West of the Big River: Boxed Set of Eight Western Novels

by James Reasoner

  When Major Jones came in to see if he could interrogate his prisoner, Dr. Davis looked at the senior Ranger then cast his eyes to the floor and shook his head from side to side. "He might last the day out, but I wouldn’t count on it."

  Major Jones stepped to Sam’s bedside and looked down at the young man’s face. He asked, "Sam, are you awake?"

  Sam was lying on his back. His eyes fluttered open upon hearing the voice. His head ached and his vision was bleared and fuzzy, not allowing any recognition of who was there. "Where am I?" he asked.

  Major Jones pulled up a chair and sat. "You’re at the doctor’s office." The Major waited a moment, considering his next words. "You’ve been shot pretty bad, Sam. One of our men, Deputy Grimes, was killed over at the store. Can you tell me who shot him?"

  Sam swallowed. "I never intended to hurt anyone, and if it was my bullet that killed the deputy, then it’s the first man that I ever killed."

  Major Jones pushed for more. "We both know that your robbing days are over, Sam, but I don’t believe that you’ll hang. Can you tell me where Frank Jackson went? There’s no need for him to be chased and shot, just taken into custody for his own good. We need to put this whole thing to rest."

  Sam blinked his eyes. "I won’t hang because you know I’m going to die. I don’t know where Frank went, I’ve got nothing more to say."

  Major Jones left when Sam closed his eyes. He figured to let the man rest some then maybe question him later.

  Sam did make it through the night and on into the next day which happened to be his 27th birthday. By noon his condition had grown worse. The doctor had summoned Major Jones.

  When Major Jones walked in, the doctor let him know his prognosis. "It’ll be any time now."

  Major Jones approached Sam’s bedside, hopeful to make one last plea. "Sam, I think you know you don’t have long. Why won’t you tell me of Frank Jackson’s whereabouts?"

  Sam answered in a subdued, halting voice that was barely audible. "Because it is ag’in my profession to blow on my pals. If a man knows anything then he ought to die with it!"

  Major Jones stared at Sam. "Even if it might save a man’s life?"

  Sam rolled his head to look away from Major Jones without responding.

  At four o’clock Dr. Davis sent a messenger to tell Major Jones that Sam Bass had died.

  Epilogue

  The fate of the six men who held up and robbed Express #4 in Big Springs, Nebraska has only been partially brought to light. Joel Collins and John (Skeeter) Wilcox died in the shootout on the plains of Kansas eight days after the robbery. Willie Jacobs and Tom Nixon escaped to eastern Nebraska where they split. Tom Nixon went north into Canada and disappeared.

  Willie Jacobs was intent on making it to his home farm in northern Missouri near the town of Mexico. On October 14th, less than thirty days after the robbery at Big Springs, Willie Jacobs was shot by a waiting sheriff’s posse and later died from his wounds. Of the loot he carried, only about two thousand eight hundred dollars was recovered.

  Sam Bass and Jack Davis made it back to Texas where they split up. Jack Davis escaped to New Orleans and possibly South America. His whereabouts remains a mystery.

  Sam Bass celebrated his return to Denton in revelry. It was but a short time later that he formed a gang of his own to lead.

  Of the six men in the newly formed Bass gang in Texas, Arkansas Johnson was gunned down in the thickets in Salt Creek. Henry Underwood escaped and was never heard from again, suggesting that he most likely changed his name and left the Denton area for good, possibly back to his relatives in Nebraska.

  Seaborn Barnes was killed in the alley next to Kopel’s store in Round Rock.

  Sam Bass died from his gunshot wounds two days after the shooting in Round Rock. Ironically, Sam’s funeral was similar to that of his original mentor, Claude Radkin. The attendees would have been the gravediggers only, except after they had loaded Sam’s pine coffin in a wagon and headed to the gravesite they passed by a Methodist minister’s house on the way. The minister joined in and conducted a Christian funeral for the former bandit.

  Afterwards a woman working in a cotton field nearby observed that a young man on a big bay horse came to the gravesite. He dismounted and stood there for a moment then threw a clod of dirt onto the grave, mounted the horse, and left. It may have been that Frank Jackson, under Sam Bass’s tutelage, had learned ways to elude a posse and had come back to pay a final tribute to his leader. One thing is for sure. Jackson managed to escape the Rangers' search of the surrounding areas. It’s possible he rode north back to Homer Wiggins' place in Stephens County or changed his name and moved to some other locale. Perhaps Sam, lying mortally wounded, when he dismissed Jackson from his side in the woods, had told the youth the whereabouts of his remaining share of the Big Springs robbery. Sam had less than one hundred dollars in his pockets when searched. Frank Jackson was not seen again.

  Jim Murphy went back to his father’s place near Cove Hollow. He died less than a year later from ingesting poison. Some say he took the poison voluntarily, out of remorse. Others speculate it was the work of Frank Jackson avenging the death of Sam Bass.

  The one certain thing is that Sam Bass and his legacy of banditry had passed into history.

  About the Author

  Jerry Guin is best known as a short story writer with 28 to his credit. His book, "Trail Dust" captures 12 of those stories.

  Jerry has written "Matsutake Mushroom," a nature guide book. He wrote his first western novel, "Drover’s Vendetta" in 2011. Followed by "Drover’s Bounty," a Black Horse Western released by Robert Hale Ltd. August 2013.

  Recently he had stories appear in the following anthologies, "Outlaws and Lawmen" by La Frontera publishing and "Six-Guns and Slay Bells, A Creepy Cowboy Christmas" by Western Fictioneers. Also through Western Fictioneers, Jerry wrote chapter one of "Wolf Creek, Dog Leg City, Book 3."

  Jerry lives in the extreme Northern California community of Salyer with his wife Ginny.

  West of the Big River

  The Doctor

  A Novel Based on the

  Life of Dr. George Goodfellow

  Clay More

  West of the Big River: The Doctor by Clay More

  Copyright © 2014 Clay More

  Western Fictioneers

  Cover Design L. J. Washburn

  Western Fictioneers logo design by Jennifer Smith-Mayo

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictional manner. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Chapter 1

  THE OATH

  Tombstone, Arizona Territory, 1891

  Dr. George Goodfellow removed his stethoscope from the man’s bare back and went back to his roll-top desk.

  “You can get dressed now, Stanley,” he said as he picked up his pen and made some notes on the record card in front of him. “You have a slight bronchial irritation, but nothing too serious. I’ll make up a cough linctus for you and drop it off at your office before lunch.”

  Stanley C. Bagg, the five-foot tall owner and editor of the Tombstone Prospector and laterally, also the owner of the Tombstone Epitaph, tucked his shirt into his pants and pulled on his jacket. Then he pulled out a pair of wire-framed spectacles from his breast pocket and settled them on his thin nose.

  “Thank you, George,” he said, standing and immediately provoking a coughing fit. He covered his mouth with his hand and then thumped the front of his chest, which seemed to have the desired effect in stopping the cough. “I guess i
t is inhaling all that darned paper dust and ink fumes that does it.”

  The two men were old friends, as were their wives and daughters. Or at least, their wives had been good friends until the month before when Dr. Goodfellow’s wife Katherine died in Oakland from the tuberculosis that had plagued her for years. And both men were known to be forthright in their opinions and in their manners. Stanley was a bullish, combative newspaperman who for all his lack of height was a formidable man to cross. He had been prepared to serve a jail sentence for contempt of court when he refused to pay a fine imposed upon him by District Judge Barnes. Fortunately, several of his friends, including his friend and doctor had donated money to keep the newspaperman out of jail, while leaving his personal integrity intact.

  As for Dr. George Emory Goodfellow, he had built the premier medical practice in Tombstone and garnered a considerable reputation throughout the Southwest as the surgeon to have operating on you, if you had a choice. He was prepared to push back the frontiers of his craft and perform operations that no one had tried before or even thought to be possible.

  “It is probably more to do with those evil-smelling cigars that you insist on smoking. I’ve told you before, you are poisoning your system.”

  Stanley guffawed. “And that is coming from a man who was advising me that a good pipe keeps a lot of diseases away when we were chatting just last week.”

  George stood up. He was taller than the newspaperman. He was thirty-six years old and powerfully built, like the boxing champion he had been at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in his youth. He had been hotheaded back then and gotten involved in a fight at the Academy, the result being a win for George. Unfortunately, his prize was expulsion and discharge for lack of respect for discipline. That had been the time when he had chosen to make his career in medicine.

  He had black hair with a central parting, a full mustache and steely eyes that could smolder with anger, twinkle with amusement or which could be reassuring in the extreme. As usual he was wearing a bow tie and a dark suit with his polished knee high boots.

  He pointed to the wall above his desk upon which hung his framed medical degree beside a framed copy of the Hippocratic Oath, and in a small glass-fronted box a silver double-headed eagle medallion of Austria, which had once been the property of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. Stanley had written an article about it when it had been presented to Doctor George Goodfellow by President Porfirio Diaz, along with a horse named El Rosillo in 1888 following the Sonora earthquake. They were given as tokens of Mexican esteem after he had loaded up his wagon with medical supplies and led a party ninety miles to Bavispe, Sonora, Mexico to treat survivors and injured. Then in the following months he had returned along with Camillus Sidney Fly, the town photographer, to study and record the effects of the earthquake. Together they travelled over seven hundred miles through the Sierra Madre Mountains. Both Camillus Fly’s photographs and George Goodfellow’s maps and reports earned national praise. The photographs of the earthquake rupture scarp were widely syndicated and George’s geological study had been praised by the united States Geological Service.

  Stanley knew that his friend was proud of the award, yet he was far prouder of the fact that the townsfolk of Bavispe had called him El Santo Doctor, the sainted doctor. His fluency in Spanish had helped, since he could communicate, explain and reassure the injured in their own tongue. It was typical of the man that he cared more about what his patients thought of him as a doctor than he did for all the accolades and prestige that he seemed to accumulate with little effort. He was just a natural subject for newspaper coverage, one of those characters that the frontier seemed to throw up every now and then.

  But it was to the framed Oath that George directed his attention. “See that Hippocratic Oath, Stanley?” he asked rhetorically. “You know as well as I do that I live by it, as best I can. If I take someone on as a patient I’ll give him or her the best treatment I can and advise them to the best of my ability. You have to accept that sometimes, like when we were chatting last week, my best may be impaired. If you recall we were playing poker at the time in the Crystal Palace saloon and we had both drunk four or five whiskies. I actually said that a good pipe kept some diseases away, on account of pipe tobacco’s natural ability to keep pesky flies and bluebottles away from the vicinity. And as you well know, the good Lord blessed us here in Tombstone with more than our fair share of the creatures.”

  His hands went up to grasp the lapels of his coat, a slightly pompous mannerism of his that many folks found intimidating, because it was usually accompanied by a slight raising of his jaw and a triumphant twinkle in his eye that signaled, at least in his mind, that he had either won, or was about to win an argument.

  “So, my friend, you can see that the advice I gave you was the best I could give under the circumstances.”

  Stanley opened his mouth to protest when there was a sudden commotion from the waiting room outside. Voices were raised and there were exclamations of amazement. Then there was the noise of heavy boots racing across the wood floor and a beating on the door was followed by it being immediately thrown open.

  “Doc Goodfellow! You’ve got to come over to Campbell and Hatch’s Pool Parlor. There’s a guy dying there.”

  George recognized the messenger as Walt Harper, one of the ushers from the Schieffelin Hall. He could see the panic in his face.

  “I didn’t hear any shooting. What is it, a knifing?”

  “It’s Red Douglas. He’s choking and seems to be having some kind of fit.”

  The doctor had already sprung into action. He had grabbed his black bag then dashed to a cupboard from which he took out a couple of small wooden cases which he threw into the bag.

  “Stanley, don’t you come. That cough will start up if you try to run. Get going, Walt, I’m right behind you.”

  “And miss a story?” Stanley rejoined him. “Not on your life. I’ll just take the stairs nice and easy and I’ll meet you there.”

  But the town doctor had already gone. As he charged through the waiting room he barked a quick, “Emergency call, folks. I should be back in half an hour.”

  Then he was out the door and dashing down the outer steps of the Crystal Palace Saloon from his office.

  As was often the case when folks saw Dr. Goodfellow racing someplace he attracted a number of followers who tagged on behind him. Tombstone was that sort of place. It had a lot of folks who seemed to have an unhealthy interest in sudden death. As long as it wasn’t their own.

  * * *

  It took a matter of moments for George and his unwanted entourage to dash around the corner onto Allen Street and enter Campbell and Hatch’s Saloon and Billiard Parlor.

  Dr. George Goodfellow had set up his shingle on the second floor of the Crystal Palace Saloon in 1882, when the saloon had been built by Frederick Wehrfritz after the old Golden Eagle Brewery had burned down in the second of two Tombstone fires. The first fire a year earlier had been started when someone dropped a cigar on a barrel of whiskey in the Arcade Saloon. It burned down several other buildings on Allen Street, including the original Campbell and Hatch Saloon and over sixty other businesses.

  There was a crowd gathered by one of the pool tables. At the doctor’s entrance shouts went up and the crowd parted to reveal a man writhing on the floor, clawing at his throat, his heavy-bearded face almost purple and his eyes rolled upwards so that most of the whites of his eyes were showing. He was convulsing, his boots beating out a macabre tattoo on the floor.

  “Give me room!” George cried, shoving a couple of onlookers roughly aside.

  He knelt by the man and quickly assessed the situation. The man’s mouth was open and lodged inside was what at first sight appeared to be a green apple. But as George put a finger on it, it became clear that it was a green clay ball from a 15 ball pool set.

  “We couldn’t get it out, Doc,” someone said.

  “Yeah, he threw a couple of us off when we tried to help him,” volunteere
d another.

  “The damned fool had won and was doing his usual showing off trick. He put that whole ball in his mouth.”

  “Only he couldn’t get it out for some reason,” another said, stating the obvious.

  “His breathing is obstructed,” Dr. Goodfellow announced. “How long has he been having a fit like this?”

  “Three, maybe four minutes.”

  The doctor straightened to his feet. He pointed to the nearest four men. “You and you take an arm each and you two each take a leg. Hoist him up on this table.”

  With a sweep of his arms he sent balls from an abandoned game to the side wall of the table.

  “Where’s Bob Hatch?” he asked as the convulsing man was manhandled onto the table.

  “He’s at the Post Office. You want me to fetch him?” Walt Harper said.

  “No,” George replied as he opened his bag and drew out the two wooden cases he had brought with him. “I just wanted to warn him that I’m about to mess one of his tables. There will be blood.”

  He opened the first case and took out a scalpel. “Get me whiskey,” he snapped.

  One of the bartenders promptly threw a bottle to one of the crowd and it was uncorked and presented to the doctor.