Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
“I took the bullet out and stitched him up.”
Doc Burnett, still wearing a bloodied apron, gestured to the patient lying unconscious on the sturdy, leather-covered table he used for operating.
His surgical tools were scattered on a smaller table that held clean linens and a porcelain bowl filled with water.
He was making a production of cleaning each of his instruments before putting them away.
Caleb was looking on, far enough away that Doc wouldn’t feel crowded. Zeke stood in the doorway.
“The bullet was lodged very close to the heart, so I don’t honestly know if the man is going to live or not. Then again, it may not matter much, considering where he’ll be going once he’s well enough for the judge’s men to drag him out of here.”
Doc sent a quick look in Zeke’s direction and stopped whatever else he was going to say. He gathered up bloody linens from the floor and deposited them in a basket.
Caleb met John Burnett the first week he arrived in Elkhorn, and they hit it off immediately.
Since then, the two of them got together regularly for a game of chess and dinner or for an occasional drink over at the Belle Saloon.
There were other, nicer establishments to drink in, but the Belle was the closest, and they were both comfortable in the familiar surroundings.
There was some truth behind Zeke’s teasing.
After the arrival of Sheila from New York last month, the nature of the visits had changed somewhat.
The dinners were a bit fancier, and Caleb had begun to make a habit of getting a bath and a shave before coming to the house.
The chess games continued, but they hadn’t been doing much drinking at the Belle.
And there was definitely far less cursing over the chess battles.
If Caleb were pressed to name a friend in these parts, Doc would be the one.
For an educated man, he was a straight-talker, and he wasn’t one to hide his feelings.
And though Doc never carried a pistol, Caleb had never seen him show any fear.
The man willingly went out at all hours of the day or night to parts unknown to care for some injured miner or wounded cowpuncher or even, last month, a woman in an outlaw hideaway.
Doc told Caleb once that he’d spent the war working in battlefield medical tents, and he’d seen too much death to be threatened by it.
And knowing him as well as he did, Caleb realized that his friend was in a particularly sour mood right now. It was a rarity since Sheila’s arrival. As complicated as it was having a city-bred daughter living in the wild frontier town, the man was genuinely happy to have her in Elkhorn with him.
Sheila came to the door with an offer of sandwiches.
Caleb looked up, and their eyes met. The irritation she'd been carrying earlier seemed to have vanished. At least, she wasn't glaring at him anymore.
It struck him how easily he recognized the change. A few weeks ago, he wouldn't have given a second thought to a woman's moods. Now he found himself noticing every expression that crossed Sheila Burnett's face.
“Thank you, ma'am,” he said, “but I've got to finish my business here and get back to the ranch.”
For some reason, he was disappointed when she simply nodded.
The sheriff immediately accepted, but then hesitated. “Let me know if this varmint stirs, will you?”
“That won’t be anytime soon,” Doc replied.
“Well, in that case, I’m much obliged to you for the offer, Miss Burnett. I’d be happy to join you for a bite to eat.”
With the sheriff out of the room, Caleb moved closer to the bed to take a good look at the gunman.
The man was a decade, if not more, older than Bat Davis, and he’d clearly seen his share of the tougher side of life.
Half of his right ear was missing. A jagged scar—still healing—ran from the corner of his left eye down across his stubble-covered cheek to his chin.
He’d taken that knife wound to his face not too long ago.
Happily, that face belonged to a stranger. Caleb was sure he’d never laid eyes on him.
“Know him?” Doc asked, moving to stand next to Caleb.
“Nope. Never seen him before.”
“It appears he’s quite used to being shot and cut.
” Doc lifted the sheet covering the patient’s chest and pointed to the scarred torso.
“This fellow has lived a hard life. There’s an old bullet wound in the arm, another in the stomach, a stab wound, and a knife scar clear across his chest. A man doesn’t collect marks like these without spending years in trouble. ”
Doc was right. There wasn’t enough unmarked hide on him to make a good tobacco pouch.
Caleb looked back into the man’s face and a feeling of relief washed through him. Running into Bat Davis was a freak incident. Maybe this was really the end of it. Maybe his past was truly behind him.
“I wouldn’t doubt it if there were a reward on his head.” Doc covered his patient again with the sheet.
“Probably.”
“But regardless of if he’s wanted or where, Patterson will hang him in front of his office on Main Street, as sure as we’re standing here.”
“Probably so. But I won’t be there to watch.”
“Are you against hanging?”
Caleb was never partial to hangings. He’d never willingly attended one—not since he was a boy—not even during the two years that he wore a badge in Greeley.
“Some fellas deserve it, I suppose,” Caleb said. “Only way to get their full attention. But it’s a fearsome way to go. You?”
“I agree.” Doc ran a finger inside the collar of his shirt.
“It’s better than skinning alive or boiling in oil or burning at the stake.
Drawing and quartering had to be messy, but it sent a message.
The French hold that their guillotine is the cleanest and most humane way to do the job.
But yes, I’d have to agree with you about hanging.
It’s fearsome and unnatural. But almost none of us have a say in how or when we meet our Maker. ”
Caleb looked away as his mind flooded with the long-buried image of a battered woman, lying dead in her own blood. She had no say. The knot growing in his throat was suddenly big enough to choke him.
“It’s not your fault that they’re going to hang him. You had nothing to do with it. He is the one responsible for his actions.”
Caleb shook his head, realizing Doc misunderstood his silence. “I got no regret about him. Or the others, neither. I did what I had to do.”
And that’d been the way with Caleb for all of his life. He refused to keep count of how many men he’d killed. Each of them deserved to die.
“If I work it right, maybe a fever will take him first.”
Caleb knew Doc didn’t mean what he said. Criminal or a saint, the physician treated them the same. He’d do anything to keep his patients alive.
“But I know the judge wants him alive.” Doc wiped his hand with a rag. “He always wants them alive. No entertainment value in hanging a dead man.”
Crowds sure enjoyed a good hanging, Caleb thought somberly.
“At times like this, I get so sick of it,” Doc continued. “If there were going to be a fair trial, with the honest application of law and justice, then I’d have no problem. I’d patch them up. But there never is…not in this town.”
“This knothead did shoot at the judge, Doc. I saw him, and he had killing in mind.”
“I know. I know.” Doc threw the rag on the table.
He went to the other side of the room and poured two glasses of the bourbon that he liked to go to when something was eating away at him.
“Maybe he really is a bad apple. But I’ve been here too long, and I’ve seen too much.
There have been too many hangings in this town over the years. I have the right to be cynical.”
He held out one of the glasses. Caleb walked over and took it.
His curiosity was piqued. He was still green here in Elkhorn, and he only met the judge about a month ago.
“You say he has a lot of hangings?”
“I’ve lost count how many. Rarely does a month go by that the gallows doesn’t go up on Main Street. About a year ago, there was serious talk of leaving it up.”
That was one way to build a name for yourself and your town.
A hanging judge’s reputation got out pretty quick.
Maybe it persuaded trouble to bypass a place, Caleb couldn’t really say.
But then he thought about the man Patterson hired before Zeke became sheriff.
Grat Horner was a crooked low-down snake.
He made most gunslicks and cold-blooded killers look like fresh-faced schoolboys.
“I’ve had to patch men up well enough to walk on their own two feet over to his courtroom. Those trials are quick, and they’re followed by a short trip up the steps to where the hangman is waiting.”
“Well, I don’t work for him, Doc. And I don’t reckon I’ll be staying around to see what he does to this fella.”
“Maybe. But you’re still here. He wants a confession out of this fool. And if none of us hears the man say the words, Patterson will lean on us until we actually think we may have heard it. That’s the way he does things. And he always gets what he wants.”
“Don’t sound like you care too much for the man.”
Doc poured himself more bourbon. “Another one?”
Caleb raised the glass, still untasted.
“Did I mention to you that I’ve been here too long?”
“You did.”
“He’s not what he appears to be.”
“I figured that much already.”
“And I know what he wants.” The physician motioned to his patient with the glass. “He’s supposed to wake up and tell us Eric Goulden sent him.”
“How did you know that? You talked to Patterson already?”
“A week ago.”
His words startled Caleb. “You’re saying that he told you, a week ago, Goulden would be sending gunhawks here to kill him?”
“He told me that the man would be looking for a way to get to him. The judge was defying Goulden. There are plans in the works that Patterson believes encroach on territory that he sees as his own. The two of them want the same thing.”
Goulden might be sniffing around the judge’s bone yard, but the railroad magnate struck Caleb as more of a sneaking backbiter than a look-a-man-in-the-eye fighter. It would take real brass to send men to gun down a man of Patterson’s importance in his own town.
Besides, if the judge had stretched as many necks as Doc said, Caleb reckoned there’d be more than a few folks out there waiting for their chance to strike him down.
He mentioned his thinking to his friend.
“Patterson has plenty of enemies, to be sure, and not all of them are big shots from Denver or from back East,” Doc continued. “But he’s shrewd and quick. It doesn’t matter if this man works for Goulden or not. It only matters that we say he did. It plays right into his hand.”
For about the hundredth time, Caleb was glad he wasn’t the sheriff. In fact, now that he’d seen that the gunner was no one who knew him, there was no reason for sticking around.
Doc wiped out his glass and set it down. “Patterson is as ruthless and ferocious as a wolf. He gets what he wants. So, whatever he told you about Goulden, don’t just accept it as gospel truth. With the judge, there’s always more to the story.”