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Authors: Loren D. Estleman

BOOK: The High Rocks
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The wind whistled.
“Prepare to dismount, Sergeant.”
“Prepare to dismount!” bawled the sergeant. Leather creaked.
“You with them, Page?” The scalp-hunter spoke quietly.
I said I was. He nodded. “Just as well. I was getting too slow anyway.” He slid the Spencer from its scabbard—the captain cocked the hammer of his Colt—and, swinging the rifle by its barrel, hurled it out into the middle of the river. It struck with a crash, bobbed once, and slid beneath the surface.
The unexpected action distracted us. While we were watching it, Bear unsheathed his bowie knife and plunged it into his breast.
I
had started forward before he hit the ground. Trainer grabbed my arm.
“Stay back! It might be a trick.”
I pulled my arm free and kicked the mare forward. Bear was lying in a hunched position at his horse's feet, breathing heavily. The big dun, anxious, shifted its weight from one front hoof to the other and snorted steam. I dismounted and turned the scalp-hunter over onto his back. The bowie was jammed up to its hilt just below the curve of his chest; blood was spreading slowly.
“Who's got a clean kerchief?” I demanded of the troopers who had come forward to look down at the legend of the Bitterroot.
“Ain't nobody got a clean kerchief after three days on patrol,” the sergeant said, dismounting. “But here.” He untied the yellow cloth from around his neck and handed it to me.
Pulling the knife from Bear's breast was only a little easier than loosening an axe sunk in a maple stump, but by grabbing hold of the hilt and bracing my other hand against his shoulder I succeeded in drawing it out. Then the bleeding began in earnest. I tore open his bearskin and shirt and poked the end of the kerchief into the wound. He shuddered.
“Some scalp-hunter you are,” I told him. “You can't even kill yourself. That bearskin saved your life.”
“I always did hate it,” he said, grunting through his teeth.
I undid my belt, pulled it free, and strapped it around his chest inside his shirt to secure the makeshift bandage. It barely reached. I had to use the bloody knife to make a new hole in the leather before I could fasten it.
“How long do you think that will hold?” Trainer asked.
“Long enough to get him into Staghorn, I hope,” I said. “If he lives that long.”
“He won't.”
“Ordinarily, I'd agree with you. But people like Bear Anderson don't just die.”
“I can't understand it. If he wanted to commit suicide, why didn't he just let us shoot him?”
“I like to do some things for myself,” Bear grunted. Then he lost consciousness.
“Will you look at that!” the sergeant exclaimed suddenly.
I looked up. He was pointing across the river.
A pack of wolves thronged the opposite bank, snarling and slashing at one another over the bounty hunters' now-frozen bodies. On the outer edge of the pack, Lop Ear himself, head down and teeth bared, eyed the soldiers warily. His hackles bristled. The sergeant hooked his rifle out of its scabbard, nestled the butt against his shoulders, and fired.
The pack scattered, all except Lop Ear, who stood his ground. The sergeant fired again. This time the big leader howled and tried to rear, but the bullet had smashed a hind leg. The rifle crashed a third time. The wolf fell over onto its right shoulder, kicked, and lay still. Steam rose from its body.
“Wolves,” spat the sergeant, lowering the rifle. “I hate 'em.”
Expecting Bear to ride with a bullet in his back and a knife wound in his chest was out of the question, so the soldiers and I set about constructing a new litter while the captain paced the riverbank, twisting a gloved fist in a gloved palm and firing anxious glances from time to time across the water, where the Indians remained an unseen presence. On that side, gangs of wolves heaved and tore at the carcasses of the bounty hunters and their dead leader, bolting great bloody chunks of meat and hair in their eagerness to fill their bellies before they were shouldered aside by the others. Pleading low ammunition, Trainer had put a stop to any more
shooting of the animals, and so we were forced to work to the accompaniment of their greedy slurps and snarls. At last we had the scalp-hunter secured to the rig and hitched once again behind the dun; with me in charge of it and troopers leading my mare and the black behind their mounts, we pulled out.
The blizzard had begun to wind down by the time we reached the foothills. That night the cloud cover broke, allowing a ragged splinter of moon to glimmer down and set aglow the rolling whiteness that surrounded us. We made no camp, having fed and watered our horses at the river. As it turned out, though, we needn't have been concerned about pursuit, as by sunrise—a brilliant, sparkling sunrise, the first such in many days—we had yet to be overtaken. Already it seemed that Black Kettle's loss had begun to change the character of the Flathead nation. We stopped for a short rest at noon, and by the close of the second day we were on the outskirts of Staghorn, where the smell of wood smoke quickened the pace of even the most exhausted of our mounts.
The main street was deserted, which came as no surprise since it was piled with snow up to the tops of the hitching rails on either side. We came to a halt in front of the darkened barbershop.
“Sergeant, see if you can wake Staghorn's excuse for a doctor,” ordered Captain Trainer.
“Not him,” I said.
“Open your eyes, Deputy. Right now, Ezra Wilson is the only thing available. Every road to town is blocked.”
“I'd rather do the job myself.”
The sergeant banged on the door with the butt of his revolver and kept banging until a light came on inside the shop. The door flew inward and Ezra Wilson, in nightshirt and cap, started out onto the threshold.
“What the hell—oh, good evening, Captain.” He had spotted the mounted troopers.
“We've a wounded man here, Wilson,” said the captain. “How are you at surgery?”
“At this hour?”
“At any hour. Never mind. Get moving, Sergeant. I want two strong men on each end of that litter. Get him inside.”
It was the work of two minutes for the delegated men to unhitch the litter, hoist it, and staggering beneath their burden, shuttle it past Wilson into the shop. The troopers transferred the patient from the litter to the bed in the back room.
“Who in perdition is
that
?
”
Wilson stared popeyed at the giant that was revealed when the blankets covering him were peeled back. Bear was conscious and breathing with great effort.
“That there's the man who might just make you famous if you pull him through, Doc,” volunteered the sergeant. “That there's Bear Anderson.”
The eyes started farther. “Anderson? The scalp-hunter?”
“Is there any other?” I retorted.”Look, he's got a bullet in his back, and I think it's leaning up against his spine. Can you take it out?”
“I don't know. I never tried anything like that. And I'm not about to try now. I don't treat murderers.”
“You'll treat this one.” I drew my gun.
Wilson stared at it for a moment. Then he smiled. “You wouldn't shoot.”
I shattered the glass chimney of the lamp he was holding with one shot. He lost his grip on the base and had to stoop to catch it before it hit the floor. The flame flickered violently.
“Are you crazy?” Trainer exclaimed. “You could have burned us up!”
I removed the empty shell from the cylinder and replaced it with a fresh cartridge. “I have faith in Wilson. He's good with his hands. That's why he's a barber.” I spun the cylinder. “What about it, Ezra? Are you going to operate?”
He was standing there holding the still-burning lamp in both hands. He opened his mouth, closed it. “I'll wash up.” He set down the lamp and stepped out through the side door.
“You're something new in lawmen,” said the captain, studying me curiously.
I holstered the gun, looked around, found another lamp, and transferred its chimney to the one the barber had just relinquished. “You and my boss
would get along famously,” I told him. “He says the same thing.”
Ezra Wilson returned a few minutes later wearing the same clothes he'd had on when I left his shop the last time. “Turn him over,” he mumbled, opening his medical bag and setting out the contents on the table beside the bed.
“See to his chest first,” I said. “He's been stabbed.”
“Anything else?” His tone was ironic.
“What would you like?”
“Room. I need room to work.”
Captain Trainer dismissed everyone except the sergeant. Then the non-com and I helped Wilson strip off Bear's shirt and bearskin. His chest was a battlefield of scars old and new, but the barber was interested in only one. He undid the belt I had fastened around the huge torso and slowly drew out the kerchief.
“Christ,” he said, looking at the bloody relic. “Why didn't you stuff your hat in while you were at it?”
He opened a bottle of alcohol and poured it into the wound. The scalp-hunter arched his back, sucking air in through his teeth.
“Laudanum!” Wilson barked. “Cabinet, top shelf. Hurry!”
The captain reached down the square bottle and handed it to him. He pulled out the stopper with his teeth, measured a portion of its contents into a shot
glass on the table, put it to Bear's lips. The big man gulped it down greedily, his head supported by the barber's other hand. Almost immediately he relaxed and his breathing returned to normal. Wilson looked at me sideways.
“It does have its uses, you see,” he said.
He finished cleaning the wound and applied a patch, securing it with sticking-plaster, then nodded to us. The sergeant and I helped him turn the patient over onto his chest. “Turn up the lamp,” said Wilson. I obeyed. A warm yellow glow spread over the bed. Fresh shadows crawled up the wall on the other side.
“It's healed over,” the barber observed. “I'll have to re-open.” He reached for the laudanum bottle and glass. I took hold of his arm.
“He's had enough,” I said.
He looked at me. “It's not for him.”
I hesitated. He held his hands up in front of my face. They were shaking. I released my grip.
I watched the expressions on the two soldiers' faces as the barber poured himself a measure of the narcotic—nearly twice what he'd given Bear—and tossed it down as if it were a shot of watered-down whiskey. To say that they were thunderstruck would be an understatement. But they kept their mouths shut.
There was a clock somewhere in the building; the ticks reverberated like explosions in that overheated room as Wilson cut with his scalpel and
probed inside the wound with alcohol-soaked fingers. At length he straightened and wiped the blood off on a towel.
“It's deep,” he said. “Maybe too deep. I'm just a barber. I don't know anything about backs.”
“Can you get it out?” I asked.
“No question about that. The question is, what'll happen when I do it? It's fifty-fifty I might kill or cripple him.” He looked at the captain. “Will you take the responsibility?”
That was a tough one. I could see Trainer weighing the odds. It was a decision that could affect his career, and not for the better. Finally he nodded. “Go ahead,” he said. “Whatever happens, I'll back you up.”
Under Wilson's direction, I poured more alcohol over his hands while he held them over a basin on the table. He shook them dry. Then he seized a pair of metal tongs and had me repeat the procedure with them.
“Hold up the lamp,” he told me. As I did so, allowing the light to flood into the gaping hole, he spread the flesh around it with his fingers. A drop of sweat rolled down his nose. He wiped it off on his rolled-up sleeve.
“There it is,” he said. “See it?”
I leaned over for a closer look. Framed between his fingers, a dark and shadowy something showed deep in the wound. “So that's what they look like after they hit,” I said.
“Of course. What did you expect?”
“I don't know. I put them in. I don't take them out.”
“You've got the easy job.”
He inserted the tongs. As he worked, a fresh bud of perspiration started out on the bridge of his nose and began the long crawl downward. I removed my kerchief—this time clean didn't matter—and mopped his face gently. His breath came sibilantly through his nostrils. After what seemed an eternity he drew out the tongs, straightened, and with an exhausted sweep of his right arm hurled the offending substance clanging into the basin.
“What's the verdict?” I asked him.
He picked up the discarded scalpel from the basin and extended it to me. “Care to do the honors?”
I stared at him uncomprehendingly. Finally he shrugged and used the pointed end of the instrument to prick Bear's right leg. It jumped.
“He's a lucky man,” he said, tossing back the scalpel. “He'll be able to walk to the gallows.”
The sergeant's breath came out in a whoosh. “Good work, Doc! Remind me to talk to you about sending a case of that loudium stuff to Doc Hollander back at Fort Benton.”
Wilson ceased bandaging to glare at him. “That's not funny, Sergeant,” he said. “Not funny at all.”

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