Longarm and the Wyoming Woman (14 page)

“Jed, I'm going to try and stop this bleeding and . . .”

The rancher rolled his head back and forth on his scarred kitchen table. “Get me pen and paper, Addie. I'm going to write my will. I want you to see that my boy gets my cattle sale money. Will you do that?”

“Of course! But . . .”

“Listen to me, girl!” Jed spat up blood and struggled for breath. When it came, he whispered, “Addie, I want you to have my ranch. It borders your own. I want you to have it and never let Stoneman get his meat hooks into it! Hear me?”

Longarm could see that the old man was floating in and out of consciousness. His breath was coming in spasms. There was blood all over the table and dripping onto the floor. It was incredible that Jed Dodson was still hanging on.

“Addie, bury me beside my missus! Will you do that?”

Addie was sobbing while Longarm found writing materials. “I'll do that,” Addie promised.

Somehow, Jed Dodson scribbled out a hasty will, and then he whispered, “Aw, Addie, I'm seein' a sky of gold and pink and it's prettier than a rainbow, all . . . all waitin' for me to ride that cloud to the Promised Land. Addie!”

Before she could answer, the old cattleman was gone.

“Is that young man still alive?” Addie asked after a few minutes of silence.

Longarm twisted around and looked at the gunman. “He was when I brought him in, but he's hurt bad.”

Addie stroked Jed's cheek for a moment, and then she took a deep breath and said, “We'd better try to save that young man even if he does work for Wade Stoneman.”

“If we can, then we've got a witness that will testify against Stoneman. Addie, that man could be the key to bringing Stoneman to trial. If you can save him, then do it.”

They carried Jed Dodson into the parlor and laid him out on the floor. Then Longarm lifted the man he'd badly wounded up onto the table so that Addie could attend to him.

“Help me get him undressed,” Addie ordered. “He has been hit by scattershot from his knees up to his neck. He's bleeding from about five places, but I won't know if he has any chance to live until I can do a full body examination.”

Longarm used a knife to cut the man's bloody clothing away. When he got him stripped down to his underpants, he hesitated.

“I'm a doctor,” Addie said. “He might have gotten shot in the groin. Take
everything
off.”

Longarm stripped the bleeding man naked and stepped back to take his measure. He was young . . . probably in his early twenties . . . and he was tall, slender, and quite handsome. He had sandy brown hair and a strong chin. Longarm noted that the badly wounded man also had a lot of scars on his back, chest, and buttocks.

“He's been beaten relentlessly,” Addie said, asking for a wet kitchen towel so she could wipe away the blood and see exactly how bad this man was shot. “I'd guess he was savagely whipped as a boy. Probably by a father or a relative. No kid should have had to endure such a beating.”

“Doesn't excuse him for turning into a killer,” Longarm told her.

“We don't know if he ever killed anyone or not,” Addie countered. “He might have, but I don't see how we can be the judge of that. All I'm saying, Custis, is that this young man has had a very cruel upbringing.”

Longarm took the bloody towel and wrung it out over the kitchen sink, then wet it again and gave it back to Addie. “How many lead pellets did he take from my eight-gauge?”

“At least five. Two in the legs, three in the body.” Addie placed her finger over a bleeding hole just to the right of the man's belly button. “The worst is definitely this one. I'm afraid that it might have penetrated his stomach cavity, and it'll have to come out if he has any chance to live. If it's punctured his gut, he's already a dead man. I won't know until I get it out and we see how he does during the next twenty-four hours.”

“That long?”

“If he's still alive in twenty-four hours, he has a fighting chance,” Addie said, digging into her medical bag for a pair of long-nosed forceps. “I'm just not sure that I can find the lead shot.”

Longarm nodded with understanding. “A gut wound is fatal,” he said. “I've seen a lot of them and no one who had a gut wound ever survived.”

“It may have just missed his stomach and come to rest in his abdominal muscle,” Addie said, wiping the wound clean. “These other wounds are obviously into muscle, and I can dig the lead out after we see to this one.”

Longarm gazed down without sympathy at the young gunman. “Do you want me to hold him down on the table?”

“Yes,” Addie said. “He might come awake due to the pain and start fighting me.”

Longarm pinned the man's arms to his sides and watched as Addie doused the wound with some antiseptic that she had in a corked blue bottle. “I've got to get this out fast or he's going to bleed to death,” Addie said more to herself than to Longarm.

Addie had long, supple fingers, and now she gripped the silver forceps and slipped them into the wound. She frowned with intense concentration, and Longarm could see that she had begun to sweat even though it wasn't all that warm in the kitchen.

Addie closed her eyes and said, “I was taught by a very good surgeon that these little pieces of lead go deep and the only way that you can possibly extract them out is to close your eyes and concentrate on feel.”

“You can
feel
the lead shot?”

“I hope so,” Addie told him. “I've never done one that is this deep. My thinking is that, if I feel my forceps close on something solid, it has to be the lead from your shotgun's blast.”

“If he dies, it's nobody's fault but his own,” Longarm told her. “But we sure could use his testimony.”

Addie wasn't really listening because she was concentrating so hard. After several minutes, a very slight smile touched her lips and she whispered, “I think I've got it!”

“Well, pull it out and let's see.”

Addie squeezed the forceps and slowly extracted a piece of twisted lead about the size of a flattened pea.

“You did it!” Longarm said, genuinely impressed. “Do you think that lead was inside his gut?”

“No,” Addie replied, dropping the lead shot onto the table and leaning forward with relief. “It was embedded in muscle.”

Addie found bandaging in her medical kit and stuffed some cotton in the hole, and then she went to work on the other less critical wounds. Longarm kept expecting the young killer to come awake and begin to thrash, but he never did.

“How hard did you hit him over the head with your gun?” Addie asked when she had examined and extracted shot from all five wounds and then closed them up with either sutures or bandages. “I am wasting my time if you scrambled his brain like you almost did poor Jed's.”

“I just gave him a good, solid tap on the skull. If he doesn't make it, it won't be because of my pistol-whipping.”

“I certainly hope not,” she said, finishing her doctoring.“He's a handsome young man and if he lives, maybe he'll take this as a lesson and change his ways.”

“Maybe,” Longarm said, though he doubted it. “All I want is for this fella to live long enough to testify in Cheyenne against Wade Stoneman. If he does that, he can die or go to prison and live; it doesn't matter to me one way or the other.”

“Well,
I
want him to live,” Addie said with conviction. “I never had a patient that was shot as badly as this young man. I'm just glad that the pattern from that shotgun hit him low and not in the head. If it had, he'd have been killed on the spot.”

“Just like Casey and the others,” Longarm said, thinking about all the bodies outside that would need burying. “I told you when I bought that shotgun in Cheyenne that it would make all the difference if we got in a tight spot and were outnumbered.”

Addie finished up her work on the unconscious young man and said, “Did you check this man's pockets to see if he had anything personal that would tell us his name or where he came from? If he dies, it would be nice to notify his next of kin. This man probably has a mother who loves him. It's the least we can do.”

Longarm disagreed. “I haven't got time to notify the next of kin. Casey and three other gunmen are lying dead out there in Jed's ranch yard, and all of them deserved what they got after they ambushed old Jed. Besides, if I tried to contact all their next of kin, I'd never get to what really needs doing and that's bringing Stoneman down.”

“I understand,” Addie said patiently. “But . . . but, well, this young man might have been spared for a good purpose. Who are we to say that he couldn't turn over a new leaf and become a fine citizen?”

“I'm not saying he couldn't,” Longarm replied, “but I am saying that a leopard doesn't change its spots and that if this young fella lives, don't you expect him to become a Bible-thumping solid citizen. That's just not being realistic.”

I know, but he's such a handsome lad.” Addie's fingers touched his pale cheek. “You know something? I'll bet he's broken a few hearts in his short life, and he might even have a sweetheart waiting somewhere. Check his pockets, Custis.”

Longarm retrieved the man's bloody pants and shirt. He rummaged through his pockets, and danged if there wasn't a bloodstained but readable envelope and letter.

“It's addressed to a Mr. Joel Crawford in Cheyenne.”

“So his name is Joel,” Addie said, looking pleased. “Open up the letter inside,” Addie urged, spreading a blanket over the man. “Let's find out who sent him that letter.”

Longarm unfolded the letter, and damned if it wasn't from the man's sweetheart, a girl in Omaha, Nebraska, of all places.

“She says that she misses him a lot and that she wants to leave her parents' farm before Christmas so that they can be married. She says that she would love being his wife and living in Cheyenne, but thinks that she would rather live in California . . . if they could get the money to travel that far.”

Addie grinned. “California, huh?”

“Yep,” Longarm said, scanning through the letter. “His girlfriend doesn't say where she got the notion that California would be a good place to live, but she says that she'd live almost anywhere except Nebraska after they were married.” Longarm tried to wipe away a spot of blood that was blotting out a few of the girl's words.

“Go on,” Addie urged.

“There's a little part here too smeared with blood to read, but later on she says that she loves him and wants them to have a lot of children, mostly boys because they would all be tall and handsome like their father.”

Tears sprang to Addie's eyes and she scrubbed them away. “Did she leave a return address so that we could contact her?”

“Nope. She just signed the letter Betsy.”

“Too bad,” Addie said, obviously disappointed. “If Joel Crawford dies, we will never know how to contact Betsy and tell her what happened to the young man she loves.”

“That would be a mercy for Betsy,” Longarm reckoned aloud. “Why would she want to know that her lover was gunned down by a lawman after he was in on something bad like he was?”

“I guess you've got a good point,” Addie said, adjusting the blanket. “But I sure hope our Joel doesn't die.”

“Yeah,” Longarm agreed. “If you plan to practice medicine around here, it wouldn't be good if your first gunshot patient shipped out.”

“That wasn't why I was hoping he'd make it,” Addie told him with some exasperation.

“Maybe not,” Longarm said, “but this fella would be a real good advertisement for your skills, if he makes it and testifies.”

“I expect he probably would,” Addie agreed. “We've got a lot of burying to do.”

Longarm nodded. “I'll start digging a grave for Jed beside his wife Rebecca. But I'm not planting Casey and those other three riddled bastards anywhere near Jed and his wife.”

“We probably ought to take them into town and have the undertaker bury them, but I can't leave Joel in his critical condition.”

“And I'm not going to do it either,” Longarm said. “I'll plant Casey and his friends in shallow graves up on the ridge. If someone ever wants to claim the bodies, they can dig them up and do what they will. But I'm not going to any extra trouble.”

“Let's get Jed buried properly and then we can take it from there,” Addie suggested.

“Okay.”

Longarm went out, and it took him an hour to catch the horses that Casey and his men had owned. He hid those animals out of sight in the barn. After that, he fed and watered them, and then he found a shovel and went to the little cemetery where Rebecca Dodson lay long buried.

“I'm bringing your husband back to you,” Longarm said as he shoveled dirt. “We're gonna lay Jed down beside you just like he wanted. And for what it's worth, Mrs. Dodson, I hope you and Jed are already holdin' hands in heaven.”

It was mid-afternoon before Longarm had finished all the burying. Five graves, four of them shallow and one deep, and with words from the Holy Bible said over that grave so that Jed was sent off properly.

After that, Longarm went into the house and washed the dirt off himself, and then he lay down to take a much-needed nap.

“Stand the watch, Addie. By now, Stoneman must be wondering why his boys haven't returned to Buffalo Falls.”

“Do you think he'll come out here to find out why they didn't return?”

“I sure as hell hope so,” Longarm answered as he pulled the brim of his Stetson over his eyes and fell asleep almost instantly.