Hell on the Prairie (7 page)

He eyed Billy and waved at the whiskey glass
on the bar. “Cowboys down it all at once. First time anyway. Makes
drinking go easier after that. ’Sides, I bought that sumbitch for
ya.”

Billy tossed the whiskey, and swallowed. It
burned. It burned in his throat and it burned in his gullet. He had
no doubt but that it would burn his anus when it came out that end.
Then the pain went away and the fire banked into a warmth that
gradually spread through his body.

“
Not bad,” he said, his voice still
strained from the impact of the raw whiskey on his vocal chords.
“My turn. ’Nother round of whiskey for me ’n my friend.”

The man behind the bar ladled two fingers of
whiskey into the glasses. “Be a buck,” he said.

This time Billy hunted through the paper
money he’d been paid with. He found a dollar bill and passed it to
the barman.

Reckon tossed his drink.

Billy tossed his drink.

The two cowboys looked at each other squinty
eyed, tears leaking. They nodded. “Not bad,” they chorused.

The warm glow spread and everything Billy
looked at took on a rosey hue. “Rose,” he said.

“
Huh?” Reckon faced the room and
hooked his elbows on the bar.

“
Buy a drink for a lady?”

The question came at Billy’s elbow. He
glanced sideways at the woman, then did a double take. “Rose?” he
said.

“
Lily,” she said. “But I’ll answer to
Rose if you want.”

“
Lady wants a drink,” Billy said. His
lips were warm and numb, and his words slurred a little.

The barman filled a glass with something
brown. It didn’t look like whiskey, but Billy didn’t care. “Four
bits,” the barman said.

Billy gave him another dollar bill.

“
I’ll hold on to the change. She’ll be
wanting another when that one’s gone,” the barman said.

Billy nodded.
Good man, that barman.
But then, at that moment,
the whole world looked good to Billy.

“
Let’s go sit,” Lily said. “One empty
table over there.” She nodded at a table in a corner behind the
stairway at the far end of the room.

“
Sure, Rose,” Billy said.

Lily took his hand and led him to the table.
He managed to hold onto his whiskey glass and she held her glass of
brown liquid as if she’d done it many times before.

“
Hey, kid.” Long Tom lurched over to
the table. “Hang on ta that gal ’til I win me some money bucking
the tiger, then I’ll be along.” He guffawed at his own joke and
staggered away toward the roulette table.

Lily leaned over to whisper in Billy’s ear.
“I don’t want to be here when that oaf comes back. I’ve got a room
upstairs. Wanna come?”

Billy stared at Lily. She looked rosy to
him. He couldn’t see the thick powder nor the extra lip rouge. He
didn’t notice the rubbery roll around her hips, nor the crow’s feet
wrinkles in the corners of her eyes. She just looked rosy. “I think
I’ll have another drink,” he said.

“
I got booze in the room,” she said.
“You can pay me. Cheaper than paying Jigger for
everything.”

“
Jigger?”

“
The barman.”

“
Oh. All right, then.”

Lily nearly leaped to her feet. She grabbed
Billy by the hand and almost dragged him to the stairway. Billy
wagged his head, trying to spot Reckon, but couldn’t. Then they
were at the top of the stairs. “Just down the hall,” Lily said in a
low voice. She led him to a room with the name LILY over the door.
She gave Billy a smile as he watched her pull a key from her
bodice. “Nobody looks there, hardly,” she said. “Good place to keep
what a gal don’t want others to find.” She opened the door. “Come
on in,” she said. Billy did, and Lily locked the door behind
them.

“
Ain’t no place to sit but the bed,”
Lily said.

“
You said you got whiskey up here. You
said that.”

“
Sit down,” Lily said. She grabbed him
by the hand, twirled him around, and gave him a little push. The
edge of the bed caught him behind the knees and he had to sit down.
“There. That’s better.” She plucked his hat from his head and
sailed it across the room. It landed on a steamer trunk. She
sniffed Billy’s hair. “Hmmm. A bath, eh?”

“
Didn’t have no other clothes,
though,” Billy said. “Whiskey?”

“
Good Lord. Don’t you think of nothing
but drink?”

Billy ducked his head. “Do,” he said.

“
Do what?”

“
Do think of other things.”

“
Like what?”

“
Rose.”

“
That your sweetheart?”

“
Nah. Long Tom’s.”

“
No! What’re you doing thinking nasty
things about someone else’s girl?”

Billy kept his head down. “He tol’ us. He
tol’ us everthing what him and Rose did. Makes a man think.”

Lily plonked herself down by Billy. “What?
Tell me what.”

“
Cain’t. Cain’t say stuff like that to
a woman.”

“
Have anything to do with this?” Lily
patted the tent in Billy’s trousers.

All he could say was “ung.”

Lily laughed. “Maybe we could do some of
those things.”

Billy’s face went bright red. “Ah. Ah. Ah,”
he said.

“
No. No. No. Can’t be.” Lily laughed
again. “Youngster, how old are you, anyway?”

“
Sixteen, next birthday.”

“
Man growed, then.” Lily started
unbuttoning Billy’s shirt. “Just you leave it all to me, Billy Boy.
Everything’s gonna be just fine. You shut your eyes and lay back
and leave it all to me.”

Billy did what he was told.

In the morning light, Billy could see all
the wrinkles and bulges that Lily had, but he didn’t care. “Gotta
get back to the herd,” he said. He put an eagle on the commode.
“This enough?”

“
More than enough, Billy
Below.”

“
Whaddaya mean, Billy
Below?”

“
I’ll always know how you like it,
Billy Below.”

Billy grinned as he left the Lucky Break.
Billy Below. A good name for a droving cowboy.

When Billy signed on with Tobias Breedlove
at the T-Bar-B to help watch after the herd through the winter,
that’s how he signed his name.

Billy Below.

THE END

THE OATH

by

Clay More

When he first entered the spartanly
furnished room, Doctor Logan Munro had thought that the baby was
about to die. Its breathing was harsh, rasping, and the cough was
pitiful to hear.

The air was thick with the acrid smell of
tobacco. As soon as his eyes accustomed themselves to the pall of
smoke that made the dim circle of light thrown out from an oil-lamp
even dimmer, he began to assess the situation.

“
He’s here with my ma,” chirped up
Tommy Brewster, the seven-year-old boy who had been sent to summon
him.

His stepfather was a large red-faced man
with a full beard, whom Logan recognized as Rob Parker –the chief
bartender at The Lucky Break Saloon. He was sprawled over the bed,
resting his head on a bank of pillows. He had a half-empty bottle
of whiskey in one hand, and a smoldering cigarette in the other. He
squinted belligerently at Logan.

“
You took you-sh time, Munro,” he
slurred. “My kid is sick and…”

Logan ignored him and crossed to the
distraught and frightened mother, who was rocking back and forth as
she tried to placate the badly distressed baby.

“
Please, Doctor Munro, help him,” she
pleaded. “He can’t breathe.”

“
You besht give him medicine quick,
Munro,” the drunken bartender said, swinging his legs off the bed
and rising unsteadily to his feet.

Logan turned to him and jabbed the man’s
chest with his forefinger. “You are a disgrace, sir. You are both
drunk and disrespectful. You will address me as Doctor Munro in the
future.” He grabbed the cigarette stub and tossed it into the open
front of the Pot Belly stove that was blazing away nearby. “For
now,” he said, “take yourself out of this sick room, get rid of
that whiskey, and do not dare come back in with a cigarette.”

“
You better not talk…”

“
Get out now, Rob Parker, before I
manhandle you out. You are wasting precious time.”

“
Please, Rob, the baby,” Mollie Parker
begged. “Just go and let the doctor look at little
Kenny.”

Rob Parker lumbered out.

“
Tommy, open that window and let some
clean air in, please,” Logan said. He doffed his hat and bent to
examine the baby.

“
How long has he been breathing as bad
as this, Mollie?”

“
About four hours. He’d been stuffed
up all day, but this evening he started to burn up, and the cough
just got worse and worse. From around midnight, his cough has
sometimes sounded like a puppy dog barking.”

“
Hold him firm while I have a look
down his throat,” he said. He reached into his bag, moving aside
the Beaumont-Adams revolver that he always kept there, to bring out
a tongue depressor and a small mirror. He angled the mirror so that
he could reflect some light from the lamp into the baby’s mouth,
while he eased the tongue down to see the throat.

There were two things he hoped not to see.
First was a purulent web-like membrane that was typical of
diphtheria. That would be really bad news, because an epidemic
could spread like wildfire through a town like Wolf Creek. The
immediate danger with such a discovery was that it could instantly
block off the baby’s airway and choke him to death.

The second thing was a cherry red
protuberance down the back of the throat if the epiglottis was
inflamed. The trouble in that case was that it was so easy to send
the larynx into spasm to shut down the whole of the throat, again
with catastrophic results. If either was present, Logan was ready
to perform an immediate tracheostomy, by making an incision in the
baby’s throat between the Adam’s apple and the cricoid cartilage
just below it. He kept a small wooden case with a fresh scalpel and
a silver tube for just such an emergency in his black bag.

But fortunately, there was no evidence of
either. He withdrew the tongue depressor.

“
Is…is it the diphtheria, Doctor? My
sister died from it when I was about Tommy’s age.”

Logan drew out his stethoscope and fitted
the earpieces into his ears. “No, Mollie. It isn’t diphtheria, it’s
just a bad case of croup.” He listened to the infant’s chest for a
few moments then looked up and nodded. “We can settle him down nice
and easy.” He turned to young Tommy. “Close that window again, son,
then go and call your father in. I need him to stoke that stove and
fetch as much water as possible in your kettle and in a couple of
pans.”

As the youngster went off with the message,
Logan explained. “The linings of his upper air passages are
inflamed, raw, and bulging. They need steam to reduce them. We need
to fill up the room with steam, and you’ll see him settle before
your very eyes.”

***

It took an hour for young Kenny Parker’s
breathing to calm down, and another hour for the cough to subside
enough to satisfy Logan that he could safely leave the child for a
while.

By that time, Rob Parker had sobered up
some.

“
I’m sorry, Doctor Munro,” he said,
somewhat sheepishly. “I guess I was worried about our little boy.
When I get nervous I reach for the bottle.” He scratched his beard.
“And I have to admit that I probably had a couple too many last
night at The Lucky Break. Dab Henry was in a celebrating mood about
something that he didn’t want to tell us about. That usually means
he’s clinched some sort of business deal.”

Logan shrugged dismissively. He was aware of
Mayor Dab Henry’s varied business activities. He didn’t consider
them to be any of his concern.

“
Just don’t smoke near your son for a
few days,” he said.

“
We can’t thank you enough, Dr Munro,”
Mollie said, placing a hand on his arm as he snapped his bag closed
and prepared to leave.

“
My pleasure, Mollie. I have to admit
that I was relieved to find that it wasn’t diphtheria
myself.”

It was close to seven o’clock by the time he
left their clapboard house on the east of town that looked directly
out on the Wolf Creek River itself, and made his way back to his
office and home at the corner of Second Street and Washington
Street. It was too late to go back to bed, but too early to stop at
Ma’s Café to sample one of Stephanie Adam’s fine breakfasts.
Accordingly, he let himself into his office and sat down at his
roll-top desk, where he had left the notes that he was preparing
for his monograph on Venereal Diseases. After almost twenty years
spent practicing medicine and surgery, his body was used to doing
with less sleep than most people.

He charged his meerschaum pipe from the
tobacco jar on top of his desk and struck a light to it. When it
was going to his satisfaction, he shuffled through his papers and
then set to write the section on syphilitic chancres, the painless
ulcers that formed on the genitals at the start of the condition.
There had certainly been no shortage of cases in Wolf Creek over
the time that he had practiced there, and at one time he had
thought that it would be good to publish his monograph complete
with photographic plates of them. He had toyed with asking some of
his less particular patients if they would mind their private parts
being captured for the benefit of science. Against that was the
fact that he would have to hire the services of Wil Marsh, the Wolf
Creek photographer. He personally doubted that the man could be
trusted not to keep copies and exploit them in some way. Marsh
struck Logan as being the sort of chap who would dig up and sell
his grandmother’s coffin if he could make money from it.