Sawbones

by William W. Johnstone

  Or worse, the deputy marshal.

  He pressed his hand against the door and applied a little pressure, only to give up trying to push it inward. Running his fingers down the poorly fitted frame he found a spot that yielded when he pulled outward. Sitting on the ground, shoving his feet against the wall, and pulling with what strength remained to him caused one panel to pop free. He landed flat on his back, staring up at the stars. Clouds moved in from down south, coming off the Gulf of Mexico and bringing a spring storm.

  He sat up and ran his arm through the opening, then slowly worked his way up until his fingers brushed the locking bar. Heaving, he lifted the bar and let it drop to the floor inside. The door opened on well-oiled hinges. He was in.

  Knight tumbled forward and almost passed out from the odors in the kitchen. Food. Fresh and wonderful. Mouth watering, belly rumbling, he crawled forward and pulled himself up to a table. Greedily stuffing stale bread into his mouth caused him to choke. Common sense took over. Eating more slowly, he let the bread make its way down his constricted esophagus into his belly. New rumblings told him he might puke. His stomach and food had been strangers for too long. A dipper of water helped ease the complaints.

  More bread gave him reason to continue. As he scavenged for food that would go into a flour sack, he kept eating. Cheese. A bit of beef so tough that his teeth wobbled as he gnawed on it. Pickles from ajar. Okra. He ate anything and everything until he felt bloated.

  He turned to filling the flour sack for Jake and his meals later rather than eating. When the sack weighed him down, he went to the cast-iron stove and reached behind it. He cut his fingers on a sharp-edged metal box. Fumbling it out and dropping it on the kitchen floor, he saw that a small padlock held it shut. He hunted until he found a knife and tried to force open the lock. Before he applied enough leverage, a warbling sound came from outside.

  The noise puzzled him for a moment, then he realized Jake sounded a very poor mockingbird’s call. He stuffed the metal box into the top of the food-laden flour sack, tucked the knife into his waistband and went to the door. A quick look out made him catch his breath. A dark figure stalked along.

  The clouds moved away from the moon enough to cause a glint off a badge. Worse, the deputy carried a shotgun in the crook of his arm and he came directly for the opened door. Knight touched the knife, then knew facing down an armed lawman with a butcher knife was suicidal. He closed the door, then lifted the locking bar. It fell into place just as the deputy reached the outside.

  “You in there, Gus? That you? Open up. Gus? Augustus!”

  The deputy began banging on the barred door with the shotgun’s stock.

  Knight caught his breath, wondering what to do. Then he realized the only way out was through the main dining room and out the front of the restaurant. The energy given him by the food heightened his senses and put spring into his step. He felt better than he had in weeks. He dodged through the red-and-white checked cloth-draped tables to the front door held shut by a lock. Without thinking, he slid the knife between the hasp and door and pulled down with every ounce of strength he had. The nails holding the hasp ripped free. He burst out into the street and looked around frantically. Jake’s plan had ended with them leaving the restaurant undetected.

  “Don’t just stand there. Come along.” Jake motioned to him from the corner of the building.

  “What about the deputy?”

  “Don’t worry your head none ’bout him. Just hightail it.”

  Knight had considered asking if they could go to a livery stable and steal a horse. That was a damned sight worse than stealing food and some money. Men got their necks stretched for such a crime, but he wasn’t sure how far and fast he could run, even with his belly full.

  Besides, was it really a crime stealing a Yankee’s horse? After all they had done to him and the other prisoners in Elmira? They owed him more than a horse. They owed him a life.

  “No time to dawdle. We might have the whole town comin’ down on our heads.” Jake scuttled away, moving fast for a man with a bum leg and forcing Knight to trail behind. He found himself hard put to keep up with the man.

  They left the town and plunged into a wooded area darker than the inside of a cow. Somehow, Jake found his way through the stygian night. Knight wasn’t as skilled at avoiding low branches or even tree trunks. He bounced from one to the next, following his partner in crime more by sound than sight. After what seemed an eternity he popped out into a clearing.

  Jake stood at the edge, hands on his knees, bent over and panting harshly. He looked up as Knight approached. “You hang onto the loot? Lemme see.” Jake grabbed the flour sack from his feeble grasp and held it open. The tin box tumbled out to the ground. “You got it! I’m rich!”

  “I got us enough food to last a few days. If we use some of the money to buy horses, we can be in Pine Knob real soon.”

  “Pine Knob? Oh, yeah, Pine Knob.” Jake looked around, found a rock, and smashed the small lock. “Lookee here. There must be a hunnerd dollars inside. I knew that son of a bitch was rich, but I never thought he had this much salted away.” He looked up and danced a little jig.

  Knight stepped closer. The stacks of greenbacks might amount to that much. A few silver cartwheels rattled about in the box. Jake grabbed them and stuffed them into his coat pockets.

  “Is your leg all right? You seemed mighty spry after the way you were dragging it around when we met.”

  “My leg? Oh, it’s hurtin’ something fierce, Doc. We got the time. You think you can do something about it for me?”

  Knight went to him and knelt, then looked up. “Which leg was it? You’ve been limping on both legs . . . and neither.”

  “It comes and goes, the pain does. It’s my right leg. See?”

  As Knight looked down, Jake launched a kick that caught his benefactor under the chin. Knight’s head snapped back, and he sat heavily, stunned. Through blurred eyes he saw Jake lifting the rock he had used to break the lock. Then the world went dark all around him.

  CHAPTER 2

  Samuel Knight smiled and rolled over, pulled the pillow tightly under his head, and settled down. He was home. Back in his own bed. Warm and safe.

  “Victoria?” He reached out for his wife and recoiled when his hand smashed into a rock wall.

  He worked hard to open his eyes against the crusted gunk gluing the eyelids together. A quick swipe broke the seal and let him stare directly into an unfamiliar wall. Struggling, he sat up, swung around, and dropped his feet to the cell floor. Cell? He panicked. In front of him rose iron bars. He was in a cage again, just as he had been at Elmira every time he tried to help his fellow prisoners of war.

  “You finally decided to wake up, huh?” A portly man came from the shadows on the far side of the cage. He pushed his face forward until his chubby cheeks pressed into the bars to get a better look at Knight. “You don’t look like you got the strength to do the dirty deed.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Go on, play innocent. That won’t cut it when you get to court. We’re on the circuit for Karl Lassiter, the toughest judge ever to come to Texas, or so folks claim. Don’t know about that, but he has sentenced three men from town to hang since the end of the war.”

  “A Reconstruction judge?” Knight spit out the words.

  “He’s from Wisconsin, that’s true, and he was an elector for Abe Lincoln. Ain’t sayin’ that’s how he got this job, but the way things are these days it didn’t hurt none.”

  “You’re going to hang me?”

  “Not me. Judge Lassiter. And a jury of your peers.” The man pulled back from the bars. For the first time Knight saw the marshal’s badge pinned on the taut cloth of a vest. “I’d say you deserve it, if Slowpoke dies.”

  “Slowpoke? Dies?” Knight held his head and winced when he touched the large lump where Jake had clobbered him.

  “Don’t reckon you’d know my deputy’s name. We call him Slowpoke. Slowpoke Bennet. Now that I th
ink on it, I’m not sure I ever heard his real name. Might be Clarence. If I have to make up a tombstone, it’d be proper to put his Christian name on it.” The marshal mumbled to himself.

  “I was attacked. A man named Jake. Leonard Jacobs, I think was his full name.”

  “Now, don’t go lyin’ just to save your neck, mister. You hit Slowpoke with a rock and put him into a coma. Doc Phillips ain’t sure he’ll ever come out of his stupor, though it’s hard to tell the difference between him layin’ in bed now and when he was sleepin’ on my desk while he was on duty.” The marshal chuckled, shook his head, then sobered. “I ain’t got no call jokin’ about him. He was a decent man. Not too bright, but he did his job, such as it was. If it was left to me, you’d swing for ambushin’ him, no matter if he dies.”

  “I never touched your deputy. Jake hit me. It’s Jake you want.”

  “You denyin’ you broke into Gus’s restaurant and stole his money? Where’d you stash it? The money box was empty when we found it. And don’t you go tryin’ to say one of my posse stole it. They were all family. Two brothers and a cousin. Honest as the day is long, the lot of them, even if Cousin David did stray a mite when he stole that scrawny calf, but that was when he was younger and full of piss and vinegar . . . and a considerable amount of ’shine.”

  Knight put his head in his hands and leaned forward, trying to think. Jake had hit him. The man had set him up. The reason he limped first on one leg and then the other was that neither was injured. It had all been a ruse to get a sucker to take the risk of breaking in and stealing the money from the restaurant owner. His hunger and weakened condition had made him easy to hoodwink.

  Now he was going to swing for a crime Jake committed.

  “Is your doctor well trained?”

  “Now, why do you ask that? Doc Phillips is a good man.”

  “I’m a doctor and saw too many wounds during the war. Traumatic injuries can be treated, and I have the experience.”

  “Well, now, Doc Phillips ain’t a medical doctor. He’s a vet. Damn good one. He saved Ramon Zamora’s prize bull last year when nobody thought it was possible. Then he did a good job on—”

  “I can help. Let me see what I can do for your deputy.”

  “Anything to bamboozle me into lettin’ you out of that iron cage? No, siree. You ain’t gettin’ me to turn the key in the lock. Not today, not until Judge Lassiter orders you to appear in court to stand trial.”

  The marshal lumbered off, puffing from the exertion. A door leading into the outer office closed, followed by a metallic click as a key turned in a lock. Knight was doubly locked into the cell. Even if he escaped from the cage, he had another door to open before confronting the marshal in his office.

  He got to his feet, wobbled a bit and began examining his predicament. Some of the bars were rusty—but not rusted through enough to make escape possible. The hard-packed dirt floor was almost as good as concrete for preventing a prisoner from digging out. The outer wall he had banged his hand into had been constructed with imprisonment in mind. A barred window set high in the wall was too small to squeeze through, even in his emaciated condition, even if he pried off the bars, even if he jumped high enough to get out. Elmira had been mostly large, tattered tents to house the prisoners, with sheet-iron cages and pits dug deep into the ground for extra punishment. A few days spent in both had given Knight experience in sizing up the chances to escape.

  The Yankees had been good at making escape-proof cells. This marshal’s jail matched anything he had endured during his incarceration, in spite of its superficial look of disrepair.

  Frustrated, he rattled the bars. For all the rust, the door was solid. He rested his forehead against the cool metal and shook as if he had the ague. Being too trusting—gullible!—had landed him in a world of trouble. Jake had duped him and then made off with the money and a bag full of food. Knight smiled wryly. Of all the troubles, he missed the flour sack filled with food the most. His belly still churned and grumbled in spite of the bread and other food he had eaten while robbing the restaurant.

  “Marshal! Are you going to feed me? You can’t let me starve.” He glanced up at the tiny window. Pale dawn seeped through. “It’s breakfast. Bring me some eggs and ham. Maybe some cornbread to go with it. Or biscuits and gravy.”

  “Shut yer yap. I’ll get around to feedin’ you when I danged well feel like it. Right now I’m going to see if Slowpoke’s still among us or if you don’t get fed at all ’cause he died.”

  The outer door slammed. Knight had the sense of being completely alone. He sank onto the cot and considered curling up to grab a few more minutes of sleep. Whether the deputy lived or died had little effect on what they would do to him. Even if they didn’t stretch his neck, he was bound for prison due to the assault and robbery.

  As that thought sunk in, Knight turned cold all over. He had endured so much in Elmira. Never again. Better to die than be caged like an animal. He stood, pulled the blanket from the cot and began tearing it into long strips wide enough to support his weight. It took him the better part of fifteen minutes to get a noose made and to fasten the free end of his crude rope through the bars in the window where he couldn’t even look out to see the new day.

  * * *

  “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” The marshal slammed back the door leading into his office, turned and grabbed the keys, and rushed to the cell door. He stared up at Knight dangling from the rude noose, unmoving. He fumbled and finally got the cell door open. A quick step took him to the dangling body. Strong arms circled Knight’s thighs and lifted to get him down.

  The marshal expected deadweight. Instead he caught an elbow to the top of his skull. He staggered back and released Knight. For a moment, Knight kicked and then got free of the harness he had made from the blanket. Landing on his feet, he stepped forward, then dropped as hard as he could to drive his knee into the marshal’s big gut. Air whistled from the lawman’s body. He gagged, turned purple, and rolled onto his side. As he gasped for air, Knight acted.

  Like a cowboy during branding, he whipped a length of blanket around, caught the man’s wrists and bound them. A second strip fastened the marshal’s hands to his ankles. Grunting with exertion, Knight pulled his victim into the cell and looked down on his handiwork.

  “Sorry, Marshal. I didn’t want to do this.”

  “I’ll have the army after you. I’ll—”

  Before he got another word out, Knight whipped a third piece of the threadbare blanket around his head and tightened it into a gag. Only then did he exit the cell and slam the door. A quick turn locked the marshal up.

  “Believe me, I hope the deputy is going to be all right. I might have robbed the restaurant, but I never touched him. If anything, I went out of my way to avoid him. The one you want is named Leonard Jacobs.”

  Knight closed the door between the cells and the marshal’s office, turning the key in that lock, too. The lawman was as secure as Knight had been only a few minutes earlier. He tossed the keys onto the desk, then hesitated when he saw a stack of wanted posters. His likeness would be among them soon enough if he didn’t clear out. Wasting time pawing through the pile made it all the more likely he would get caught, but he did it anyway. Halfway down he saw a smeared picture of a fugitive who might be Jake. The crimes were all robbery and swindling. He was a known confidence man. Knight found a pencil, scribbled a hasty note to the marshal letting him know this was who he really wanted for the assault on the deputy and then started out the door.

  He again hesitated.

  Hanging on a peg beside the door was a gun belt with a revolver thrust into a holster. Hand shaking, he took it down, drew the pistol and looked at it. He had seen plenty of six-guns in the army. This was a Colt Navy cap-and-ball. He thrust it back into the holster and slung the belt around his meager middle. It almost went around him twice, given the marshal’s girth and his own lack. He fastened the buckle and slung it over his shoulder, then grabbed a leather pouch with two loaded cylinder
s and more slugs, caps and powder. Only then did he venture out into the street.

  The sun had risen high enough to hang above the pine trees at the far end of town. Commerce proceeded and the town’s citizens went about their chores. They had no idea that a desperate outlaw joined them as they conducted their business.

  The town was small enough that Knight found the livery stable quickly without asking anyone for directions. He hesitated to enter. From the street he saw four horses stabled there, a towheaded youngster of eight or nine dutifully giving each a nosebag of feed. His hemming and hawing saved him. Two men came from the rear of the stable. Both carried rifles but didn’t wear sidearms. He spun away and pressed against the rough-hewn wall as he overheard them.

  “He’s a damned cheapskate. We caught that varmint. We deserve more than a shot of whiskey for our trouble.”

  “Yeah, Cousin Ned, you’re right. We coulda got our heads blowed off. We didn’t know what to expect after Slowpoke got all bashed up like that other than we was on the trail of a real desperado. Being summoned to ride with the posse interrupted my sleep. We shoulda got paid at least a dollar, like any other time.”

  “If you ask me, the marshal kept the posse money for hisself. The mayor puts up ten dollars a month, silver, not any of that worthless Yankee greenback scrip, just for such things, and it shouldn’t matter if we was out a minute or a day. The rules say a posse member gets a dollar a day.”

  “We did get a drink.”

  “Yeah, but it was trade whiskey. It’s still chewin’ holes in my gut.”

  Knight slid the Colt Navy from the holster and held it down at his side. Cocking it would draw attention. He kept his thumb on the hammer, just in case he had to get off a quick round. The thought of shooting it out with the two who had been in the posse that caught him the night before made him slump. The first report from his pistol—or their rifles—would bring the rest of the town running. He would be caught for sure.