Sawbones

by William W. Johnstone

  He finally drifted off to sleep with a single thought in his head. It was time to part company with Milo Hannigan and the gang.

  CHAPTER 18

  For three days Knight squirreled away food for the trail. The others paid him no heed since he drifted from one to the next, checking their wounds, changing bandages, and being almost invisible. He noticed he was excluded from the council Hannigan assembled around him. Lattimer and Nott became his close comrades in arms. That suited Knight fine because the food and other supplies he slipped into his saddlebags were intended to get him as far from everyone as possible.

  In too many ways it had become an outlaw gang. He saw how easily he had gone along with the notion that they were owed the cattle after defending the rancher and getting almost nothing for their blood and sweat. The killings at the trading post had put him on alert, but he still hadn’t seen the full meaning of what Hannigan said until the disastrous stagecoach robbery. That drove home that what they were doing mattered—and law-abiding people who had once been his neighbors considered them thieves, outlaws, and killers to be arrested.

  Or cut down like mad dogs.

  He slipped a handful of beans into his coat pocket. Fixed up with some greens, that made a meal or two out on the trail. Stealing the food from the others rankled, but he hadn’t been able to talk to the Lunsfords about his plans. He wanted Ben and Seth to ride with him. They lacked the killing fervor of the others. Even Porkchop showed a ruthless streak now and then, making him a better partner for Hannigan than Knight and the Lunsfords.

  It almost seemed that Hannigan knew what he planned, at least as far as Ben and Seth went, since he kept the two of them away from camp, on patrol and hunting for any soldiers who might be sneaking up. Knight realized those two were in the best shape of any of the gang and most able to spend long hours in the saddle. The only other one of their number who had escaped the robbery unscathed was Hector Alton, and he spent a great deal of time with Hannigan. Knight saw how Alton never took part in serious strategy talks, but the dandy didn’t seem to take notice of that.

  With a bit of sleight of hand, he added a small bag of gunpowder to his stash, giving him enough to reload his Colt Navy several times, should the need arise. He hoped to sneak off one night, ride like the wind, and be so far away when Hannigan noticed he had left that he wouldn’t have to use the six-shooter to gain his freedom. More than once, Hannigan had made it clear no one left without his approval—and that permission would never be granted. The only way out was feetfirst.

  That only strengthened Knight’s resolve to clear out.

  “Your pockets bulge when you put too much in them.”

  His hand dropped to the Colt on his right hip. He didn’t draw. Hector Alton stood over him, feet squared off, his green brocade coattails pulled back so both six-guns were exposed in their shoulder holsters. Knight had watched Alton practice. Any stiffness he had once shown in his right hand or weakness in his arm from the arrows had passed. The man was as quick on the draw as anyone Knight had ever seen, not that he had ever really known a gunfighter. Growing up in Pine Knob had been dull. Even the saloon fights were bare-knuckled brawls that ended fast because everyone involved tended to be falling-down drunk. Other than the town marshal and deputies, men with six-shooters never walked the streets. At least, not that he knew.

  “Don’t worry your head none, Doc. I’m not going to say anything to Milo.” Alton looked over his shoulder to where a new powwow with Lattimer and Nott was getting started. “He might not believe me even if I said you were leaving.”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “You’ve made up your mind.” Alton came over and squatted beside him. “I want to go with you. There’s nothing keeping me here.”

  That startled Knight. He tried to find words and failed.

  “They think they’re rough-and-tumble outlaws. They aren’t. Nott’s the only one who might have a reward on his head, and I wonder about that. I heard him talking about the man he shot in Baton Rouge.”

  “In the back.”

  “Yeah, he shot him in the back after a poker game. None of the players knew any of the others, so the law had no idea who gunned down the tinhorn who had been cheating. Any of them might have pulled the trigger.”

  “Only it was Nott.” Knight wondered how such details had been pried loose from Nott when he had been so tight-lipped about the killing. It wasn’t that Alton was an easy man to talk to or that they had all gotten drunk. What whiskey they had was long used up for medicinal purposes.

  “I want more excitement in my life.”

  “Coming with me’s not the way to get it. If your complaint is that none of them is a wanted outlaw, sticking with me will be worse.”

  “You stole horses from the army. They want you for killing two soldiers.”

  “You gunned them down.”

  “You’ve never thanked me for that kindness, either. If I hadn’t come by when I did, you’d be buried in some unmarked grave, rope burns around your broken neck. The way I see it, you need me to look out for your back.”

  Knight trusted Hector Alton less than he did Nott or Lattimer, but he said nothing. The man held a winning hand. All he had to do was let it slip how Knight intended to sneak away and all hell would be out for lunch.

  “When are you leaving? I can be ready any time.” Alton cocked his ear expectantly, waiting to hear the precise time and details.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “You want to see if the Lunsford boys will come along. Is that it? Don’t look so surprised. They don’t fit in any more than you do with this amateur outlaw gang.”

  Knight only nodded, not trusting himself. The sooner he talked to Ben, the better. He had no intention of letting Alton ride with them, but if they told him tomorrow at dawn was the time and rode out after midnight, that gave them a six-hour head start. If Ben went, he knew Seth would come along, too.

  “Hannigan’s sent them into Pine Knob. They left a couple hours ago.”

  “What? Why?”

  Alton shook his head. “Don’t have any idea, unless he wants them to scout out the bank there.” Alton put his hand on Knight’s shoulder. “Don’t look so distraught, Doc. This works out just fine. They’re already away from camp, and Hannigan won’t miss them. We sneak into town, team up with them, and the four of us head out and never look back.”

  “That makes sense.” And it did, even if it meant that Alton rode with them.

  “Let’s think on leaving around midnight. That’ll give us a few hours before Hannigan figures out we’re gone. Chances are real good he won’t do anything about finding us, so we’ll be away and free as the wind.”

  Knight nodded. It was as if the other man read his mind as to timetables and what Hannigan would do when he discovered the defection. But why had he sent the Lunsford brothers into Pine Knob? That made no sense.

  * * *

  “We’ve got a few extra hours. I took Nott’s turn as guard until two. You were supposed to take over until four, then my regular time was up till dawn. We’ve got six hours before anybody wonders where we’ve gone.”

  “Thanks, Alton. You’ve taken care of everything.” Knight patted the bulging saddlebags filled with food Alton had swiped from the others. They had enough food for four on the trail until they got beyond the reach of Hannigan or Captain Norwood or anyone else. By the time they were scraping the bottom of their food, they could settle down, get jobs, and live peaceable lives away from outlaw gangs and cavalry troops.

  “Lead your horse out, but not in the direction of Pine Knob. Hannigan will try to track us. We want to confuse the trail as much as possible. That’ll give us extra time.”

  “Do you know where Ben and Seth are in Pine Knob?”

  “Not exactly. Being sent to scout Fitzsimmons’s bank tells me they’ll be easy enough to find. On a rooftop across the street watching or sitting in a chair on the boardwalk where they can count the coins in the pockets of depositors. How much tim
e they need to case the bank I don’t know. How smart are they?”

  “Clever enough, but if Hannigan gave them specific instructions, they might take a few days—or be back before we get to the outskirts of town.”

  “They’ll be in town. That bank’s a tough nut to crack.” Hector Alton swung into the saddle and looked around the quiet camp. Fires had died down, casting eerie shadows behind the sleeping men. “That way’s best.”

  Knight said nothing. He stepped up and walked his horse behind Alton. Something the man had said gnawed at him, and he couldn’t think what it was. He worried too much about the Lunsfords and what trouble they might get into if they weren’t circumspect poking around the bank. The citizens in Pine Knob were friendly, but any behavior that struck them as odd got gossiped about. Ben and Seth were outsiders and likely to draw attention for that reason alone, though the rush of Northerners because of Reconstruction might blunt curiosity about them.

  Or not. They were Southerners. Nothing hid that the instant they opened their mouths. In Texas a Georgia accent bored into the ears like a worm because it was so much more pronounced than local speech. Carpetbaggers were tolerated. Other Southerners were noticed.

  Knight followed Alton single file so the tracks might appear as only one horse. Closer examination would reveal the truth, but to do that Hannigan would have to wait for the sun to get up into the sky. They played for time. Causing confusion at the start might turn into an hour in town to find the Lunsford brothers. After a mile north, Alton cut toward a stream and turned to go north.

  “Town’s in the other direction,” Knight said.

  “Wait and see how this covers our tracks. This isn’t the first time I’ve laid a false trail.”

  Knight rode along, vowing to change direction unless a reason appeared for the misdirection. It did within a few minutes. Alton crossed from one creek to another that ran toward Pine Knob. Knight pictured the landscape in his head. The stream passed within a couple miles of the town. He had played in it when he was a tadpole.

  “See? Even if Hannigan finds our tracks, he’ll be confused which direction we actually went.”

  “How’d you get to be such a trails man? You dress like a tinhorn gambler.”

  Alton chuckled. “A childhood spent on the run. My old man was crooked as a dog’s hind leg. He never did anything honestly to earn a dollar if he could steal a dime instead. The thrill was always in outsmarting the other poor sucker.”

  “So you learned all this from him?”

  “Mostly. He got lynched when I was eight. That might have been the best thing that ever happened to me. A gambler took me under his wing and I learned poker and a dozen other games.”

  “Is he the one who taught you to use those six-shooters?”

  Hector Alton fell silent for so long Knight wondered if he had even heard. After a considerable time he said in a voice so low as to be almost inaudible, “I taught myself. Either learn or die.”

  Knight had no response for that. Alton folded into himself and rode in silence. For that, Knight was grateful. He needed a chance to consider how mad Milo Hannigan would be. They had been friends in Elmira, taking each other’s part, but they had never been friends like he was with Ben Lunsford. How much of a betrayal would Hannigan feel when he found that in one night, he had lost half his gang to defection? The man had a fiery temper. He usually held it in check, but when that fury exploded, people died. A prison guard had pushed Hannigan too far and had lost an ear, a nose, and an eye.

  Beyond that, Knight wondered what it would take to convince Alton to ride on alone, letting him and the Lunsfords follow their own trail. Hector Alton fit better with the gang than he did with men seeking to settle down and avoid the law. That put Knight’s thoughts on a different path. Where should they head after leaving Pine Knob? West took them past San Antonio and across desert sure to take its toll on them. Better to angle up toward the Staked Plains and Adobe Walls, heading more northward. From all he had heard, that was lonely country, but rich with cattle roaming the prairie. Like most of West Texas, rainfall might be sparse some years, making life hard, but when it did rain, there wasn’t a better place to live. A man had elbow room. An ambitious, hard-working man could prosper.

  His medical skills would be in demand, and the Lunsford brothers could find work easily. That sounded better to Knight with every mile he rode. All he needed to do was convince Alton not to tag along. His background ensured trouble, no matter how he professed to want to walk the straight and narrow.

  “There’s a house. You recognize it, Doc?”

  Knight tugged on the reins, stood in the stirrups to look around and got his bearings. The first pink fingers of dawn poked at the sky, giving an unearthly tint to trees and buildings.

  “Old Lady Rawlins’s house. Her husband died ten years back. All three of her children followed him into the grave. Diphtheria. Worst outbreak we ever had, unless they had another while I was gone. She tended them and others and never got sick, not a day. I’m not sure that was a good thing for her.”

  “Went a little loco?”

  “We can pick up a road not a hundred yards farther in that direction that will take us into town.”

  “We need to be careful. You need to be especially careful since that army captain has it in for you. Gerald Donnelly, too, from what I hear.”

  “You certainly have your ear to the ground for a man who’s ridden with Hannigan for only a month or so.” Knight thought furiously. “You aren’t well-known in town, are you? You should check the bank and see if you can flush Ben and Seth.”

  “What’ll you be doing?”

  Something in Alton’s tone put Knight on guard. “I’ll scout the area to be sure it’s clear of soldiers. We wouldn’t want to hit the trail and find we were riding into a Federal camp, would we?”

  “No, sir, Doc. That we wouldn’t. Where do we meet up? After everyone’s rounded up?”

  “The post road going north is our best bet. You, Ben, and Seth start along it, and I’ll watch for you. I know the area like the back of my hand.”

  “See you real soon.” Hector Alton trotted off. Knight watched him uneasily. The man’s tone had been mocking, sardonic, and there wasn’t any reason for that.

  He waited for him to vanish around a bend in the road before making a beeline for his old house. It was a foolish thing to do, returning to see Victoria just one more time, but he couldn’t restrain himself. His feelings for her mixed utter contempt with love that had endured anything the Yankee guards could do to him in a prison camp. Hatred was too strong, and that told him he was getting over her. His passion was muted when he thought of her. He no longer cared.

  And yet he did. One more time. There was no call to speak to her, but he wanted to see her flowing brunette hair and even look into those soft, wonderful brown eyes that carried so much emotion.

  He shook himself out of the reminiscence. She had chosen a carpetbagger over him, and the only way she could legally marry was for him to be dead or for Gerald Donnelly to pull legal shenanigans with his carpetbagger cronies. He touched the Colt holstered at his hip and considered another way for this tragedy to end, possibly with a happy ending.

  If Donnelly was out of the way, would Victoria come back to him? He doubted she would if it were obvious he had killed her ersatz husband, but if he was shot and killed from ambush, and no one was ever brought to justice for the crime, would she consider how wrong she had been with Donnelly?

  Knight shook off such terrible thoughts. He was a doctor, not a gunman like Johnny Nott, content to shoot men in the back. Would he even want Victoria back under those circumstances? He had never been good at keeping secrets. Somehow, somewhere, sometime he would blurt out his deed. He knew her well enough to know her killing him as he slept would not be too far-fetched an end.

  There wasn’t any way to get back with her, even with Donnelly dead. He still had to see her once more before riding away from town.

  He tethered his horse a w
ays down the road, then advanced on foot. The sun had poked above the pines to the east, giving the house a bright coat of sunlight. Two stories. He shook his head. That looked so wrong. It was wrong because Donnelly had built it. He heard the maid bustling about at the rear of the house, but he didn’t see Victoria anywhere. Surely, the lady of the house was up with the sun to oversee her servants?

  Knight knew he should turn and leave. Instead, he silently mounted the steps to the front porch and turned the cut-glass doorknob. The door opened on silent hinges to show the stairway leading up. Another Samuel Knight would have left then. He closed the door behind him to avoid a betraying draft and carefully placed each foot on the stairs leading to the second story.

  At the head of the stairs he paused. He went cold inside when he heard the sounds coming from the big bedroom. Again a different Samuel Knight would have fled. He opened the door a few inches and looked in where Donnelly and his wife were locked together in the throes of passion.

  Knight drew his pistol but did not cock it. He sighted along the barrel, lined up the bead on the front sight and mentally pulled the trigger. As quietly as he had opened the door, he closed it and went downstairs and outside.

  All the way he wondered who would have been the target if he had actually fired. By the time he mounted and rode away, he realized it no longer mattered.

  CHAPTER 19

  Knight felt curiously hollow inside. Being so devoid of emotion, either love or hate, made him wonder if he still lived. He pinched himself. The tiny jolt of pain convinced him this wasn’t a dream where he did strange things and nothing mattered. The real world surrounded him . . . and everything mattered.

  He rode down Pine Knob’s main street. The town council had argued over giving it a name ever since he could remember. They wanted to hang some meaningless name on it like Main Street. Everyone called it that already, but the mayor had demanded that it be named after Sam Houston. That had caused a new round of discussion. Those favoring Main Street had slowly worked around to supporting Goliad Avenue. Or even San Jacinto Street. By the time he had left for Richmond and the war, everyone on the council had laid claim to a different name and they had a new mayor who wanted it named after himself. Putnam Street.