Gun Law

Inside the surgery room door, the two gunmen, Sara Cayes, and Dr. Washburn all stood staring at the sheet-covered body on the gurney. Washburn managed to hide his surprise when he saw that the sheet was not as he had left it, but had been pulled all the way up over her head, covering her entirely. One of the woman’s bruised purplish arms hung limply off the edge of the gurney.

“There, I told you she’s dead. Now let’s all let her rest in peace,” Washburn insisted, keeping himself in check.

Sara let out a slight sigh when she set eyes on the sheet-covered body, she herself believing the woman had died.

Jennings turned Sara loose and stared down at the covered face of Celia Knox.

“That’s why we’re here, Buck the Mule,” said Philbert, giving the doctor one more quick, distrustful look. He took hold of the top edge of the sheet, lifted it and looked down, immediately recognizing Celia’s bruised and swollen face.

After a moment, Jennings reached out a dirty hand and started to lay it on the woman’s naked, battered breast.

“All right, that’s enough of this!” said the doctor, stepping forward, outraged. “Deputies or no deputies, I won’t allow you to disrespect the dead in my presence! Get away from her, the both of you!”

“Damn, Buck the Mule,” said Philbert with a dark chuckle. “What the hell is wrong with you?” He dropped the sheet back down over the woman’s face.

“I only wanted to touch her,” said Jennings in an angry, childlike voice. He glared at Philbert. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Okay, Deputies, you’ve done your job. You’ve seen her,” Washburn said firmly. “Now go report her death to the marshal.”

“We will,” said Philbert. He stepped away from the gurney, then turned to the doctor as he slipped his Colt back into its holster. “Who brought her here?”

“A young man who is convalescing in a house outside town,” said Washburn, offering them no more than he had to on the matter. “He found her and brought her here.”

“Oh,” said Philbert, “he found her like that, all beat up and shot, that is?” He gave a short, sly grin. “Well, well, who’s to say he didn’t do it to her?”

“I’m to say he didn’t,” Sara cut in instantly. “I was with him when he found her.”

“Yes, barely,” said Sara. “The man who found her with me is Sherman Dahl. We both found her. He brought her here on horseback. Then he came back and sent me to help the doctor look after her.”

Philbert considered it, and decided that there was no way he and his brother and Buck the Mule Jennings would be connected to the woman.

“Too damn bad,” he said with a trace of his usual smile. “I always want to get my hands on a sumbitch who does something like this, eh, Buck the Mule?”

“Yeah, me too,” said Jennings. “Choke the sumbitch to death.” He opened and closed his big, dirty hands as he spoke.

“Let’s go talk to the marshal . . . ,” Philbert said to Jennings. He gave a touch of his hat brim toward the doctor and Sara. With no apology for their earlier behavior, he gave Jennings a slight shove toward the hallway.

As soon as the rear door closed behind the two men, Sara turned to the doctor with a stunned look on her face.

“No time to talk!” the doctor replied in a rushed voice. “Go lock the back door.”

Sara did as she was told. When she returned to the surgery room, Dr. Washburn had thrown back the sheet from the woman’s face and stood staring down at her intently

“Don’t worry. They’re gone,” he said to the battered face. “You can stop pretending.”

Sara gasped in surprise to see the woman’s eyelids flutter slightly and try to open against the dark swelling that surrounded them.

“Did you hear us talking from the hallway?” the doctor asked. “You covered yourself when you knew we’d be coming in?”

With much effort, the woman managed to nod her head slightly. “I—I recognized . . . the voice,” she managed to say in a weak and raspy voice. “They . . . did this.”

“They’re nothing but murdering, back-shooting rapists,” Sara said, horrified.

“They are also Marshal Emerson Kern’s deputies,” said the doctor, “at a time when Kern is disarming this whole town.”

Jennings stopped dead in his tracks on the way back to the marshal’s office, turning to Philbert. “You go on. I’ve got to go to the jake.”

Philbert looked at him, recognizing the tightly drawn expression on his face.

“Has that little strawberry dove got you all steamed up, Buck the Mule?” he asked in a lowered voice.

“Don’t you say nothing like that to me,” said Jennings, getting upset. “I told you I have to go to the jake. That’s all I have to do.”

“All right, go on to the privy,” said Philbert. “I’ll be at the marshal’s office. I want to tell Jason about the dead woman.” He grinned. “He’s going to be real surprised to hear it.” He walked on as Jennings veered away toward the privies in the alley behind the row of shops and buildings.

Inside the surgery room, Dr. Washburn and Sara Cayes stood over the woman on the gurney as she came around. She’d managed to hold her swollen eyes open long enough to tell the doctor a little bit about what had happened to her and her husband out on the high trails. When she’d finished, Sara leaned in close and held her hand.

“You rest now,” Sara said. “Doc Washburn and I won’t let anything happen to you.”

But as the woman drifted back to sleep, Sara gave him a worried look. After they’d walked a few feet away, Sara whispered, “What if they come back?”

“She mustn’t be here for long, Sara,” the doctor whispered in reply. “Can you keep her at the widow’s shack?”

“Of course I can keep her there,” said Sara. “Sherman won’t mind sleeping on the floor. Neither will I.”

“Bless you, Sara,” Washburn said. He patted her shoulder. “I’m going to put her in my buggy. With the top up, nobody will see her in there.”

“All right,” said Sara. “I’ll go make sure there’s nobody snooping around back there.”

While the doctor walked back to the gurney, Sara hurried to the rear of the house and looked through a window. At the hitch rail, the doctor’s buggy still sat where he’d left it. But Dahl’s horse, which Sara had ridden bareback from the shack, was missing. She finally spotted the big dun hitched near the open door of a barn thirty yards from the doctor’s backyard.

When she looked more closely, Sara recognized Buck the Mule Jennings peep out from the shaded darkness of the open doorway. A chill went up Sara’s spine. She turned and hurried back to the surgery room just as the doctor had started to scoop the wounded woman up into his arms.

“Doc Washburn, wait,” she said. “There’s a trap waiting out back.”

“A trap . . . ?” Leaving the injured woman on the gurney, he turned and followed Sara to the rear window and looked out.

“There, see him?” Sara said, the two of them huddled at the edge of the window curtain, peeping out.

“Yes, I see that low-down scoundrel,” said the doctor. He looked all around to make sure the big dirty gunman was alone. Pulling his face back from the edge of the window, he sighed in frustration.

“One thing’s for certain, we can’t send you two off to the widow’s while he’s back there waiting for you to come get the horse.”

“Yes,” said Sara. “Once I get close enough for him to grab me, he plans on pulling me into the barn.”

“That’s clearly his plan,” said Washburn, his rage growing. “If only I were a younger man, I’d go give him the thrashing he deserves.” He clenched his fists at his side, his shirtsleeves still hanging loose and unbuttoned.

“No, you stay right here,” said Sara. “He’ll leave in due time, once he sees I’m not coming for the horse.” She looked back out for a second, seeing only the toes of Jennings’ boots in a slice of sunlight at the open barn doorway.

“You’re right, of course,” the doctor said, letting his anger settle a little. “We can outwait him. He has no interest in the woman now anyway. His only concern is to get you within his reach.”

“While he’s in the barn,” Sara said, “I’m going to slip out the front door and go tell Sherman what’s going on.”

“Yes, certainly, you go ahead. He needs to know,” the doctor said. “I’ll wait here with this poor woman.”

“Oh yes, we’ll be safe,” said the doctor. “I have a loaded gun in a desk drawer. Don’t worry about us.”

“Then I’m gone, Doctor,” Sara said. She turned and walked toward the front door.

After he’d made certain that Sara had slipped unnoticed along the street toward the edge of town, Dr. Washburn went to his office and took a .36-caliber Navy Colt from a bottom desk drawer. He hefted the gun in the palm of his hand.

“It’s sure been a long time since I’ve come calling on you,” he said to the blue brass-trimmed revolver.

Sherman Dahl stood leaning against the door of the widow’s shack, his Winchester rifle propped against the doorjamb, when he saw Sara cross the town limits and step into the weedy rock-strewn front yard.

“I was starting to worry about you,” he said as Sara walked up toward the porch. Recognizing the worry on her face, he asked, “Are you all right? Is the woman going to make it?”

“I’m all right,” Sara said. “The woman is alive. That’s as well as can be expected, the shape she’s in.” She stepped onto the porch and said, “Two new deputies came to the doctor’s office. She played dead while they were there. When they were gone, she told us she recognized their voices. They’re the men who did all this to her.”

“Yes, deputies,” Sara repeated. “Thank God they thought she was dead. I believe if they hadn’t, they would have killed not only her, but the doctor and me as well.”

Dahl only nodded, gazing past her and in the direction of the doctor’s office on the main street.

Sara drew a tense breath and let it out slowly. She told him everything, about how Buck the Mule hitched the dun near an open barn door in order to lure her in close enough to grab her.

“Yes, to lure me in,” she repeated. “But it didn’t work, and see? I’m okay,” she added quickly, not liking the change she saw coming over Dahl’s icy blue eyes.

“That’s what they said,” Sara replied. “I believe them.” She quickly changed the subject, getting down to business. “I’ll bring the woman here in Doc Washburn’s buggy as soon as things settle a little.”

“Yes, as soon as things settle down,” he said. He stared in the direction of Kindred, attempting to make out the doctor’s office and the barn behind it in the faroff distance.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. He picked up his rifle from the doorjamb and walked off the porch.

“But you can’t go into Kindred armed,” she said. “You agreed not to!” she called out as he walked away across the front yard, the rifle lying back over his right shoulder.

“I agreed to when I considered Kern to be the law. If his deputies did that to the woman, Kindred has no law. I owe them nothing.”

Sara stared at him as he walked away. “Should I—Should I come get the woman?”

From the darkness of the barn’s open doorway, Jennings watched as the tall sandy-haired figure walked along the alleyway, a rifle propped over his shoulder. When he saw the man walk to the dun and begin to unhitch the animal, he stepped out, his big hand on his holstered revolver.

“Hey, you,” he said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You can’t take that hor—”

Dahl’s rifle swung off his shoulder and crashed down on the big man’s right collarbone. Dahl heard the bone snap like seasoned hickory. Jennings’ head snapped sideways with the impact of the blow. As he tried to straighten up, the tip of the barrel stabbed him full force in the V of his chest where his ribs joined. His breath exploded from his lungs.

Dahl looked down at the big gunman, who lay gasping in the dirt. He then unhitched the dun and led it away toward the widow’s shack.

“It went a little quicker than I thought,” Dahl said. He looked along the street toward the marshal’s office where a long line of townsmen had once again formed. He shook his head. “Go get the woman in the buggy. I’ll wait right here.”