by Matt Braun
Climbing aboard at the forward steps, McCluskie rapped on the caboose door. There was a muffled inquiry from within and he barked a single word in response.
“McCluskie!”
The door edged open and the barrels of a sawed-off shotgun centered on his chest. Somewhere behind the cannon a disembodied voice rumbled to life.
“Everything all right out there, Mike?”
“Right as rain, Spike. Open up.”
The door swung back and Spike Nugent ducked through the opening. The shotgun looked like a broomstick in his meaty paws, and the onlookers fully expected him to bound down off the train and start walking on his knuckles. He was what every young gorilla aspired to and seldom attained. Even McCluskie seemed dwarfed by the sheer bulk of the man.
“Any trouble?” McCluskie asked.
“Quiet as a church,” the burly guard observed. “Me and Jack played pinochle the whole way.”
“Good. You boys get the strongbox out and we’ll waltz it over to the bank. Sooner we get their receipt for it, the sooner I can get back to my poker game.”
Nugent’s laugh sounded like dynamite in a mountain tunnel. He turned back into the caboose and McCluskie scrambled down the steps to the station platform.
Spivey was fairly dancing with excitement. “By God, Mike, I got to hand it to you. That was slicker’n bear grease. Nobody in his right mind would’ve thought of lookin’ in a caboose for a hundred thousand simoleons.”
“That was sort of the idea,” McCluskie commented.
Tonk Hazeltine stepped out from the little crowd and hitched up his crossed gunbelts. “Now that you got it here, I’ll just ride herd ’tween here and the bank to make sure nobody gets any funny ideas.”
McCluskie gave him a corrosive look, then shrugged. “Tag along if you want, but remember what I said. This is railroad business. You get in the way and you’ll get beefed. Same as anyone else.”
The lawman’s reply was cut short when Spike Nugent and another man stepped through the door of the caboose. They each had a shotgun in one hand and grasped the handles of an oversized strongbox in the other. McCluskie started toward them but out of the corner of his eye he caught movement. Wheeling, he saw a shadowy figure drop from one of the forward cattle cars and take off running.
Hazeltine’s arm came up with a cocked Remington, centered on the fleeing man. The impact of McCluskie’s fist against his jaw gave off a mushy splat, and the deputy collapsed like a punctured accordion.
“Spike! Get that box back in the car!”
The Irishman took off in a dead sprint as the two guards lumbered back aboard the caboose. Ahead, the dim shape of a man was still visible in the flickering light from the depot lanterns. But there was something peculiar about him even in the shadowed darkness. Instead of running, he seemed to be bounding headlong in a queer, staggering lurch. Almost as if momentum alone kept him from falling. McCluskie dug harder and put on a final burst of speed.
He overtook the man just back of the engine. When he grabbed, a piece of shirt came away in his hand, and the man stumbled to a halt. McCluskie saw him turn, sensed the cocked fist, and the looping roundhouse blow. Slipping beneath the punch, the Irishman belted him in the gut and then nailed him with a left hook square on the chin. The man hit the cinders with a dusty thud and lay still.
McCluskie stooped over, gathered a handful of shirt, and began dragging the limp form toward the front of the engine. Oddly, the man didn’t seem to weigh any more than a bag of wet feathers. Clearing the cowcatcher, McCluskie heaved and dumped the body in the glare of the headlamp. Then his jaws clicked shut in a wordless curse.
It was nothing but a kid. A scarecrow kid.
CHAPTER 5
MCCLUSKIE SAT in a chair across the room, elbows on his knees, staring vacantly at a glass of whiskey in his hands. Every now and then he would glance up, watching the doctor for a moment, and afterward go back to studying his glass. The whiskey seemed forgotten, just something to keep his hands occupied. Whatever it was that might have distracted his mind didn’t come in a bottle. Not this night, anyway.
Gass Boyd, Newton’s resident sawbones, hovered around the bed like a rumpled butterfly. Though unkempt in appearance, he had a kindly bedside manner; the townspeople had found him to be a competent healer, if not a miracle worker. Since arriving in Newton, something less than a month past, most of his patients had been the victims of gunshot wounds or knifings. The youngster he worked over now had a far greater problem.
Boyd painstakingly bound the boy’s ribcage in a tight harness, easing a roll of bandage under his back and around again. The youth’s face was ashen, almost chalky, and a bruise the color of rotten plums covered his chin. But that wasn’t what concerned the doctor. Even as he worked, he listened, and what he heard was far from encouraging. The boy’s breathing was labored, more a hoarse wheezing, and a telltale pinkish froth bubbled at the corners of his mouth. Boyd had seen the symptoms plenty of times after the war, back in Alabama. It was the great ravager. Slow and insidious, without the swift mercy of a rifled slug or a steely knife.
Finished with the bandaging, Gass Boyd once again took out his stethoscope and placed it on the youngster’s chest. He listened intently, moving the instrument from spot to spot, wanting desperately to be wrong. But he heard nothing that changed his diagnosis.
Then he grunted sourly to himself. At this stage it ceased being diagnosis. It became, instead, prognosis.
Folding the stethoscope, he placed it in his bag, snapped the catch shut, and stood. Just for a moment he studied the boy, seeing him for the first time as more than a body with sundry ailments and bruises. Hardly more than eighteen. If that. Haggard, hollow-cheeked, gaunt. A face of starved innocence. One of God’s miscalculations. Or perhaps the immortal bard had been right after all. Maybe the gods did make wanton sport of men.
Boyd heard rustling behind him and turned to find the Irishman out of his chair on his feet. Their eyes locked and the doctor had a fleeting moment of wonder about this strange man. Beat a boy half to death and then turn a town upside down to save his life. It was a paradox. Classic in its overtones. From a clinical standpoint, perhaps one of the more interesting phenomena in man’s erratic tomfoolery.
The doctor set aside such thoughts and came back to the business at hand. “Mr. McCluskie, the boy has a couple of broken ribs and a badly bruised chin. Fortunately your blow didn’t catch him in the nose or he might’ve looked like a bull-dog the rest of his life.”
“Then he’ll be all right?”
“I didn’t say that.”
McCluskie’s mouth tightened. “What’re you gettin’ at, Doc?”
“The boy has consumption of the lungs. Rather advanced case, I’d say.”
“Consumption?” McCluskie’s glance flicked to the bed and back again. “You sure?”
Gass Boyd sighed wearily. “Take my word for it, Mr. McCluskie. The boy has consumption. He’s not long for this world.”
The Irishman stared at him for what seemed a long while. When he finally spoke his voice had changed somehow. Gentler, perhaps. Not so hard.
“How long?”
Dr. Boyd shrugged. “It’s difficult to say. Six months. A year, perhaps. I wouldn’t even hazard a guess beyond that.”
“Guess? Hell, Doc, I’m not askin’ for guesses. He’s just a kid. Don’t it strike you that somebody punched his ticket a little bit early?”
“Mr. McCluskie, it’s an unfortunate fact of life that God plays dirty pool. All too often the good die young. I’ve never found any satisfactory answer to that, and I doubt that anyone ever will.”
“What you’re sayin’ is that you’ve given up on him. Written him off.”
Far from being offended, the physician found himself fascinated. McCluskie was a strange and complex man, and the irony of the situation was inescapable. Within a matter of minutes he had run the gauntlet of emotions. From hangdog guilt to concern to outraged indignation. Right now he was gripped by a sense of
frustrated helplessness, and the only response he knew was to lash out in anger. It was as if this big hulk of a man had unwittingly revealed a part of himself. The part that was raw and vulnerable and rarely saw the light of day.
“I’ve hardly written him off, Mr. McCluskie. Matter of fact, I’ll look in at least twice a day until we have him back on his feet. He’s underfed and weak as a kitten, and we have to get his strength built up. Unless things take a drastic turn for the better, I’d judge he won’t set foot out of that bed for at least two weeks.”
Boyd tactfully avoided any mention of the beating the youngster had taken. There was no need. The punishment absorbed by the frail body was apparent and spoke for itself. McCluskie could scarcely bear to look at the bed, and the loathing he felt for himself showed in his eyes. Watching him, it occurred to the doctor that victims weren’t always the ones swathed in bandages. The Irishman’s shame at having thrashed a sickly boy would endure far longer than a broken rib or a bruised chin.
McCluskie still hadn’t said anything, as if his anger had been blunted by the doctor’s unruffled manner. After a moment Boyd gathered his bag and nodded toward the boy. “I’ve given him a dose of laudanum, so he should rest easy through the night. I’ll come by first thing in the morning and see how he’s doing.”
“Thanks, Doc. I’m—” The Irishman faltered, having difficulty with the words. “Sorry I talked out of turn.”
“Completely understandable. No apologies necessary.” Boyd smiled, clamped his hat on his head, and crossed the room. But at the door he turned and looked back. “There is one thing, though. If you don’t mind my asking. What prompted you to bring the boy here to your room? Instead of over to my office.”
McCluskie blinked, taken off guard by a question he hadn’t as yet asked himself. “Why, I can’t rightly say.” He took a swipe at his mustache and shrugged, fumbling with a thought which resisted words. “Just seemed like the thing to do, I guess.”
The doctor studied him a moment with a quizzical look. Then he smiled. “Yes. I can see that it would.”
Nodding, he opened the door and stepped into the hall.
The Irishman stared at the door for a long while, overcome with a queer sense of unease. The question hung there, still unanswered, and tried to sort it out in his head.
Why had he brought the kid to his room?
Everything else was clear as a bell. The commotion at the depot. Everybody running and shouting and yelling bloody murder at the top of their lungs. Hansberry bleating some asinine nonsense about train robbers, and the little crowd scattering like a bunch of quail. Then later, Spivey and the judge raking him over the coals for coldcocking Tonk Hazeltine. And later still, somebody carting the deputy off like a side of beef. Somewhere in all the fussing and moaning he’d even managed to get the strongbox over to the bank. That part he remembered clearly. But there was just a big blank spot where the kid was concerned. For the life of him, he couldn’t recall when or how he’d gotten the kid to his room.
Or why.
Returning to his chair, he sat down and tried to muddle it through. But it was hard sledding, and all uphill. Distantly, as through a cloudy glass, he got an impression of sending Jack off to fetch the doctor. Then something else. Something to do with Spike.
That must have been when he was carrying the kid across Main toward the hotel.
But it still didn’t answer the question. The one Doc Boyd had started rattling around in his head. The one that even now didn’t make any sense.
Why the hotel? Why his room?
McCluskie reached for the whiskey glass and his eyes automatically went to the bed. Jesus! The kid was nothing but a bag of bones. Didn’t hardly put a dent in the mattress. Just laid there wheezing and spewing those little bubbles. Like he was—
The rap at the door startled McCluskie clean out of his chair. He crossed the room in two strides and threw open the door. Just for a moment nothing registered. Then those green eyes nailed him and everything came into focus all of a sudden.
It was Belle.
“Well don’t just stand there, you big lummox. Let me in.”
Wordlessly he stepped aside, his head reeling. He couldn’t have been more surprised if she had materialized out of a puff of smoke.
Belle sailed into the room and whirled on him. “I almost didn’t come, you know. Not until Spike told me—”
“Spike?”
“—about the kid.”
She stopped and gave him a funny look. “Are you drunk, or what? You did send Spike to get me, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“You guess so?” One eyebrow lifted and she inspected him with closer scrutiny. “Mike, are you all right? You look sort of green around the gills.”
Suddenly it all came back to him in a rush. As if somebody had wiped the window clean and he could see it again. The way it had been in those last moments when he walked away from the depot with the kid in his arms.
“Sure I sent Spike. The kid was bad hurt and I didn’t know what kind of sawbones they had in this jerkwater burg. You’ve patched up more men than most of these quacks anyway, so I didn’t figure it would hurt nothin’ for you to have a looksee.”
She gave him that queer look again, still a little leery. “Well, as long as I’m here I might as well inspect the damages.” She turned toward the bed. “Where’s Doc Boyd? Didn’t he show?”
“Yeah, he just left a little while ago.”
“What was the verdict? Castor oil and mustard plaster?”
McCluskie had no chance to answer. Belle stopped short of the bed and uttered a sharp gasp. In the pale cider glow of the lamp the boy looked like he had been embalmed. Her eyes riveted on the bandages and the bruised chin and the froth at the corners of his mouth. Her back went stiff as a poker and she mumbled something very unladylike under her breath. Suddenly galvanized, she wheeled around, and green-fire shot out of her eyes in a smoky sizzle.
“You miserable excuse for a man! Is that how you earn your keep? Beating up kids for the Santa Fe?”
“Belle, it’s not like it looks. The kid swung on me—”
“Swung on you! My God, Mike, that boy doesn’t have enough strength to kill a fly.”
“I know that now.” He flushed and went on lamely. “But it was dark out there and I couldn’t tell. I just knew he was swingin’ on me.”
“So you let him have the old McCluskie thunderbolt.” Her stare was riddled through with scorn. “You must feel real proud of yourself. Why aren’t you down at the saloon telling the boys all about your big fight?”
McCluskie’s shoulders sagged imperceptibly, and he had trouble meeting her gaze. They stood like that for a moment, frozen in silence. Then, quite without warning, Belle felt her anger start to ebb. Something had just become apparent to her. The big Irishman was ashamed. Really ashamed! This was none of his slick dodges. Those cute little tricks he’d always used to get around her temper. He was genuinely shamed by what he had done. Which rocked her back on her heels.
So far as she knew, Mike McCluskie had never apologized to anybody for anything in his entire life. Much less hung his head and looked mortified to boot.
Curiously, the question she’d been saving for later no longer needed to be asked. She knew why the kid was here. In this room. Laid out in Mike’s bed.
But the knowing left her in something of a quandary. One question had been answered yet others were popping through her head like a string of firecrackers. Questions she had never before even considered about the Irishman.
Suddenly it came to her that perhaps she wasn’t as good a judge of men as she had thought. Maybe she’d been running a sporting house too long. Saw things not as they were but distorted and flawed, like a cracked mirror.
She took a closer look at Mike McCluskie.
What she saw was different from what she had seen before. Or perhaps different wasn’t the right word. Maybe it was just all there, finally complete. Like a jigsaw puzzle that ha
d at last had the missing parts fitted into place.
She decided to withhold judgment for the moment. “What did Doc have to say about the kid?”
“Couple of busted ribs and a sore jaw.”
Belle darted a skeptical glance back toward the bed. “That’s all?”
“No, not just exactly.” McCluskie swallowed hard. “Doc says he’s got lung fever. Consumption.”
She just stared at him, unblinking. After a while she managed to talk around the lump in her throat. “He’s sure?”
“Sure enough. Said the kid had a year at the outside. Leastways if you’re partial to bettin’ longshots.”
She turned and stepped nearer the bed. Her eyes went over the frail, emaciated boy, missing nothing. Hair the color of cornsilk, dirty and ragged, but bleached out by the sun. A sensitive face, with wide-set eyes and a straight nose, and the jawbone squared off in a resolute line. Large bony hands with fingers that were curiously slim and tapering. Like those of a piano player. Or a cardsharp. Or a surgeon.
Or any one of a hundred things this kid would never live to become.
Belle jumped, scared out of her wits, as the pale blue eyes popped open. They reminded her of carpenter’s chalk, only with a glaze of fresh ice over the top. But the boy didn’t see her. His face mottled in dark reddish splotches, and he started sucking for wind in a hoarse, dry rattle. Belle didn’t think, she simply reacted.
“He’s choking, Mike! Sit him up.”
McCluskie reached the bed in one stride, slipping his arms beneath the youngster, and lifted him to a sitting position. Belle wrenched the boy’s mouth open, prying his tongue out, and began gently massaging his Adam’s apple. Suddenly the boy heaved, his guts pumping, and went into a coughing spasm that shook the entire bed. Globs of sputum and scarlet-tinged mucus shot out of his mouth and nose, and for a moment they thought he was vomiting his life away right in their arms. Then the coughing slacked off, gradually subsiding, and a spark of color came back to his face. The film slowly faded from his eyes and he slumped back, exhausted. The attack had run its course, but he was still laboring for each breath.