Gasher Creek Part 8

"I am an injured man," Don protested, twirling his finger about his face. "I'm not faking you Tom. You can't fake this." Although some of the swelling had gone down, his deputy still looked like Jem Mace after ten rounds. His face was mottled and bruised. His grin was crooked and his eyes looked smoke stung.

"Not to worry, I've been taking care of him," Delilah said, giving Don an all-too-obvious wink.

"Yeah, you did at that," Don said, ma.s.saging his shoulder.

"I want you at the office well before sunset," Tracker said. "Caroline shouldn't be alone."

Don grinned. "d.a.m.n Tom, who's the midwife in this town, you or Sylvia Platter?"

Delilah snorted.

Not for the first time (or, he suspected, the last), Tracker wanted to put his deputy through a wall.

"Now don't look at me like that," Don said. "I was just joshin'."

"Now's not the time for joshin'," Tracker said, nodding at Andy. "Show some respect."

"You're right," Don said. "I'm sorry, Andy."

Andy gave the slightest of shrugs, stood, and headed back upstairs.

"We're going to take care of this for you," Don called after him. "Cole's got the bead on Devlin, don't you fret."

Andy reached the top of the stairs and disappeared down the hall. A few seconds later, a door opened and closed.

Moving over to the coffin, Don placed his hands on the edge and said, "Lord, but he does stink. Couldn't you move him out of the light?"

"I like him there," Delilah said. "It's a shame we can't keep him out long enough for his birthday celebration."

"You're still throwing it?" Tracker asked.

"Of course," she said. "It's our biggest night of the year, Sheriff."

"Yeah, I know it," Tracker said. Hank's birthday was the one night when cowboys and rushers felt it their sacred duty to tear up the town. The Ram filled, bulged, and then spilled out onto the street. Revelers shouted, fought, and shot their guns into the air. It was the one night where the incidence of broken windows jumped considerably. Tracker's cell was always full by morning.

"Well, he might go under before his birthday," Don said, waving his hand over his nose, "but that smell won't." He leaned closer. "Devlin sure did a number on him, huh?"

"Yeah," Tracker said, looking at the bruises. "Must've been stronger than he looked to squeeze the life out of Hank. Sally was tiny, but Hank was..."

Tracker looked closer at the bruises.

"I do believe the word you're looking for, is fat," Don said.

Green, brown, and blue.

Splotches of green, brown, and blue bruises.

Just like Sally's bruises.

Exactly like Sally's bruises.

Tracker turned and headed for the front door.

"Oh, now don't get up in hitches," Don said. "There ain't no harm in calling a dead man fat-he's dead!"

Tracker hurried down the front steps and rushed across the street to the Doc's.

How had he missed it. How had the Doc not seen it? And if he was right, what did it mean?

Tracker climbed the side steps and entered the waiting room. "Doc," he said. No answer. Tracker opened the examination room door, saying, "Doc, I-"

"What are you doing, Tom!" the Doc exclaimed.

Archie Parnell stood before the Doc, naked from the waist up, his arms held up and his tongue sticking out. Seeing Tracker, the old man grabbed his shirt and covered his chest, shouting, "Shut the door, you eejit, I'm naked as a plucked chicken and you're showing me off to the entire town!"

"My apologies, Mister Parnell," Tracker said.

"Is this what I get for taking the time to hitch up my horses and come into town?" he raved. "I expected more from a medical man than to parade me around in the G.o.d's-as-honest-buff so's everyone in town could get a look at..."

Archie went on like that for a while as the Doc tried to calm him down.

"Sorry," Tracker said feebly.

"...and then you give me sweet water and tell me it'll keep me moving, but I spend so much time in the outhouse the wife thinks I should just put a cot in there and be done with it!"

"Get out of here, Tom," Doc said.

"But I have something very important to-"

"It can wait," Doc said. "Come back later."

"But-"

"Later!" the Doc said, ushering Tracker out of the room.

"Dinner," Tracker said.

"What?" Doc said, peering at him over his gla.s.ses.

"Dinner, at my home, tonight."

"Yes, fine, good," the Doc said. "Just get the blazes out of here!"

He slammed the door shut.

Chapter Nine.

The morning stretched into the afternoon. The sun cooked the gra.s.s until it dried and clung to Jack's ankles. Bugs sizzled in his ears. The wind baked his face. He was hungry. He spied a fat gra.s.shopper-not that hungry. He hoped to spot a farm or a soddy soon. He'd dig a well for a crust of bread or a cup of water. He wished it would rain, but a bowl of blue sky hung above him without a wisp of cloud to tempt a storm. He couldn't swallow.

Things were going badly.

Gradually, the gra.s.s thinned. Dirt crumbled under his feet like fragments of old pottery. He found himself heading down a slope into a valley of rocky hillocks. There was a path (of sorts): an old stone riverbed that snaked through the valley. Jack didn't much like the look of it, but he didn't want to backtrack or go around. Going around would take twice as long.

The insects stopped buzzing as he stepped onto the path. They didn't fade like when you enter a house; they just stopped. It was as if every cricket, gra.s.shopper, and black fly held its breath and watched. Ahead, he saw no life. He saw no prairie dogs or rabbits, no birds above or rodents scurrying along the ground. Even the wind had died.

He walked on. The path narrowed, cutting its way between two walls of rock. They rose on either side of him and squeezed the sky into a blue stripe. A sudden memory struck him. He remembered lying in his ma's coffin shortly before she died, staring at the sky between two planks of pinewood. He'd felt constricted and suffocated.

Now the sensation returned to him. He held his breath.

Thankfully, it didn't last. The path widened again, eroding back into rocky hillocks capped with stone shelves. They jutted over the path like the brims of a top hat.

He took a breath. He started to feel a little better.

And then he spotted the coyote tracks.

Jack grabbed a rock. He looked around, trying to blink back a sudden rush of dizziness. His chest ached. His temples throbbed painfully. The black coyote was tracking him. It could smell death on him. It wanted to rip into him, eat his bones and lap up his blood.

Jack's tongue touched his dry, cracked lips.

Blood. A coyote that size would hold buckets of salty, hot blood.

He could kill it. He could kill it, drink its blood, and eat its meat. Then he'd be full and fat and could run for miles.

"Come on," he said, creeping toward the tracks. He scanned the rock shelves above him. He twisted around. He twisted back, poised to attack. "I've been cooking in the sun," he rasped. "I'm ready to eat."

He reached the tracks and hazarded a look.

He dropped the rock.

They were not coyote tracks, and they weren't fresh. These tracks were set in the stone bed of the river. They were big as his hand and three-toed like a bird. "Gosh," he said, kneeling before them.

He imagined a grouse the size of a horse.

Then he imagined eating it. A drumstick would take half a day to eat. He'd need a bucket of water to wash it down. Two buckets. And then pie.

"Pie," Jack said, smiling.

Something struck him on the back of the head. He pitched forward onto his face.

Jack's mouth filled with water. It burned his throat and he coughed most of it up. As he opened his eyes, the sunlight blinded him. "What," he tried to say.

"Don't get up."

He couldn't move. Something bound his wrists and ankles.

"Don't struggle, you'll hurt yourself."

"Who are you?"

Something blocked the sunlight. Slowly, Jack's eyes adjusted until finally he could see an- "Indian!" he cried out. At least he thought it was an Indian. His skin was copper colored and his hair was black, but the hair was short and styled like a white man's. He wore a white shirt and black trousers. He held up a bowler hat to shade Jack's eyes from the sun.

"My name's Charlie Sewell," he said.

At first glance, Jack thought the Indian was wearing war paint, but now he saw that he'd been beaten. Blood stained one cheek. His lips were split. A bruise spread across his forehead. A rip stretched across the brim of his bowler hat.

"Why did you bind me, Indian?" Jack demanded.

"I didn't know if you were one of them."

"One of who?"

"One of the highwaymen who attacked me."

"I'm no highwayman."

Charlie untied the cloth from Jack's wrists and helped him sit up. A wave of dizziness washed over him. He touched a sticky wound on the back of his head and hissed. "What did you hit me with, some kind of tomahawk?"

"No, a rock," Charlie said. "What's a tomahawk?"

"It's like an axe, but smaller."

"You mean a hatchet?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. No, just a rock."

Jack batted Charlie's bowler out of the way and looked around. He was sitting on one of the rock shelves that jutted over the riverbed path. In the distance, the sun was descending toward the horizon. He must have been out for a while.

Keeping his eyes on the Indian, Jack inched back to lean against a rock.

"Want more water?" Charlie asked, holding up a canteen.

Jack shook his head, hoping he wouldn't get sick from the water he'd already drunk. Indians were always sick.

Leaning forward, he started untying the knots around his ankles. It was a length of black cloth, torn from the cuffs of the Indian's trousers. As he freed himself, he said, "What are you gawking at?"

Charlie smiled. "Your name's Jim."

"No."