by Paul Lederer
‘You want me to send for Doc Leitner?’ Joe asked with concern. Tom simply shook his head.
‘What about me?’ Harley Griffin called from his cell. ‘I was roughed up pretty good! And I haven’t had a bite to eat since you threw me in here.’
‘Neither has your wife,’ Tom Dyce said.
‘No, but Vance Wynn is eating a comfortable dinner somewhere, isn’t he!’
‘I hope so,’ Tom answered without pity.
‘Tom,’ Joe Adderly said, ‘I’m going to send for Sean Leitner. You’re pretty banged up.’
‘All right,’ Tom agreed. There was a minute of silence before Joe spoke again.
‘I lost my nerve,’ he said miserably.
‘You just didn’t want to do it cold, Joe. But you were right in the first place – what else was there to do with someone like John Bass? There comes a killing time.’
‘I’ve got a wife and two—’
‘Two boys,’ Tom interrupted. Another minute passed in silence.
‘Tom?’ the marshal inquired, ‘Do you want my job? It’s yours for the asking. I’m through with all of this, I think.’
‘No,’ Tom answered, ‘I don’t want your job. Thanks, Joe.’
‘Well, think it over – we need someone even if it’s only temporary. For myself, I’m hanging it up. I have a wife and …’ Joe caught himself and quieted.
Tom was feeling woozy. He thought the idea of being a ‘temporary’ marshal was terrifically amusing. Just ask the people in Flapjack! He was smiling, but his bleeding head was still buried in his hands.
Joe Adderly, for his part, had gone out onto the plankwalk, hailed a kid and sent him for Doctor Leitner. ‘I hope the town council has paid him this month,’ Joe said. ‘He might not even be willing to come to the jail.’
‘Somebody ought to straighten that situation out,’ Tom commented.
‘It’s a bureaucratic world,’ the marshal said.
‘I suppose so.’ Tom was tired of conversation.
‘You know, Tom,’ Joe said at length, ‘the Ruidoso bank put up a reward for the recovery of that stolen money. It’s yours. I don’t know how much it is, but it will help you get along until you can find something you want to do.’
‘It’s ten per cent,’ Harley Griffin said from his cell, being unaccountably helpful. Griffin had become more subdued. No longer challenging, he had apparently accepted what life held for him from here on. He was a wounded prisoner and there was no shining hope in his future. The former sheriff seemed to accept that now, and was dealing only with the problems of survival. If they could not prove that he had killed his wife – and Vance Wynn was certainly not going to appear as a witness, nor would Tom Dyce try to persuade him to do so – Griffin might receive a ten-year sentence or less for the bank robbery. Any lawyer worth the name probably would be able to convince a jury that the once-honest lawman had snapped upon learning of his wife’s death.
‘Two thousand dollars’ reward at least,’ Griffin said. ‘I didn’t have a chance to count all of the money myself.’
‘That’d help,’ Joe said to Tom. ‘It’s too bad you didn’t get Vance Wynn as well.’
Tom did not answer.
It was another fifteen minutes before the front door opened and Doctor Leitner entered the office. He was not alone.
‘Who’s first?’ he asked Joe Adderly who pointed to the cell. Leitner was brisk and smiling. He must have gotten paid at last. His nurse stood hesitantly in the doorway.
Tom peered up at her in disbelief. Laura! She stood watching as the doctor went to the cell, followed by Joe Adderly who carried a gun for the doctor’s protection.
‘You?’ Tom said incredulously as the red-haired girl came to examine him.
‘Of course it’s me, you crazy man,’ Laura said, gently fingering the gash in his face. ‘I met Doctor Leitner at the hotel restaurant, and we got to talking. I told him about my medical background and he asked me if I would consider working as his assistant.’
‘And you said?’
‘I said “of course”.’
‘But what about nursing school?’
‘I can probably learn more in a few months working with Doctor Leitner than I could in years at school.’
Laura smiled as she bent near to see to his latest injuries. ‘Besides, you being as trouble-prone as you are – I’ll always have someone to practice on, Tom Dyce.’
About the Author
Paul Lederer spent much of his childhood and young adult life in Texas. He worked for years in Asia and the Middle East for a military intelligence arm. Under his own name, he is best known for Tecumseh and the Indian Heritage Series, which focuses on American Indian life. He believes that the finest Westerns reflect ordinary people caught in unusual and dangerous circumstances, trying their best to act with honor.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Logan Winters
Cover design by Michel Vrana
ISBN: 978-1-4804-8818-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY PAUL LEDERER
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up now at
www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM
FOLLOW US:
@openroadmedia and
Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia