Don't Hang My Friend

by Raffensperger, John;

  “He died slow and painful,” said Doc.

  Doc cut deep through the layers of skin and muscle until he opened into the cavity and traced holes that went through the liver and stomach all the way to a rib in back. “This is the slug that killed him,” said Doc. “It looks like a .44 caliber bullet from a Henry repeater,” Mr. Birt said.

  Sheriff Brewer and two deputies rode up to the barn. “Who authorized you to cut open that body?” Asked the Sheriff.

  “Mr. Isaiah Trimmer, the man’s father. “A gang of thugs shot him down with .44 caliber slugs,” said Doc.

  “Murphy had a Henry repeater in town last summer,” said I.

  “That slug don’t prove a thing, ‘cept that one more uppity darky ain’t gonna bother nobody anymore. There’s plenty of them Henry rifles around,” said the sheriff.

  He no more had the words out of his mouth when Sarah, Young Isaiah’s widow, ran out of the cabin, threw herself against the sheriff’s horse and grabbed the reins. “You got to find who done it. You got to find who killed my Isaiah,” she said. Sarah went down on her knees and cried until her tears dripped on the snow. The horse reared up and came down with a front hoof on Sarah’s shoulder. The sheriff stayed in the saddle, got the horse turned and they he and the deputies galloped down the road.

  Sarah made no sound, but was sprawled with her blood pooling in the snow. The skin and muscle was torn right down to bone. Dr. Steele bound her arm to stop the bleeding.

  “I can’t finish the job without instruments and ether,” said he..

  Miz Trimmer came in her surrey and with a basket had fried chicken, ham, homemade bread and a big apple pie. It was a right neighborly thing to do. She looked after the family just like they were her own children on account of she didn’t have any of her own. Miz Trimmer went to Young Isaiah’s two children, who were huddled and sobbing in the corner. “I got room in my house. You come and live with me until your mama is well and you got a new cabin.”

  “Are you are the new doctor I been hearing about? Doc Evans is too old to come across the river to look after these folks. Are you fixin to help Sarah? She’s hurt more than I can handle,” said Miz Trimmer.

  “She needs an anesthetic and a lot of stitching.” Dr. Steele said.

  “There’s folks who won’t like you helpin’ any Negro,” said she.

  “Sarah will be the first patient in the hospital I’m fixing up in Sandy Ford. Tom will be my assistant,” Dr. Steel said. My heart just about busted with pure joy. “Do you really mean that I will be your apprentice?” I asked.

  “Yes, if you can tend the horses, chop wood and help out with patients and study in your spare time,” he said.

  My eyes got all blurry again. “I will work hard and do most anything.”

  The darkies put Sarah in Isaiah’s wagon with Obediah’s wife. I went with Mr. Birt Dr. Steele in the buggy. When we drove across the river on the ice and came into town. I scrunched down and hid under a blanket on account of I didn’t want anyone to know I escaped from the orphanage. The word got around and a bunch of men from Murphy’s gang came out of Friday’s tavern. “Get those darky’s out of town. Let’s have a lynchin’ party,” they yelled.

  Doc whipped up the horse and we went on through town, without no more bother.

  The new hospital was in the old Travis house, a big old mansion. Doc drove around to the barn and tended to the horse. I wasn’t much help because my feet hurt.

  “I’ll work as soon as I can walk,” I said.

  “It’s all right, stay off your feet until they heal. Tom I know how you feel about your father. We can’t bring him back,” said Dr. Steele.

  “It ain’t just Pa. I ain’t heard nothing about Aunt Alice since they took her to the poorhouse. She might be dead for all I know,” said I.

  I hobbled after the doctor through the back door of the big brick house. The place was bare and dusty, like nobody had looked after it. The kitchen floor hadn’t been mopped for a while and the place was disorderly except for the big front room with the bay windows that Doc was fixin’ up to be an operating room. The rest of the first floor was for his office and rooms for patients. Doc said I could have a room on the second floor. Most of the rooms had an iron stove or a fireplace. It was a fine big old house with rooms for an office and patients.

  By the time Doc had showed me the house Old Isaiah drove up in the wagon with Sarah and carried her into the front room.

  “Lay her on the table. Then pump a bucket of water and set it on the stove to heat,” Doc said.

  He gave her a shot of morphine and by the time the instruments had soaked in hot water with carbolic and the clean towels were ready, Sarah was almost asleep.

  “Tom, you will have to give the ether. Start with a few drops, then do a steady drip until she stops moving.”

  I was pretty shaky, and had to sit down because my feet hurt, but was careful. She went to sleep real easy, but it took a while for Doc to clean and stitch the wound. By the time he put on a big bandage, Sarah was waking up.

  “You did just right, Tom,” Doc Steele said.

  I felt mighty good. Doc and Old Isaiah and Obediah’s wife put Sarah in one of the small bedrooms on the first floor and stayed to tend to her needs.

  Folks always said, the old Travis place was haunted because it had been a station on the Underground Railroad for slaves who came upriver from Mississippi and Missouri on their way to Canada. If you listened close you could hear the crying and the hoof-beats of galloping horses carrying slaves north to the promised land. Colonel Travis had made a lot of money in land speculation and built the big house at the edge of town for his wife. They were Quakers and abolitionists. When she died at the end of the war, he moved out and the house was vacant for so long the “for rent” sign was covered with weeds. When Mr. Birt showed him the house, Dr. Steele took the old place and set about making it into a hospital.

  I figured that getting out of the orphanage would be like going to heaven, but it was lonely without Pa and Aunt Alice. I stayed awake worrying about the sheriff taking me back to the orphanage. Then I got to thinking about how Old Isaiah had saved me from sure death out there in the cold and how the Negroes were better people than a lot of white folks. It was hard getting comfortable, but I drifted off to sleep.

  It wasn’t the wind or painful feet that woke me up just after midnight. A rock came crashing through a front window and then there was a fearsome noise. Men hollered and fired guns.

  Chapter Twelve

  Smoke and the smell of coal oil came in through the broken windows. By the time I pulled on my pants and hobbled downstairs, Doc was dressed and making for the front door.

  “Tell those darkies to stay out of sight,” he said.

  Isaiah was asleep in Sarah’s room. “Hide, quick,” said I.

  “I kept by Captain Trimmer at Gettysburg and I ain’t goin’ to hide now,” said he.

  A load of buckshot clattered like hail and another window shattered with a crash of broken glass. When I got to the front door Doc was checking the primers on his Navy Colt. The hooting and hollering outside was louder. Isaiah went out the front door ahead of Doc: I was right behind, too excited to be scared..

  Flames of the burning cross and torches lit up a half dozen men with white peaked hoods carrying guns. The melting snow had turned to frozen slush and the front yard was covered with ice. It was a mean, cold night. Every so often a half moon hanging in the western sky peaked through a hole in the clouds.

  The man right in front of the porch and a dozen yards ahead of the others was Murphy on the coal black horse with a white patch on it’s face. He held that Henry rifle in one hand and the reins in the other. As soon as Isaiah came out the door Murphy fired a shot that whanged into the door jamb. Isaiah jumped from the front steps and grabbed the rifle, but Murphy clubbed him on the head with the rifle’s butt. Old Isaiah stumbled against the horse that skittered on the ice. I ran down the steps and grabbed ahold on his white sheet. “You killed Ike
and Young Isaiah,” I cried.

  “You little sumbitch,” Murphy yelled. He grabbed the back of my neck and tossed me away like I was a sack of potatoes. My neck felt like it was broke but I got up out of the snow .

  Doc aimed his Navy Colt directly at Murphy and could have killed him easy, but instead he fired over his head. The men behind Murphy must have figured we would hand over the Negroes without a fight but now they backed off and lowered their guns..

  Murphy couldn’t work the lever of his rifle with one hand and the horse reared up like it was going to bolt. Isaiah was back on his feet and Doc was on the steps, drawing back the hammer of the Colt. Murphy jammed the rifle into a scabbard and drew the cavalry saber. He slashed at Isaiah and Doc fired another shot that grazed Murphy’s hood. Then Murphy held the saber out in front. “Yeeah,” It was just like a rebel yell except it was more awful. He bent low in the saddle, hung on to the horse’s neck and charged up the steps. Murphy swung the saber and would have cut Doc’s head right off but Doc ducked out of the way. The saber hit a column that held up the porch and broke in half. The horse turned just in time to miss the front door, jumped a railing and went off in the night. Doc aimed at the rest of the hooded men. “Get on out of here,” said he. They all left; the cross was about burned out.

  My bad dreams that night could have been because of the laudanum that Doc gave me for the pain in my neck and feet but they kept coming every night and turned into terrible shadowy nightmares. One was about Reverend Burns who was about to kill me but I got my hands around his neck. When his eyes bulged out, I couldn’t squeeze no more and let him go. Another time, I held a gun on a man in a peaked hood, but couldn’t pull the trigger.

  Billy Malone came by the next day. I never was so happy to see a person in my whole life.

  “We figured you were about dead,” he said.

  “Well, I ain’t dead yet. What happened to those bandits?”

  “Pa and the vigilantes follered them all the way to the county line. The hoofprints were the same as the rustlers that have been stealing cattle and burning barns. Murphy and his gang are stirrin’ up trouble with the Negroes and stealin’ from the farmers. “ We don’t have to worry none now, on account of the vigilante committee elected Pa to be the captain,” Billy said. “You sure? Murphy’s mean and he won’t forget about his dog and us stickin up for Old Isaiah and his family,” said I. “Pa says he don’t dare come back to Sandy Ford, even if he is deputy sheriff,” Billy said.

  Obediah came the next day and fixed the broken windows. Isaiah came from the Camp House to see Sarah every day. “How do you bear up under all this suffering?” I asked. “Trust in the Good Lord,” said Isaiah. “I went to church and Sunday school but Pa still died and it looked like the Lord sent me to that orphanage,” said I.

  “Have faith, have faith is all we can do,” said Old Isaiah.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After about a week, I could curry the horse, chop wood, stoke the fires and sweep the kitchen. Neither one of us was much of a hand at cooking. Doc fried bacon, eggs and potatoes, but mostly we ate at the Camp house. One night Mr. Birt said Aunt Alice was still in the poorhouse. The next morning while Doc and I were eating eggs that had been fried too hard I had an idea. “It’d sure be nice if Aunt Alice could do our cooking,” said I.

  “I couldn’t pay her,” said Doc.

  “She would cook and clean like she done for Pa and me if you gave her room and board,” said I.

  The very next day, he drove the buggy to the poor house in Columbia, signed some papers and brought Aunt Alice to stay with us.

  We hugged and cried out of pure happiness. Aunt Alice settled into her own room on the second floor and went to work with lye soap until the place was sparkly clean. I felt a whole lot better and gained weight on Aunt Alice’s cooking. After about a month, the pains in my neck went away and I could walk almost as good as ever. Sleep was hard on account of almost every night I had those nightmares.

  Folks had started coming to Doc with their complaints but after word got around that he had brought “that darky woman” into the house no one came. It was hard to believe they could be so close-minded, but there were always folks who liked to stir up trouble. People forget that he had cured Mr. Birt and churchgoers didn’t like his drinking and card playing at the Camp House. Sometimes a whole day went by without a patient. Doc was down at the mouth and things looked pretty bleak. I mixed tonics and elixirs, like iron chloride in gin and wild cherry for nervous women and root of elecampane with molasses for coughs and asthma. The work wasn’t much different than what I had done for Pa. I figured that if things got any worse, I could still go west. Doc made me read Gray’s Anatomy two hours a day. There were times, though, when all I did was daydream about Rachel and sometimes, I even thought about that night I had snuggled up close to Mary.

  One afternoon, Doc Evans fell down his office steps. People said he was drunk but Doctor Steele said the old doctor was paralyzed on his left side from a stroke. There wasn’t a whole lot to do but Mrs. Evans told everyone in town how Dr. Steele had visited twice a day and kept him from choking to death. People figured they could trust him and we had more patients.

  Another case made Doc famous as far away as Chicago. There was a tough little saloon on the river about ten miles out of town on the line between two counties where there wasn’t much law. Dirty Dick Olsen made his own corn likker and a steamboat man or a sharper could always find a game of dice or poker and sometimes there were women in the upstairs rooms.

  One night someone banged on the door. “Tom, get the horse hitched. We got work to do,” said Doc.

  I put on my clothes in no time at all, got a lantern and went to the stable. The light spooked Jesse and she danced around the stall. I whacked her a good lick across the shoulders with the harness and she let me hitch her to the buggy. By that time, Doc was there with his bags and ready to go.

  “Follow that man,” he said.

  It was getting on to April and we had a spell of nice weather. Even though the moon was about half gone, there was plenty of light to see the horse and rider. We went out of town on a dirt road that led off to the north-east, next to the river on top of the bluffs. After a few miles there was a turnoff, leading back to the river. When we got there, the saloon was quiet and dark. It was plumb spooky. Doc ran into the saloon with his bulls eye lantern, while I hitched Jesse to the post. The Beaver, a packet boat that did the mail run from Ottawa to Peoria was tied up at the rickety dock. This was no mail stop or even a regular landing but before I could think why she was here, Doc called from inside the Saloon. I carried the instrument case inside, where the floor was slippery with blood, the mirror behind the bar was splattered. The bartender was out cold on the floor back of the bar, clutching an empty whisky bottle. A half-dressed red-haired woman slumped over a table toward the back. We figured she was just drunk. The feller who led us to the place rode off at a fast gallop and we never did find out his name. The man stretched out on the floor in a pool of blood looked like he was dead, except he made a gargly sort of moan. Doc got down on his knees and felt his wrist. “His a pulse is weak and he’s about a goner.”

  I took his feet and with Doc at his shoulders, we heaved him up on the card table. He was limp as a dishrag. A slash across his throat went plumb from one side of his neck to the other. Doc kicked the bartender a couple of times but he didn’t come awake. We found candles and another coal oil lamp that shed enough light so we could see to work. The cut went from the muscles at the side of his neck, across his windpipe and over to the other side. Blood and air bubbled up out of a hole in his windpipe.

  Doc felt put his finger in the cut. “It missed his carotid arteries and the deep jugular veins or he would be dead. All this blood came from the external jugular veins.”

  I stood there, kinda dumb, until something clicked and I could see the picture from the anatomy book in my mind, clear as a bell. The external jugular veins ran from the angle of the jaw just beneath
the skin down to behind the clavicle bone. They weren’t real big veins, but could bleed real bad.

  “Tom! Stop daydreaming. Soak the needles, thread, artery forceps and bandages in whiskey. There isn’t much time.”

  It was the first time Doc ever raised his voice. There wasn’t clean water for a carbolic solution so I spread the instruments and sutures out on a clean cloth and poured a whole quart of rotgut booze over the clamps and sutures.

  When Doc went to work, time slowed down. If it hadn’t been for the bubbling and gurgling of air and blood out of his windpipe, I would have sworn the man was deader’n a mackerel. I held the edges of the skin apart with one of his special hooks so he could see inside the wound. The bleeding stopped when he clamped the vein. He tied the veins with linen threads, mopped the wound with bandages soaked in whiskey and sewed the muscles back together. When that was finished, he stitched the skin, but left it open over the hole in the windpipe. When we were done the man was still unconscious, with a weak pulse. It was almost daylight outside.

  The bartender was still out cold back of the bar and the woman was in the exact same place. Doc slapped the bartenders face with a wet bar rag, but he didn’t move.

  The woman raised her head off the table. “Come here,” she whispered.

  Doc poured himself a little glass of whiskey and carried it over to the woman’s table. I went along and noticed for the first time that she was pale as a sheet and that the lower part of her dress was soaked with blood. The blood had even pooled on the floor under her chair.

  “Why didn’t you say you were hurt?” Doc asked.

  “Wouldn’t make no difference. He put a knife through my stomach. I come here with Captain Bart Daniels. That’s him over there, near dead. Him and me came on the boat for a little party. We were talking and drinking when a passenger from Chicago horned in. Bart gave him a shove, but he got mean, pulled a knife and tried to cut Bart’s head off. When I busted him with a bottle, he rammed the knife into my belly.”