Sawbones

by William W. Johnstone

  Less than a week later Billy had been cut up bad by a scythe blade that broke. He had died from infection a few days later. Two months to the day after Billy’s funeral, Marianne had upped and run off with a man twice her age who had been passing through town, peddling notions. There had been rumors that she had to get married. After going through medical school and learning what he had of human reproduction, Knight no longer disputed that gossip.

  “Why not stretch out here and wait for him to get back? We can lay a trap.”

  “All you want to do,” said Reilly, “is to goof off. The captain ordered us to cover as much territory as we can in a day’s time, then report back.”

  “Screw him. He’s as bossy as he can be. I don’t think he knows what’s goin’ on half the time, so he covers it up with bluster.”

  “Bluster and makin’ us walk extra sentry duty.”

  “You ought to know ’bout that. When you lost your horse to that drifter, you walked an extra ten thousand miles, I do declare.”

  “It felt like it. Still does.” Reilly massaged his knee. “He told me to keep off it, and it’d heal just fine, but the captain wasn’t havin’ any of that. Maybe it was twenty thousand miles. That’s a mighty long way.”

  “Who’ll know if we take a short nap? It’s another of them sultry days that drains the energy from you like water leakin’ from a cracked jug. Not a whole lot at once, but little bits all the time till nothin’s left.” The corporal leaned his rifle against a rock and began digging in the soft dirt to hollow out space for his hip and shoulder. When he had made a comfortable contour, he settled down. In a minute he snored quietly.

  Knight watched as Reilly limped about as if on patrol duty. More than once, the leg he favored caused him enough pain that he sat and rubbed it. After a complete circuit of the springs and the woods surrounding it, he returned and stretched out some distance from the corporal. He tipped his garrison cap down over his eyes and lay back. Like all good soldiers, he grabbed some sleep when he could, too.

  Watching from the safety of his cave lulled Knight to drowsiness, too. He snapped awake at the sound of horses galloping toward the springs. Both soldiers jumped up.

  “Who’s that comin’ like their horses’ tails are on fire?” The corporal climbed onto a pile of rocks, shielded his eyes, and tried to make out the riders.

  “Nobody we want findin’ us snoozin’ away the day. Let’s ride.”

  “Might be the galoot we’re searchin’ for. If we let him slip past us, we’re in for a court-martial.”

  “He didn’t have a horse. Besides, mighty frontiersman, does that sound like a single horse or a whole danged herd of them?”

  “We should go find out,” the corporal said. “I heard tell that the town’s lawyer had his own men out huntin’.”

  “Those were his men that got all beat up.” Reilly shook his head. “It don’t seem possible it’s the same man that stole my horse, but it sounded like him. How could a scrawny, starved drifter shoot one man twice and beat up two men who could wrestle grizzlies and win?”

  “If it had been a gang what beat them up, don’t you think they’d be braggin’ on how they run off a dozen men? Or a hundred?”

  “Come on. Let’s see who’s ridin’ across our patrol area.” Private Reilly hobbled for his horse and swung into the saddle with more agility than likely from his injured leg. He didn’t wait for his partner but turned his pony’s face and galloped away.

  “Slow down, damn you. Don’t go leaving me behind like this.” The corporal brushed himself off as he raced for his horse. The animal tried to buck and forced him to take extra time to mount. Then he galloped away.

  Knight perked up when the soldiers vanished from sight. The corporal had left behind his carbine. With only two rounds left for his six-shooter, the rifle and loaded magazine jammed up into the stock would go a long way toward keeping him fed.

  It might even go a ways toward settling the score with Gerald Donnelly. The longer Knight stewed about it, the more satisfying it became to think about getting the lawyer’s head in his sights, then pulling the trigger.

  He pushed rocks and weeds out of the way and slithered downhill on his belly like a snake. His fingers curled around the cool wood front grip. He hefted the rifle. The short barrel was intended for a horse soldier to draw it from the saddle scabbard and bring it around. While not as accurate as a rifle with a longer barrel, it was better than what he had now, which was almost nothing.

  “You got two choices,” came a cold voice. “You can either try to use it or you can leave it be. What’s it going to be?”

  Knight didn’t release the rifle. He got to his feet and picked it up, his finger curling around the trigger. Before it could fire, he had to cock it, but there wasn’t any call to do that.

  “You’re just as bossy as you were in Hellmira.” He turned slowly and faced the rider astride a paint. On horseback, he looked even more hulking and burly than he was, which was plenty.

  The man hiked his leg up and curled it around the saddle horn. Leaning forward, he squinted the slightest bit as he studied Knight more closely.

  “As I live and breathe, it is you, Doc. Isn’t it?”

  “Sure as summer rain, it is, Milo.”

  “You don’t look like yourself.” He unhooked his leg and dropped to the ground. He grabbed Knight in a bear hug, then released him hurriedly when he felt nothing but bones. “The armistice surely did not treat you well. It doesn’t look as if you’ve had a bite to eat since the blue bellies turned us loose up there in New York.”

  “Doesn’t feel like I’ve had much to eat. There’ve been troubles along the way, but you’re looking hale and hearty.” Knight nervously shifted and looked past Milo Hannigan to his back trail.

  “You on the run from them Yankees? Don’t fret about them, Doc. My boys will take care of them, if that’s what’s needed.”

  “Your boys? Others from Elmira?”

  “Some. You remember Ben Lunsford. Well, now, we picked up his younger brother, Seth. Seems after Sherman was done burning Atlanta, he set to stealing everything else in Georgia. Seth was the only Lunsford left alive, other’n his brother. Ben wanted to ride straight on down there and slaughter every last one of them baby killers, but I talked him out of it. We were outnumbered during the war. Now we’re outnumbered and outgunned even more than before.”

  “Georgia must be a hellhole,” Knight said.

  Hannigan nodded sadly. “That’s why I convinced the lot of them to ride on west. There’s nowhere in particular we’re going, but we’ll know it when we get there.”

  “You’ve reached Pine Knob. This is where I grew up.”

  “Do tell? Are there jobs for the likes of us? Unreconstructed Johnny Rebs?” Milo Hannigan laughed with more than a hint of derision.

  “I can’t say. My welcome here wasn’t what I expected.”

  “Your wife died? Them Yankees kill her? Or do worse to her? You always went on about how purty she was. I wouldn’t put nothin’ past them. They are the scum of the earth.”

  Knight had no stomach to let Hannigan know how unsettling the homecoming had been. Better that Victoria had died than be swept off her feet by a carpetbagger. Or had she decided to marry Gerald Donnelly because of what he had to offer her? That made her nothing but a cheap whore. Knight refused to believe that his wife hadn’t been coerced into the marriage. She had to know he would come home, even if he had to crawl on his belly the whole way.

  He rubbed the concave stretch under his ribs. That was almost exactly how he had returned home. “I’ve run afoul of the Yankees and a Bostonian carpetbagger.” He wiped mud off the rifle butt. “I took this off a soldier who was hunting me.”

  “We ran into a pair of blue bellies.” Hannigan took a deep breath, then let it out. “The boys handled them while I . . . scouted around.”

  Knight wondered what trouble Milo Hannigan found himself in. With soldiers everywhere and the iron fist of the Union smashing down all
around, breaking the law wasn’t hard. He had discovered that himself.

  “You’re safe enough here. At these springs.” He kept from looking uphill at his secret cave. Letting anyone know—even a man whose life he had saved and who had likely saved his while in Elmira—bothered him. With nothing as it should be in Pine Knob and the world, he thought it was more sensible than needlessly suspicious.

  “We’re not going any particular place. I’ve heard tell of gold strikes in New Mexico Territory. And there’s plenty to do in Colorado. Middle Park’s got ranches aplenty for men willing to ride herd.”

  “What do you know about being a cowboy? You said your family were all storekeepers.” Knight settled down, rested the stolen rifle against a rock beside him and felt more at peace than since returning home. Swapping lies with Hannigan had passed the time while they were locked up.

  “What do I know about anything? If we find a mine, we can dig rock and get rich that way. Ben Lunsford wants to learn to be a tanner. He thinks stitching saddles and making holsters is a fit way to earn his supper and a shot of whiskey or two.”

  Knight looked at the way Hannigan carried his six-shooter slung low with a bit of rawhide strip holding it down in the fashion of a gunfighter.

  Hannigan noticed his interest. “I’ve been practicing. The Yankees taught me to be a good shot. No sense wasting powder and lead, I say.”

  “During the war or after?”

  Hannigan looked at him sharply, then laughed. He squared off, slipped the leather loop keeper off the hammer and drew. Knight had never seen a real gunfighter but doubted anyone could match Hannigan’s speed. There had been nothing but a blur as he grabbed iron, pulled it free, and held the cocked pistol in a steady grip.

  Knight froze. He didn’t blink until Hannigan eased down the hammer and dropped the six-shooter back into his holster.

  “I’ve practiced. I had to or I’d have been buried in some potter’s field.”

  “You look well fed.” Seeing how prickly Hannigan got at that, Knight eased the tension by rubbing his sunken belly and saying, “I wish I was.” Punctuating his hunger, his belly rumbled ominously.

  “Sounds like a thunderstorm building there. When the boys get rid of the Yankees, they’ll whup you up enough food to put meat back on your bones.” Hannigan dropped to the ground beside Knight and stretched out, staring up into the blue sky. “They’re good boys.”

  “It’s hard to know who to trust these days.”

  “Always watch your back,” Hannigan opined, “because anyone might turn on you. Dangle a greenback in front of man these days and you have yourself a traitor.”

  “Or in front of a woman,” Knight said, bitterness rising to burn his tongue.

  As if he hadn’t heard, Hannigan didn’t even twitch at what his friend said. And he might not have. He stared at puffy white clouds drifting slowly across the sky and pointed. “You ever make pictures out of clouds, Sam? That one looks like a bronco rider. And just behind is a man fixin’ to shoot him in the back.”

  “All I see are clouds.”

  “A storm’s building. Mark my words. It’s coming, and I don’t mean up there. Chasing folks away from their farms and stealing their businesses is going to cause another uprising.” His hand drifted to the gun at his side. His fingers curled, then relaxed.

  “It didn’t work the first time, trying to get free of politicians who wanted to meddle,” Knight said. “Why should it a second, no matter how bad it gets?”

  “After Atlanta, folks were stunned and the Yanks could push them around. More and more are realizing what’s happening to them. Until then, me and the boys will drift around out west and wait until we’re needed again.”

  “You’re not going to join the Knights of the Golden Circle, are you?” Knight felt a tight knot forming in the middle of his chest. They didn’t offer any good solution to the problems he faced . . . or those that Hannigan and everyone else did, as well.

  “I’m tired of being bossed around. You remember the colonel who was in with us? The short one with the eye patch?”

  “He was a bit touched in the head,” Knight said. “He stood too close to his own artillery and the shock of so many cannonballs firing did something to his brain.”

  “That’s one thing I like about you, Sam. You always have an explanation. Me, I just want a solution.” Hannigan’s fingers tapped on his gun. Then he sat upright. The six-shooter half came from the holster before he saw who trotted toward them.

  “Ben!” Knight got to his feet and waved. For a moment the rider hesitated, then waved back. He galloped and came to a halt only a few feet away.

  Ben Lunsford slid from the saddle and hit the ground running. He grabbed Knight in a hug that crushed the wind from his lungs.

  “I thought you were dead. When they let the lot of us go, you weren’t anywhere to be seen. What happened? How are you?”

  “I couldn’t wait to get home.” Knight gave his best friend a slap on the shoulder and held him at arm’s length to keep from getting another devastating bear hug. “I should have said good-bye.” He looked up at a younger version of Ben Lunsford sitting astride a swaybacked horse. “That’s got to be Seth.”

  “How’d you know that? You one of them gypsy mind readers?” The boy dismounted and came over. He hesitantly held out his hand.

  “Your brother never stopped talking about you, not a single day we were in the Yankee prison camp.” Knight shook the boy’s hand. Other than the five years difference in age, Seth and Ben might have been twins.

  Both stood close to five-foot-ten and were ruggedly built. Long hair poked out from under identical flat-brimmed hats, and eyes bluer than the sky above shined like gems. Ben had been a lady-killer. Seth had the same look that drew women in droves. Neither was handsome, but their confidence kept that from being noticeable.

  “After I got out, I went and rescued Seth. The Federals had burned whatever they couldn’t carry.” Ben turned somber. “They killed damned near everyone in our town for no good reason.”

  “Ma and Pa died when they set fire to the house,” Seth said. “I was in the outhouse and missed being killed alongside them.” He shuddered. “I still hear their screams.”

  “Don’t go exaggerating none, Seth. You heard your own screaming ’cuz you were so constipated,” Milo Hannigan said, trying to lighten the mood and not succeeding. To Ben, he asked, “Where’s the rest of the boys?”

  “They’re leading them two blue bellies on a chase, just for the fun of it. I told them not to kill anybody or we’d have a company of soldiers down on our ears.” Ben Lunsford turned back and looked at Knight. He shook his head in wonder. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Doc.”

  “Splash some of that spring water onto your face if your eyes are that sore. I can’t imagine anyone missing me.”

  “Always there with a joke. What are you doing out here and not with your missus?”

  Knight fell silent. He was happy to see friends, comrades, those who’d shared his life for so long in Elmira, but sharing his heartbreak with them wasn’t right. Taking care of Gerald Donnelly was his duty. He looked at the gun on Milo Hannigan’s hip and knew all he had to do was ask. Hannigan would shoot down anyone Knight wanted dead. From the way the man acted now, he would enjoy it more than considering it a favor for a friend.

  “We’re not going to stay, Doc. Come with us. I’ve picked up a few others, besides these two owlhoots. It would be a pleasure, an honor to have you with us.” Hannigan motioned. Seth took the horses to the spring to water them after Ben dutifully took off the saddles and dropped them on the grassy land away from the mud.

  Knight considered the offer, then nodded slowly. “You have any food? I am famished. We can catch up on old times while we eat.”

  “And?” Milo Hannigan fixed him with a hard stare that drilled to his soul.

  “I have some business to finish, then we can do some exploring. I hear Arizona’s got some wide-open spaces where nobody tells you what to d
o.”

  “The kind of place we’re all hunting for, Doc.” Hannigan slapped him on the shoulder. “Now let’s get to making a fire so Ben can show us some of the cooking skills he’s learned.”

  “Ben? Cooking?” Knight laughed. “I’d better get down to remembering how to deal with food poisoning. You were the worst cook I’d ever seen, Ben.”

  The other four riding with Hannigan showed up, and dinner wasn’t as bad as Knight expected. He found himself enjoying the company and even seriously considering Hannigan’s offer to ride with them. But it had to wait until afterwards.

  After he dealt with Gerald Donnelly.

  CHAPTER 8

  Ben Lunsford followed him around like a puppy dog. Knight wanted to get rid of him but had no idea how to do so without hurting the man’s feelings. They had counted on each other in the prison camp. He still felt some of that bond between them but not to the extent that Lunsford did.

  “You remember the time I got that cut on my leg? From the guard’s bayonet while I was tryin’ to get under the fence? See? I’m all healed now, and all I got’s a tiny scar, hardly worth mentionin’ compared to the one I got when that bull gored me when I was twelve and thinkin’ I could outrun it.”

  “What’re your plans, you and Seth?” Knight had no desire to talk about the prison camp or the crude doctoring he had done there. In the field, with men blown apart, he had let so many die. At least he’d had basic instruments and some supplies. Surgeon General Moore had been a wizard at getting medicines to his field hospitals. In Elmira, Knight had lacked even simple instruments, much less anything to disinfect. More than once he had used whiskey as both disinfectant and anesthetic after a battle. Liquor of any kind was banned from the prison camp, though many of the guards never had a sober day the whole time he, Lunsford, and the others were locked up. Some of that whiskey would have gone a long way toward relieving pain and suffering.