Killer's Draw: The Circuit Rider

by Dani Amore

  Henry Jones darted into the room, and flattened himself against the wall, with his hands up.

  Bird drew a bead on him.

  “I’m not here to hurt you,” he shouted.

  This statement was followed by an explosion of glass that showered Bird with lacerating fragments. She hesitated for just a moment before shooting Henry Jones with her left pistol, putting a bullet dead center in his forehead. And then Mr. Seven was through the window and across the room, grabbing her right arm and throwing her through the window. Bird had the sensation of being caught in a ferocious wind, the walls around her blurring with speed, a pain in her shoulder, and then she was being heaved over the narrow walkway and cast-iron railing, down two stories before she landed flat on her back in the street. The impact was brutal, driving all of the air from her lungs. Bird gasped, struggling to breathe.

  She saw blackness and stars. Whether it was the sky or the blanket of pain and shock that she felt throughout her body she could not decide. She clenched her left hand. It was empty. She clenched her right. The gun butt was still there.

  Bird blinked and rolled onto her left side, happy to see that she really had been staring at the sky, and now the images of a dirt street from ground level and distorted buildings on either side took shape in her vision.

  Along with the foot of Mr. Seven crashing into her stomach.

  The pain was all-consuming and fierce, and her mouth was suddenly full of blood. She felt no fear or panic, just pain and the sensation of something kicking against the palm of her right hand. She then realized that although she was firing her pistol over and over, the hammer was clacking on empty chambers. Her view of the street was replaced by the face of Mr. Seven.

  With the top of his head gone.

  Bird couldn’t breathe, the air was still refusing to enter her lungs, and her mouth was full of blood.

  She smiled, and blood poured from her mouth.

  She had cut down Mr. Seven.

  Turned him into Mr. Three and a Half.

  Forty-One

  Tower thought about Mrs. Egans. Morrison said he would help the woman get settled, then give her a quick tour of Big River so she could make her way around on her own. Mrs. Egans hadn’t mentioned how long she planned on staying in Big River, and neither he nor Morrison felt the need to ask. Tower figured the answer would be that she was going to stay as long as she needed to, which was the way Tower was approaching this case, as well.

  Tower walked back into the main street of Big River. He thought the woman was holding up pretty well. A child dying had to be every parent’s worst nightmare.

  If nothing else, maybe the woman could get closure, as long as Tower found out who was responsible for her son’s murder. But he didn’t feel an overwhelming sense of confidence with regard to the investigation. It seemed like every day brought new questions instead of answers. And the old questions hadn’t been answered yet either.

  Tower thought back to his first time reading through the papers Silas had given him. He had come to a decision regarding the documents he had studied on the train and continued to read. He would go back to his hotel room, pore over everything one more time, box them up, and give them to Mrs. Egans tomorrow. Once he had learned everything he could, he no longer had a need for them—and she was the rightful owner. It wouldn’t be right to keep them any longer.

  He couldn’t help but think, however, that an answer was still somewhere to be found in those notes and letters. Something that he had overlooked. The thought nagged at him, irritating him and leaving behind a sense of frustration.

  As he continued his walk, Tower shook off his negative thoughts and took a deep breath. The night was alive in Big River. A herd had come in earlier in the day, the cowboys had been paid, and laughter, shouting, and music poured out of the saloons. Occasionally, a gunshot could be heard.

  He thought of years back when he would have been in there, a drink in his hand and a gun on his hip. Spoiling for a fight, a chance to work out the anger he felt inside by delivering pain to a complete stranger.

  He was glad to no longer be a part of it. He had come to terms with his own pain, his own past, and no longer felt the need to demand answers from people who had no hope of providing them.

  Tower’s thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a rider at the end of the street. The white on the horse’s chest caught Tower’s eye. He knew the horse and he knew the rider.

  He raced ahead, caught the Appaloosa by the reins and pulled Bird from the saddle. Even in the dark, he could see the blood on her face, the way she slumped forward, the dark stains on the front of her chest. He quickly looked for signs of an obvious gunshot wound but found none.

  Tower lifted her, remembered where the doctor’s office was, and carried her easily in his arms, running down the street until he turned a corner and spotted the medical sign in the window. He kicked at the door with his foot and was nearly ready to kick it in when someone partially opened it from within.

  The face of a young woman, her brown hair pinned back behind her ears, took in the sight of Bird and immediately stepped back, opening the door wider.

  “Tower,” Bird said. Her voice was soft and he looked at her face. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused.

  “Shh,” Tower said.

  The woman gestured for Tower to come inside, and pointed to a table in the center of the room.

  He crossed over to it, set Bird down as gently as possible, and leaned down toward her face.

  “Tower,” she said again.

  The woman who’d opened the door moved behind the table and lit two brass oil lamps. The room brightened considerably as an older man appeared in the doorway.

  “Just breathe,” Tower said to Bird.

  “Jeffire,” she whispered.

  She started coughing. More blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

  The doctor appeared next to Tower. “Well, that coughing doesn’t sound very promising,” he said. “You’re going to have to step aside, young man. Frannie and I will take over from here.”

  “Tower,” Bird said. “Martha Jeffire. She lied to us. I think he’s there.”

  “That’s enough!” the doctor said, as he pulled Bird’s gun belt from her hips and his assistant began cutting away Bird’s shirt.

  “Frannie, get me some whiskey,” the doctor said.

  Tower looked at Bird.

  “My kind of doc,” she said, smiling, and then her eyes closed.

  Forty-Two

  Martha Jeffire opened the door upon Tower’s knock.

  “Oh,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I just need to talk to you about something,” Tower said. “It won’t take very long.”

  She stepped aside, and shuffled uncertainly. Tower noted that she didn’t have the same quiet composure she’d shown on his last visit.

  “If you have any of that coffee, I would greatly appreciate it,” Tower said, trying to put her at ease. “I remember it from the last time I was here. Thankfully, you forced a cup on me and I still recall how good it was.”

  “I’ve just started a pot,” she said.

  “We’ll definitely need some,” Tower said. “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.”

  Tower sat at the table. When the coffee was ready, Martha Jeffire poured him a cup, set it on the table in front of him, then sat down in the opposite chair.

  “Let me be as direct as I can possibly be,” Tower said. “I believe I have found your husband’s body.”

  The lie came out of his mouth as easy as he could deliver it. He knew that Martha Jeffire wouldn’t believe him. But he just needed a small amount of time.

  “What do you mean, his body?” she asked.

  Tower ignored the question and said, “I need to draw a map of where I found him,” he said. “Do you have a pencil and paper?”

  Martha Jeffire looked at him for a brief moment, then fetched a yellow ledger with a black fountain pen.

  Tower wrote,
Where are they? As he said, “This is roughly where I rode today.”

  He handed her the pen.

  She wrote, In the pantry behind the kitchen, and he said, “And it was right about here, between this valley and this river.”

  He wrote on the paper, How many?

  She held up one finger.

  “That coffee was so good I could use another cup,” he said. “And then I can show you exactly where I found him.”

  As she got up and went to the kitchen Tower followed her, grabbing the pot of hot coffee. He slipped past Martha Jeffire, opened the door to the pantry and threw the coffee directly into the face of a cowboy who was sitting on top of a bound Roger Jeffire. The cowboy had a pistol in his holster and a dime-store novel in his hands.

  The scalding coffee burned his face and he screamed, dropped the book, and covered his face. He shot to his feet, planning to run into the kitchen, Tower assumed. So Tower kneed him in the groin, then whipped a vicious uppercut that smashed into the man’s mouth, splitting his lips and knocking several teeth onto the floor.

  Tower grabbed him by the collar and dragged him from the pantry, took away his gun and pistol-whipped him. The blow knocked the man unconscious and he landed on his face on the kitchen floor.

  Martha Jeffire used a paring knife to cut her husband free and remove the gag from his mouth.

  “Thank you,” he said to Tower. He hugged Martha, who had begun to cry. “We don’t have much time,” Jeffire said. “We have to get to the Bugle office. Now.”

  Forty-Three

  “Can’t you just tell me?” Tower asked as they ran toward the newspaper office. Jeffire ran with a wobble and massaged his wrists where the ropes had bound him.

  “It’s a very big story,” Jeffire huffed. “It would be much faster for you to see some of what I’ve found, and then I can fill in the rest of the details. Plus,” he said. “If I didn’t show you, you probably wouldn’t believe it.”

  They emerged from the side street onto the town’s commercial block.

  “Is Martha going to be all right?” Tower asked. They had walked Jeffire’s wife over to a neighbor’s and given her a gun. The neighbor had been a cavalry officer and knew how to handle a weapon.

  “She’ll be fine,” Jeffire said. “They only got me because we were surprised. They won’t catch us off guard again.”

  “Who were they?” Tower asked.

  But Jeffire was done talking, and the two men took a circuitous route toward the newspaper’s office.

  A group of cowboys had spilled out of a saloon into the street. Two were fighting, although to Tower it looked more like a drunken wrestling match than fisticuffs.

  He and Jeffire skirted the crowd and soon reached the headquarters of the Big River Bugle.

  The sounds of late-night drinkers shouting and cavorting filled the air, and in the distance they could hear the cattle bawling in their pens, protesting their newfound confinement.

  Jeffire fumbled in his pockets for a key, his hands shaking. Tower worried about the man collapsing. He himself was out of breath, and he leaned his back against a stout wooden pole that helped support the overhanging roof.

  Jeffire cursed under his breath as he struggled with the keys.

  Somewhere, a door opened then closed, and Tower cocked his head. It had sounded like it came from the other side of the building. But the only door on the other side of the building was the door to the Bugle.

  “Could there be someone else—” he began to say to Jeffire but just then the journalist turned the key in the lock and the entire night lit up in a blinding flash of white.

  Tower felt himself flung backward as something immense and powerful hit him with a force unlike anything he’d ever felt before.

  He had the sudden sense that he was airborne and all of the night sounds were gone, replaced by utter and complete silence.

  And then he was on the ground, stunned, his body a confusing mixture of pain and numbness. Tower thought of Jeffire, of how the man had been right in the front of the door while he, Tower, had been behind that post.

  The idea that Jeffire might not have survived hit him like another blow, as the memory of the door opening and closing rushed back at him. Someone had been inside, waiting for them.

  Tower thought about Bird back at the doctor’s office and how he might soon be joining her there.

  The smell of smoke surrounded him, along with shouts of people spilling out into the street.

  He recognized something about the smell of that smoke. Something mixed in that he’d gotten to know a long time ago when he had briefly worked in a mine.

  The scent was unmistakable.

  Dynamite.

  EPISODE FOUR

  Forty-Four

  “You’ve got a problem, young lady,” the doctor said. Bird was oddly captivated, either by his bright-green eyes and their intensity, or the compassion that was on full display. Whichever it was, it was a sentiment she wasn’t accustomed to having directed at her.

  “Don’t we all, Doc?” Bird asked.

  Bird glanced at the young woman on the other side of the table. The doctor’s daughter, she assumed. The thin, pale girl paid no attention to Bird as she methodically stocked the doctor’s medical kit.

  “When I saw all that blood on your front, I was certain you had been shot, most likely by a shotgun,” the doctor said. “Much to my surprise, you didn’t have a mark on you, other than some bruises on your side, some shallow lacerations, and a few deeper cuts from glass. As I understand it, you were thrown through a window?”

  “Through a window, and over a second-floor balcony,” Bird said. “It was a rather unpleasant evening.”

  “So, then I wondered,” the doctor continued. “Where did all this blood come from?”

  Bird sat up.

  “I believe I’ll be on my way, now,” she said.

  The doctor put a hand on her shoulder as she began to get to her feet. Ordinarily, Bird despised anyone touching her, but for some reason, her temper didn’t flare with the old doctor.

  “Not so fast, young lady,” he said. “I figured out the source of that bleeding.” He pointed toward Bird’s stomach. “It’s coming from right in there.”

  Bird pushed his hand away and got to her feet.

  “That’s an interesting theory,” Bird said.

  She snatched her gun belt off a hook by the door and shrugged it on around her hips.

  “I heard a rumor,” the doctor said, “that a certain Bird Hitchcock was in town. A woman as famous for her drinking as for her ability with a pair of those.” He pointed at the guns Bird was now tying down to her legs.

  “Well you shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” Bird said. “Didn’t they teach you that in medical school?”

  “I suspect it’s the drinking,” the doctor continued. “You’re shredding your insides.”

  Bird was about to respond when the door banged open.

  Two men carried in the body of Roger Jeffire, while a second set of men carried in Mike Tower.

  Jeffire was unconscious; Tower’s eyes were open and focused on Bird.

  Bird looked at Tower.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.

  Forty-Five

  Tower awoke in the morning after a long and mostly sleepless night. He’d tossed and turned, alternately feeling dizzy and nauseated from the explosion, which caused a constant ringing in his head that increased and decreased in intensity with every restless turn.

  Now, the pounding in his head was finally gone and though exhausted, he felt steady.

  The bed was actually one of four glorified cots in a small room in the doctor’s house, located next door to the actual doctor’s office. The other three beds were empty. On the wall was a painting of a flower, with deftly defined shadows that bespoke of talent. Tower wondered who had painted it.

  He stood, steadied himself as a mild wave of dizziness came and went, put his clothes on, and left the room.

 
The doctor was sitting at his desk. He looked up at Tower’s entrance.

  “Frannie!” the doctor called out. The young woman who assisted the doctor hurried into the room.

  “Find the pain medicine for Mr. Tower,” he said. Then he looked at Tower.

  “Have a seat on the table, preacher,” the doctor said. “You aren’t going anywhere until I say so.”

  Tower hesitated, then sat on the table, feeling a bit relieved to sit down after the long trek of ten feet from the spare room the doctor’s table. He knew he was a long way from feeling like himself.

  The doctor stood in front of Tower and looked at Tower’s eyes.

  “You were knocked unconscious and judging by your condition last night, I would guess that you suffered a concussion.”

  “Wonderful,” Tower said.

  The young woman reentered with a tiny glass bottle containing a brown liquid.

  “It’s good,” the doctor said as he took it from her and handed it to Tower. “I mix it up myself.”

  Tower slipped the bottle into his pocket.

  “Your pupils appear normal,” the doctor said, “and I see no signs of lingering problems. How do you feel?”

  “I feel fine. Just a little tired.”

  “That’s to be expected. Get plenty of rest for the next few days and you should be fine. Take a sip of that syrup as needed. Just don’t drink it all at once.”

  Tower hesitated and then looked around the room.

  “What happened to Jeffire?” he asked.

  The doctor shook his head. “He didn’t make it. It appears he took the brunt of the blast. Were you standing behind him?”

  “No, I was standing behind a post.”

  “It must have protected you. Jeffire wasn’t so lucky.”

  Tower got to his feet, a bit unsteady.

  “Go back to the hotel. Rest. Forget about all of this nonsense going on in town,” the doctor said, waving his hand in the general direction of Main Street. “All of that can wait.”

  Tower went to the door.

  “I’m not so sure it can, doctor.”