Bellet completed her evaluation with Cap still drifting in and out of consciousness. Even beyond his leg, his rock-hard body seemed somehow compromised, and for the first time in Lou’s memory, his best friend looked his birth certificate age.

“We go as soon as we pour some antiseptic into that wound and get it redressed,” Bellet said. “Moving him isn’t going to be that easy. I think we should lift the drag litter as is. Daniel and Dr. Welcome, that’s your job. Sir, you and our pilot can get our stretcher set up in the chopper.”

“Everyone just stay low at all times,” Captain Tompkins warned. “You don’t get a second chance to make up for forgetting that one.”

Daniel gave Cap some more morphine.

“How tough is this guy?” he asked Lou.

“They don’t come much tougher.”

“How long on the tourniquet, Dr. Welcome?” Bellet asked.

“An hour forty.”

“Mr. Duncan, I’m going to loosen this tourniquet. Sorry if I hurt you.”

The trauma nurse waited until Daniel had redressed Cap’s gash, then gingerly removed the stick and set it aside, leaving the band of cloth in place. For a minute or two, the group waited in silence. No oozing. Julie looked over at Lou and again nodded. This time she was smiling.

“You must be a hell of an ER doc when you’ve got some real equipment around you, and not just a bunch of sticks and ropes.”

“As long as the nurses are as sharp as you are, I’m pretty good,” Lou replied.

“I believe you are. Okay, let’s get your friend to a real bed.”

Thanks to morphine and Cap’s advertised toughness, the transport and transfer went off with just a few moans of pain. As soon as the cardiac monitoring equipment was in place, Daniel gave Tompkins the thumbs-up sign for liftoff. Lou took Cap’s hand in his and held it.

It was time to leave the woods.

Sound-dampening earphones in place, Lou knew he would remain on edge for the entire seventy-five-mile flight from the field beside Floyd and Rebecca Weems’s cabin to the Arbor General Hospital helipad. He was actually ready to climb into the chopper before he managed to wrangle a post office box number in the river town of Sledge Crossing.

Weems felt certain he would have no trouble replanting the damaged part of their field. He had offered it up as a landing pad even before he learned that he would be saving Cap the pain of having to be hoisted up using a winch and basket. As he settled into his seat, Lou vowed that it was not the last time he would see the eccentric woodsman and his wife. He also knew that whatever material thanks he passed on to them would be insulting if not rejected altogether, unless it were carefully thought out.