Hanging in Wild Wind

No sooner had the two outlaws ridden out of town into the darkness than they stopped alongside a thin creek and dropped from their saddles. “I can’t go on like this,” Buckles moaned. He limped out into the shallow creek and squatted down, letting the cool water run across his bloody, scorched behind. “I need a doctor, bad.”

“Yes, we will,” said Paco, staring back toward town, a trickle of blood running down his swollen jaw.

“Ride back there? Are you out of your mind?” Buckles asked. “We don’t even have guns. They’re both lying back there on the cantina floor.”

“Nobody treats me this way and lives to tell about it,” Paco said with a slight lisp, owing to his swollen jaw. He broke open the shotgun and checked it. Seeing both barrels loaded, he clicked it shut. “I am a man. I will live like one or I will die like one.”

Buckles thought about it as the water took some of the sting out of his burning rear end. “Hell, I hear you,” he said. “Count me in.” He dipped cold water with his cupped hand and held it to his jaw.

Back in Wild Wind, Longworth gathered the two Colts from the floor of the cantina with his good hand and stuffed each of them down into his belt. From the open doorway he stared out into the darkness in the direction the two outlaws had taken out of town.

“Oh, I’m right. You can count on it, Detective,” said Bell. He stood beside Longworth and squared his broad shoulders. Gabby Fletcher stood to the side and watched, his torch still in hand. “Saddle trash like those two—they’ll go off and lick their wounds. They’ll vow to each other that they’re coming back. They’ll make bold threats between themselves. But they won’t show their faces here. Trust me on this.”

Longworth was doubtful, but he kept his doubts to himself. “You know more about these kinds of men than I do, Chief.”

“That’s right, I do,” Bell said immodestly. “What it comes down to is, they’re cowards . . . men like these.” He gave a confident smile. “Truth be told, I almost wish they would come back. I’ve still got some bark on.”

As the two stood watching, the waitress from the restaurant walked back across the street toward the sheriff’s office. “There goes Shelly to get the dishes. I best go help her out some,” said Longworth.

“No, wait here,” said Bell. “The feed and waste slots in these new cells make it easy for anybody to take care of prisoners.” He grinned. “Unless you’re interested in helping her out some other way. I’ve seen the way you look at her.”

Longworth felt embarrassed. “No, Chief, it’s strictly business for me. We’ve got too much going on here for me to take on a romantic interest in a woman.”

“Whatever you say, Detective,” said Bell. “She is a little on the homely side, I have to admit.” He took out a cigar and stuck it in his mouth. “As to this town, I’ve got it under control.”

“I know I demand a lot of the so-called physical work from you. But it’s me who takes care of the most important work, the thinking and planning. I keep it all laid out nice and proper, right up here.” He tapped a finger to the side of his head. “I hope you’re paying attention to everything I’m teaching you.” He took out a long match, struck it and lit his cigar.

“That’s good, Detective,” said Bell, blowing out a stream of gray smoke. “You need to learn all you can from me as quickly as possible. You never know when you’ll be called upon to run the show.” He looked around. “And there is no better learning place than here, in town like this. This is still a frontier town—not even a telegraph office yet. Of course, now that Western Railways is invested here that’s all forthcoming.”

“But be on your toes. Responsibility could be thrust upon you all at once, at any time,” said Bell. “You could wake up one morning and find yourself in charge, with lives depending on you.” He stared at the contemplative young man. “Would you be ready to shoulder such a responsibility?”

Longworth looked gravely concerned at the prospect of such an occurrence. “I can only hope that I would be, Chief,” he said.

Bell looked down the street at the wagon of ore samples. “Why don’t you put the wagon away for tonight? We’ll get the samples ready to ship first thing in the morning. I’m retiring early this evening. Don’t let anyone disturb me unless it’s awfully damned important.”

“Whatever you say, Chief,” said Longworth, relieved that his throbbing hand would have a night off after he completed the chore with the horses and wagon.

Longworth drove the wagon around to the town livery barn, where he pulled the wagon into a side shed, unhitched the team and led the horses out. He locked the shed doors behind him. Inside the livery barn he grained, watered and rubbed down the team of horses with his good hand. Over an hour had passed by the time he’d finished attending to the horses and led them into separate stalls.

On his way back to the sheriff’s office he saw the waitress walking away from the closed restaurant with a shawl thrown around her shoulders. The two acknowledged each other with a cordial exchange and continued on their separate ways. Once inside the office, Longworth walked back and checked on the prisoners.

“How’s the hand, Detective?” Price Cullen asked as Longworth stepped close to the bars, carrying two folded wool blankets over his forearm. His bandaged hand stuck out from beneath them. A dimly lit lantern hung from his good hand.

“Sore,” Longworth said. He held the blankets over to the feed slot for Price to take. “This is to hang on the bars between the cells for when you need privacy.”

“Privacy?” Price said. He grinned as he reached and pulled the top blanket in through the slot and looked it over.

“You know,” said Longworth, nodding toward Kitty in the other cell and lowering his voice almost to a whisper. “When you need to relieve yourselves.”

“I am, though,” Kitty said, hearing them talk through the bars. She stood up walked over to where Longworth stood. “I’ll take that other blanket, Detective,” she said.

“What you and your brother saw was most likely a doe sheep.” Kitty glared at him and said to Longworth, “I hope you’re going to be here tonight on watch, Detective. I don’t trust these two turds even with steel bars between us.”

“I’ll be on watch all night, ma’am,” Longworth said to Kitty. To Price he said, “Hang the blanket up and act civil. Maybe it’ll make things go better for you with the judge.”

Cadden ventured forward to the bars and said, “Hold on, Detective. Are you saying you’ll put in a good word for us?”

“I’m saying I’ll tell the judge whether or not you’ve been good prisoners while you were here,” said Longworth.

“You’re right,” Cadden said, “it couldn’t hurt.” He looked at his brother, then back at Longworth. “All right, from now on, no more fooling around. We’re going to be so quiet you won’t hardly know we’re here.”

“I hope you mean it,” Longworth said. He turned and gave a quick glance toward the brass-ringed cell key hanging behind Bell’s gun belt. Then he walked back out front to the desk. The three prisoners looked at one another through stripes in the shadowy, moonlit darkness. Cadden winked. “Good night, Detective Longworth,” he called out in a respectful tone of voice.

Next door, an hour later, in the living quarters behind his office, Dr. Martin Ford awoke with a start to the sound of a gun butt rapping soundly on his back door.

“Who the blazes is it?” he called out as his feet swung off of the bed and found their way into his battered leather house slippers.

“Please, Doc, open up. It’s an emergency,” Huey Buckles called out painfully, his pain both real and intense.

“All right, then,” the old doctor grumbled. “Don’t beat my door down.” He struck a match and lit a candle sitting on a stand beside his bed. He stood up with a grunt, candleholder in hand, and walked over and unlatched the rear door. Opening the door a crack, he peeped out bleary-eyed and said, “What are you doing coming to the back door, this hour of the night?”

“I—I couldn’t come to the front, Doctor,” Buckles said, “for fear someone would see me like this.” He cocked his backside around for the doctor to see. “I’m in a wretched condition.”

“Good Lord, man. You surely are,” said the doctor, seeing the seat of his trousers burned away, bits of blackened cloth clinging to the blistered, peeling flesh. He saw blackened blood gathered and crusted atop the stab wound. “Get in here. Damned if it doesn’t hurt just looking at you.”

In the treatment room, he set down the candle, raised the globe of an oil lamp, lit the lamp and adjusted the wick up for optimum light. “Drop your trousers and sit down—no, lean down over that table.”

The doctor picked up a pair of thick spectacles from beside the oil lamp and strung them behind his ears. When Buckles had gotten into position over the table, his burnt trousers down around his ankles, the doctor leaned in for a closer inspection. Shaking his head, he straightened up and said, “Before we get started here, are you one of the fellows Detective Bell found breaking into the cantina this evening? I heard the ruckus.”

“I am,” said Buckles. “But you’ve got to believe me, Doc. We had no idea it was closed down. We were what you might call ignorant of circumstances.”

“Ignorant of circumstances,” the old doctor repeated, shaking his head. “I’ve got to remember that one.”

“Yep, I’ll fix you up. From what I’m seeing here, it looks like Detective Chief Bell must’ve taught you whatever lesson you needed to learn.”

“What difference would it make if I did?” the doctor asked. As he talked, he stepped over to a desk and took a bottle of whiskey from a lower drawer. He uncorked it and handed it to Buckles.

“None, except I don’t want you to,” said Buckles. He took the bottle and turned back a long, deep drink.

“All right, then. I won’t,” the old doctor said, reaching out for the bottle, wondering if he would have to pry it from the wounded man’s hand.

Something in the doctor’s voice told Buckles he was lying. But before he could do anything to make sure the old doctor didn’t tell, Buckles had to get his wounds tended to.

“Thanks, Doc,” he said, letting go of the bottle. “I never needed a drink so bad in my life.”

For most of an hour, the doctor plucked burnt cloth and bits of charcoal from the outlaw’s behind. He cleaned and swabbed both the knife wound and the burn, smeared a heavy layer of ointment over the entire area and bandaged it with a thick layer of white gauze cloth. When he’d finished working on the wounds, he took a blue bottle of laudanum from a desk drawer and handed it to him. “Start taking this when the ointment starts drying up and the pain comes back.”

“Obliged, Doc,” said Buckles, stepping into a pair of worn-out pin-striped trousers the doctor had rummaged up for him to wear. He pulled the trousers up, buttoned them and swung his empty gun belt around his waist. “Now, about what we were saying.”

“About what?” the doctor said, taking off the spectacles and pushing the sleeves of his nightshirt back down his forearms.

“You know about what,” Buckles said. “About you keeping your mouth shut.” He reached over on a table laid out with sharp surgical instruments and closed his hand around the handle of a bone chopping knife.

“Wait, mister,” said the doctor. “I said I wouldn’t tell him anything. I meant it. I wasn’t lying.”