These Violent Times

by C. Courtney Joyner

  “I’ll take her,” Bishop said to Firecrow, indicating that Firecrow should go to the widowed woman. The brave lay the slight figure across his arms, the human arm bearing most of the weight, the gun supporting her legs. The doctor carried her back to the tepee.

  “You . . . you will get sick?”

  Bishop shook his head. “This fabric is fine enough. And your body has been cleansing itself—you may not be a carrier any longer.”

  He ducked through the flap and lay her on her blankets. He gave her water and told her not to leave.

  “I’m going to pin the flap open,” he said. “Air will do you good.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I have work to finish, at the fort and elsewhere. Then I will return. Yes?”

  She nodded weakly, then grabbed his hand gently. “Before you go . . . find Little Hen. She has the necklace that is not Cheyenne. She was ill . . . see that she is all right.”

  Bishop pursed his lips and nodded. Kissing her hand through the mask, he rose and left.

  It was easy to find the girl. She was asleep beside the corral. Had slept through it all. As he had discovered during the war, sickness, especially delirium, was the best insulation from reality, better than anything found in a bottle. Reality was not distorted; it was eliminated entirely.

  Bishop knelt and felt her forehead and cheek. The precious little girl was barely feverish. She woke when he touched her. She looked at his unfamiliar face, then at the arm he held at right angles to his side. It was golden, shining, like bracelets on the arm of the proud and caring tribal chief had been.

  She touched it, then suddenly threw her hands around a neck thick with sweat and grime from the hard two-horse ride.

  “Neisonoo,” she said in a voice that was soft and lyrical. “Neisonoo.”

  “Yes,” he cooed back warmly.

  Bishop did not know her language, could not have known the word she was saying.

  “Father.”

  * * *

  Bishop left Little Hen in the care of a slender young boy by the name of Young Bear. He had been hovering near the growing fields, probably watching over the little lady. The doctor motioned for the boy to come over as he departed, leaving him with the surgical mask, which the young man donned promptly. He suddenly seemed very grown up, kneeling beside his charge.

  The doctor walked wide of the encampment, since there was still active disease in the air, though when he reached the killing grounds he sought out Firecrow, who was outside his sister’s tepee. He motioned the brave over.

  “I’m going back to the fort,” Bishop said, his eyes seeking the horse he had ridden. “I will send someone for the other animals—unless I find them along the way. And I will also send more medicine. The worst is past but we should be careful just the same.” He clapped the man on a shoulder. “You did well, Firecrow. You are a great constable.”

  “I had a great deputy.” He smiled.

  Bishop took the intentionally self-effacing compliment as it was intended—the highest praise.

  Bishop smelled the fresh morning as he walked over to the big cavalry horse. It was grazing east of the settlement, covered with sweat from the run. It will have earned its pasture time this day. He gave it a grateful pat before leading it over to the buggy. He left the animal several paces back, tied to the stump of an old lightning-struck oak, since the presence of the dead horse would have spooked it. That was the only death Bishop regretted in all this.

  Carefully unhitching the buggy, he pulled it around with his good arm and harnessed it to the big, black animal and set out in the direction of the fort.

  * * *

  There was no delay this time admitting John Bishop. Once he had identified himself the gate swung wide. He did not, however, enter, even though there was no rifle squad to meet him, no sentry to watch his moves. Only Major Terry, who stood in the opening. His bushy brow seemed confused by the buggy and just one horse.

  Bishop braked the buggy and stepped out. Carefully, he removed the carpetbag. He set it down in front of the carriage. Terry stopped facing them both.

  “I expect there is a story,” Terry said.

  “I did not see the two horses we cut loose, I’m sorry,” Bishop said. “The other is with the Cheyenne. They will need more medicine but they are mending.”

  “More medicine,” Terry said crossly.

  “The army will give it to you, happily,” Bishop said.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because in this satchel is a disease created by Anton Weiber-Krauss, one that is presently fatal. They will want to study it and come up with an antidote. I suspect there are notes at the Lady Freemont. You might go look for them.”

  “And Weiber-Krauss?”

  “Dead as Otto the Great,” Bishop informed him. He said no more. He did not have to.

  “There were others with him?” Terry asked. He looked as though he wanted a reason to summon his healthy troops.

  “There were,” Bishop answered. “More than thirty. They predeceased their leader. But the settlement is safe. There was one casualty, a good man, Knob Pipe. Please remember him if you go there. White Fox and Firecrow are well.” He looked at the fort with something approaching sadness. “It was a day when all Americans, red and white, united to defeat a common foe. I have rarely been prouder than this day.” He turned and stroked the horse. “Even they rose to new levels. It’s as if they knew what was at stake.”

  Terry took a cigar from his pocket, struck a match on his heel. “Maybe they did. You won’t convince me they are dumb.”

  “No,” Bishop said. “Not like some people.” He pointed his rig toward the carpetbag. “You will want to be very, very careful handling these. You saw samples of the glass grenades?”

  “I did.”

  “Then you know what we’re dealing with.” Bishop stepped forward several paces. “How are Avery and Duffin?”

  “Avery is recovering, Duffin is still out. But his fever is lower. The doctor says he will likely survive.”

  “That’s good,” Bishop said. He started forward. “If you’ll excuse me, I want to talk to my acquaintance.”

  Avery was still lying on his back, but his eyes were open and there was food on his unfolded lap. Bishop held a mask over his mouth as he entered.

  “You . . . you are all right,” Avery said with what sounded like genuine satisfaction.

  “Better than the man who sent you here,” Bishop said.

  Avery’s flesh formed a smile. “Good. Good-bye. Adios.”

  “I want to ask you something,” Bishop said, standing over the man.

  “Anything. Old friend.”

  “The German abducted you, right?” Bishop pointed with his rig. “The injury on your scalp . . .”

  Avery flinched under the barrel. “Yes. They hit me. I don’t know what happened to the man who was with me, Homer.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Older. Heavy, sort of short.”

  Bishop frowned. “The other man in the shack,” he said.

  “Eh?”

  “Murdered by Weiber-Krauss’s men,” he said. “I wondered who that was.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Avery said earnestly.

  “Did the German pay you?” Bishop dropped.

  Avery started. “Pay me?”

  Bishop looked down at him over the mask.

  The mayor-sheriff seemed as though he wanted to lie and did so anyway, but not overtly. “He . . . there was talk of expenses to cover my journey,” Avery said.

  “Through the plains.”

  “I needed . . . supplies.”

  Bishop continued to regard him like a specimen to be dissected. “I have somewhere to go,” the doctor said. “When I come back, I will see you at the Hospitality House. We’re going to finish this talk then.”

  “Your stay there will be complimentary,” Avery said. “You know that. You saved my life.”

  “That’s about the correct value for services re
ndered,” Bishop noted.

  The man with the gun-arm turned to the bed where Marshal Duffin lay. The young man wheezed through the bandages that covered his missing nose. His eyes were shut but his color wasn’t bad. Gibson was right. He was a good candidate for recovery. And a leather patch for a new nose. Bishop walked away.

  “Wait,” Avery said. “Where are you going?”

  “I have business elsewhere in the territory,” he said.

  “Is it something I will be reading about?” Avery asked.

  Bishop left him with a grim smile. “It is a possibility.”

  * * *

  Bishop stayed at the fort, happily nestled in the jail cell. He had a long and needed rest and then a pleasant breakfast with the young Gibson. Bishop commended the man for the work he had done with the Cheyenne. For his part, Gibson said that Terry had given him permission to go to the two settlements personally, with the medicines, and provide whatever care was needed. In a region with so much mistrust and hate, where lies brought reward and the truth none at all, this was refreshing to hear.

  Major Terry gave Bishop the horse on loan. He promised to have the painted returned to White Fox.

  “It’s been a special honor getting to know you,” the man said around his unlit cigar. “I hope you will forgive our early misunderstanding.”

  “It was engineered by a tragic genius,” Bishop said. “No blame falls on you.”

  Provisioned and settled on the steed—whose name, he learned, was Smokey—Bishop rode into the late morning light. The air seemed fresher, his mood—it was also fresher, lighter than it had been since the day his world had fallen to ruin. But God in heaven had His way and, for the moment, Bishop had his.

  Northeast.

  * * *

  Littleton was only a few years old, becoming more than just the home of the Littles in 1871 when the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad came through. The main street was still a dust trap, the buildings on either side were still low-lying, unappealing wood shacks built large, but there was a sense of activity in the street and children playing with hoops and sticks and balls and dogs chasing after them. The town was going to become something.

  Bishop walked through the town, saw what he was looking for, then camped well outside the village until nightfall. He did not like to enter a place where his face or his rig could be seen. One of them would be, but that could not be helped. When the sun set and he finally did ride in, he kept a blanket over the gun-arm and held both across the back of the horse where it was not likely to be seen unless someone was looking for it.

  He rode directly to the storefront he had seen earlier. The weather-beaten sign on the front read DENT’S DETONATIONS. He dismounted, looped the reins over the rail out front, and went around back. The store was dark but a light shone in the window of the second, topmost floor.

  * * *

  Walter Dent was playing the upright piano that dominated the small living room. His mother was in a thickly cushioned rocking chair, listening. The piano was how the man kept his fingers supple, sensitive, but also strong for the work that he did.

  He was playing Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude—fast and a little sloppy but his mother did not seem to mind. It was more challenging than the nocturnes, which were so dolorous. Bessie Dent had had a hard life, widowed young with a son to raise on a washwoman’s salary. She liked the rest of her life to be gay.

  There was no knock on the door. There was a snap around the knob as it was kicked in. Bishop entered and his rig came up and Bessie shrieked thinly, like a canary, while her son turned to the door and then to stone.

  Bishop heel-kicked the door shut. The latch didn’t quite hold but it declined to swing back. The man with the gun-arm did not bother to pull away the blanket. It would not hinder what he came here to do. Bessie Dent’s hand was in front of her mouth. Bishop suspected that if she lowered it she would scream and never stop, until she was shot. Cautiously, without looking in her direction, her son raised a hand, palm out, encouraging her to stay both calm and silent. His eyes never left Bishop.

  “We have open business,” the new arrival said.

  “Wh-what business? I–I killed no one, hurt no one. I did nothing to you.”

  “That’s right,” Bishop said agreeably. “You did nothing to me. But when you went to Weiber-Krauss—who is dead, by the way, along with his demented lieutenants and every last one of his ridiculous men—when you went to that misery, you gave him White Fox. You did not have to say anything about her, but you did.”

  Bishop’s voice had been rising all the while. Dent’s posture had been shrinking.

  “I did—did not go to him willingly,” Dent said, managing somehow to get the sentence out. His throat was clogged with fear. “I left the woods . . . rode . . . intending to come here. Men came to get me.”

  Bishop walked toward him. “You had to go. You did not have to mention her.” His tone was unforgiving.

  “Dr. Bishop, sir, hear me out,” Dent said. “Two things. First, he has written a letter. I do not have it yet. It is a . . . a testament of some kind. Written in case he did not survive.”

  “He told you this?”

  “I saw him writing,” Dent said. “If you need it, if there is anything I can do . . .”

  “P-please do not hurt my boy,” Bessie Dent chirped.

  Bishop looked from her back to her son. He put the muzzle of the gun to the man’s forehead. “You turned a brave, innocent girl over to a monster. The only reason we are still speaking is because she survived.”

  “I–I am deeply thankful for that. Apart . . . apart from my own . . . situation.”

  Bishop took a step back and studied the man.

  “This is what you will do,” he said, “or I will come back.”

  “Yes sir, Dr. Bishop. Anything.”

  “You will sell that letter to one of the publishers of the penny dreadfuls. You know the magazines?”

  “Of course. Certainly.”

  “You will make sure the money you are paid, every cent of it, goes to White Fox for the purchase of medicine for her people. Do you understand?”

  Dent shook his head so vigorously that the doctor half-expected his neck to snap. For her part, Bessie’s expression had shaded from fear to disappointment.

  “There are only two reasons I leave without your blood on the keyboard. First, the promise you just made. Second . . . I want no one, ever, to hurt the way I hurt losing a son.” He leaned in. “But Dent, I swear, you lie to me and there will be nowhere you can hide. Do you understand?”

  “All in its entirety,” he said.

  Bishop raised the rig, the blanket sliding to his elbow. He drew it off, turned, tossed it to Bessie. “A gift, madam, and the reminder of a promise.”

  She nodded her white-bunned head. “Your compassion will not be forgotten.”

  John Bishop, the man called Shotgun, backed toward the door. He used a toe to open it and stepped halfway out.

  “My compassion,” he said thickly, “can change like the Denver weather. Do not disappoint me.”

  With that he eased into the black night, finding solace in the humanity that, for the moment, had trumped his own darkness.

  Keep reading for an excerpt of the first book in the Dr. John Bishop saga.

  Before there was SHOTGUN: THE BLEEDING GROUND

  and THESE VIOLENT TIMES,

  there was the first story of Dr. John Bishop . . .

  A DOUBLE-BARRELED AVENGER IS BORN

  Dr. John Bishop thought he’d seen his share of

  death on the battlefields of America’s great Civil

  War. Then his quiet life was shattered when a gang

  of outlaws invaded his home, killed his family, and

  tortured him within an inch of his life. John

  Bishop’s soul may have died that day, but his

  mangled body lived on. A beautiful Cheyenne

  named White Fox nursed him back to health—

  and a gunsmith outfitted him wi
th a special shotgun

  rig where his left arm used to be. A strap across one

  shoulder fires it, while the chip on the other fuels

  his quest for vengeance. Now the man called

  Shotgun rides deep into the Colorado winter to

  find and kill the men who murdered everything

  he once held dear. The hunt will lead him straight

  to the heart of a fiendish criminal conspiracy—

  and force him to confront the violent legacy

  of his own outlaw brother.

  Look for SHOTGUN

  by C. COURTNEY JOYNER

  On sale now.

  Visit us at www.kensingtonbooks.com.

  “You damn well know I’ll do it.”

  “Major” Beaudine’s spit-shined boot was flush against John Bishop’s right arm, pinning it down, while he turned the blade in the moonlight to heighten the threat.

  Beaudine said, “So, your choice?”

  Bishop managed, “You’re thinking I know something I don’t. I swear, I’ve told you everything. You got no reason to touch my family.”

  Beaudine gripped the handle of the long cleaver, saying, “A liar always boils my blood.”

  Bishop was on the edge of consciousness, trying to take in the faces of the other men holding him to the frozen ground. They were dirty fragments: moustaches dropping into beards, fresh burns, and one curtained eye. Their names were nothing but jumbled noise, while the screams of Bishop’s wife and son cut through everything to reach him. Their voices didn’t even sound like them anymore, though they were just a few feet away. Bishop cried out, twisting his head to see, as Deadeye and another man gripped him by his ears and jaw.

  “Them ears’ll come right off!”

  Deadeye asked, “Why are you tryin’ to look, anyways?”

  Beaudine let Bishop know, “They’re breathing. I see her little bosom moving in and out, but it’s not honorable for you to make your wife and boy pay for your being contrary. Do you understand the penalties, what it means to incur my wrath?”