The Daughter - C.B. Cooper (red novels txt) 📗

that Jarvis?"
"Yes."
Sharp was glad to see that Angel's face had returned to normal, everything except her ebony colored eyes. "So, that's it then. We're all done here?"
Angel regarded him with darkly troubled eyes, "Not quite." she answered sadly.
"What, why? Who's left?" he asked, quickly going over everything in his mind, trying to figure out if they had missed something. He couldn't think of a single thing.
Angel's brows furrowed above her forlorn eyes. "I'm sorry Sam," she whispered, "But it has to be like this."
Fear skittered along his spine, "Like what?"
He watched her eyes harden and her shoulders stiffen and a second later, two loud gunshots boomed in the narrow hallway.
Sam flinched twice, his eyes rounding.
He slowly lowered his gaze in shock. Blood flowed freely from the two open wounds. "Noooo!"

chapter


Angel tipped forward and fell against him. He grabbed her around the waist with his left arm and pulled her tightly against him as he jerked his pistol with his right. Cocking as he brought the muzzle up, he fired two rapid shots, back to back.
The first bullet pierced Tom Coulters left cheek, and the other caught him at the base of his throat. The smoking gun in Tom's hand fell from his grasp as he hit the floor one last time.

Sam scooped Angel up into his arms as he raced for the stairs, screaming for his partner, "Zeb! Zeb!"
Sharp took the stairs as fast as he could without jostling her around to much. "Zeb! Zeb!"
Zeb came on the run, meeting him at the bottom of the staircase, gun in hand. When he saw Sam carrying the girl, he stopped, his expression instantly worried. "What's wrong? What happened to her?"
"She's been shot. I need you to ride up the hill and fetch me the doc. Tell him to hurry!"
"I'll try, but you know he's always passed out drunk by this time."
Sharp cursed. He knew Zeb was right. The town doctor was also the town drunk. He fixed people up just fine, as long as it was before noon. After that he was useless. Come four O'clock in the afternoon the man couldn't see straight, by six, he was wetting in his pants, piss drunk, and by seven thirty— he would be passed out cold.
"Shit. Just ride up there and get him anyway. Sober him up anyway you can!" Sam yelled as he started for the door.
"Sam…"
Sharp spun on him, "God damn it, Zeb, just do it!" He looked down into her pale, drawn face. Her eyes were closed and her breathing seemed shallow, "She's dying! We have to do something!"
"White Warrior!" Buffalo Hump called from the parlor. Behind him stood his braves. Even in that dire moment, the scene struck Sam as odd. There were more than a dozen, half naked Comanche warriors made up for battle, wandering around the fancy library parlor. A few of them stood behind their chief, stoically watching him, while all the others roamed around the room, stopping to touch this or that. It was all strange and new to them. "I will send for Water's That Fall. If anyone can save your girl, it is him."
Sharp nodded, "I'd be much obliged." Motioning with his head, he told the chief, "You and your men take what you want, but hurry, there's a fire upstairs."
The chief turned, scowling at his men and spoke to them sharply in their own tongue. The men who had been browsing the room reluctantly stopped and went to stand by their chief dejectedly. They had obviously been told to leave the things alone.
Buffalo Hump was notorious for shunning the white mans ways. While other cheifs had taken to wearing the white mans clothes and adapting to the white man's ways, it was not so with Ol' Buffalo Hump. He was proud of who and what he was, and he expressly forbid his people from lowering themselves to the white mans standards.
Buffalo Hump walked towards the door, motioning for Sam to follow him, "Come, White Warrior, and we will try to save your girl."

As they crossed the street towards the Gold Rush saloon, the chief and his men went for Waters That Fall, who was waiting just outside of town.
Entering the saloon, Sam carried Angel over to the large Faro table in the far right hand corner of the room. Zeb rushed ahead and cleared the table in one long swipe, the dealers box and cards scattering across the wood planked floor.
Sam eased Angel onto the table, "Zeb, get those lanterns lit." he called as he stripped his shirt off and began tearing it into strips with the help of his bowie knife.
He spoke to Angel as he worked, sounding a lot more confidant than he felt, "Just hold on there, Girl. We're gonna get you fixed up good as new."
He cast a worried look at the blood stains spreading on the front of her shirt. One bullet had pierced her shoulder blade, the blood seeping through the black material, several inches above her left breast. The other wound was on the same side, right above the swell of her right hip, in the fleshy part of her stomach.
With his shirt in tatters, he paused. Zeb had brought the lanterns, and was standing on the other side of the table, looking worriedly back at him.
He stared at Angel's shirt. It didn’t seem right to just strip her bare, right here in the middle of an empty, cold saloon. The place smelled like stale cigar smoke and old beer that had been spilled and seeped into the grain of the wood floor. He thought that the surroundings would make the act of undressing her seem cheap and dirty. He wished they would have taken her down the street to the doctors office.
Cold fingers grasped his hand.
Looking down, he seen that Angel was awake and watching him. Her features looked pained, but she tried to smile, "It's alright, Sam, it's just skin." The smile slipped off her face as told him seriously, "You need to stop the bleeding." When she seen he was still hesitant, she said, "Don’t think about it, just do it."
He wasn’t sure exactly when it had happened, but he no longer thought of her as Gracie. He also wasn’t real sure if he believed the whole, 'Grey Angel' theory either, even though he'd seen her do things that no human could possibly do, it all still seemed so surreal. But, one fact remained, whoever she was, he still loved her like a daughter— and he had to save her.
"Zeb, turn around," he ordered his friend. He knew he had to undress her, but he could try and spare her some dignity in the process.
Once Zeb had turned away, he went about trying to get her arms out of her duster, which was almost impossible.
"Use yer knife," Zeb instructed over his shoulder, "It'll be easier on her."
Sam slid his bowie knife out of its sheath again, and the sharp blade made quick work of removing the material. Once he had her naked from the waist up, he could see that the bullet that had went through her shoulder blade was just under the surface of the skin, even though there was a large hole there that leaked blood. The wound in her side was the same.
Frowning, he gently rolled her over, ignoring the growl of pain that escaped her lips. Stuffing the rags against the small entry wounds, he rolled her back over, so that her own weight would help stop the bleeding there.
Taking a large strip of material, he laid it across her chest, covering her breasts. With the rest of the material, he wadded it up and held it firmly over the wounds.
Behind him, he heard the batwing doors push open.
"Okay," he told Zeb, "You can turn around now."
As Zeb turned, his old eyes widened, "We got trouble, Son."
Sam spun to look at where Zeb had indicated with a thrust of his head.
Buffalo Hump stood just inside the doors with two of his men, each holding an arm of the chief's Medicine Man.
Waters That Fall looked scared and defiant, all at the same time. The mans eyes were wide, but his brow was furrowed, and his lips were pursed together tightly. The skin around his left eye was turning purple, and the corner of his mouth leaked a small trail of blood.
"What in the hells going on?" Sam demanded.
"Waters that Fall, is being difficult," Buffalo Hump said angerly, "He's refusing to help the devil woman."
Sam was about to start yelling, when Angel grabbed his hand again. He turned back to her as the Comanche all started arguing behind him.
"Sam, I need to tell you something."
He voice was so weak he could barely hear her above the shouting behind him. "What?" he asked, as he bent closer.
"I need to tell you something. It's very important." she breathed.
Her breath washed over him, making his nose tickle and the skin on his head tingle as his head started to swim. Her breath smelled unlike anything he'd ever smelled before. It was a weird mixture of lillacs blooming in the summer sun, and something he could only describe as…how the feeling of home would smell, if it had a smell, like pure goodness. The feeling it gave him was almost euphoric, like he was standing in the presence of something holy. He wondered briefly if it was always like this between a father and a daughter. A magical bond or connection, that joined them together forever.
"I lied to you," she said. "I lied when I told you that Gracie was dead."

Chapter.

He stared at her incredibly, "What?"
She smiled, her pained eyes glistening, "I lied about Gracie. I just wanted you to go home. I didn’t want you mixed up in all of this. She didn’t want you mixed up in all of this."
"I don’t understand."
"Neither do I, really. It's never happened before."
Sam stared at her in confusion, his mind reeling at her words and his heartbeat speeding up just a little. Could his Gracie still be alive in there? He still held onto the concept of Angel being some sort of alter ego created by a girl who had suffered through unbelievable torture and trauma— and the mind-bending loss of the only man she had ever known as her father. His heart beat faster still, as he thrilled at the idea that she could snap out of it at any moment, and become his little girl once again.
"Let me explain," she whispered, as everything going on around them fell away, leaving just the two of them.
"When I'm pulled to help someone, I enter the persons body as they leave— which is what I did. Only, this time, as soon as I entered Gracie's body, she popped back up. As it turned out, it wasn’t her time to go yet, but I was already in there. And, let me tell you, she was pissed." Angel smiled at the memory. "That girl has quite the temper once you get her riled up. She demanded that I get the 'hell out of her body'. She can be very… persistant."
Sam grinned, tears welling in his eyes, "That sounds like my girl."
"Yes, she reminds me a great deal of you. And to tell you the truth, those first couple of days, she just about drove me bat shit."
Sam's heart swelled, "Can she hear me?" he asked hopefully.
"No." Angel shook her head, "That first time I met you, after I slipped you that sedative, she went absolutely ballistic. She