Connor: The Stuff of Life2

"You know," a voice drawled behind him. "I really hate it when someone kicks a man down."
The sound of a cocking pistol startled him. He jumped with an angry yelp. Turning around he glared at the intruder. A woman with a rather cold smile on her face. The barrel of her pistol was levelled at his forehead. Somewhere in the dark recesses of his fired brain he acknowledged that she must be a very good shot.

"Why don't you take your sorry rear end out of here while I am still in a generous mood?" she suggested sweetly, raising another pistol to point at his chest. She raised her eyebrows. "Well? What do you think?"

He opened his mouth to answer and then just shook his head like a stubborn mule. She sighed and fired off near his left boot.

"Scoot," she ordered while he shrieked, red faced, that the game was not fair. "I am not playing." She gestured with her other gun. "The next bullet will open a hole in your head so big that I will see your brain drizzling out." There was an undercurrent of menace there – that frightened him. When he was not in control of the game, he did not want to play. He pouted and stepped away from the dying man.

"Further," she commanded matching him step for step. "And more. And more. I want to see you in those trees – and I sure as hell do not want to see your face again." Her eyes glinted. "Because if I do, that will be the last time you cackle."

She discharged the other gun just to show she mean business and then discarded both. From the holsters at her back she drew two more long barrelled guns.

"These are loaded, amigo," she said slowly with relish. "And I have more where that came from."

Finally he got the hint that this one was trouble. She was a bully. She would not play by the rules. She made her own rules. With a pout and a screech he ran off into the woods. She watched him go. Only when his shrieking faded did she approach the by now surely dead man.

Only he was not.

"Well," she muttered peeling back his eyelid clinically. "you are one tough son of a…" She checked his pulse. It was so irregular that she had to stop and think. He was going into shock. Would it kill him to have the arrow taken out now or later? She scooted over to the other side of him, watching the quick rise and fall of his chest. A tough bugger and no mistake. Each breath he pumped blood out. There was no obvious exit point.

"You had to go and complicate didn't you?" she accused him. "You look a hard one. So we'll try this. Odds are even: live or die. Nice and simple." She spat on her hands and rubbed them together.

She took off her bag and opened it with a look of intense concentration. She rummaged around until she found what she was looking for: a wooden block with impressions on its smooth surface – impressions of teeth.

"Why ruin a perfectly good knife handle when you can simply pick up a piece of wood?" she asked of empty air. If he heard her he gave no sign. She patted his cheek. "Nothing for it now, amigo. Live or die – that's the sentence of this court." She pried open his mouth and wedged the wooden block into it. "Make some marks on this for me," she told him and set one hand flat against his chest, the other grasping the shaft. "This will hurt like a hell of a mother," she warned and pushed.

He was alive after all. He spasmed at the first push, his jaw tightening around the piece of wood. Mercilessly she went on pushing, muttering under her breath a stream of words that was part curses part imprecations against man, God and beast and arrows in general.
"Ah, you son of a mother," she grunted finally once the arrow point had come out of his back. "You are lucky this went UNDER your lung, not through it. Or you'd be a dead bugger right now."

He was shivering, his breathing audible around the wood. His nostrils flared and contracted. She touched his chest lightly. "We're halfway done. One more little thing left to do. You doing good so far."

She waited until he'd stopped twitching. The next part was to cleanly break off the arrowhead. It was soaked with blood. The smell of blood was spreading all around. She could almost feel it settle on her clothes. "Urgh," she grouched. "This crap'll never come off now."

She extracted a rather sharp knife from her boot. It had a wide polished blade and she could have shaved with it had she wanted to.

"Alright," she went on with the one sided conversation. So long as the sound of her voice penetrated the pain and shock in his mind, she was doing fine. "Amigo, this is part two." She crouched lower, not the most comfortable position – but she did not dare move him. he was already damaged enough – and set the edge of the knife against the shaft just under the cleaned off arrowhead. "On the count of one, two and three."

The soaked wood parted badly and she cursed. Wiping off the knife blade on her coat she studied the rather ragged ends. "Well," she shrugged philosophically. "Can't get lucky all the time."

She glanced at his face. He was pale. The front of his coat – a strange combination of Indian and white dress that somehow suited him – was soaked and glistening with dark blood.
"We're almost out of time," she said in a funnily deeper voice. "So far so good. Now for part three. And then we'll see what happens."

Once more she put one hand flat against his chest. His heart did not flutter quite so much now, a good sign or a bad one depending on one's interpretation. "I'll go with the optimistic one," she chuckled, grasping hold of the shaft, counted to three and tugged sharply. He shuddered and she had to calm him down again. "We'll try again." She exhaled sharply and inhaled again, ignoring the stink of blood all over. Counting to three again she tugged hard and this time part of the arrow shaft appeared, with more blood sluggishly following. She wiped a blood spattered hand across her face, leaving streaks. "Just what do you have in your chest, amigo?" she wondered, smiling and shaking her head. "One more time then…"

On the third attempt the arrow did come out. The man lay limp, sweat pouring in rivulets down his face. "If you can sweat," she observed. "you can live." She had to force his mouth open to get her piece of wood back. She whistled when she saw the deep grooves. "Honey, you sure have very strong teeth there," she remarked cleaning the piece and stashing it into her bag. "Alright," she continued. "What now? Ah, yes, bandages."

She sloshed her waterskin around. Half full. Enough in a pinch, not great but enough. "Sorry, friend," she got hold of her sharp knife again. "I hate to do this but your clothes have gotta go." With a few cuts of the knife she peeled off the coat and let out an appreciative sound. "Well, amigo, you are certainly a looker, blood or not. All that running around the forest sure keeps you trim." With great care she placed pads and bandages around him. "I'll make it tight – don't want this unravelling at the wrong moment."

She sat back on her heels, drawing her arm across her blood streaked face. "And now the hard part," she told the unconscious man. "Getting the hell out of here." And that might just be harder than she'd thought. He was no lightweight – in fact he was closer to being dead weight than anything. She grunted humourlessly. Sometimes she wished her thoughts would just stop.

"Fine. So what do we do then?"


"I hate moralistic impulses," she said to the sleeping man two days later. "I just do. They make absolutely no sense to a rational human being." Moodily she drank her tea. Coffee was too strong a drink for her. And the smell….

The Indian lay still. Closer to death than life but that could not be helped. His own body had to do the work now. Her arms ached and her head was full of wool which did not make for a fun evening. The fire crackled merrily and she poked at it, hating the smug light.
"So you will probably ask me, why did you do it?" She poured more tea from the still warm kettle. "Damned if I know." She drank and grimaced. Time to change the bandages – again. How much of her spare shirt had she used up now? One more day at most and then he'd just have to bleed right through.

Her horse snorted from nearby. "I know. Pathetic." She came over to check her saddlebags for more herbs. She'd planned to sell these in the nearest town but now that was not going to happen. "You owe me," she muttered to her supine patient. "Big time."

She smelled the bandages after unwinding them. No sweet smell of rotten meat. No infection, then. So far so good.

"It's food you need now, amigo. Lots of it – something hot." She checked his pulse: a steadier heartbeat than in the morning. "You are stronger than you appear, friend. That's luck on your side for once." She glanced around at the cold night forest. "I wonder what your insane friend is doing out there." Her lips twitched into a wintry smile. "Probably still running. Maybe met that bear too – these claw marks…. Argh." She had been worried at first that the claw marks had been infected – apparently the bear had not been rabid after all. "Alright, let's do this."


"And what's this?" the round faced black man asked from the porch of his cabin on the outskirts of the little shanty town.

Without breaking her stride or even cracking a smile, she replied, "A stray dog."
He blinked and then roared with laughter, throwing his head back. She rolled her eyes.

"You laugh so much it's a wonder you ain't got flies in your mouth," she growled. That made him laugh even harder, holding his hands to his paunch that hung over the stained apron he wore.

"O that is why I love you so much, my dear," he said coming down to hug her. "Your never failing sense of humour."

"Your life is about to fail you, old man, if you do not help me get him down from that animal," she growled.

The portly man approached the horse and the travois it dragged. He pursed his lips and turned to her. "He is half dead."

"Not after I finish with him he won't. There was some insane bugger trailing him – I got interested. This one," she nodded in the sleeping man's direction. "He was doing quite well until he met a bear… after that it was touch and go." She came over to untie the travois from the saddle harness she'd rigged. "Well, you gonna help me or just stand there making grave faces."

Lifting the head end of the wooden travois, he grunted. "You could not have found somebody lighter." His only answer was a long look. He sighed. She was impossible when she was like this, hell bent on some moralistic errand. She insisted she had no morals but he knew that was a lie. She was a softie under the rough exterior.

Once the only bed in the cabin was occupied by her patient, she sat near the table, her face resting in her hands. "Here," he pushed a cup of hot tea with honey in it across to her. "You look half frozen."

"It's late November," she groused swilling the tea in the cup and then taking a careful sip. She licked her lips. "You are getting better, old man. This does not taste half so bad."

He grinned and got up to get the roast from the spit. "Of course now I have nothing to sell – thanks to him," she indicated the blanket-wrapped Indian on the bed. She shook her head, irritated. "Idiot."

"You are too hard on yourself," he said putting plates in front of her. One had dark bread and the other the remains of the coneys he must have caught yesterday. The meat was a little stringy but warm food all the same. "You always pick up stray animals."

"Yeah, and this one has teeth." She dragged her bag across the table and extracted from it the wounded man's knife. "Keeps it well honed too. A hunter's knife this."

Her old friend took the knife and studied it. He hefted it. "Good weight too. You do not want to sell this?"

"Ask him," she replied chewing a big piece of bread. "How do you think he would feel waking up and finding his weapons gone? He's got a killer's build."

"He's an Indian – they're all like that. All muscle and no fat."

"Would you like to estimate how strong his arm is," she wondered sarcastically. "Before he strangles you with his bare hands?"

"You feel strongly about this," he noted shrewdly. "Why?" He put the knife down onto the scratched wood of the table.

She looked at the fire for a long time. And then sighed.

"I was asked," she admitted at last. "I owed an old friend a favour."

"You have a lot of friends," he noted dryly. She slapped the table and glowered, then saw the smile on his face.

"O you… stop that," she told him. "Lee told me a friend of his was out in the wilderness somewhere tracking an insane nutter who'd turned traitor."

The old man leaned forward. "And you think you've found him?"

She once more opened the bag and took out a tomahawk. "Lee described the distinctive weapon his friend carried." She tapped the feathered haft. "This, to be exact."

"No name?"

She shook her head. "The less I know the better. Now it looks as if I might get to know too much."

"Lee is dangerous," the black man said looking away from the tomahawk. The weapon made him nervous. It looked positively nasty. A man of the Indian's stature could easily bash his brains in – not a pleasant image. "He keeps dangerous company."

"So do I," she dead panned returning the tomahawk to the bag. "Fun, though."

"Eat," he said roughly. "I'll make you a bed in the upstairs room."

"No," she disagreed. "I'll stay down here. Don't want my debt to die on me."

"Amy," he remonstrated. "Think about your virtue."

She snorted and had to hold her mouth closed with her hand so that the meat would not fall out. "Really?" she said once she had her laughter under control. "Winston, sometimes I think you worry too much."

"If I did not," he said seriously looking over his shoulder at her. "Would you be sitting here with a roof over your head?"

She slumped. "No, I guess not." She put on her most winsome expression. "Please, uncle Winston, can I stay down here?" She fluttered her eyelashes at him outrageously. He huffed and promised retribution under his breath as he stumped up the wooden stairs to the attic of the cabin.

She sat at the table for a long time, staring at the unconscious Indian.

"Well, amigo, looks like we're home."