Chapter Thirty-One

Just as evening light turned to an almost dusty rose, Cole saw Mattie look up from her coffee cup. She went to the window, looked out, and said: “They’re coming.”

He heard feet stomping on the porch, then the latch of the door lifted, and they came in—Book and Jilly Sweet and a short, heavy-set man wearing a stovepipe hat with a bent crown.

“Mattie,” said the man.

“Doc.”

“That him?”

She nodded.

He looked in Cole’s direction. “Shot you in the brisket, eh?”

“Close,” Cole said. “More like the short ribs.”

“Damn,” he said, “that must’ve hurt like hell.”

“It did. Still does.”

“I’ll bet.”

He set a leather bag down atop the table. “You got more of that coffee, dear?”

“Plenty,” she said. “You know me and coffee.”

“Good, I’ll have a cup to warm my innards, it’s damnable cold out there.”

“How about you, Mister Book?” Mattie said. “You and the girl want some coffee, something to eat?”

“Yes’m. Coffee and victuals would do just the trick,” Book said, glancing at Cole.

Jilly Sweet kept her gaze lowered, avoiding Cole.

“You look a sight better,” Book said, noticing that Cole was sitting on the side of the cot, maybe noticing his hair was combed and washed.

“You were expecting maybe I’d be dead?” Cole prompted.

Book glanced toward Jilly, then said: “Didn’t know.”

Dr. Jellicoe removed his coat and hung it over the back of a chair. He was wearing a patchwork vest over a collarless shirt. His black trousers were shiny from use. He went over and stood in front of the fire and rubbed his hands together. The fire seemed to glow red in his chubby cheeks.

Mattie gave him a cup of coffee, but before he drank any of it, he went to his leather bag that was on the table and took out a silver flask of whiskey and poured some into his cup. “How about you, Mister Book, you want a taste of this?”

Book nodded, held out his cup, his lips parted slightly as he watched Dr. Jellicoe pour the coffee in.

“Mattie?” Dr. Jellicoe asked, holding forth the flask, the firelight glinting against the metal.

“No, Doc. I’ve seen what a thief whiskey can be. I won’t allow it to steal my mind.”

Dr. Jellicoe grinned, showing a double row of gapped teeth. “Good for you, ol’ girl. It’s the worst insult a man can do to himself … get drunk as a pole-axed mule and go about showing the world what a fool the devil sauce has made him.” He took a long sip of the coffee and licked his lips.

Mattie set the table with a meager meal of fried pork, biscuits she’d prepared in a Dutch oven, pinto beans, and some turnips she’d taken from a burlap sack next to the stove and cooked in a pot of water. She fixed Cole a plate and brought it over.

“Can you do this on your own, or do you require my help?”

“Let me try it on my own,” Cole said, glancing at the others who had seated themselves around the table. “You’ve done enough already. Sit down and eat your meal.”

She looked at Cole for a moment longer than was necessary, then joined the others at the table.

Cole still didn’t have much of an appetite. The bullet lodged in his side had wounded his desire to eat as much as it had his flesh. But he tasted some of what was on his plate, taking small bites and holding them in his mouth a time before swallowing. He watched Dr. Jellicoe eat. He went at his food with dogged determination, his forefinger pressed on the back of his knife as he cut into his pork, his jaw moving in a steady rhythm as he chewed, his eyes never leaving what was on his plate. And when he’d finished the last scrap, he took one more biscuit and swiped it back and forth across the drippings and ate that as well. Finally he lifted his whiskey-laced cup of coffee and washed everything down with it before wiping the tips of his fingers across his vest.

“Damn’ wonderful meal, Mattie. Worth the ride out here.”

“Glad you enjoyed it, Doc.”

He had the look of a wanting man, but Mattie’s gaze was unyielding. He fumbled around in the pockets of his vest and shirt fronts and found what he’d been searching for—a small black cheroot that he promptly fired up, then blew a ring of gray smoke that lifted and broke against the ceiling.

Book and Jilly Sweet were still working on their meals, as was Mattie, but she seemed less interested in food than did the others. “You figure on getting around to looking at the patient sometime this evening, Doc?” Mattie wondered. “Or did you just ride all this way for a taste of fried pork?”

“Oh, I ain’t forgot,” he said. “Just that I got plum famished on such a long ride. And a meal ain’t really a meal until you’ve had a good seegar to go with it.”

“And maybe another cup of that whiskey coffee?” she presumed.

“Point taken, madam,” he said, and stood from the table. Taking up his leather bag, he walked over to the cot Cole was sitting on.

“Pull back your shirt, son, let me see that bung hole that young gal put in you.”

Cole could smell his sour breath. “Mattie tells me you do most of your doctoring on animals,” he said.

“Animals, cowboys, and shot-in-the-brisket gunfighters,” he clarified. “Whatever comes along and needs doctoring. In this case that’d be you. Now pull back your shirt and let me look.”

Cole did as he ordered, figuring that it didn’t really matter what sort of doctor he was, or wasn’t. Someone had to try and take that chunk of lead out of him.

Dr. Jellicoe brought one of the lamps in close and examined the wound with the tips of his fingers after he’d peeled away Mattie’s bandage. Then he opened his bag, took out a long metal probe, the kind Cole’d seen surgeons use in hospital tents on the battlefields at Shiloh and Lookout Mountain and a lot of other bad places. “You might want to lean back and think about something else,” he suggested.

Cole stared at the ceiling and clamped his jaws shut until his teeth ached while the doctor poked and prodded with the probe.

“Think I feel it,” he said at last. Cole was sweating, his hands were damp and cramped from making fists with them. “That or a piece of bone,” he added, straightening and blowing out a stream of blue smoke whose smell caused Cole to want a cigarette.

The doctor took out a metal pan, laid the probe in it, then took out a long, slender instrument that looked like thin pliers and placed it in the pan next to the probe. Then he removed a bottle of rubbing alcohol and poured it over both instruments. The blood from the probe swirled pinkly in the pan as it mixed with the alcohol. He waited a few seconds, then took up the thin pliers. “This is gonna be a little uncomfortable. Better take a drink of this,” he said, handing Cole his whiskey flask.

“I’ll wait for a drink until after you take the bullet out,” Cole said, declining the offer. “I suspect it will taste better then.”

“Suit yourself, son. You don’t mind if I have one, do you?”

“Go ahead.”

Cole watched the lump of the doctor’s throat in the loose sack of his unshaven neck as he took a swallow from the flask, then screwed the cap back on, and slipped it back into the same side pocket of his jacket he’d taken it from. “Here goes. I’ll try to make it quick, if not painless.”

Surprisingly for Cole it didn’t hurt much more than the probe had, until he caught hold of the bullet and began to retract it. That’s when it felt like someone was driving a railroad spike into him. It took Book and Mattie to hold him still long enough for the doctor to bring out the object he’d grabbed onto.

“Bullet,” he declared, dropping the small, partially flattened piece of lead onto the table. It clattered around like a penny. “Now this is gonna burn,” he said as he poured some of the alcohol directly into the wound. It burned enough to make Cole’s eyes water and sting. Then the doctor asked Mattie if she’d mind dressing the wound since she’d done such a fine job of it before. “You ready for that drink now, son?”

Cole took a swallow, then a second one before handing the flask back to him.

“Lucky it was a small caliber,” he said, eyeing the slug of lead on the table. “A Forty-Four-Forty might have blowed out your insides, liver, intestines, all that good stuff. I think what happened was that round bounced off a couple of your ribs and just run out of power to do you much damage. I once had a man got himself shot in the skull but all the bullet did was bounce off. Knocked him cold as a pickle, but didn’t kill him. ’Course, such things are rare.”

“Well, I guess we were both lucky,” Cole said.

The doctor grinned his picket-fence grin. “I guess maybe so.”

“Thanks,” Cole said.

The doctor shifted the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “If it hadn’t been that those two friends of yours come and got me, you would’ve ended up dead of lead poisoning. It’s been known to happen.”

Cole looked across the space of the room to Book. His gaze came up from his plate and met Cole’s. “Yeah, I guess I owe them a debt of thanks as well,” Cole said.

“You going to stay the night, Doc?” Mattie asked.

“No. Marfina Goodlaw is expecting twins anytime. Got to get back and see how she’s holding up. I know sure as anything if I’m down here, she’ll have those twins ’way cross the valley. Best get going. Thanks for the supper.”

“How much do I owe you for the call?” Cole asked.

“Ten dollars ought to cover it.”

“Would you take a good Winchester rifle instead?” Cole asked.

“Another busted hand,” the doctor said. “Ain’t never met a drifter yet had a nickel to his name.”

“I’ll pay for his care,” Mattie said.

“No, Mattie, I’ll count the supper and your company as payment,” Dr. Jellicoe said.

“You come out for a chicken supper some Sunday,” she said.

He nodded. “Some Sunday for sure, Mattie.” He set his hat on his head and gave them all a final look before closing the door behind himself.

Mattie tried to watch him from the window but it had grown dark outside, so she set to bandaging Cole’s wound.

Jilly Sweet stretched her arms and said she was tired, then took a blanket and curled up on the floor in front of the fireplace.

Cole asked Book to make them a cigarette, and by the time he finished, Mattie had finished with the dressing. She began clearing the table as Book handed Cole one of the shucks he’d rolled.

“Tell me the details on Will,” Cole said.

Book looked through the haze of blue smoke from his cigarette. “I thought I already did.”

“There wasn’t any other way than that you had to shoot him?”

He shook his head. “No, sir, there wan’t any I could see. I didn’t ever think he’d try pullin’ his piece with my Sharps on him, but he did. Whole thing happened so fast, wan’t nothin’ could be done about it. Man had to know one of us was goin’ to end up dyin’.”

“What about the man in Cheyenne?” Cole asked.

“What about what man in Cheyenne?”

“You shot and burned a man in Cheyenne. He was another friend of mine.”

Book’s eyes lifted slowly. “Didn’t kill no man in Cheyenne.”

“You were there.”

His head bobbed. “I was there. Stopped long enough to get some things to keep goin’ on … some flour and sugar and bacon.”

“A woman I know says she saw a black man running away from where my friend’s office was just before it started burning,” Cole lied. “I reckon that’d have to be you.”

Cole could see Mattie, standing there, the stack of dirty dishes in her hands, waiting, listening.

Book took the shuck from his mouth, held it between his fingers, the smoke curling up around them. “I was goin’ down back of that alley, when I heard somethin’. Somethin’ like glass breakin’. I was tryin’ to keep to myself account o’ I know Mister Harper be trailin’ me. I heard the glass breakin’. I look inside one of them buildin’s where it come from. I see a man done busted a kerosene lamp on the floor.” A sheen of sweat glistened on Book’s broad forehead. “Seen another man, down on the floor, look like he dead. Face in a ring of blood. Then I seen the yellow-haired man strike a match and toss it down into that kerosene from the busted lamp. I ran, mister, ’cause I know it’s trouble what I seen.”

“Yellow-hair man?” Cole asked.

“That’s what I seen … tall, skinny man, well-armed.”

Cole knew only one man that fit Book’s description of the killer: Long Bill Longly. It took him a full minute to adjust to the news. Somehow, knowing it was Longly made it even harder to accept. Longly wasn’t worth half a spit compared to a man like Ike Kelly. Cole felt his anger grow white hot.

Book squatted there on his heels, staring at Cole.

“Will told me about another man he said you killed, then burned,” Cole prompted.

Book shook his head. “No. I already tol’ you, I ain’t killed no innocent folks. They got me mixed up with a freed nigger named Kimbo Luke. I know Kimbo Luke. Fact is, I was chasin’ him until I found out Mister Harper was on my trail. I had to break it off and deal with Mister Harper. I ever find Kimbo Luke, I’ll kill him myself. Kimbo Luke and me’re from the same section of the Settlements. Only Kimbo Luke is low-down, a low life. That’s the man what done the killings of all them folks … not me.”

“Then how come you’re the one caught the blame?”

“To most of them white lawmen, us colored’re all the same.”

“More to it than that.”

“No. No, there ain’t.”

It wasn’t just his words that convinced Cole that Book was telling the truth; it was his eyes. “I’ll take my weapons back now.”

Book looked at him a long time.

“You and the girl are free to go,” he said.

Book turned his head to look at Jilly Sweet, lying asleep on the floor.

“You givin’ up on takin’ me back to Fort Smith?” he asked.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“What about her? What about that she shot you?”

“She did what she thought needed doing. I won’t hold it against her.”

Book looked at his burned-down shuck, then tossed it into the fireplace before handing Cole back the self-cocker and the Colt hide-out pistol.

“I guess me and Jilly’ll get goin’ first light,” he said. “Still ain’t too late to find Kimbo Luke an’ kill him.”

“You want my advice, Mister Book?”

He studied Cole’s face.

“Let someone else take care of Kimbo Luke. Sooner or later, someone will kill him. Take the girl and go to Texas. Lots of pleasant places down along the border where the weather is warm and a man and a woman could grow a garden and raise a brood of kids. There are worse things in life.”

All the tension seemed to go out of his dark face at once. “Maybe so,” he said. “Maybe so.”

Everyone settled in and the light of the fire danced around the room and up the walls and for the first time since Cole had been shot, he wasn’t having to fight the rages of the fever. He felt weak and his mouth was dry, but he knew he wasn’t going to die, at least not just yet, and in a few days he’d be up to riding again. New losses, old pain. That part was never going to change. But he felt a sense of renewal and was grateful to be alive. As much as it worked around the edges of his mind, he didn’t let himself think about vengeance or Bill Longly. Not for the last few hours of the evening. There would be time aplenty for that come morning. He lay there in the darkening silence, and finally fell asleep.