by Ford Fargo
“Please do not think that I am following you, Doctor Munro,” Tsu Dong said. “I was hoping to have a word with Jing Jing.”
The curtain that hung over the doorway leading into the laundry itself was swept abruptly aside and Mrs. Li stepped through. She glared at the young man.
“Jing Jing, your father needs you,” she snapped, without taking her eyes off Tsu Dong.
He looked flustered for a moment, but quickly recovered and gave a short bow. “Good morning, Mrs Li. I was just…”
“Quickly, Jing Jing,” Mrs. Li said, clapping her hands rapidly. “And while you are there, tell Li Wei that he needs to take a basket of fresh linen to Miss Abby Potter’s Boarding House. Chop-chop.”
Jing Jing cast a regretful glance at Tsu Dong then scurried through. Mrs. Li closed the curtain behind her, then turned to Logan.
“I am sorry to keep you, Doctor Munro,” she said, now studiously ignoring the young man.
Tsu Dong grunted irritably, then yanked the door open and strode out, banging it shut behind him.
“A petulant young man,” Logan said, smiling at Mrs. Li. And with that thought he again wondered whether the young man’s anger betrayed the sort of personality that could be channeled into the sort of tasks that he suspected Tsu Chiao ordered his nephews to perform.
“Again, I am sorry, Doctor. We do not want our children to have anything to do with Tsu Chiao or any of his ruffians. They are not – like us.”
Logan concurred. The Li family were sober, upstanding members of the Wolf Creek Chinese community, whereas Tsu Chiao was, in his opinion, nothing more than an opium dealer, brothel keeper and a ruthless gang boss. Logan despised him and was aware that Tsu Chiao disliked him simply because he was British. He had heard from patients that Tsu Chiao often boasted about having fought in the Opium Wars against the British when he was a young man.
Suddenly the door was violently thrown open.
“Get behind me,” Logan cried to Mrs. Li as he spun around, fully expecting to be confronted by an angry Tsu Dong.
Instead it was a flush faced fourteen-year-old boy with a black left eye that was just about closed. He was shirtless and covered in trail dust.
“My word, Frank Miller, you look as if you’ve walked into a post. How did –?”
Frank unconsciously reached up to his eye and winced as he touched the bruised flesh. “Oh, that ain’t nothing, Dr. Munro. But I’m real glad I found you. You have to come with me, sir. Mr. Sublette sent me.”
“What’s the emergency, Frank?”
“It’s Obie and Ethan, they’re both hurt bad. Obie’s been shot in the chest and…and we’re wasting time.” He put a hand on Logan’s arm and pulled. “Please, Doc. They’re bleeding.”
Logan could see that the lad had been under some sort of immense strain and had witnessed some tragedy. Clearly he had been sent to get medical aid.
“Take it easy, Frank,” he said calmly. He clasped the youngster’s shoulders and held him firmly, and looked him straight in the eye. “Just take a deep breath, son, then tell me exactly what has happened.”
“Dr. Munro,” Mrs. Li said with a sharp intake of breath. “It must be the school party. Mr. Sublette took some of the boys on a trip to look for bones. My son Li Wei wanted to go, but my husband said he is needed here at the laundry.”
She reached under the counter and pulled out a fresh shirt. Frank took it gratefully and put it on.
He nodded his head vigorously. “That’s right, Doc,” he said, his voice steadier and calmer. “We were on Mr. Breedlove’s land on a trip to find dinosaur bones. Mr. Sublette was about to show us his rifle, a Whitworth .451. We had set up a target and were on our way back to the camp when we saw Billy Below and some of the T-Bar-B cowboys inspecting our wagon. We had a few laughs, and they was about to head off, when a bunch of Rolling-R wranglers rode up and started shooting.”
“They started shooting at who? At Billy Below and the T-Bar-B men?”
“At all of us. They were just shooting at everyone and there were about half a dozen of them. They were trying to kill us all!”
Despite himself, the boy shivered. “It all happened so fast. Obie Wilkins and Ethan Hartman were hurt the worst. Obie was shot in the chest and the blood was pumping out of him. Ethan has a huge spike of wood sticking out of his leg. Billy Below and Mr. Sublette were wounded and two of the T-Bar-B boys were killed. Mr. Sublette killed a couple of them and…and I shot one that was going to kill Mr. Sublette.” Tears welled up in his eyes and his face drained of color. “I…I shot him in the head. It made me feel sick to my stomach.”
“Did any of them get away?”
“I don’t know, sir. I guess I was in a sort of shock. Mr. Sublette took charge, like he was used to it. He was going to head for Mr. Breedlove’s house, but he was worried about the tough country they’d have to cross to get there. Then Jimmy Spotted Owl suggested they head for the old line shack, which was nearer and where they had beds and supplies of food and water. Then Mr. Sublette sent me to fetch you out there.”
Logan looked round at Mrs. Li. “Could you get Li Wei to run and tell Sheriff Satterlee about this?”
“Billy Below rode with me and he’s doing that right now,” Frank volunteered.
Logan put an arm about Frank’s shoulders. “You’ve done good work this day, Frank. You’ve done as well as any man could have done. Now, do you know where Obie’s folks live?”
Frank nodded.
“Then I want you to do three things. First, I want you to go to their home and tell them that there has been – an incident. Tell them that Obie has been wounded and that I am going to head straight out there to see him. Secondly, as soon as you can, go over to the livery and ask Ben Tolliver to get my horse ready. I need to go over to my office and get some things, and then the third thing I want you to do is lead me to this line shack. Can you do all that?”
Frank nodded and made for the door.
Logan turned to Mrs. Li. “This all sounds bad, Mrs. Li, I reckon that I’m going to need –”
Mrs. Li anticipated his request. “You will need dressings and bandages. You go to your office, Doctor Munro. I will send Li Wei and Jing Jing round with a basket straight away.”
***
Jimmy Spotted Owl was waiting outside the line shack with Marcus Sublette’s Whitworth .451 cradled in his arms. He shook his head as Logan and Frank reined in and tied their horses to the hitching post.
“Little Obie didn’t make it,” he announced apologetically.
Logan quickly went into the shack, followed by a speechless and disbelieving Frank.
There were two bunks in the shack against opposite walls. A blanket covered Obie’s body and had been drawn up over his face. Ethan Hartman was lying on the other bunk, his face lathered in perspiration and taut with pain. Marcus Sublette was sitting on a stool, a crude bandage bound round his own right calf. He was dabbing Ethan’s brow with a damp cloth.
“I am pleased to see you, Doctor,” he said, pushing himself painfully to his feet. “I am sorry that I couldn’t do much for young Obie.”
Logan eased back the blanket to reveal the young boy’s body. He bent down and quickly felt for a pulse, then cursorily examined the wound.
“Judging by this wound there wasn’t much anyone could have done. You tried to staunch the flow, and that’s about all that you could have hoped to do. His chest cavity would have filled up with blood and his lungs would collapse and his heart would just stop.”
“He looks like he’s asleep,” Frank remarked, his voice quaking. “He didn’t deserve that to happen.” He quickly turned away and slumped onto a stool in the corner of the shack.
“Let’s have a look at Ethan,” Logan said, taking the stool that Marcus had vacated.
“I didn’t dare try to remove it,” Marcus said over his shoulder as Logan looked at the three inch long spike sticking out of the front of Ethan’s thigh.
“You were quite right, Marcus. You could have done mo
re damage and started a hemorrhage that you couldn’t control.”
He put a reassuring hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. I’m going to take this thing out of your leg as soon as I can. How bad does it hurt?”
“It feels like the worst pain I can imagine, sir. Like I have the devil’s own pitchfork stuck in me.” He screwed up his face and a sob escaped. “But I feel bad complaining at all, seeing as how poor Obie has gone.”
Logan opened his bag and took out a small bottle of laudanum and a dosage glass. He poured a small measure into the glass and then put a hand behind Ethan’s neck and eased him up. “I want you to drink this, my boy. It will start to ease the pain. Then as soon as I can get this stove fired up I’m going to put you to sleep so that I can remove this shard of timber from your leg.” He smiled reassuringly. “You will not feel me doing it, I promise.”
A look of fear flashed across Ethan’s face. “I…I ain’t going to die, am I, sir?”
“No, son. You will not.”
Marcus had started to light the stove.
“Should we wait until his parents can be told?” he whispered, as Logan removed his surgical operating kit from his bag.
“No, the sooner this thing comes out the better. But you are right, we need to let them know he is here and what happened. Could we ask Jimmy Spotted Owl to ride over to their place?”
“Actually, Doc, after what has just happened today I’d rather we kept Jimmy here, especially as we have this injured boy to look after.” He glanced at Frank, who had overheard their whispered conversation.
“I’ll go, sir. It’s the least I can do for my friends.”
Marcus clapped him on the shoulder. “Mr. Miller, I can honestly say that I have never seen a boy turn into a man as fast as I have seen you do today. And I can honestly say that there is no one that I would rather trust with a mission like this. Have you still got your pistol?”
Frank tapped his pocket. “It’s ready and loaded just in case, sir.”
“Then ride like the wind, young man. Again.”
When he had gone, Logan smiled wistfully at Marcus. “That lad is a credit to you. As is young Ethan here. I’ve seen grown men make far more noise about far less injuries than he has.”
Marcus Sublette’s gaze fell on the covered body of Obie Wilkins on the other bunk. His eyes immediately began to well up. “I am proud of each and every one of them, Doctor. God bless them.”
***
Ethan had drifted off as soon as Logan had applied an eighth of an ounce of chloroform to the perforated disc on top of the Chisolm inhaler that he always carried in his medical bag. It was a small cylinder that measured a mere two and a half inches by one inch, with two nose tubes that he had inserted into Ethan’s nostrils.
“This, Marcus,” he explained as he removed the device once Ethan was unconscious, “just happens to be one of the finest pieces of medical equipment that we have. It was invented by Dr. John Chisolm, a surgeon of the Confederate States Army. It allows us to use a fraction of the chloroform that we used to need with the handkerchief cone or the drinking glass methods of delivery.”
Marcus Sublette had seen several operations carried out during the War, but he had never seen one done so dexterously and swiftly as this.
After cleaning the skin around the wound Logan Munro had applied a Petit’s screw tourniquet higher up the leg, then started to explore the tissues about the wood spike with a long silver probe. Gradually he worked the muscles free of the wood, creating a space wide enough to insert the Parisian-made bullet extractor that he favored down the side of the wood.
“This wood shard is like the head of a spear or an arrow,” he said out loud as he worked. “I just need to get to the end, which just have, then rotate the head to catch the point.” He then threaded a thin rod with a screw tip down the fine tube of the extractor. “And now, having secured the tip, I just screw this rod into the wood and then I can start the withdrawal.”
Exerting steady and controlled traction, all the while retracting the muscles with the probe, he pulled the spike free.
“Now we just check that there are no deep splinters, then I can release the tourniquet and start sealing off any bleeding vessels with those cautery irons that we’ve had in the stove, and I’ll repair some of the muscle with catgut.”
There was remarkably little bleeding after removing the tourniquet, but such as there was Logan quickly stanched with either a touch of a cautery iron or the application of a pinion catch artery forceps and a swift catgut ligature that he was able to tie with one hand.
Once the wound was dressed to Logan’s satisfaction, he revived Ethan with some volatile smelling salts before giving him another dose of laudanum to keep the pain under control.
“Now you can sleep properly for a while, Ethan,” he said. “You’ll have a limp for a few weeks, and you’ll have a scar, but no-one’s going to see it. And don’t worry, your folks will soon be here.”
He rinsed his hands in a bucket, then he and Marcus watched as Ethan gradually drifted off again.
“Now,” the doctor said to the schoolteacher, “I’ll have a look at that leg wound you obviously were not going to tell me about.”
“It’s just a flesh wound,” Marcus said. “I made a tourniquet and stopped the bleeding.”
“Leave the diagnoses to me,” Logan said, and bent over to examine the wound.
Some minutes later, as they waited for coffee to brew, Marcus heard the sound of horses approaching. “That could be them now.”
The shack door opened, and Jimmy Spotted Owl poked his head in. “We’ve got company again. Looks like more Rolling-R fellers. And if I’m not mistaken, their boss man hisself is riding with them.”
***
Marcus and Logan joined Jimmy outside. Logan had taken his Beaumont-Adams revolver from his bag and shoved it into his waistband.
“Jimmy, where is my horse?” Logan asked
“I tethered him round the back of the shack with the other horses. Just in case anyone uninvited rode up.” He nodded in the direction of the riders. “Like them.”
Marcus had retrieved his rifle from Jimmy and braced it across the side of the wagon. “That is close enough, Mr. Rogers,” he shouted. Jimmy and Logan joined him behind the wagon so that they would have some sort of protection if needed.
The six riders had slowed to a canter, but now stopped completely as Andrew Rogers held up his hand. He was a dark-haired man in his mid-thirties with a smug, arrogant face, dressed in clothes that fitted him so well they looked to be tailor made.
“Is that you, Sublette? Who’s with you?”
“It’s me, Jimmy Spotted Owl! And none of you had better come any closer or I’m going to throw some lead your way. Some of your scum killed two good friends of mine today, as well as a young boy that should be running and playing with his friends, instead of waiting for his folks to come and collect his body.”
“And I’m here, too,” Logan called. “Dr. Logan Munro. I’ve just been treating a patient.”
“You mean you’ve been treating a goddamned wounded rustler!” Rogers shouted back. “Him and the gang he belongs to have killed six of my men. They shot them down in cold blood when my men caught them red-handed rustling some of my cattle. I saw their bodies back there, and we followed your trail and saw your smoke.”
Marcus’s blood started to boil. He clasped the rifle firmly. “That is an outright lie. Those men rode right at us and started firing indiscriminately. My pupil Obie Wilkins is dead, and another one, Ethan Hartman, is in that shack badly wounded.”
Rogers’ sneer was echoed by his men. “I want that wounded rustler, Sublette, I don’t care how old he is. I mean to take him in and let the law deal with him.”
He coaxed his horse toward them. “Come on, boys,” he said. Then, to the boy’s defenders, he added, “You men would be advised to put those weapons down. I have the law on my side.”
Marcus dropped his head to peer through the telesc
opic sight of his rifle. “That is far enough! I warn you that I have a clear bead on you, Rogers. One more step or any false move from any of these men and I will blow a hole through whatever it is you have instead of a heart. As for having the law on your side, that is hogwash and you know it.”
Rogers immediately stopped and his expression turned ugly. “I don’t like to be threatened, Sublette. Just put that rifle aside and let’s talk in a civilized fashion. You have my word, none of my men are going to draw leather.”
Marcus cautiously raised his head away from the telescopic sight, but kept the rifle where it was; confident that if needed he could shoot Rogers out of his saddle at the first sign of treachery. “I suggest you start talking.”
“Wolf Creek is a town that is about to change,” Rogers said. “It would do folks well to make sure they are on the right side of the people who will be in charge.”
“For a man who doesn’t like to be threatened, you don’t seem to mind handing them out.”
“It is the way of the world. The same goes for you all. I can be a powerful friend to have. All I want is for you to give me that wounded rustler so I can hand him over to the law in Wolf Creek.”
Logan Munro gave a dry laugh. “Now I do believe that I have heard everything. It sounds as if Mr. Rogers believes that we would trust him to take care of Ethan, after all the blood that has been spilled around here.”
He took out the scalpel that he always kept in his top pocket and pulled off the cork that he used to protect the blade. He held it up to the sunlight so that the blade gleamed. “Let me just tell you something, Mr. Rogers. You might say that this scalpel is one of the tools of my trade. I’m pretty deft with it, if I say so myself, but I certainly do not appreciate threats being made to any of my patients or to any of my friends. Apart from Dr. Jefferson Cantrell, the town dentist, I am the only doctor within fifty miles of Wolf Creek. That means if a person needs pus letting out of an abscess, or a broken bone needs fixing, or any intimate operation needs doing, then I am the man you come to. I took an oath to help anyone who needs me, and I always keep it. But just you be aware that threats make me nervous, and if I get nervous my hand could slip. And when I have a scalpel in my hand and my hand slips – well, that could be mighty dangerous for anyone that is under the blade.”
