Chapter 8 - The Purge
The next four hours were a blur of furious, life-saving work.
Ruth took total command of Mercer Ranch, and for the first time, no one dared to disobey her.
She ordered Mrs. Baines to build a massive fire in the kitchen stove and boil gallons of fresh, clean well water. She had the old cook bring up bushels of fresh charcoal from the forge behind the barn, pounding it into a fine, black powder on the kitchen block.
"What is that for?" Mrs. Baines asked, her hands shaking as she handed Ruth a clean linen cloth.
"Charcoal binds poison in the gut," Ruth explained calmly, her broad hands moving with swift, practiced skill. "It will soak up the arsenic before it can reach their blood again. Then we pump their stomachs with warm salt water and raw egg whites."
Ruth strode into the west wing sickroom like a storm.
She grabbed the heavy green velvet drapes in both hands and yanked them down from the wooden frames, tearing the brass rings right off the walls.
Bright, golden morning sunlight flooded into the dark room for the first time in months.
The three little girls winced, covering their eyes with their hands, but as the fresh, cool morning air rushed through the open window, little June took a long, deep breath and let out a soft sigh.
"It smells like grass," the little girl whispered weakly.
"It is grass, sweetheart," Ruth said gently, sitting beside her with a cup of warm milk mixed with crushed charcoal and egg whites. "The darkness is gone now. You're going to drink this for me."
"Is it sharp water?" June whimpered, shrinking back against her pillow.
Ruth took a small sip from the cup herself first, smiling down at the child. "No sharp water ever again. This is medicine to wash the bad stuff out. I promise you on my mother's memory."
The little girl looked into Ruth’s plain, honest face, saw the steady strength in her warm brown eyes, and nodded slowly. She leaned forward and drank.
Outside the house, Clay Mercer stood on the front porch with his double-barreled shotgun resting across his arm. He had tied Nurse Lorna to a heavy oak chair in the parlor, her mouth gagged with a dish towel.
He did not move. He did not speak. He stood like an iron statue framed against the rising sun, waiting for the black buggy to emerge from the valley road.
At six o'clock precisely, the iron wheels gritted against the gravel.
Dr. Stephen Crow drove his buggy into the yard, wearing his fine wool coat, his gold-rimmed spectacles glinting in the morning light. He held his dark medical bag on his lap, expecting to find three dead children and a broken, mindless father ready to surrender his land.
As Crow pulled the reins to stop his team, he looked up at the porch.
He saw Clay Mercer standing in the sunlight, the double barrels of the 12-gauge shotgun pointed directly at his chest.
Doc Crow’s face turned instantly white. "Clay? What... what is the meaning of this?"
"Get down from the wagon, Stephen," Clay said softly.
"Clay, put that weapon down!" Crow urged, his voice cracking with sudden panic. "You are unstable! The grief has unhinged your mind!"
"I said get down," Clay repeated.
Crow looked around frantically, realizing for the first time that the heavy green velvet curtains had been torn from the west wing windows. Through the glass, he could see Ruth Hart moving about the brightly lit room, holding a cup to little Elsie’s lips.
Crow reached for his buggy whip to turn his horses around.
BOOM!
A blast of heavy buckshot exploded into the wooden wheel of the buggy, shattering the spokes into flying splinters. The horses reared up, screaming in terror.
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Crow fell out of the seat, tumbling into the deep mud of the yard, his dark medical bag popping open and spilling dozens of glass vials and forged paper documents into the muck.
Clay stepped down off the porch, racking the second shell into the shotgun’s chamber as he walked slowly toward the man in the mud.
