“Damn it, he could have damaged the wound site!” George said. “Is he still in bed?”
“He’s gone! He said he needed whiskey to kill the pain. Then he…he said he was going to find you and kill you!” She shuddered. “I was in two minds about sending for the marshal before you got here.”
“Oh, he said that, did he?” George asked, two little patches of red showing on his cheeks. “Well, thank you, Sister,” he said, as he opened his black bag and took out the wooden box that normally housed his tracheotomy tube. He replaced it and snapped the lid shut. “I’ll go and see if I can find him. Did he say which saloon he was going to get whiskey from?”
“He did not,” Sister Mary replied, looking quite concerned. “You are not seriously going to go and look for him, are you? He looks as if he could wrestle with a bear and come off best.” She shook her head in exasperation. “Doctor Goodfellow, he said he was going to kill you!”
George Goodfellow’s chin rose and his jaw set firmly. “He can try, Sister Mary. But not before I have given him my medical bill and made the ruffian pay it.”
Chapter 3
SCIENCE IS THE KEY
Red Douglas was nowhere to be found. George started his search at Campbell and Hatch’s Pool Parlor, where he asked the big miner’s pool-playing friends who were still there where he was likely to be found. They listed half a dozen saloons, but no one had seen him since the drama of the morning.
George tried a few of the saloons before he gave up. Other than visiting the hundred or so others in Tombstone, he decided to just wait until Red Douglas showed up again. Apart from which, having had a whisky in three of the saloons he had no wish to slow his reflexes any further.
He was actually very confident in his own ability to deal with most physical threats, having been the boxing champion at Annapolis, as well as having fought and won several fist fights in various mining camps earlier in his career. To win those unruly brawls simply meant being the last man standing.
Nevertheless, he was aware that the miner was a huge man with muscles hardened by a life of toil, so if needs be he would have no compunction about using the four-inch triple-edged Italian poniard that he habitually carried in a concealed sheath behind his back. He had used it a couple of years before and had been taken to court and fined $25 for stabbing Frank White after a fight occasioned by a heavy loss at cards the night before. George had consumed more whiskey than was good for him on that occasion, which was another reason for discontinuing his current search. He had enough insight to realize that whiskey had a tendency to bring out the worst in him and turn steadfastness into belligerence.
He reached under his coat and patted the poniard. Its presence reassured him as he walked home. Yet although he was calmness personified as he strutted along, swinging his bag in one hand and whistling a merry air, yet he was carefully watching every alleyway as he went, just in case Red Douglas should be lurking, waiting on his opportunity to make good his threat.
But there was no sudden attack. As would become apparent later, Red Douglas had left Tombstone to go off to let his wounded throat heal. His temper would be another matter.
* * *
It was mid-afternoon before he let himself into his house on First Street, which he had bought from Wyatt Earp when Wyatt left Tombstone for Albuquerque. It suited him well, since it was not far from his office and yet was far enough away from the rowdiness occasioned by the multiplicity of saloons. He especially liked it when Edith was staying with him, as she was at the moment.
Edith was twelve years old and the apple of George Goodfellow’s eye. She had been badly upset by the death of her mother and so George had decided to keep her with him until the grieving was over. He was fortunate in having Stella Rimmington, Edith’s old governess and now George’s housekeeper and chief defender of his reputation. She had been widowed in her early twenties and had supported herself since then as a ladies' companion, children’s governess and occasionally as a schoolteacher. She was now in her late forties and had worked and lived with the Goodfellows for twelve years, being employed by Katherine Goodfellow when she first became pregnant with Edith. Then as Katherine’s health started to falter she became Edith’s governess and when Edith went away to school she stayed on as George’s housekeeper and cook.
Not a soul in Tombstone would have dared to cast any aspersions about the propriety of Dr. Goodfellow sharing a house with his housekeeper, for both of them were well known for their fire. George would counter any such slur with rhetoric or his fists if needs be, while Stella would not be averse to giving an offender a good tongue-lashing. It wasn’t that Stella Rimmington wasn’t an attractive woman, more that George Goodfellow, who enjoyed female company well enough, made it a policy never to get involved with either patients or employees.
“Daddy, come quick,” Edith called from the back of the house as George let himself in, stowed his medical bag on the hall stand and hung his hat up. “Lucrezia looks poorly.”
Stella Rimmington appeared from the kitchen door. “She’s been worrying all morning, Doctor Goodfellow, sir,” she stated formally, the way she always addressed him, since that was her way of maintaining strict boundaries between them. “Although how she can tell one of those ugly creatures from the other, is beyond me.”
“They all have their own distinct features and their own personalities, Stella. I have told you before.”
Stella stood wiping her hands on her apron. “I am not convinced about that, Doctor, just as I am not convinced that it is safe to have a dozen of these Gila Monsters living with people.”
“Daddy, can you come and look at her... please?”
“Coming, Edith, my dear.” he replied.
Then to Stella: “They are not exactly living with us, Stella. They are all of them housed in their own enclosures. Which again is how Edith can tell them apart.”
“But they are poisonous, Doctor! Everyone knows that. Your friend Doctor Handy from Tucson told me that when he was last here.”
“I am not sure that he exactly meant that, Stella. I think he may have meant that bites from them can go septic. The same applies to any kind of bite.”
“I am sure that he said they were poisonous, Doctor. Anyway, surely it is not a good idea to let a young girl like Edith get too close to them? They are not proper pets for a young girl. They…they are bound to bring bad luck.”
George gave a harrumph of irritation. If there was one thing that annoyed him about Stella it was her tendency to be superstitious. “They are not her pets, Stella. They are all my specimens in a study I am making of them. It is called science. It’s the key to learning.”
Edith popped her head around the back door. “Daddy, I am really worried.”
George lost his irritation immediately when he saw his daughter. She had her mother’s sparkling eyes and a pretty, smiling mouth that never failed to melt his heart.
He laughed and crossed to the door to give her an affectionate tousle of the hair. “Lead the way, Edith, my dear.”
She responded by giving him a hug before immediately turning on her heel and dashing out. George followed her outside to the back yard, in an area of which George had employed Zach Donoghue, a carpenter and housepainter, to section off into a dozen four by four foot enclosures, each with a five feet high wall, containing its own pile of stones arranged inside like a mini cave and with sufficient room for the Gila Monsters to dig burrows or to bask in the sun if they had a mind to. Zach had built them well so that they were escape proof, yet with holes high up on the fences for Edith to view them through.
George had always encouraged Edith to be enquiring and to develop a scientific mind, like his own. And in this he had been successful, for her greatest joy was in reading and doing experiments. Her favorite book was a leather-bound volume of The Magic of Science: A Manual of Easy and Instructive Scientific Experiments, by James Wylde. It was an old book published in 1861, that George had been given when he was a ten-year-old youngster by his fathe
r, Milton Goodfellow. Milton Goodfellow had been a Forty-Niner and professional mining engineer who had been educated at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, where he had taken classes in medicine and dentistry along with his mining studies. With his love of science and learning and a smattering of medicine the senior Goodfellow was also always referred to as Dr. Goodfellow.
The love of science and experimentation had filtered through the three generations.
Ever since Dr. John Handy had described the case of his Gila-bitten patient a few months before when he had visited George from Tucson to discuss a number of shared medical interests, and expounded on his view that they were poisonous, George had passionately thrown himself into studying Gila Monsters. He doubted that they were poisonous to humans and thought that they merited further study.
As he always did when he decided to do something, he did it without sparing a thought of expense. He offered locals five dollars a specimen, the result being his significant collection of Gilas, ranging from nine to a couple of dozen inches in length. He found the orange, yellow and black beaded-scale reptiles quite fascinating.
And Edith had named each and every one of them. Despite the fact that George tried to persuade her to name them simply, yet she had chosen names that were in keeping with the Gila Monsters’ supposedly toxic nature. He supposed that Stella had assisted her in either giving them the names of various poisoners from history, or the names of their victims. Hence her two favorites were Lucrezia, a large, coral pink, plump bodied specimen two feet long named after Lucrezia Borgia, and Socrates, a smaller yellow and black fellow of a mere twelve inches, named after the ancient Greek philosopher who had drunk a cup of hemlock.
Edith hopped onto a wooden box that she used to reach the viewing peephole in Lucrezia’s enclosure fence. “See Daddy, she’s just lying there half in and half out of her cave. I think she looks sick and she’s barely moving.”
George looked over the fence and laughed. “I think she’s fine, Edith. She’s just sleeping it off.”
“Sleeping what off, Daddy?”
“Her meal. I put two mice in there this morning. She’s just digesting. That’s enough food for her for a week or so. Look!” And he clapped his hands, the result being that Lucrezia disdainfully got up and shuffled around into her cave of stones. “She was just lying in the sun.”
George chuckled and went around the other enclosures and checked a couple of the other inmates of his Gila zoo, who happened also to be basking rather than resting inside their burrows as Gila Monsters were wont to do in the heat of the day.
“And in fact, I think that’s quite what I’d like to do before we sample the delicious cake that Stella seems to be baking for us.”
“You want to lie out in the sun?” Edith asked with a puzzled expression that made her nose wrinkle most attractively. It was another feature that she had inherited from her mother.
“No, not out in the sun, but I’d quite like to lie down and take a nap before we have coffee and cake.”
Edith jumped on the box to look at Lucrezia again. She heaved a sigh of relief. “I’m glad she’ll be all right. I still can’t believe that they don’t need to drink the way that all other creatures do.”
“I told you, Edith, that’s because they are adapted to survive. They get the water they need from their prey and they store up fat in their tails.”
Edith jumped down and took his hand. “Can we go to the Snake Ranch soon? I’d like to see what my brands look like on my cattle.”
George laughed and squeezed her little hand. “Maybe soon, when my practice gets a little less busy.”
A few months ago, when his wife Katherine’s health was taking a turn for the worse over in Oakland where his mother lived, he had registered a brand in Edith’s name, for his cattle on the Snake Ranch that he co-owned over Sonora way. Every few months he tried to go over and inspect things, combining it with a trip to oversee his share of the nearby Providencia Gold mine.
He was just leading the way inside, playfully swinging Edith’s arm back and forth when he heard Stella talking to someone at the front door. His heart sank slightly, for he knew that it was likely to be a request to see a patient. And that would mean no nap, and possibly no cake.
George recognized the voice of Carlton Levine, the head schoolteacher of the Tombstone School.
“Carlton, can I help you?” he asked.
“Mr. Levine was just telling me that his wife is ill,” Stella said. “He was wondering if you could call on her. I told him that we would be having coffee and cake soon.”
George clicked his tongue. “It’s been a busy day, Carlton, but I’m here and listening. Come into the parlor and tell me what’s wrong. Maybe Stella will serve us all some cake.”
Carlton Levine was as tall as George and just a couple of years younger. He had a kindly face crowned by a mop of curly black hair. He was well-liked by the pupils of the school and by their parents who all felt that he was giving them as good an education as they could possibly expect without sending their youngsters off to an expensive fee-paying school back east. That was in fact precisely what the Goodfellows had done with Edith, yet it had never affected George’s relationship with Carlton Levine, for he was aware that the Goodfellows had been cautious about Edith’s health ever since their son, little George junior had died in infancy back in 1882. George had told him about it.
“To be honest, George, if you don’t mind, I’d just as soon not come in. If there as any chance of you coming to see her straight away, I would appreciate it.”
George nodded and reached for his medical bag and his hat. “Lead on, Carlton.”
As they walked up First Street and along Safford Street towards the Levines’ two story house on the other side of the road from St Paul’s Episcopal Church, George quizzed the schoolteacher.
“So what’s been the trouble?”
“Esme’s in agony, George. I’ve never seen her like this. She had been feeling a bit queasy at breakfast and felt a bit worse at lunchtime. I didn’t think too much about it then, but when I got home after school she was vomiting and she’s been doubled up with stomach pains.”
“How have you felt yourself?”
“Fine. We’ve eaten the same meals, so I don’t think it can be anything she ate.”
A few minutes later George was sitting at Esme Levine’s bedside, taking a medical history while her husband stood anxiously at the threshold.
“So it’s pain that comes in spasms and you’ve been sick four or five times?” he recapped.
Esme Levine was a pretty blonde-haired woman of thirty-one years who had come to Tombstone with her husband in 1887 when he had been appointed head schoolteacher at the age of twenty-nine. She had also been a teacher, but when they came to Tombstone they had decided that she would not work, but would give private lessons in art and be at home to support Carlton. The walls of the bedroom were covered with impressive samples of her artwork.
George had seen her professionally on a couple of occasions and knew that her health was fragile, rather as his own wife Katherine’s had been. He also suspected that she may have been trying to conceive a child and had been finding it hard to do.
“That’s right, Doctor Goodfellow. I…I feel so thirsty as well.” She looked up at her husband. “Carlton, could you get me a glass of water, please?”
While Carlton was out of the room George examined her. She watched his face as he palpated her abdomen.
“What is it?” she asked anxiously as she saw his eyebrows rise momentarily.
“When was your last monthly show, Esme?”
She took a sharp intake of breath and shook her head. “No! No! That’s not right. It…it’s impossible.”
Carlton came back in the room with the glass of water. “What’s impossible, Esme?”
George saw the look of panic in her eyes. He assumed it was not the right moment for a discussion. He needed time to talk with his patient and the best way was to do it alone.
&nb
sp; “I haven’t finished my examination yet, Carlton. I need to perform a more intimate examination, so maybe you could give us ten minutes?”
Carlton glanced at his wife. She sipped water then nodded.
“Please Carlton, let Doctor Goodfellow do what he needs to do.”
“Well, as it happens, I need to collect some things from school for The Microscopical Society meeting tonight. You’re coming, aren’t you, George?”
George had been the secretary of the local science and philosophical club since the early ‘80s and had given several lectures on a variety of his medical, scientific and geological studies. “God willing, I’ll be there. You’re talking tonight about chess, aren’t you.”
“That’s right, about Checkers, Chess and Chase Board games, actually. I need to pick up some of the games I had been using to teach the children about tactics. Games are a good way of keeping hold of the children's interest.” He smiled. “It’ll take me about ten minutes.” He bend down and gave his wife a chaste kiss on the cheek. “I’ll be back then, my dear.”
Esme Levine patted the back of his hand and gave him a winsome smile. “I’ll be fine, Carlton,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
* * *
After performing an internal examination and then going to wash his hands, George returned to the bedroom and sat down beside the bed.
“I thought you might be pregnant.”
“I sort of realized that. That’s why I said it was impossible.”
“Why were you so sure?”
“Because we haven’t…we haven’t lain together like a husband and wife in over a year.”
“Your abdomen feels like it has a sixteen week pregnancy, but after doing the internal examination I know that you are not pregnant.”
Her eyes grew wide with alarm.
“Esme, you have a tumor in your abdomen. It may be what we call a fibroid, or it could be…”
West of the Big River: Boxed Set of Eight Western Novels Page 70