the door before ignoring them all. Only Sheriff Chase remained, staring dubiously at the unconscious man. Marcia shooed him away too. “Go look at your posters, Terrence. We’ve got work to do.”

The man gazed at her, eyes wide as his cheeks flushed with color. He looked like he was going to say something but then changed his mind, nodded, and backed out as well, closing the door softly behind him. She heard her father chuckle.

“You do know that they’re never going to get used to seeing you working beside me, don’t you?”

Marcia snorted. “I don’t care if they get used to it or not. This is my job, and I’m not going to apologize for it.”

After that, the two worked quietly. Marcia dipped her towel into the basin of water several times, finishing with the man’s chest. She didn’t see any other recent injuries on his chest or abdomen, but she did note several scars, one that looked rather ugly, maybe from a knife. There was one pucker in his left abdomen and a thin scar that traced along the bottom of his rib cage. Who was this man? Why did he have so many healed injuries?

She’d treated plenty of men out here, men with injuries that had occurred in the mines caused by falling rocks, inattention with pickaxes and shovels, and of course the nearly daily brawls that occurred when men came into town to release steam and spend their paychecks. She treated fractures from cowboys busting broncs, caused by any number of wagon accidents, and even a man who had fallen from a barn roof while repairing his barn shingles. This man’s injuries appeared to be caused by violent confrontations with guns, knives, and who knew what else.

She sighed and turned her attention to his leg. She tried to maintain her focus on her task, easing the cloth gently around the edges of the wound, his skin warm beneath her fingers. She needn’t have worried, as the man remained unconscious and motionless under her ministrations. She glanced up at her father, quietly probing the bullet wound in the man’s upper chest now, his concentration intense. Her gaze shifted to the man’s features once more. He was obviously tall, his feet nearly hanging off the edge of the table, which would make him just over six feet tall. He was lean and muscular, a man who probably spent a lot of time outdoors and on the trail. His face and neck were darker than the skin of his chest or his legs. His auburn hair was a bit long, and a stubble of reddish-brown beard covered his jaw. In addition to the new wound along his hairline and forehead, she saw a scar on his right temple as well.

After she finished cleaning the wound on his leg, she began to clean his hands and arms. His fingers and hands looked strong. She saw scars on his knuckles, and his palms felt calloused. She’d always been a curious sort, and now her curiosity blossomed. She looked up at her father.

“Who do you think he is? What do you think he does? You think he’s a miner or a rancher from somewhere around here?”

Her father glanced at her. “I don’t know, Marcia. I’ve never seen him before. Don’t let your curiosity run away with you.” He shook his head, tsking softly. “I’m not sure he’s going to make it.”

She looked at the man’s face and, for some reason, imagined that he was stubborn, one who didn’t do anything he didn’t want to and one who didn’t much care what other people thought about him. Why she felt that way, she didn’t know. Maybe it was the scars. Maybe it was the fact that he was still alive in spite of his injuries. Maybe—

A groan interrupted her thoughts, and both she and her father paused in their ministrations to gaze at the man’s face. His eyelids fluttered, and he moved his head. His eyelids opened, and Marcia sucked in a breath. She’d never seen eyes that color—very light blue, almost gray. The man tried to shift his position on the table.

“Hold still, young man,” Samuel ordered, placing his hands gently on the man’s shoulders. “You’ve been shot, and you’re on my examination table. I’m Doctor Samuel Cooper, and my daughter and I are taking good care of you.”

The man stared up at him, blinked heavily, and then turned to gaze at Marcia. When his eyes met hers, she felt their impact deep in her belly. Then, as abruptly as he’d woken, he slipped back once more into unconsciousness.

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“Mending His Wounded Heart” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

Marcia Cooper is not your ordinary doctor’s daughter and she has never claimed to be. She works alongside her father, taking care of patients and other tasks that most people don’t approve of. If there’s one thing about Marcia though, it’s that she speaks her mind and fights for what she believes in. Little does she realize what awaits her though when an injured bounty hunter suddenly arrives at their doorstep. As she tends to his wounds she becomes fascinated by him, much to her father’s chagrin. Yet she fears he will put himself in harm’s way again all too soon… Feeling truly alive for the first time in her life, will she find the courage to show him what lies deep in her heart?

When Dale McCandless finds himself wounded by the outlaws he’s trailing, he ends up under Marcia Cooper’s care. He’s bound and determined to get back on the trail while the feisty young doctor’s daughter fights him every step of the way. Dale, a man who’s sworn to never settle down in one place for too long, soon becomes aware of his increasing attraction to Marcia. The more he gets to know her, the more he begins to feel like she could be the one to save his aching heart. But troubles left behind, have a way of returning… For a man who has spent his life fighting, can there ever be peace and maybe a chance to love?

Dale worries that he’s put Marcia in peril and Marcia worries that Dale is going to get himself killed due to his obsession with capturing his enemies. When Dale comes close to losing everything that he never knew he wanted he will have to decide what truly matters to him. Can their electrifying connection withstand the danger coming their way and turn into a true love they never imagined?

“Mending His Wounded Heart” is a historical western romance novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

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