A Dangerous Man (12 page)

Tam Sullivan stopped at the front desk and got the name of the town doctor.

The clerk said Peter Harvey was a fine doctor, young and eager, and during the war had served as General Braxton Bragg's personal physician. Doc Harvey seemed to have little social life, though he was close with the mayor's family, and most in town believed that his recent marriage was a happy one.

That was as far as the clerk's description of the man went. Apart from his association with the irascible Bragg, he seemed quite ordinary.

Sullivan nodded his thanks to the desk clerk and stepped onto the porch.

Bill Longley was there.

Hatless, the gunman wore black pants and vest and a white shirt open at the neck. He packed both revolvers in their expensive gun belts and was, Sullivan conceded, an intimidating sight.

“Taking the air, Bill? A might cold to go coatless.”

“I'm not lingering long. The hotel starts to stink when certain people are in residence.”

“Bill, you surely don't mean me?” Sullivan asked.

“If the shoe fits, Sullivan. Hear you carried the new town hero across the street. I heard maybe the brass band will play later if'n the snow quits.”

Sullivan glanced at the sky where restless black clouds circled the town like a pack of wild beasts. “Sure don't look like quitting.”

“They say the little feller killed himself three or four Apaches. That's what I heard. They're calling him some kind of famous Indian fighter come to visit.”

“He winged one, probably by accident,” Sullivan said.

“I prefer the other version,” Longley said.

Sullivan nodded. “Yeah, well it makes for a better story. It's always a joy to talk with you, Bill, but I got to go.”

“Go where?”

“The graveyard.”

“Reserving a space, Sullivan?”

“No, but I'll pick out one for you if you like.”

“One day that smart mouth of yours will get you killed,” Longley said. “You know that, don't you?”

“But not by you, Bill, huh?”

“You figure you're faster than me, Sullivan?”

“Well, I reckon so, but faster or slower, I'm too mean to die easy. I'd get lead into you and you know it. Gives a man a kinda uneasy feeling, don't it, Bill?”

“You got a smart mouth, Sullivan.”

“I think you already said that, Bill.”

“Ah, the hell with it. This isn't the time for a shooting scrape,” Longley said. “Be out here tonight at seven and you'll see Booker goin' a-courtin'.”

“A sight not to be missed, I'm sure.”

“It ain't, because he'll look mighty fine. One of the store owners donated a new sack coat, vest, and plug hat. Booker's got a bag of molasses candy for his ladylove.”

Sullivan smirked. “Donated? Now there's a word you don't hear every day in Comanche Crossing.”

“Yeah, well everything in this town is free to me and good ol' Booker. I thought I told you that.”

“Must have slipped my mind. What does Buck Bowman over to the saloon think of that arrangement?”

Sullivan touched a nerve, but Longley quickly recovered his poise. “He don't know about it yet.”

“I see. Let's set that aside for the moment. Who's the lucky lady?”

“As if you didn't know.”

“I hear Miss Montana Maine when she deigns to visit the saloon is a sight to see. It could be her.”

Longley frowned. “Yeah, well it ain't her. Tonight Booker is putting Lisa York in the right frame of mind for a wedding.”

“And what woman could resist his charms? Is he taking a bath?”

“A bath in the middle of winter? Are you crazy? Booker could catch his death of cold. I know you'd like that, clear your path, like.”

“If Booker passed away from the sniffles, he'd be sadly missed by all,” Sullivan said.

“You're jealous, Sullivan, huh? That's your problem.”

“Well, perhaps just a tad.”

“I figured you would be.”

Sullivan stepped to the edge of the porch, careful to not turn his back on Longley. “Bill, you're a man of the world. Ever hear of Resurrectionists?”

Longley blinked. “What the hell are those? Some kind of preachers?”

“Body snatchers,” Sullivan said. “They dig up fresh corpses and sell them to doctors.”

Something dawned in Longley's face. “Oh, now I catch your drift. You're going up to Boot Hill to scout around for the body of Crow Wallace so you can collect your reward. Wherever ol' Crow is hiding, you're gonna dig him up.”

Longley slapped his thigh, tilted back his head and guffawed. When he recovered, he wiped tears from his eyes. “Damn it all, Sullivan, even though I'm gonna kill you one day, you make me laugh. You're a Resurrectionist, an' no mistake.”

“Wait till you see the funny faces I can make,” Sullivan said.

Bill Longley laughed again.

Driven by a relentless wind, snow swept through the cemetery as Tam Sullivan, bent over against the cold, stepped to a hole in the ground that he figured may have held Crow Wallace's body. The outlaw's rough pine coffin was smashed, long, splintered fragments of the lid lying around with rimes of icy white along their edges.

Whoever had taken Wallace from the grave had transported only the body, probably because it took up less space in a wagon.

The empty graves of Frank Harm and his helpers told the same story, shattered coffin lids hastily tossed aside and the bodies removed.

Where the hell were they? And who took them?

Sullivan shook his head. Maybe it was the ghosts of Burke and Hare come to the Americas to practice their profession.

He scouted around the gravesites but found nothing. Only his boot tracks marred the spotless virginity of the fallen snow.

It was not yet three, but the ashen-gray sky promised an early dark and a longer banishment of the sun. The air was razor-sharp and smelled of dank earth and rotting things. There were no shadows.

Sullivan began his trudge back to the cemetery gate, feeling helpless. The reward for Crow Wallace was as out of reach as ever. Doc Harvey was his only hope, slim as it was.

Maybe he'd just come straight out with it, state his case. “Excuse me, Doctor, but do you have a body of mine? It originally belonged to a man named Crow Wallace, and now I seem to have mislaid it.”

Yeah, good luck with that, Tam
, he told himself.

Sullivan was just a few yards from the gate when a bullet knocked him on his back.

For a moment, he thought he was dead.

The bullet hit the left side of his chest with the smashing force of a kick from a Missouri mule. A second, probing round jolted up a V of snow and dirt close to his head and he rolled to his right. A third bullet, scattering twigs and frosted leaves followed him into a clump of boxwood brush.

He looked down at the blood on his coat, pulled his gun, and gave vent to his exploding rage. “Longley, you've done for me!”

The only sound was the mocking moan of the merciless wind.

Sullivan pushed down the boxwood and looked around, seeking a target. Then it dawned on him. . . . He'd heard the flat roars of a mighty big gun, a larger caliber than Longley's .44-40 Henry.

Somebody else was taking pots at him with a damned cannon.

Peering through the brush, he saw nothing but snow sloughing among gravestones and the arched ebony dome of the sky. “Bill Longley! Is that you?” he yelled, knowing it wasn't. “Show yourself like a man and take your medicine.”

A bullet crashed terrifyingly close and Sullivan pressed himself into the ground, trying to dig a hole with his face.

He spat out dirt, more scared than angry. The situation was not good. The hidden rifleman had him pegged and it was only a matter of time before his probing shots started hitting.

It was a big gun, all right.

Sullivan swallowed hard. He had it to do. He'd die on his feet.

Then the thought came to him.
I'm shot through and through, so why the hell am I still alive?

He had no time to ponder the question. He clambered to his feet and thumbed off a shot for no other reason than it made him feel less vulnerable and more in command.

Five running strides took him to the cover of a low, aboveground tomb. He dived for the ground just as a bullet chipped marble from the dome-shaped top and a fragment cut a red gash across his cheek.

Then he did the unexpected.

Anticipating that the bushwhacker would count on him to keep his head down, Sullivan jumped to his feet, his darting eyes seeking a target.

There! Just a glimpse!

A humped back arched above the top of a tombstone, like a fish breaking the surface of a lake.

Sullivan fired from the hip. He heard the angry slam of his gun and a wild shriek at the same instant. He dusted a shot at each side of the stone, then waited.

Just one loaded chamber left.

The windblown snow and late afternoon gloom cut his visibility to about twenty feet. Listening into the quiet, he heard a series of high-pitched yelps, like a cur dog in pain. Then to his left he caught a glimpse of gray moving quickly through a bordering stand of pines.

Walking as fast as his aching wound would allow, Sullivan headed in that direction, his Colt ready.

He saw his assailant.

Dressed in a long greatcoat, the man ran bent over with a strange, limping gait, running close to the ground like an animal.

Sullivan fired and missed by several yards.

He'd known he had no chance of hitting the bushwhacker, but the shot was payback for scaring the hell out of him . . . and for cutting his suspenders.

He took shelter under the skeletal branches of a good-sized tree close to the cemetery gates and opened his coat. His wound was bloody but gave him more numbness than pain.

Then he saw the reason why.

He removed the mangled silver cigar case from his shirt pocket. The rifle bullet had hit the case and deflected, but not before it drove large slivers of silver into his chest. One jagged fragment gleamed in the middle of the wound like a silver tooth in a scarlet mouth, but he kept his gloved fingers away from it.

It looked to be in deep, a job for a doctor.

But he was still alive.

He'd always known that smoking was a healthy habit.

Bill Longley, in his usual chair on the porch of the Bon-Ton Hotel, saw Tam Sullivan come down from the cemetery hill with blood on his coat and a face as white as bone. The gunman rose to his feet, stepped onto the boardwalk, and when Sullivan reached the street, he held up a hailing hand. “Howdy, Sullivan, you dead at last?” he yelled, grinning. “You've come over all bloody.”

The big bounty hunter stopped, a tall, stooped figure behind the moving veil of the snow. “I got shot, Bill,” he yelled back. “Lucky it wasn't a .44-40 or right now you'd be taking your last breath.”

“Aw, I figured you were dead. I heard the shots an' all and I was hoping. What a disappointment to hand out to a man.”

“Maybe the doc will have good news for you,” Sullivan said.

He started to cross the muddy street as Longley yelled, “Don't forget to come admire Booker tonight, if you're able. Hell, Sullivan, with any kind of luck you might even be dead by then.”

Sullivan, uncomfortably aware of the shot-dry gun in his holster, smiled. “I'm going to kill you one day, Bill. Depend on it.”

“If you're still around!” Longley laughed.

 

 

“You're not able to take your coat off by yourself, Mr. Sullivan. Please, let my nurse do it.” Doctor Peter Harvey frowned as Sullivan reluctantly complied.

The nurse was middle-aged and stern. She pointed at his holstered Colt. “Remove that, please.”

Again Sullivan did as he was told, but he didn't like the nurse.

The doctor ushered him into a chair and glanced at Sullivan's bloody shirt. “It seems that we've been shot.”

“Seems that way to us too, doc,” Sullivan said.

“Nurse Fry, please remove the patient's shirt,” Harvey said.

“Amazing how a chunk of lead can turn a man from a person into a patient real quick,” Sullivan said, smiling at the woman.

“Humph,” Nurse Fry said. “That wasn't very funny.”

“Let's take a look, shall we?” Doctor Harvey said.

“We shall,” Sullivan said.

The physician was an intense young man, somewhere in his middle thirties, with intelligent brown eyes and thinning yellow hair. He was clean-shaven but for a huge pair of frizzy Dundreary side-whiskers popular among medical men.

He examined the wound, and smiled slightly. “Were you shot by a silver bullet, Mr. Sullivan?”

“The answer is in the pocket of my coat, doc,” Sullivan said.

“Nurse Fry, if you please,” Harvey said.

The nurse, nose wrinkled, reached into the pocket and produced the mangled case.

Harvey studied it closely. “You shouldn't be alive, Mr. Sullivan. You were struck by a large caliber bullet that should have gone right through this cigar case like a hot knife through butter.”

“Then I'm lucky, I guess.”

“Very lucky. Mind you, strange things do happen with ordnance. During the war, I once saw a ten-pound cannonball deflected by an oak tree twig no thicker than Nurse Fry's little finger.”

“Skinny twig.” Sullivan kept his face bland. Getting out from under Nurse Fry's glare, he asked the doc, “Can you cut the pieces out of the wound?”

“Yes. Actually, there will be no cutting involved, though the probing might be quite painful.”

“However, we can give you ether,” Nurse Fry said.

“And put you out,” Doctor Harvey said.

“I prefer to stay awake,” Sullivan said, feeling contrary. But when the doctor started mining for silver with steel forceps, he regretted those words.

When Sullivan's wound was clean and bandaged, Nurse Fry beamed at him. “What a brave little soldier you were.”

He didn't feel brave. It had hurt like hell.

The nurse helped him into his coat and handed over his gun belt. “I'm sure you'll need this,” she said, her frown of disapproval back in place. “The surgical fee is five dollars. You can pay at the desk.”

“Getting shot is becoming more expensive,” Sullivan said.

“Then don't get shot.”

“Come back in a couple days so we can check on your wound,” Doctor Harvey said. “We don't want gangrene setting in, do we?”

“No, we don't,” Sullivan looked him in the eye. “I'd like to ask you a question, doc.”

“I welcome questions from my patients,” Harvey said, smiling.

The smile fell like a fat man on ice as Sullivan said, “Have you ever heard of Resurrectionists?”

It took the physician a few moments to reply, his eyes troubled. “Yes . . . body snatchers, weren't they? In Scotland, I believe.”

“And in this country, from what I've heard.”

“I'm afraid surgeons need cadavers for the teaching of anatomy to medical students,” Harvey said. “And the great Renaissance artists like Leonardo Da Vinci dissected corpses to study muscles and the like.”

“Do doctors still cut into dead bodies?” Sullivan asked.

“Of course, but a steady supply of executed criminals fills that need.”

“Nobody's been executed in Comanche Crossing in quite awhile, I reckon.”

“But then, we don't have a medical school now, do we?” the doctor pointed out.

“Doctor, I think he's talking about the missing bodies at the graveyard,” Nurse Fry said.

“Ah, yes, yes of course,” Harvey said. “That is unfortunate, I might say macabre, indeed.” He smiled, staring at Sullivan like a philosopher who's just discovered the answer to a great mystery. “I don't think there's anything sinister in it, though. It's alarming, yes. Dangerous, possibly, if it's the mischief of Indians. But it's not the handiwork of Resurrectionists.”

“Then who?” Sullivan asked.

“Then
whom
.” Nurse Fry corrected, her face stern.

Doctor Harvey stepped to the window. “Look out there, Mr. Sullivan. From what I've been told, Apaches infest every hill and valley, eager to kill white men. What better way to plunge Comanche Crossing into a panic than to steal bodies from the cemetery? Terrorize a community sufficiently, and it loses the will to fight and becomes easy prey.” He turned and stared into Sullivan's eyes. “Apaches are the answer to the missing bodies.”

“Doc, in enemy territory, Apaches scalp the dead and later throw the hair into a tree to keep the deceased warrior's vengeful spirit at bay,” Sullivan said. “They don't carry away the bodies of their enemies.”

“Then this town is an exception, Mr. Sullivan. The savages are trying to instill fear in us, and as far as I can tell, they're succeeding. Nurse, do we have a patient waiting?”

“Yes, doctor. Mrs. Lucas is here. Her husband is down with the ague again, I'm afraid.”

“Then, if you'll excuse me, Mr. Sullivan?” Harvey left the room.

A couple of minutes later, Tam Sullivan found himself back in the street, five dollars poorer, his shoulder punishing him. He suspected Dr. Harvey knew more than he was telling. It was obvious he'd made up the Apache story on the spur of the moment.

Sullivan nodded to himself, his face grim. There was only one way to find out.