The Moon by Night Read Free Page B

collar, and dragged him out from under Balaam’s hooves. Shiloh shook him. “Get up, you!”
    The boy was limp in his grasp, his head lolling like a broken doll.
    â€œAw, man, you aren’t dead, are you?” Kneeling quickly and cradling the boy’s head, Shiloh looked close—it was so dark he could hardly make out the features, though the face was a deadly white blur—and felt his head. He could see that this was a man—a very slight man, but he did have a mustache—with thin, greasy hair. Shiloh could feel the warmth of blood on his fingers. But the man was breathing. He even murmured slightly and his hand scrabbled vaguely. Shiloh felt his pulse. It was weak but steady. The man’s hands and face, however, were icy cold and corpselike.
    â€œGreat,” Shiloh rasped. “Okay, Mr. Big Bad, you did it. You’re gonna have to carry him. But—” Shiloh heaved up the unconscious man—”it’s not going to be that big a pain, ’cause this little piffle doesn’t weigh as much as the doc does. But don’t tell her I said that,” Shiloh added hastily. He tossed the man over the saddle like a bag of flour—a long, thin bag, perhaps—and then stooped to pick up the robber’s weapon.
    It was an umbrella. A very nice umbrella, actually, made of fine black silk, with no broken spokes and a hand-carved wooden handle. Shiloh couldn’t see what the carving was, but he could feel the delicate etching of some hard, highly polished wood.
    â€œWhat’s a fine muffin like this doin’, anyway, mugging self-respecting men and horses out here like this?” Shiloh asked Balaam, shoving the umbrella into the saddlebag. “Aw, quit your whinin’. It’s all your fault anyway, knockin’ him out cold like that. Speakin’ of cold, let’s step it up a little, Balaam. Snow’s getting heavy, and I guess I need to get this little sneak-thief someplace warm before he dies on me.”

Two
Lifeline
    â€œPut him in Surgery 3,” Cheney told James and John as they carried Cornelius Melbourne into the hospital on the stretcher. They turned left into surgery while Cheney started toward the nurses’ station straight ahead. A weak cry from the litter stopped her, so she motioned to the duty nurse, and the two followed James and John into the operating room. The boys placed the patient, litter and all, on the surgical table. Cheney said firmly to Melbourne, “This is Nurse Kitty Kalm, Mr. Melbourne. She is going to stay with you, because I must attend—”
    â€œNo, no,” he said. “Don’t leave me, Dr. Duvall. Please don’t leave me….” He was beginning to show signs of increasing agitation, though only his hands twitched. He kept his eyes locked on Cheney’s face. She knew that sometimes patients with horrible-looking injuries could not bear the sight of them, so they obsessively fixated on something else. In Mr. Melbourne’s case, Cheney seemed to be his tenuous lifeline.
    She took his hand. “All right, then, I won’t leave you.”
    He relaxed a little, and some of the dreadful panic diminished in his eyes and expression. His hand was cold and clammy. His lips were blue. Cheney knew that he must have surgery immediately. To Nurse Kalm she spoke in the quiet monotone that seemed to soothe the patient regardless of what she was saying. “Is Dr. Batson here?” “Here” for Cleve meant at the hospital, the office, or his home, as they were all on the same block. He always alerted the hospital of his whereabouts.
    â€œNo, ma’am. He came in after lunchtime and said he was going downtown, that he had several patient calls to make. He left a list if you would like—”
    â€œNo,” Cheney said, the casual tone in her voice belying the urgency in her eyes. “Mr. Melbourne must have surgery immediately.”
    Nurse Kalm nodded. She was