Sawbones

by William W. Johnstone

  Look for these exciting Western series from

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  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  and J. A. JOHNSTONE

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  AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS

  SAWBONES

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE with J. A. JOHNSTONE

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  Teaser chapter

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 J. A. Johnstone

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  PINNACLE BOOKS, the Pinnacle logo, and the WWJ steer head logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-4487-0

  Electronic edition: October 2018

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4419-3

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4419-X

  CHAPTER 1

  Dr. Samuel Knight doubled over as pain drove into his belly, worse than any knife wound. He forced himself to stand upright. Sweat beaded his forehead, and it wasn’t from the sultry late spring day in East Texas. He was used to such weather. He had grown up in the Piney Woods. The agony came from the void in his stomach from lack of food.

  Or maybe he had poisoned himself with the weeds he had eaten the day before. His time spent in the Yankee prison camp at Elmira, New York—Hellmira, the starving, disease-ridden inmates had called it—had hardly been as bad. There the tainted food caused different symptoms. Diarrhea. Vomiting.

  He gasped when stomach pain doubled him over again.

  “Must have been hemlock and not wild carrot I ate.” Desperation had made him careless. Wild carrot leaves looked fuzzy, hemlock didn’t. But with his vision blurred at times from lack of food, making such a mistake was all too easy because the leaves were similar. The only luck he had was being alive. Hemlock killed as surely as a Yankee minié ball to the head.

  He talked to himself to get his mind on something other than the pain threatening to swamp him. It worked, concentrating on his wife and the homecoming she would give him when he got to Pine Knob. How they would celebrate! All night. For a week!

  It had been years since he had seen Victoria and almost as long since he had written her a letter. The Yankees hadn’t permitted their prisoners to send or receive letters, even if Victoria had known where to write him. The more he thought of her, the better he felt. The brutal pain died down enough to let him keep walking along the muddy road. He had no particular destination in mind today. But soon, soon he would be back in Pine Knob and home. All he had to do was to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

  Home. Where he had grown up. The house. His wife, Victoria. His heart beat faster as he concentrated on his mental image of her. The pocket watch case with her picture had been stolen by a bluecoat the first day he had been taken prisoner after the Battle of the Wilderness. The watch had never kept good time, but her picture was the real reason he kept the battered gold case.

  Closing his eyes, he pictured her waving weakly to him the day he had ridden from Pine Knob on his way to Richmond and the Louisiana Hospital located there. He had begun as an assistant surgeon and quickly found himself teaching classes to first-year medical students. Too few of them had any aptitude, but Surgeon General Samuel Preston Moore had assigned most of them to forward units under the Bonnie Blue flag. Attrition in medical ranks proved almost as great as among those on the front lines.

  Disease ran rampant, not caring if a doctor or private or butternut-uniformed general suffered.

  His feet moved a little faster. He knew what he’d left behind back East, and he knew what lay ahead. Home and hearth and Victoria.

  Hunger pangs tore at him again when a tantalizing odor made his nostrils flare. Without realizing it, he left the road, cut across a grassy yard and found a game trail leading through the pines to a small, well-kept house. His mouth watered. It had been too long—a lifetime—since he had tasted freshly baked peach pie. Knight stumbled forward, ignoring everything around him but the pie set on the windowsill to cool.

  He braced himself, hands on either side of the window, as he leaned forward, closed his eyes and took a deep whiff. He turned giddy with anticipation. Eyes popping open, he looked around. Stealing a pie was wrong. Stealing was wrong, but starving to death had to be a sin of some sort, too. Hands trembling, he picked up the pie. The pain as heat stung his fingers proved far less than the knife thrusts of hunger in his belly.

  He turned to steal away with his booty. Not ten feet away a girl, hardly six years old, looking all pert and small, dressed in a plain brown gingham dress, gazed up at him. Her stricken look froze him in place.

  “That’s for my birthday party,” she said in a choked voice. “Please, mister, don’t take it. I ain’t got anything else.” She shuffled her bare feet and looked at the ground. Her shoulders shook as she tried to hold back sobs.

  “I just wanted to get a better look at it. It smells wonderful.” He held out the pie. His belly grumbled.

  “Mama made it special for me. She got the peaches fresh from Mr. Frost. He’s got an orc
hard of fruit trees. Apple, pear. Peaches are my favorite.” She took a step back.

  He knew what she saw. Knight might have been a scarecrow come to life. Standing almost six feet tall, he was down to a hundred and twenty pounds, ribs poking out, face gaunt, his long, unkempt dark hair greasy and pushed back out of his feverish eyes. Scarecrows in the field were dressed better, too. His trousers hung in tatters, his shirt had more holes than a woodpecker’s dinner, and his coat would fall apart if he dared to remove it. He wished for the first time in months that he still wore his Confederate uniform. It had been presentable, but it had rotted away in the harsh winter spent at the prison camp.

  She stared into his eyes and took another step back. Her small hand covered her mouth in horror. He knew his blue eyes were sunken and bloodshot, turning him into a bogeyman.

  A bogeyman stealing her birthday pie.

  “It’s a mighty fine-looking pie.” Knight turned and placed the pie back on the windowsill. “Happy birthday.” His hands shook, as much from emotion as from hunger. Not daring to look back, he hurried away, found the path through the woods and got onto the road again.

  Tears ran down his cadaverous cheeks. “I’m reduced to stealing from a little girl. No, no, no.”

  He stumbled on, trying to convince himself he was a good man, only driven to desperate acts by all that had happened to him. Life in the prison camp had been harsh. When the Confederacy finally capitulated, they had no resources to help those prisoners kept by the Federals. He and all the others had been turned out, put on trains going south, and then abandoned in Richmond without food, money, or hope. Those civilians in the onetime Confederate capital were hardly better off. They certainly did not want diseased ex-prisoners in their city.

  “I’m better than that,” he told himself aloud. “I am.”

  “Reckon you might be, if I knowed what you was talkin’ ’bout.”

  Knight took a few more steps before he realized the voice was not coming from inside his own head. He stopped and looked around. Undergrowth started only a few feet from the road. Sparse trees quickly grew into a dense forest blocking his view after more than a dozen yards. A rustling made him home in on the short, tattered man emerging from behind a barberry bush.

  Knight knew he wasn’t the only one down on his luck. This man, with his scratched face and tangled, sandy hair, was in no better condition. As he hobbled out, Knight realized he was in even worse shape. The right leg twisted outward so the foot plowed up the dirt as he came forward.

  “You don’t look like no threat to me,” the stranger said. “Are you?”

  Knight shook his head and immediately regretted it. Dizziness hit him from the simple movement. Surprisingly strong arms circled his shoulders and held him upright.

  “Sorry. Been a while since I had anything to eat.”

  “You got the look of a soldier about you, but not exactly. Hard to put my finger on it.” The man steered Knight to the side of the road and a stump, where he collapsed. “You some kind of officer for the Rebs?”

  “Captain,” Knight said, seeing no reason to hide it. “I was a doctor attached to Jeb Stuart’s cavalry unit.”

  “You’re nuthin’ but skin and bones. You ain’t sick now, are you?”

  “Hungry. Can’t get anyone to give me the time of day, much less a decent meal. I’ve walked most of the way from Richmond. A few gave me rides in a wagon, but not many. Not enough.” He thrust out his stick-thin legs.

  The man came around and put his foot up against the sole of Knight’s shoe, then bent and got a closer look.

  “Our feet’s ’bout the same size, but you got a hole in that shoe big enough to shove a silver dollar through.” He reached over and poked with his finger. “That anything more’n old, rottin’ newspaper you got shoved in there?”

  “All I could find.”

  “You are truly a man down on his luck, Doctor . . . ?”

  “Dr. Samuel Knight from Pine Knob. That’s where I’m heading.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Doc. I’m Jake—Jacobs. Leonard Jacobs. Folks just call me Jake, though.” He hobbled around and sank down on a log next to Knight’s stump.

  “Thank you for your kindness, Jake. You . . . you got any food?”

  “Reckon I’m in a similar situation as you, Doc. Nobody wants to help out a gimp.” He thrust out his left leg and rubbed it. “Too many soldiers returnin’ for me to find a decent job. And the Federals, curse ’em all, they moved in with Reconstruction blowin’ at their backs, and took over ’bout everything. No spare food for any son of the South.”

  “You?”

  “Me and you, from the sound of it, Doc. But I got an idea, only there’s nuthin’ I can do for it.”

  “Food?”

  “More’n just food. All we can eat and a few dollars, to boot. Likely only them damned Federal greenbacks but what good’s a hunnerd-dollar bill with Lucy Pickens’s fine portrait on it? Or even a five-hunnerd piece of scrip sportin’ that great general, Stonewall Jackson?” Jake tipped his head to the side and squinted in Knight’s direction. “You ever see Confederate money with denominations that large?”

  Knight shook his head.

  “Well, sir, I did and am proud of it. Only them Federals stole it all away and left me with a bad leg and nothing more’n the clothes on my back.”

  “What of food?” It was all Knight could think of, right at the moment. “How do we get food?”

  “You ain’t adverse to doin’ a little thievin’, now are you? If it’s from turncoats cozyin’ up with the carpetbaggers?”

  “I was tempted to steal a peach pie from a little girl. Anyone helping the Yankees is fair game.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Jake slapped him on the back and almost knocked him off the stump. “Now, I got me a plan, but with my bad leg and all, I can’t rightly do much by myself. The two of us workin’ as a fine Rebel team, now, we have a chance.”

  Knight turned slightly to face Jake. The man rubbed his leg as if it hurt him.

  “I’m not going to be much help. I’m so weak. My eyes don’t focus all the time.”

  “You don’t have to see too good. That’s the beauty of my plan. We’re not a half hour’s walk from a town.” Jake looked hard at him. “Call it an hour away, what with your shoe and that hole and all. It’ll be dark when we get there. I’ll keep an eye peeled for the marshal or the owner comin’ round all unexpectedlike while you break in and scoop up food for the pair of us.”

  “It’s a store?”

  “A restaurant. Best of all, the damn fool owner keeps all the money he takes in hidden behind his stove. We get food and money, money from carpetbaggers eatin’ their fine meals all in style while the rest of the town starves ’cuz there ain’t no money. The Yankees have sucked the townspeople dry with taxes and fines and levies.”

  Knight had to speak up over his growling stomach. He rubbed it until it subsided. “I swear, I can feel my backbone when I press in like this.”

  “You say you’re on your way to Pine Knob? That’s another hunnerd miles to the west. A long walk, but a couple days’ hard ride iffen you set astride a horse. Maybe three or four days if you take it easy. You could be in the bed next to your lovin’ wife ’fore you know it. What’s her name again?”

  “Victoria.”

  “You and the missus must have a lot of catchin’ up to do. Get the money from the damned carpetbaggers and you can buy a horse, a good one, and let it run. As featherlight as you are, you can gallop it all the way and it won’t feel nuthin’ but the saddle.”

  Knight closed his eyes and imagined himself home. It seemed like a fantasy to him, a dream he had given up on. Victoria. Home. Bed and food and Victoria.

  The thought of his lovely wife kept him moving. They reached the small town a little after midnight, if Knight judged the position of the stars right. The streets were deserted. He looked around for the saloon, but even it had shut down.

  “Why isn’t it open? The saloon?”
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  Jake laughed harshly and shook his head. “It don’t open on Sundays. They got some religious feelin’ in this town, even if it is overrun by damned Yankees.”

  “Sunday?” Knight said dully. He had lost track of time, how long he had been walking, the day of the week. All that had mattered was taking one more step to get back to Pine Knob.

  Victoria. He had to be with his wife again, but the impact of what he was about to do crashed in on him. “I can’t rob a store on the Sabbath.”

  “You don’t have to. By now it’s past midnight. It’s Monday, not Sunday. We got to hurry. The proprietors will be in there soon to start the day’s cookin.” Jake spat. “Cookin’ for the carpetbaggers. They line up and make all kinds of nasty remarks about us, about us Rebs and Southerners. They especially hate Texans.”

  Knight felt adrenaline pumping through his veins. He straightened. Everything Jake said was likely true. He had met with little charity as he crossed the country. The towns run by the Reconstruction judges and lawmen were the worst. He had almost gotten lynched for nothing more than passing through one town in Louisiana.

  “That’s the place. You get on ’round back and break in. I’ll keep watch. The deputy makes rounds whenever he wakes up.”

  “What’ll you do if he comes? He’s likely armed. Do you have a gun?”

  Jake laughed harshly, took hold of the tails of his coat and pulled them away from his body to show nothing but his suspender buttons.

  “If I’d had a six-gun, I would’ve hocked it for a square meal. Listen for a mockingbird. You hear one, that’s me warning you.” Jake came over and slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Doc. I know I can trust you. What’d I say about the money box?”

  “Behind the stove.”

  “Get going. I’m gonna find a lookout spot.”

  Knight watched Jake hurry off. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t focus well enough to figure out what it was. Then he forced everything but the robbery from his mind. The restaurant stood in a simple wood-frame building. Around back he found a locked door. He tried it, but it had been barred on the inside. Trying to force it open wouldn’t do him any good. Even if he had strength enough to kick in the door or slam it open with his shoulder, that would cause too much of a ruckus. The town slept peacefully. Sudden noise like that would awaken the dead.