by Logan, Jake
4
Doc Bower finished up Slocum’s stitches in a rush. The job wasn’t perfect and it sure as hell wasn’t painless, but the wound was closed and the needle was removed from his flesh. “Here,” the doctor said while tossing some bandages at him. “Since you fancy yourself a field surgeon, perhaps you could dress that arm in my stead. It seems I have another patient on the way.”
“Sure thing, Doc.”
Slocum wrapped the bandages around his arm, and by the time he was tying them off, the source of all that screaming staggered into the large windowed front door of the office. Not through the door. Into it. His height was difficult to determine because he was hunched over so badly, but he couldn’t have been any taller than Slocum. Judging by the way he gripped the front of his body and staggered repeatedly into the door like a bird flopping into a freshly cleaned window, he seemed to have been knocked in the head. He may have been shot in the stomach, although there wasn’t quite enough blood to fit that bill. When Doc Bower tried to open his office door while the wounded man repeatedly pushed it shut in his attempts to get inside, it put on a show that was amusing enough for Slocum to sit down and watch for a while.
“For heaven’s sake,” Bower sighed. “Step back.”
“I’m hurt! Need a damn doctor!” the man outside wailed.
“I am a doctor.”
“Then let me in!”
“Step back, I implore you.”
“But I need to get in!”
Slocum couldn’t help chuckling. All that was missing was a piano accompaniment.
Finally, Bower timed an attempt so he could open the door after the man outside bounced off it. For a finale, he managed to clip the man in the side of the face with the edge of the door when the bloody fellow tried to rush inside. After catching the frantic man, the doctor looked over to Slocum with a stern glare that proved he knew exactly how amused he was. Either that, or Slocum had accidentally laughed louder than he’d intended.
“You should probably get a door that opens in,” Slocum offered.
“I didn’t build the place,” Bower snapped.
After taking a breath, the man from outside sobbed, “Yeah. Fix yer door!”
Biting back his retort to those comments, Bower asked, “What happened to you, sir?”
Now that the man was standing beside Bower, Slocum could see he was a bit shorter than the doctor, which made him a few inches shorter than him. A thick mop of tan hair was snarled with everything from dust to bits of dead leaves, and the beard covering the lower half of his face obviously hadn’t been tended in weeks. Slocum wasn’t the sort who normally took notice of the color of a man’s eyes, but it was hard to miss the huge, cloudy green orbs embedded in this one’s panicked face as he let out another wailing scream.
“Take a breath,” the doctor said.
The man drew a breath and screamed again.
“You’ll have to calm down, sir,” Bower said.
The man hollered.
“Sir!”
Another scream.
Slocum stepped forward and swung a quick backhand that caught the screaming man in the face. It was so fast and so unexpected that it silenced the wounded fellow as well as the doctor trying to tend to him.
“Go ahead, Doc,” Slocum said as he sat back down.
Still stunned by the display, Bower straightened the spectacles on his nose and said, “Yes, well, let’s take a look at what we’re dealing with here.”
The wounded man was still simpering as Bower peeled his arms away from where they were clenched around his torso. Instead of a stomach wound or anything on his body, the source of the blood was the man’s right hand. When the doctor tried to get a closer look, the man looked as if he was going to start wailing again. One quick glance in Slocum’s direction nipped that idea in the bud and he choked down a shuddering breath.
“Were you shot?” Bower asked. “There’s been a lot of that going around, you know.”
His lame attempt at a joke didn’t come close to making a dent in the wounded man’s panic. Slocum was reminded of a little boy who’d cut his finger and couldn’t settle down enough to get a single word out. Of course, when the man finally extended his right arm to show his hand to the doctor, it was clear that he suffered from a lot more than a cut.
“Oh my,” Bower said. He stretched a hand back toward Slocum and said, “Hand me a towel, please.”
It took a few seconds for Slocum to turn and find the small cabinet stocked with towels, washcloths, and bandages. By the time he picked up some linens and turned back around to hand them to the doctor, he could see even more of what had brought the man into Bower’s office. The man’s hand was slick with blood that covered it like a thick coat of wet paint. As far as he could tell, the only finger that was still intact was the smallest one. The other three had been ripped off to leave thin stumps of varying lengths. The thumb seemed to be all there, but was covered with too much blood for him to be certain. Slocum was no stranger to gruesome sights, but this one was enough to give him a moment’s pause. As for the doctor, he became calmer as more of the grievous injury was revealed.
“I see three fingers have been partially severed,” Bower said. “Can you feel this?”
When the doctor touched each stump, the man reacted as if he’d been prodded with a red-hot poker. “Hell yes, I can feel that!”
“Well, it would be worse if you couldn’t feel anything in those extremities,” Bower said while taking a towel from Slocum. “How long ago did the injury occur?”
The man was having trouble making more than a few unintelligible sounds. His face looked more like a chalky mask beneath several layers of dust and whiskers.
“Sir. Tell me your name.”
“J . . . Jack.”
“Jack?”
“Jack Halsey.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Halsey. I’m Dr. Bower. Take a breath and sit still while I clean this wound. John, get me some water, won’t you?”
“Sure, Doc.”
“You’ll have to sit still, Jack, if you want me to tend to this.”
“And you’ll have to just do yer damn job,” Jack replied. “Make sure I don’t die from this hand bleedin’ out and stop flappin’ yer damn gums!”
“I know it hurts, but—”
Jack attempted to reach across his body with his left hand to pull the pistol from a holster strapped around his waist. That movement was enough to twist the hand in Bower’s grasp, which sent another wave of pain through his entire body.
“Am I going to have to ask my friend here to restrain you?” Bower asked.
Slocum had returned with a basin of water, and Jack looked up at him as if he were staring into the face of the devil himself. Twitching in the spot where he’d been backhanded a little while ago, Jack meekly replied, “No sir.”
“Good. Now sit still and let me do my job. I think it’d be prudent for you to be relieved of your weapon. John’s going to take it from you and you’re going to let him.”
Jack did as he was told, making certain to keep his eyes on Slocum.
After lifting the gun from Jack’s holster, Slocum walked over to set it on a table at the far end of the room. It was a rusted old .44, and it looked as if it had been pieced together from bits of other guns that had been left in a scrap pile. Considering the sorry state of the weapon, he would have hated to see the pieces that Jack had left behind. “What happened to your hand?” Slocum asked as he approached the doctor and his newest patient. “Were you foolish enough to pull the trigger of that piece of shit gun you’re carrying?”
In short order, Bower washed away enough of the blood to get a clearer look at Jack’s hand. The first two fingers had been torn off messily above the knuckle. Half of the third finger remained, and it seemed the tip of his thumb had been sheared as well. As he’d deduced earlier, the little finger was unscathed.
“I’ll have you know I made that pistol!” Jack said.
“Oh, I think I figured that
much out for myself.”
Wringing out the bloody cloth he was using, Bower dipped it into the water and continued dabbing at Jack’s hand. “How did this happen?”
“I was attacked by wolves.”
Bower stopped what he was doing and waited. When no more of an explanation seemed to be coming, he asked, “Are you joking?”
“No, I’m not joking.”
Slocum leaned in to get a look at the fingers. Now that they’d been on display for so long, the sight of them wasn’t nearly so unsettling. The flesh was shredded and the skin was torn. Nubs of bone protruding from the skinny stumps were splintered and jagged. “Looks about right to me.”
“Well, thank you for your approval, asshole.”
“Manners,” Bower reminded his patient.
Since the doctor still had a hold of his savaged hand, Jack choked down whatever other foul names he had in mind for Slocum. “It was wolves,” he said. When he looked down at his hand, he paled even more and forced himself to look over at the office’s front window. A few locals stood there, gazing inside. Although they’d been anxious to see what had become of the man who’d run screaming down the street, the two old ladies and a man in his forties were in no hurry to stay once they caught sight of Jack’s hand.
“Sure it was more than one wolf?” Slocum asked.
“What difference does that make?”
“First of all, you’re in pretty good shape even if only one wolf got a hold of you. Second, now’s not exactly the time for you to be lying about what happened. Save the impressive stories for the ladies.”
“I’ll have to agree,” Bower said. “It could make a big difference if there were anything like toxic substances involved or—”
“Wolves ain’t toxic enough for ya?” Jack growled.
“More than one?” Slocum asked.
Through gritted teeth, Jack replied, “Just one got me, but it was part of a pack.”
Before the other two could lock horns again, Bower said, “That’s good enough for me. I’ve got plenty of work to do and need to get to it.”
“Do you need any help, Doc?”
“No!” Jack said. “That one already struck me once.”
“Because you deserved it,” Bower was quick to say. Jack started to slump over as he finally lost the last bit of color in his face. When he passed out, Slocum had rushed around in time to catch him.
“Where should I take him?” Slocum asked.
“To that bed over there,” the doctor replied while pointing to a bed that butted against a cabinet containing what looked to be a wide array of surgical instruments.
“You got any rope?”
Thinking back to the previous night, Bower didn’t so much as chuckle at the joke. “Just hold him down, if you would. I’d like to do as much work as possible while he’s out, but it would only make things worse if he came to at the wrong moment.”
“Sure thing.”
The next few hours went by quickly and Slocum was too preoccupied to keep an accurate count of how many had passed. No matter what problem he may have had with the doctor regarding his mannerisms or conversational ability, Slocum couldn’t fault the man’s professional skills. Bower cleaned up Jack’s hand until it was cleaner than the rest of him and then got to work on the fingers.
One by one, the roughest sections of skin were trimmed away and what remained looked less like something that had been gnawed on by a wild animal. At one point, Jack stirred. Slocum held him down, but didn’t have to do that for long because the doctor took that opportunity to file down a sharp splinter of protruding bone. His movements were quick and efficient, but caused enough pain to send the wounded man back into unconsciousness.
“Almost done,” Bower said.
“Good. I think I’ve seen enough doctoring to last me for a good, long while.”
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for the squeamish sort.”
“Not squeamish, Doc. I’ve just had my fill.”
Glancing over at the table where Jack’s gun rested, Bower asked, “So do you think this man is dangerous?”
“I don’t think you need to worry about someone who can’t keep their hands out of a wolf’s mouth,” Slocum replied.
“He strikes me as something more than some unlucky vagrant. He is armed, after all.”
“Most everyone is.”
“So he strikes you as a stable man?”
“I didn’t say that,” Slocum clarified. “I just meant that most everybody who rides on their own from one town to another carries a gun.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, this town has been getting more than its share of armed visitors lately. Do you think this could be one of the men associated with that Oklahoma person?”
Slocum looked down at Jack’s face. Although he wasn’t seriously considering the possibility that he rode with Oklahoma Bill Dressel, he’d crossed paths with plenty of other folks that had caused more than their share of trouble. Even when he tried to imagine what Jack might look like under all that dirt, he still couldn’t come up with anyone that struck a chord. Finally, he said, “Sorry, Doc. It seems like you’ve just got a common, run-of-the-mill lunatic with three missing fingers.”
“And wolves.”
“Sure.”
“We could still use someone in town to lend Sheriff Reyes a hand.”
“After all you’ve seen here in this very office, you’re going to tell me that the sheriff is the one who needs a hand?”
Bower looked down at the wound he was dressing, shook his head, and started to laugh. “Thanks, John. I needed that.”
5
When he stepped out of the doctor’s office, Slocum had intended on letting Gwen know where he’d been before scraping up some breakfast. With the images of the finger surgery and the stench of all that blood still fresh in his nose, however, he decided on taking a walk to clear his head first. A few minutes of fresh air were all he needed, and he soon found himself back at the Dusty Hill Saloon. Gwen fussed over him for a bit before leading him to a table where Dale brought him some coffee. She disappeared for a little while and returned with biscuits and gravy.
“I thought we had sausages,” she told him, “but some poker players ate the last of them after gambling for eighteen hours straight.”
“Don’t mention it,” Slocum said. “Anything remotely looking like a finger wouldn’t have set well anyhow.”
“Pardon me?”
“Never mind. When does the sheriff get to his office?”
“Should be there now, I suppose. Why?”
“I’ve still got some money to collect.”
She nodded and smiled knowingly. “You mean a reward?”
“Call it what you like. I need it.”
“And I thought this might be about the man with the bloody hand.”
“You know about him, huh?”
“Kind of hard not to,” she replied. “He staggered in from the desert without a horse, holding his hand and crying to high heaven!”
“So if he was making such a spectacle, someone other than you must have seen him. Why didn’t anyone help him get to the doctor’s office?”
“He had a gun,” Gwen told him while standing up to gather the dirty plates. “And he was screaming like a banshee, waving his hand and throwing blood everywhere. I never heard such cussing! He looked like a crazy man. Would you have been so quick to walk up and offer assistance?”
“I suppose not. Does he look familiar?”
She balanced the plates in one hand and propped the other on her hip. “Just because I work in this saloon, you think I’d be familiar with some lunatic who staggers in from God knows where?”
“Yes.” His quick response caught her flatfooted and put a stunned expression onto her face. Before she could rip into him with a reply, he added, “You said he didn’t have a horse, so that means he couldn’t have walked too far on his own while bleeding so badly. Seems like he could be local, is all I meant.”
“Is it, now?�
��
“Well, I also meant to put that funny look on your face. Couldn’t help myself.”
She rolled her eyes, turned away from him, and walked to the small kitchen situated just off the main saloon. She must have dumped the dishes in a pile for someone else to sort through because she reappeared before the batwing doors could stop swinging. Approaching Slocum’s table, she took a seat and crossed her arms. The expression she wore was intently focused, but quickly dissolved into a shrug. “If he is local, I don’t think I’ve seen him. Could just mean he never came into this place before. I don’t see much outside these walls.”
“Could be a miner or trapper,” Slocum mused. “Or a hunter passing through the mountains or on his way to somewhere else. Could just be a lunatic who wandered in to scream at a town.”
“All just as likely. Why so concerned?”
“I don’t know,” he told her. “Just a strange way to start the day.” He pushed away from the table and stood up. “I’ll have a word with the sheriff about my money.”
“Come back to see me soon,” Gwen said as she stood, grabbed his shirt, and pulled him down just enough so she could whisper directly into his ear, “I bet we could do some things that’ll make you forget all about that strangeness.”
“I should probably watch my stitches.”
“Then lay down and let me take care of you. I’ll be gentle.”
“You’d better not,” he said while giving her backside a firm swat. “I like your wild side.”
Slocum left the saloon and walked along Main Street. In the short time it took to reach the sheriff’s office, he couldn’t stop thinking about one of the questions Gwen had asked. Why was he so concerned about Jack Halsey and his missing fingers? Maybe, after all of the strangeness he’d seen in his life, Slocum knew better than to just assume some of it would pass him by without further incident. Of course, that didn’t mean he had to go looking for it. Rather than concern himself anymore with the crazy son of a bitch, he pushed open the sheriff’s door and stepped inside.
Mark Reyes sat behind his desk with his feet propped up and his hands folded across his chest. His hat was positioned over most of his face, and he barely seemed to notice Slocum’s presence. Instead of announcing himself formally, Slocum banged a foot against the lawman’s desk and let out a loud cough.