The Taylor County War (9 page)

Jing Jing cast a regretful glance
at Tsu Dong then scurried through. Mrs. Li closed the curtain
behind her, then turned to Logan.

“I am sorry to keep you, Doctor
Munro,” she said, now studiously ignoring the young man.

Tsu Dong grunted irritably, then
yanked the door open and strode out, banging it shut behind
him.

“A petulant young man,” Logan said,
smiling at Mrs. Li. And with that thought he again wondered whether
the young man’s anger betrayed the sort of personality that could
be channeled into the sort of tasks that he suspected Tsu Chiao
ordered his nephews to perform.

“Again, I am sorry, Doctor. We do
not want our children to have anything to do with Tsu Chiao or any
of his ruffians. They are not – like us.”

Logan concurred. The Li family were
sober, upstanding members of the Wolf Creek Chinese community,
whereas Tsu Chiao was, in his opinion, nothing more than an opium
dealer, brothel keeper and a ruthless gang boss. Logan despised him
and was aware that Tsu Chiao disliked him simply because he was
British. He had heard from patients that Tsu Chiao often boasted
about having fought in the Opium Wars against the British when he
was a young man.

Suddenly the door was violently
thrown open.

“Get behind me,” Logan cried to
Mrs. Li as he spun around, fully expecting to be confronted by an
angry Tsu Dong.

Instead it was a flush faced
fourteen-year-old boy with a black left eye that was just about
closed. He was shirtless and covered in trail dust.

“My word, Frank Miller, you look as
if you’ve walked into a post. How did –?”

Frank unconsciously reached up to
his eye and winced as he touched the bruised flesh. “Oh, that ain’t
nothing, Dr. Munro. But I’m real glad I found you. You have to come
with me, sir. Mr. Sublette sent me.”

“What’s the emergency, Frank?”

“It’s Obie and Ethan, they’re both
hurt bad. Obie’s been shot in the chest and…and we’re wasting
time.” He put a hand on Logan’s arm and pulled. “Please, Doc.
They’re bleeding.”

Logan could see that the lad had
been under some sort of immense strain and had witnessed some
tragedy. Clearly he had been sent to get medical aid.

“Take it easy, Frank,” he said
calmly. He clasped the youngster’s shoulders and held him firmly,
and looked him straight in the eye. “Just take a deep breath, son,
then tell me exactly what has happened.”

“Dr. Munro,” Mrs. Li said with a
sharp intake of breath. “It must be the school party. Mr. Sublette
took some of the boys on a trip to look for bones. My son Li Wei
wanted to go, but my husband said he is needed here at the
laundry.”

She reached under the counter and
pulled out a fresh shirt. Frank took it gratefully and put it
on.

He nodded his head vigorously.
“That’s right, Doc,” he said, his voice steadier and calmer. “We
were on Mr. Breedlove’s land on a trip to find dinosaur bones. Mr.
Sublette was about to show us his rifle, a Whitworth .451. We had
set up a target and were on our way back to the camp when we saw
Billy Below and some of the T-Bar-B cowboys inspecting our wagon.
We had a few laughs, and they was about to head off, when a bunch
of Rolling-R wranglers rode up and started shooting.”

“They started shooting at who? At
Billy Below and the T-Bar-B men?”

“At all of us. They were just
shooting at everyone and there were about half a dozen of them.
They were trying to kill us all!”

Despite himself, the boy shivered.
“It all happened so fast. Obie Wilkins and Ethan Hartman were hurt
the worst. Obie was shot in the chest and the blood was pumping out
of him. Ethan has a huge spike of wood sticking out of his leg.
Billy Below and Mr. Sublette were wounded and two of the T-Bar-B
boys were killed. Mr. Sublette killed a couple of them and…and I
shot one that was going to kill Mr. Sublette.” Tears welled up in
his eyes and his face drained of color. “I…I shot him in the head.
It made me feel sick to my stomach.”

“Did any of them get away?”

“I don’t know, sir. I guess I was
in a sort of shock. Mr. Sublette took charge, like he was used to
it. He was going to head for Mr. Breedlove’s house, but he was
worried about the tough country they’d have to cross to get there.
Then Jimmy Spotted Owl suggested they head for the old line shack,
which was nearer and where they had beds and supplies of food and
water. Then Mr. Sublette sent me to fetch you out there.”

Logan looked round at Mrs. Li.
“Could you get Li Wei to run and tell Sheriff Satterlee about
this?”

“Billy Below rode with me and he’s
doing that right now,” Frank volunteered.

Logan put an arm about Frank’s
shoulders. “You’ve done good work this day, Frank. You’ve done as
well as any man could have done. Now, do you know where Obie’s
folks live?”

Frank nodded.

“Then I want you to do three
things. First, I want you to go to their home and tell them that
there has been – an incident. Tell them that Obie has been wounded
and that I am going to head straight out there to see him.
Secondly, as soon as you can, go over to the livery and ask Ben
Tolliver to get my horse ready. I need to go over to my office and
get some things, and then the third thing I want you to do is lead
me to this line shack. Can you do all that?”

Frank nodded and made for the
door.

Logan turned to Mrs. Li. “This all
sounds bad, Mrs. Li, I reckon that I’m going to need –”

Mrs. Li anticipated his request.
“You will need dressings and bandages. You go to your office,
Doctor Munro. I will send Li Wei and Jing Jing round with a basket
straight away.”

***

Jimmy Spotted Owl was waiting
outside the line shack with Marcus Sublette’s Whitworth .451
cradled in his arms. He shook his head as Logan and Frank reined in
and tied their horses to the hitching post.

“Little Obie didn’t make it,” he
announced apologetically.

Logan quickly went into the shack,
followed by a speechless and disbelieving Frank.

There were two bunks in the shack
against opposite walls. A blanket covered Obie’s body and had been
drawn up over his face. Ethan Hartman was lying on the other bunk,
his face lathered in perspiration and taut with pain. Marcus
Sublette was sitting on a stool, a crude bandage bound round his
own right calf. He was dabbing Ethan’s brow with a damp cloth.

“I am pleased to see you, Doctor,”
he said, pushing himself painfully to his feet. “I am sorry that I
couldn’t do much for young Obie.”

Logan eased back the blanket to
reveal the young boy’s body. He bent down and quickly felt for a
pulse, then cursorily examined the wound.

“Judging by this wound there wasn’t
much anyone could have done. You tried to staunch the flow, and
that’s about all that you could have hoped to do. His chest cavity
would have filled up with blood and his lungs would collapse and
his heart would just stop.”

“He looks like he’s asleep,” Frank
remarked, his voice quaking. “He didn’t deserve that to happen.” He
quickly turned away and slumped onto a stool in the corner of the
shack.

“Let’s have a look at Ethan,” Logan
said, taking the stool that Marcus had vacated.

“I didn’t dare try to remove it,”
Marcus said over his shoulder as Logan looked at the three inch
long spike sticking out of the front of Ethan’s thigh.

“You were quite right, Marcus. You
could have done more damage and started a hemorrhage that you
couldn’t control.”

He put a reassuring hand on Ethan’s
shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. I’m going to take this thing out of
your leg as soon as I can. How bad does it hurt?”

“It feels like the worst pain I can
imagine, sir. Like I have the devil’s own pitchfork stuck in me.”
He screwed up his face and a sob escaped. “But I feel bad
complaining at all, seeing as how poor Obie has gone.”

Logan opened his bag and took out a
small bottle of laudanum and a dosage glass. He poured a small
measure into the glass and then put a hand behind Ethan’s neck and
eased him up. “I want you to drink this, my boy. It will start to
ease the pain. Then as soon as I can get this stove fired up I’m
going to put you to sleep so that I can remove this shard of timber
from your leg.” He smiled reassuringly. “You will not feel me doing
it, I promise.”

A look of fear flashed across
Ethan’s face. “I…I ain’t going to die, am I, sir?”

“No, son. You will not.”

Marcus had started to light the
stove.

“Should we wait until his parents
can be told?” he whispered, as Logan removed his surgical operating
kit from his bag.

“No, the sooner this thing comes
out the better. But you are right, we need to let them know he is
here and what happened. Could we ask Jimmy Spotted Owl to ride over
to their place?”

“Actually, Doc, after what has just
happened today I’d rather we kept Jimmy here, especially as we have
this injured boy to look after.” He glanced at Frank, who had
overheard their whispered conversation.

“I’ll go, sir. It’s the least I can
do for my friends.”

Marcus clapped him on the shoulder.
“Mr. Miller, I can honestly say that I have never seen a boy turn
into a man as fast as I have seen you do today. And I can honestly
say that there is no one that I would rather trust with a mission
like this. Have you still got your pistol?”

Frank tapped his pocket. “It’s
ready and loaded just in case, sir.”

“Then ride like the wind, young
man. Again.”

When he had gone, Logan smiled
wistfully at Marcus. “That lad is a credit to you. As is young
Ethan here. I’ve seen grown men make far more noise about far less
injuries than he has.”

Marcus Sublette’s gaze fell on the
covered body of Obie Wilkins on the other bunk. His eyes
immediately began to well up. “I am proud of each and every one of
them, Doctor. God bless them.”

***

Ethan had drifted off as soon as
Logan had applied an eighth of an ounce of chloroform to the
perforated disc on top of the Chisolm inhaler that he always
carried in his medical bag. It was a small cylinder that measured a
mere two and a half inches by one inch, with two nose tubes that he
had inserted into Ethan’s nostrils.

“This, Marcus,” he explained as he
removed the device once Ethan was unconscious, “just happens to be
one of the finest pieces of medical equipment that we have. It was
invented by Dr. John Chisolm, a surgeon of the Confederate States
Army. It allows us to use a fraction of the chloroform that we used
to need with the handkerchief cone or the drinking glass methods of
delivery.”

Marcus Sublette had seen several
operations carried out during the War, but he had never seen one
done so dexterously and swiftly as this.

After cleaning the skin around the
wound Logan Munro had applied a Petit’s screw tourniquet higher up
the leg, then started to explore the tissues about the wood spike
with a long silver probe. Gradually he worked the muscles free of
the wood, creating a space wide enough to insert the Parisian-made
bullet extractor that he favored down the side of the wood.

“This wood shard is like the head
of a spear or an arrow,” he said out loud as he worked. “I just
need to get to the end, which just have, then rotate the head to
catch the point.” He then threaded a thin rod with a screw tip down
the fine tube of the extractor. “And now, having secured the tip, I
just screw this rod into the wood and then I can start the
withdrawal.”

Exerting steady and controlled
traction, all the while retracting the muscles with the probe, he
pulled the spike free.

“Now we just check that there are
no deep splinters, then I can release the tourniquet and start
sealing off any bleeding vessels with those cautery irons that
we’ve had in the stove, and I’ll repair some of the muscle with
catgut.”

There was remarkably little
bleeding after removing the tourniquet, but such as there was Logan
quickly stanched with either a touch of a cautery iron or the
application of a pinion catch artery forceps and a swift catgut
ligature that he was able to tie with one hand.

Once the wound was dressed to
Logan’s satisfaction, he revived Ethan with some volatile smelling
salts before giving him another dose of laudanum to keep the pain
under control.

“Now you can sleep properly for a
while, Ethan,” he said. “You’ll have a limp for a few weeks, and
you’ll have a scar, but no-one’s going to see it. And don’t worry,
your folks will soon be here.”

He rinsed his hands in a bucket,
then he and Marcus watched as Ethan gradually drifted off
again.

“Now,” the doctor said to the
schoolteacher, “I’ll have a look at that leg wound you obviously
were not going to tell me about.”

“It’s just a flesh wound,” Marcus
said. “I made a tourniquet and stopped the bleeding.”

“Leave the diagnoses to me,” Logan
said, and bent over to examine the wound.

Some minutes later, as they waited
for coffee to brew, Marcus heard the sound of horses approaching.
“That could be them now.”

The shack door opened, and Jimmy
Spotted Owl poked his head in. “We’ve got company again. Looks like
more Rolling-R fellers. And if I’m not mistaken, their boss man
hisself is riding with them.”

***

Marcus and Logan joined Jimmy
outside. Logan had taken his Beaumont-Adams revolver from his bag
and shoved it into his waistband.

“Jimmy, where is my horse?” Logan
asked

“I tethered him round the back of
the shack with the other horses. Just in case anyone uninvited rode
up.” He nodded in the direction of the riders. “Like them.”

Marcus had retrieved his rifle from
Jimmy and braced it across the side of the wagon. “That is close
enough, Mr. Rogers,” he shouted. Jimmy and Logan joined him behind
the wagon so that they would have some sort of protection if
needed.