by J. T. Edson
Now, as a result of his stratagem, Doc had at least a starting point in his search for the man who had been in possession of Den Lindrick’s two Colt Pocket Pistols. He also knew that he would have difficulty in accomplishing anything further without help. He did not know the city well enough and had no official status. Neither would have stopped him from trying if he had not been sure that he could obtain assistance.
There was, however, the matter of the wounded outlaw demanding Doc’s attention. While he had no sympathy for the man and considered that the injury had been well deserved, he was no sadist. Having done what he set out to achieve, he was willing to devote all his skill to the task in hand. For all that, he knew under the circumstances the aid he could render was limited. In addition, more capable—or, at least, better equipped—assistance was readily available.
‘H-How bad is it?’ the outlaw begged.
‘Well now,’ Doc replied. ‘I’ve seen worse plenty of times and the fellers who had them pulled through. Happen you’ve got to get shot, this’ll do until a bad one comes along.’
‘What can you do for him?’ St. Andre asked.
‘That depends,’ Doc replied, opening the box which the manager had brought from the office and had carried back.
‘On what?’ the detective inquired, wondering if he might have misjudged the Texan’s character and the display had not merely been a pose to fool their captive.
‘It’s this way, feller,’ Doc told the outlaw, losing his earlier hectoring aura and ceasing to call the robber by the hard sounding hombre. ‘Your wound’s nearly stopped bleeding and that means no major blood vessel, vein or artery, has been touched. But the bullet’s in there, along with pieces from your cloak-coat, jacket and shirt. They’ll have to come out.’
‘Th—Then get them—!’ the wounded man began.
‘I done it before and could again,’ Doc admitted, his voice still gentle. ‘Except that I’ve only got a couple of scalpels and a probe with me. Happen you’re taken to a hospital, they’ll have everything on hand to clean it out a damned sight easier and less painful.’
‘P-Painful?’ the outlaw repeated, throwing an alarmed glance at St. Andre.
‘They can put you to sleep there, so you’ll feel nothing and it’ll all be over when you wake,’ Doc elaborated. ‘There’s only two ways I can do it and neither’re easy. I can whomp you on the head and work while you’re unconscious. Only it’s difficult to hit just hard enough and not too hard. Or I can have you held down and put something in your mouth for you to bite on while I’m working.’
‘Isn’t there any other way?’ St. Andre put in.
‘It’s one or the other,’ Doc stated, directing his answer to the outlaw. ‘I’ll bandage you so that you’ll not lose any more blood, or be hurt any worse while you’re going to hospital. Or I can work right here.’
‘C-Can you get me there, Cap’n?’ the man asked. ‘I won’t give you any trouble, or try to get away, if you do.’
‘I’ll have a cab called to take you,’ the detective promised and looked around as the door opened.
‘Hey, Cap’n,’ one of the plain-clothes officers said, stepping into the room ‘We’ve got trouble.’
‘What kind?’ St. Andre asked.
‘Mudgins from the Intelligencer’s outside,’ the officer replied, his tones showing how he regarded the newspaper reporter. ‘He’s demanding to be let in and find out what’s happened.’
‘I’ll come out,’ St. Andre decided.
Working as efficiently as when he had dealt with the gang’s victim, after the detectives had taken leave of them, Doc bandaged the outlaw’s shoulder and fastened the arm in a sling. Then, telling his patient to stay put, he escorted Lynn from the office. They found that the reporter from the Intelligencer had been allowed to enter. Tall, lean, with untidy long hair, he had a sallow, thin and sullen face with deep set eyes. He had on a red necktie and his good quality suit, like the grubby white shirt, looked disheveled from choice rather than any more valid cause.
‘Is that some of your police work, Andre?’ Mudgins was demanding, deliberately leaving out the prefix to the detective’s name, as he pointed at the corpse.
‘I killed him,’ Doc announced, walking forward and becoming aware that his wife was no longer accompanying him.
‘You?’ Mudgins snorted, swinging around to look the Texan over from head to foot.
‘Me,’ Doc confirmed.
‘Why?’
‘Considering he was fixing to shoot me, it seemed like a mighty reasonable thing to do.’
On the point of calling the tall young man before him a liar, Mudgins thought better of it. There was something disconcerting in the other’s coldly challenging gaze. What was more, if he should be speaking the truth and, in his heart, the reporter did not doubt it, he would be likely to take grave exception to such a suggestion.
‘How do you feel about your officers allowing men to walk the streets armed, Andre?’ Mudgins challenged, deciding to pick on a safer target.
‘If you mean the criminals,’ the detective answered. ‘No law anybody can make will stop them going armed.’
‘I meant this man!’ Mudgins corrected, indicating Doc.
‘Now hold hard there, hombre.’ the Texan barked, before St. Andre could comment. ‘I’m no damned criminal, so I obeyed the law of your city and wasn’t toting a gun. I took it off one of the gang and used it on another who was figuring on killing me with that scatter he was breaking the law by carrying.’
‘But if you’d been able to disarm one of them,’ Mudgins protested, his newspaper being stout advocates for legislation that would make the ownership of firearms illegal and, like all of his bigoted kind, he hated to be reminded of the fact that only law-abiding people would heed such a ruling. ‘Why did you have to kill him?’
‘Look up there,’ Doc suggested, pointing to the two holes which had been shattered in the ceiling by the shotgun’s loads. ‘I was here and he was where he’s lying. Getting shot at with something capable of doing that might not seem like much to you, hombre, but it scares seven shades of shit out of me. Fact being, I get kind of touchy when it’s likely to happen.’
‘Who are you?’ Mudgins requested, wishing he had the courage to put the question as a demand.
‘The name’s Marvin Eldridge Leroy,’ Doc replied, hoping the other had not heard of him in connection with his peace officer activities in Arizona.
‘Are you a policeman?’ the reporter inquired.
‘Nope. I’m a student at the Soniat Memorial-Mercy Hospital,’ Doc answered, then turned towards the detective. ‘I’ve fixed up that outlaw’s wound like you told me to, Captain St. Andre. Now you can have him moved to hospital.’
‘Thank you,’ St. Andre replied. ‘And, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Mudgins, I think you’ve delayed me long enough from having the man moved. So I’ll go and attend to it.’
Rage distorted the reporter’s unprepossessing features as the detective and the Texan walked away. He had the kind of mentality which glorified bad manners, but not when they were directed at him.
Muttering to himself, the reporter turned his attention to the bank’s employees and Lynn. The stories given to him by the former tallied with what Doc had already told him and offered no way of being turned against the police. Nor was the girl’s efforts any more fruitful. A good actress, she left no doubt that her husband—without identifying him as such—had acted in the only way possible to avert a massacre of everybody in the bank. Nor did the wounded outlaw improve matters, as he declared he had received good treatment at St. Andre’s hands and claimed his dead companion was a notorious wanted killer from out West.
It was a bitter and furious Mudgins who stalked from the building. He swore that somebody would pay for the disrespect with which he had been treated. There was no way he could strike at St. Andre. So he decided that he would do everything in his power to ruin the damned medical student’s chances of becoming a qualified doctor. Considering ho
w to bring this about, he went in search of a cab to take him to his newspaper’s office.
Five – He’s From West of the Big Muddy
‘All right, Doc,’ Captain Phillipe St Andre said, as he accompanied the young couple from the New Orleans’ branch of the First National Bank. ‘What was all that in the manager’s office about?’
‘You’ve got to admit that, even for you, you was acting just a little mite peculiar, husband of mine,’ Lynn Leroy went on. ‘Sure, I know that you’d like to see all of those yahoos tossed in the pokey. Which’s what they’ve asked for and deserve, not counting honest folks being safer if they are. Only, happen I know you, there’s a whole heap more to it than that.’
‘There is,’ Doc Leroy confirmed quietly, although he was pleased to think that he appeared to have achieved one other purpose while in the bank. He had turned the attention of the New Orleans Intelligencer’s reporter away from the peace officers and had personally accepted responsibility for the death of the outlaw. Now, he realized, the time had come for him to explain why he had taken the steps which had produced some possibly useful information. In view of a report received by the detective, the latter might prove useful. ‘Only I’d rather not talk about it standing here.’
Half an hour had elapsed since the attempted hold up and all the on the spot formalities had been completed. While the injured outlaw was being taken to have his wound cared for, his unhurt companion was questioned and supported his suggestions as to where the two who had escaped would probably go to seek a hiding place. The dead man had been removed and, when it returned, the paddy-wagon was used to take the prisoner into custody. However, as yet, Blaby and Tick had evaded capture and the hunt in the area was continuing. However, acceding to Doc’s request without questioning it, St. Andre had not sent officers to Coffee Dan’s.
A reporter from the city’s other newspaper, the New Orleans Picayune had arrived, but was a vastly different proposition from the Intelligencer’s representative. All he had wanted was the facts and did not attempt to find ways to blame anybody except the would-be robbers for the fate that had descended upon them.
Finally, after Lynn had deposited her money, St. Andre was taking the opportunity to satisfy his curiosity over Doc’s behavior.
‘There’s a coffee house along the street,’ the detective remarked. ‘We could go there and let Lynn buy us a meal, seeing she’s so affluent, while we talk.’
‘I’ve a better idea,’ Doc contradicted, darting a glance at his wife. ‘Why don’t we let her get us a cab ride to our place. It’ll save time and we can talk on the way.’
‘I’m for that,’ St. Andre smiled.
'I’m not,’ Lynn declared. ‘About me paying, I mean.’
‘You’re out of luck, honey,’ Doc pointed out. ‘The voting’s two to one in favor of you paying.’
‘So I have to, huh?’ Lynn asked.
‘That’s the way it goes in a democracy,’ St Andre pointed out, smiling as he compared Doc’s wife with the Western girl who had been responsible for his nickname. They were very much alike, Lynn Leroy and Miss Martha Jane Canary, xxxi high spirited, unconventional, exceptionally capable of taking care of themselves even in the unfamiliar surroundings of a bigger city than either of them had ever seen before coming East, and with a similar sense of humor. ‘So I’m afraid that you must pay, cherie.’
‘Like hell you’re “afraid”,’ Lynn scoffed, then gave a piercing whistle to attract the attention of a passing vis-a- vis xxxii cab’s driver. As he was reining his two-horse team to a stop, she went on, ‘All you pair’re afraid of is that I won’t pay?’
Helping the girl aboard and allowing Doc to climb in, St. Andre followed them. Once the driver had been given his instructions and the vehicle was moving, Lynn and the detective looked expectantly at the Texan.
‘I reckon I told you why I didn’t get to be a doctor years back, honey?’ Doc inquired.
‘Why sure,’ the girl replied. ‘Your folks were killed in a feud back to Lampasas and you couldn’t make it.’
‘That was part of it,’ Doc admitted and there was a hardness underlying his quiet words. Although he had gradually succeeded in putting from his mind the idea of seeking out the man responsible for the killing he was finding that to have his loss recalled still aroused a sense of great bitterness. ‘I was wanting to find the man who had caused it to happen.’
‘You know him?’ St. Andre put in, from the seat with his back to the driver.
‘I knew him,’ Doc confirmed. ‘His name’s Hayden Paul Lindrick, a pistolero valiente—a hired gun hand—and real good. So good that he reckoned he didn’t need anything heavier than the matched brace of fancy Colt Pocket Pistols he always toted.’
‘You mean like those two that yahoo dropped when he lit out from the bank?’ Lynn guessed, having identified the kind of weapons she had been handed by her husband and noticed their excellent condition.
‘More than that, honey,’ Doc corrected and, for all his drawl, he was as tense as a tightly stretched steel spring. ‘They are them.’
‘Do you mean that you recognized them?’ St. Andre ejaculated, taking the two revolvers from his jacket’s pocket. After looking at them for a moment, he raised his eyes and went on, ‘Are you certain?’
‘They’ve been rechambered, but the rest is just as I remember them,’ Doc declared with quiet conviction and explained how he had come to his conclusions regarding the ownership of the weapons.
‘Much of what you say is true,’ St. Andre conceded, turning the revolvers in his hands and studying the initials carved on the ivory butts. ‘But I think I’m right in assuming that it wasn’t the man Lindrick who got away?’
‘It wasn’t,’ Doc agreed. ‘He was a whole lot younger and Lindrick wasn’t in the bank or I’d have recognized him, even if he didn’t me.’
‘There was only one Westerner among them and you killed him,’ St. Andre replied. ‘All the others I saw and, from what was said, the one they call “Tick”, were homegrown thieves.’
‘Not Blaby,’ Doc objected. ‘The way he talked and acted, he was from west of the Big Muddy like the hombre I put down.’
‘No further east than Arkansas,’ Lynn seconded. ‘And I wouldn’t say he’s a goober-grabber, xxxiii but closer to Texas.’
‘North Texas,’ Doc corrected.
‘Do you think that Lindrick’s in New Orleans?’ St. Andre asked, being willing to accept his more experienced companions’ opinions on the outlaws who had come from the West.
‘I don’t know,’ Doc answered thoughtfully. ‘In the days when I knew him, Lindrick was a gun hand, but not thief. Of course, I’ve heard nothing about him for a fair spell. Could I be he’s changed his name, and had to because he’d gone owlhoot and was wanted.’
‘He could be dead,’ Lynn pointed out. ‘Happen, like you said, he was so took by those two “shoat-legs” to get them rechambered, he wouldn’t be likely to have sold or let them go without real good cause.’
‘Like if they had been taken from him after his death?’ St. Andre suggested.
‘One thing’s for sure,’ Doc drawled. ‘That yahoo who ran out wasn’t good enough to have taken them from Den Lindrick if he’s anywhere near as fast as he used to be. And he wouldn’t be so old now, not more than forty. ’
‘Jack McCall wouldn’t have lived out two seconds happen he’d been stood in front of Wild Bill when the “deadman’s hand” was dealt in Deadwood,’ Lynn reminded her husband. ‘Speed only works if you’re given a chance to use it.’ xxxiv
‘I’m not gainsaying that, honey,’ Doc said soothingly.
‘Anyways,’ the girl went on, eyeing her husband in the partly speculative and partly You aren’t fooling me way he had come to know and love. ‘One feller who can likely tell us the answers isn’t too far away.’
‘He isn’t,’ the Texan concurred.
‘Only, you being just a half smart lil country boy in the big city and all, you conclude that you might need he
lp to find him.’
‘A smart man knows his limitations,’ St. Andre remarked, guessing where the comments were leading to.
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything’s we’re talking about,’ Lynn protested, looking from one to the other of her companions in a pointed manner. ‘But I reckon, husband of mine, that you figure’s how you’d likely get along better with somebody who knows the range riding point for you.’
‘I’m not too proud to take good advice,’ Doc conceded.
‘Who said anything about good advice?’ Lynn demanded.
‘If this is leading up to what I’ve a terrible feeling it might be,’ St. Andre said, directing his words at the Texan and pointedly ignoring the girl. ‘There’s only one thing I don’t understand.’
‘What’s that?’ Doc inquired.
‘Why aren’t we going straight to Coffee Dan’s instead of by way of your place?’ the detective asked.
‘For two reasons,’ Doc explained. ‘First off, Lynn’s fixed up to meet Alice there.’
‘I’m buying her dinner out of the reward,’ the girl supplemented. ‘Was figuring it’d be for four, but to do that, we’ll likely have to wait a while.’
‘Secondly,’ Doc continued, as if his wife had not spoken. ‘I want to get dressed before I go calling.’
‘Which means you want to go and collect a gun,’ St. Andre stated, remembering how he had heard Calamity Jane employ a similar expression.
‘You can bet your sweet Louisiana life I do,’ Doc agreed. ‘From the way that hombre talked and you know it, I don’t reckon that Coffee Dan is used to law abiding folks who’ll obey the law by not toting a gun. And, any time I’m going someplace like that, I figure I’ve as much right to be carrying one as they have. Fact being, what happened at the bank proves I’m right. Next time, I might not get the chance to lay hands on one.’