This Violent Land

by William W. Johnstone

  He had become a doctor because he’d once thought that he had a genuine desire to help people. Then came the war, where he had been a surgeon on the battlefield. That experience had changed, forever, how he looked at the profession of medicine.

  He stared into the fire, remembering.

  Near Franklin, Tennessee in 1865 the battle was pitched with guns roaring, shells bursting, and men screaming.

  It was the latter, the men screaming, that dominated the sounds. Clell was at the first-aid station set up behind the lines, which was a joke. Earlier, a nearby bursting shell had killed one of his medical aides. Clell had his sleeves rolled up. Blood covered his hands and arms all the way up to his elbows. He was holding a bone saw in his hand as a wounded soldier was put on the table in front of him.

  “Here’s another one, Doc,” said one of the two men carrying the wounded soldier.

  “How many more out there?” Clell asked.

  “I don’t know, thirty, forty maybe. It don’t make much difference ’cause there’s more comin’ all the time, and lots of those that’s waitin’ dies. The number ain’t never the same from one minute to another.”

  The wounded soldier looked over to his right and saw a pile of amputated legs and arms. “No, Doc! No!” he screamed. “Don’t cut off my leg! Don’t cut off my leg!”

  “Soldier, the cannonball has already just about done that. All I’m doing is cleaning it up.”

  “But you’re a doctor! Can’t you do somethin’?” the man pleaded.

  Clell shuddered. He wasn’t a doctor any longer. The war had turned him into little more than a butcher.

  Standing up next to his campfire, Clell tossed out the last dregs of his coffee, and with that action closed the door to his memories. Over the years he had developed the skill of being able to dip into those memories when he wished and shut them off when they became too painful.

  Not all veterans of that terrible war were so skilled.

  The brutal, bloody struggle between North and South had ended when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, but for many, the surrender was just the beginning of a much more personal conflict. Young men who had lived their lives on the edge of death for four years found it nearly impossible to return home and take up the plow, or go back to work in a store, repair wagons, or any of the other things that were a necessary part of becoming whole again.

  Some found nothing to come home to. Many who had fought for the South returned to burned-out homes, farms gone to seed or, worse, taken for taxes. Those men became the dispossessed. Unable to settle down, they became wanderers. Many of them went West, where there would be less civilized encroachment upon their chosen way of life.

  Some took up the outlaw trail, continuing to practice the skills they had learned during the war. But most were innocent wanderers with all bridges to their past burned and the paths to their future uncharted.

  Clell Dawson was such a man. Finding that he no longer felt a calling for medicine he, too, had nothing to come home to.

  But there was another, darker side to Clell. The same deft touch and dexterity that had made him a great surgeon also made him exceptionally good with a gun. Never, in all his wanderings, did he openly seek trouble. But neither did he back away from it.

  “All right, Dan. What do you say we get going?” Like many men who rode the lonely trails, he had gotten into the habit of talking to his only real companion—his horse. “We’ve got another long day ahead of us.”

  Dan snorted, then stood quietly as Clell extinguished the fire and threw on the saddle. He mounted and resumed his wandering, with no particular destination in mind and no need to go back to anyplace he had been before.

  It was mid-afternoon when Dan stepped into an unseen prairie dog hole. With a sharp whinny of pain, his right foreleg folded, he went down, and Clell was tossed over his head.

  Getting up, Clell hurried back to Dan.

  Dan was lying on his side, looking up at Clell as if his big, brown eyes were begging the man to do something for him. A bloody, jagged end of bone was sticking out through the skin of Dan’s leg.

  “Oh no,” Clell said, shaking his head. He closed his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them, the terrible damage hadn’t gone away. “No no no.”

  He stroked Dan’s face for a moment, talking quietly to him. “We’ll meet again someday, Dan. I know damn well we will. But you’re going to have to go on ahead of me.”

  Clell took out his pistol and aimed it right between the horse’s eyes. Dan continued to look at him, and he knew that Dan knew what was about to happen. Closing his eyes, Clell pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  Late that afternoon, Clell dropped his saddle with a sigh of relief. Climbing up the ballast–covered berm, he stood for a moment on the crossties between the twin ribbons of iron. He looked first toward the distant and empty horizon to the east, then he turned toward the purple mountains to the west. For the moment, the empty tracks offered no more comfort than the empty prairie or the foreboding mountains. He knew that a train would be passing that way sometime before sundown, whether going west or east, he wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter.

  It had been a long, hard walk to the railroad, but he hadn’t wanted to leave his saddle behind. Climbing back down from the berm, he lay down beside the tracks, making a pillow of the saddle.

  He waited for the train for just over an hour, and when first he saw it, it was coming from the east. Against the great panorama of the plains, the train seemed puny, and even the smoke that poured from its diamond-shaped stack made but a tiny scar against the deepening blue of the eastern sky. He could hear the train quite clearly, the sound of its puffing engine carrying across the wide, flat ground—the way sound travels across water.

  It was a freight. He had been hoping for a passenger train. He believed he would have been able to flag it down and pay for passage to the next town. He sighed. The only way he was going to get a ride on this train was to hop onto one of the cars, and because he was carrying his saddle, he would have to choose a car with an open door. He sighed again. He knew it wasn’t always possible to find a car with an open door on a cross-country freight.

  He caught a break as the train approached. It had started up a long, gradual grade, slowing down to no faster than a brisk walk.

  Clell waited in a little gully until the engine passed. He didn’t want the engineer, the fireman, or the brakeman to see him. After the engine and tender had passed, he looked down the row of cars until he saw one with an open door. Picking up his saddle, he climbed up the berm and began running alongside the train, not quite matching his speed to it, so the car with the open door caught up to him. Matching its speed, he tossed the saddle in through the open door, and was about to grab hold, when a hand stuck out from the darkened interior of the car.

  “Grab ahold, friend, and I’ll jerk you up here!” a voice called.

  For a second, Clell was hesitant to trust the offer, but he figured if it wasn’t genuine, he could always jerk the man down from the car. The man didn’t try any tricks, though, and with the stranger’s help, Clell half climbed and was half pulled into the car.

  The man in the car appeared to be in his late forties or early fifties. He had long white hair and a scraggly white beard.

  “Thanks,” Clell said. “That was decent of you.”

  “Yes, sir, well, I’ve been pulled onto a few trains myself, from time to time. You’re new at this, ain’t ya?”

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  The old man chuckled. “You don’t see a lot of boes carrying saddles.”

  “Boes?”

  “Hoboes,” the man said. “That’s what I am, and I’m proud to claim it. The name is Nick.” He stuck his hand out.

  “Clell,” he said, taking the man’s hand.

  “Somethin’ happen to your horse?”

  “Stepped in a prairie dog hole and busted his leg. I had to put him down.”

  Nick shook his head. “Sorry to h
ear that. I hate to see any creature have to be put down. I had me a dog that used to travel with me for a while, but he jumped down afore he was supposed to one day, and got runned over by the train. Sure pained me when that happened. I don’t mind tellin’ you, it plumb brung me to tears. Where you headin’?”

  “To the next town.”

  “Do you know what the next town is?” Nick asked.

  Clell shook his head. “I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care.”

  Nick laughed again. “Clell, you may not know it, but if you are of that kind of a mind, why then, you’re a bo, same as the rest of us. But just so that you know, the next town will be Kremmling. It’s about another hour or so, I reckon. We’re ’bout to go through Kremmling Pass. If you got a interest in it, we can climb up on top of the car and you can get a real good view of the pass as we go through.”

  “That sounds good to me,” Clell said.

  “Wait till we go around the next curve, then climb up on the near side of the car to the curve. If you climb up on the out side, why it’ll purt’ nigh throw you off, for some reason. But if you’re on the inside, what it does is, it throws you against the side of the car, and that helps you to hold on as you’re aclimbin’.”

  “Centrifugal force,” Clell said.

  “Beg pardon.”

  “Centrifugal force,” Clell repeated. “It’s the force that tends to throw a body away from the center of rotation.”

  “You don’t say. Well, whatever it is, it’s a good thing to keep it in mind when you’re outside on a train while it’s agoin’ around a curve. Get ready, we got one comin’ up, now.”

  The long string of freight cars bumped and rattled on the uneven tracks and filled the pass with thunder as steam gushed from the drive cylinders of the laboring engine. The two men climbed to the top and perched on the forward end of the car. Their legs dangled over the edge in such a way that they could look down between their feet and gauge the speed of the train by watching the passing of the cross ties and the ballast. Not long after, it grew so dark they could no longer see the ground.

  No matter how the train lurched and jerked over the rough roadbed, though, the two were sitting as securely in their places as birds on a swaying tree limb. The two men, who had never met until Clell decided to jump the freight, were sitting elbow to elbow, engaged in measured conversation. Clell had learned long ago that it wasn’t good to give away too much information to strangers.

  “I tell you what,” Nick said. “When we get to the very top of this pass, if you’ll look to the right, just between the V of the tops of the hills, you’ll see the lights of Kremmling. It looks just real purty out there on the valley floor, all lit up like that.”

  “Have you ever been to Kremmling or do you always just pass through?” Clell asked.

  “Oh, from time to time I’ve stopped there. Sometimes you can find a hobo camp just out of town, down by Muddy Creek. There’s most always some folks there, and most always a pot of stew goin’, but they like for you to bring somethin’ to throw in it, like taters or carrots or some such thing.” Nick laughed. “This time o’ night, I can generally snatch me up a chicken somewhere and use that to buy my way in. By the time whoever I steal the chicken from discovers it missin’ and goes to the sheriff about it, why it’s too late, the chicken’s done been throwed into the pot and et, so there ain’t nothin’ nobody can do about it. I got me some taters in a sack down in the car, though. There ain’t no need for me to steal nothin’ tonight. You’re welcome to come to the camp with me if you want. My taters will get us both in.”

  “Well, I appreciate the offer, Nick, but I’m not sure I would feel comfortable going in there, carryin’ my saddle.”

  Nick chuckled. “I know what you mean. We’d better climb back down into the car now. We’ll need to jump off before the train comes into the depot. Like as not, they’ll have railroad bulls lookin’ for us. And they ain’t pleasant men to be around.”

  Fifteen minutes later, both men were sitting in the open door of the car.

  Nick said, “I’ll tell you when to jump. And do it as soon as I say so, ’cause if you wait any longer, you’ll wind up on the rocks.”

  Clell picked up his saddle and was holding it so he could toss it out when he got the word.

  “Now!” Nick said, and with Clell tossing the saddle even as he jumped, the two men leaped from the car, hit soft dirt, and rolled a few feet before coming to a stop.

  “This here is the only soft dirt on this part of the road,” Nick said.

  “You picked a good spot,” Clell replied. “It was almost like jumping into a featherbed.”

  Nick laughed. “I’ll have to ’member that.”

  They waited until the end of the train passed, then Clell picked up his saddle and started across the track heading for the lights of the town.

  “This here is where I’ll leave you.” Nick stuck his hand out. “You’ve been good company.”

  “Wait,” Clell said, reaching down into his pocket. “Here, take this.”

  “What is it?” Nick asked.

  “It’s a ten-dollar bill. I figure I owe you that, for pulling me into the car.”

  “Lord o’ mercy. Ten dollars?” Nick’s voice reflected his awe. “I ain’t seen ten whole dollars this entire year!”

  “Enjoy it,” Clell said, shifting the saddle to his shoulder and heading toward the town. He looked around a few minutes later, and saw Nick still standing there, trying to make out the bill in the dark.

  He smiled at Nick’s reaction to the money. He could have given him one hundred dollars, since he had the money. But one hundred dollars might cause Nick to ask too many questions. And the truth was, he seemed just as pleased with ten as he would have been with a hundred. Besides, if someone else knew that Nick had a hundred dollars, it could be dangerous.

  Clell was quite sure that if Nick had it, he would not be able to keep secret the fact that he was carrying one hundred dollars.

  CHAPTER 16

  Kremmling, Colorado Territory

  “What are you doin’ sleepin’ here in one of my stalls?” The man gave a harder than necessary kick to the bottom of Clell’s foot.

  Clell sat up fast, a gun instantly appearing in his hand. He eared back the hammer, the cocking sound having a chilling effect.

  The man put both hands up and jumped back. “Hold on there, mister, hold on!” he shouted, fear coloring his voice. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. I was just wakin’ you up, is all.”

  Clell stood up, then returned his gun to its holster. “To answer your question, I slept here because I didn’t want to leave my saddle unguarded. I had to put my horse down, and I need another one.”

  “You . . . you’re stealin’ a horse from me?”

  “What?” Clell frowned. “No. Who said anything about stealing a horse? I said I needed a horse. I want to buy one from you, if you have one for sale. If you don’t have one for sale, I’d appreciate it if you would tell me where I might buy one.”

  “Oh. Well, you don’t have to go nowhere else,” the liveryman said, smiling at the prospect of a sale. “I’ve got some of the best horseflesh you ever laid your eyes on.”

  “Really? I’ve seen some pretty good horses in my day,” Clell replied.

  “Well, they, uh, might not be the best you’ve ever seen”—the stableman paused in mid-sentence—“but they’re damn good. How much money are you lookin’ to spend?”

  “As much as it takes to get the horse I want.”

  Again, the stableman was all smiles. “Come out back with me, and I’ll show you what I’ve got.”

  Looking at the available horses, Clell had a sharp intake of breath when he spotted Dan. That was impossible, of course, but the horse was the spitting image of Dan. He walked over to him. “I want this horse.”

  “Mister, I could tell you lies about how good that horse is, but the truth is, he’s at least seven or eight years old. If you look around, I’m sure you can find a younge
r horse, and one that would suit you better.”

  “This is the horse I want,” Clell declared. His tone made it clear he wasn’t going to change his mind.

  “All right, you’re the one paying for it. If that’s the horse you want, you can certainly have him. His name is Blackie.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Sure it is. That’s the name that was on the paper when I bought him.”

  “His name is Dan,” Clell said.

  Three quarters of an hour later Clell, mounted once more, was riding out of town. He passed by a gulley near a stream of water—he believed he remembered Nick referring to it as Muddy Creek—when he heard a voice that he recognized.

  Nick was telling a small group of raggedy men about “the feller I had to pull onto the train or he woulda been runned over for sure.”

  Clell smiled as he rode on.

  Denver

  “I don’t know what you did or said to my friend Frank Tanner while you were there,” Marshal Holloway said. “But he sent me a telegram singing your praises. That telegram was so long it musta cost him five dollars to send it. To spend five dollars on a telegram takes some kind of motivation.”

  “The truth is, Sheriff Tanner did it himself,” Smoke said. “He’s the one who faced Holder down, and when Holder drew on him, he’s the one who shot him.”

  “Yeah, he said something about you backing him up and helping him regain some face in that town.” Holloway cocked his head to one side. “Boy, you got a lot more smarts in you than most people your age. I don’t know how long you plan on bein’ my deputy, but I want you to know that I am right proud to have you with me for as long as you plan to hang on to that badge.”

  “Thanks. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m looking for the men who killed my pa. I figure that having this badge can only help. I mean, it helped me find the men who killed my ma.”