Bad Medicine (2 page)

“Ain't no good way to say this,” Lucas said. “I knew Hiram real good—done business with him, drank with him, played cards, broke bread with him an' his family. Good man. Sarah, his wife, was sweet as August honey, and their two daughters—why, you couldn't find better kids. Twins, they was, musta been born 'bout the time you went inside.”

Will didn't realize it, but he was holding his breath.

“Was renegade Injuns and crazies from the war,” Lucas said, each word straining his voice. “Killed 'em all, burned the house an' barn, made off with the cattle. I went out an' put them in the ground nice an' proper, Will.”

“What about the law? The sherrif?”

“A Mex gunfighter killed him about three, four months ago. Nobody wants the job.”

“The place—was it bad?” Will asked in a monotone.

“You don't want to know, Will.”

“Tell me,” Will said in the same flat, emotionless tone.

Lucas took the bottle back and sucked a deep swallow. “I . . . I guess you got a right to know,” he said. He paused for a moment, avoiding Will's eyes. “You know how them renegade Apaches treat women, right? An' this One Dog, the leader, is worse 'n most.”

“The twins, too?”

Lucas nodded. “Killed 'em, Will. Bullets, not arrows. Leastwise, it was fast.”

“How'd they do Hiram in?”

“Nailed him to a fence post, scalped him, shot him fulla arrows, an' burned him.”

Neither man said anything for what seemed like a long time. Finally, Will rose from the hay bale and walked out of the barn. It was twenty minutes before he walked back in, and his eyes were red rimmed and his nose running. “How many head was Hiram running?” he asked, his voice on the cusp of cracking.

“Maybe a hunnerd or so branded, an' maybe twenny youngsters, more or less. Couple of good
horses. Sarah, she had some goats, a slew of chickens. There was three dogs. They was fine cattle dogs—friendly cusses, too. They . . . well . . . gutted the poor critters. I put them in the ground, too, off ta Hiram's side. Like I said, they was right good dogs.”

Will was silent for a moment.

“I'm purely awful sorry I was the one to tell you, Will.”

“Don't matter none who tells it—the facts don't change,” Will said.

“No—I don't guess they do.”

“How many renegades?” Will asked.

“Maybe twenty-five or thirty all tol', from the tracks. Only eight or ten horses was shod. See, Hiram an' Sarah had 'vited me out for dinner. That's how I found what happened.”

Will remained as still as a statue, staring out of the barn into the sunbaked street, seeing nothing.

“What're you gonna do, Will? I s'pose you own the land now. It's all registered with the property office, an' you bein' blood kin an' all—”

“What I'm gonna do,” Will interrupted, “is take a few days to get Slick back in trim, then go out to the ranch.”

“An' then what?”

“Stock up, buy a good rifle, track this One Dog down, an' kill him an' each of his followers.”

Lucas shook his head. “Big order,” he said.

“Me an' Hiram always got along good,” Will said. “He even come all the way out to Folsom to see me. That's when we decided to partner up on his operation. I had money to buy more stock, fatten 'em up, and drive 'em into Dry Creek to the train, an' be a real, legal cattleman. We figured to build up his house
some, too. I sent Hiram to one of my stashes to get money to get some good fencing up, buy me a solid horse, an' get him an' Sarah whatever they needed. Sarah, she played the piano. Hiram said he was gonna order one from Susan Robucks for her . . .” His voice trailed off to silence.

“That all sounds real nice, Will. Woulda been, too, an' that's for—”

“So,” Will interrupted, “I don't have a choice. I gotta go after them, take them down. You can see that, can't you, Lucas?”

There was another stretch of quiet broken only by the creaking and complaining of the barn beams and a Morgan mare in a stall crunching corn.

Lucas spat off to the side. “Seems to me the boy you rode in on is all the horse you need,” he said. “Hell, I got nothin' even close to him in my string.”

“You're right. Thing is, he's stole. I picked him up the day I got out. He was the warden's horse. He had spur gouges on his flanks, and ol' Slick, he was wild as a hawk. I seen he was top stock, an' he's proved me right. Any other horse'd be out in the sand feedin' vultures right now.”

“He's branded, though,” Lucas said.

“Yeah. I was kinda wonderin', maybe you might have a runnin' iron around here somewhere, an' could be, a good bill of sale, too. I'll pay good.”

“Hell,” Lucas said, “there ain't a brand I can't change and make look real legal, and I got more bills of sales than I need. I guess the warden, he figured them bars was right cute—like the bars of a cell. I can make them into a
HW
if that suits you—ya know, Hiram an' Will.”

“Sounds real good, Lucas. Thanks. Even as kids
me an' Hiram planned on the H an' W brand. I guess maybe it was an omen or something—but a piss-poor omen.”

“Only thing is, I can't do no brandin' 'less you run over to the saloon an' fetch us a bucket of cold beer. Fair deal?”

Will didn't waste a minute getting through the batwings. The bartender was a black man, huge, sweaty, and alone in the joint except for a few cowhands slugging down shots of whiskey.

“Lord, Lord,” he said, chuckling. “Ain't you the fella tried suckin' my trough dry not long ago?”

“That was me,” Will said. “Me an' my horse, we always been partial to trough water—'specially when it's nice an' warm with lots of horse slobber in it.”

The 'tender laughed, the sound deep and rich. “You want somethin' from here or you gonna go back out to the trough?”

“I need me a big bucket of the coldest beer you got for me an' Lucas, the smith. And maybe I'll try a taste of decent whiskey while I'm here.”

“I can do that,” the black man said. He put a generous double shot glass in front of Will, topped it from a bottle he took from under the bar, and turned away to draw the beer. The booze went down like liquid fire, but it felt good to Will, pushing what Lucas told him back a tiny bit in his mind. Will put a five-dollar piece on the bar as the 'tender set down the beer bucket.

“Lemme fetch your change,” he said.

“Ain't no change comin',” Will said. “ 'Cept maybe another taste of that whiskey.” The coin disappeared into the bartender's left hand as he filled Will's shot glass with his right.

Will trudged back to the livery, walking carefully, sloshing not a single cold, precious drop from the bucket.

Slick was in crossties, with his right front leg jacked up and lashed in a V position by a long, thick leather strap that immobilized him. The acrid stink of burned hair and flesh was heavy in the air. Slick's ears were laid back tight to his head, and his eyes were mere slits, behind which a feral fury seethed. His muzzle was drawn back over his teeth, which clattered like castanets.

“He'd sure love to take a bite outta your ass, Lucas,” Will said.

“Madder'n a pissed-on hornet,” Lucas said. He smiled. “Gimme that bucket.”

Will noticed an inch gash over Lucas's left eye. The cut was held closed tight with a glob of hoof dressing. The dried blood was pretty much the same color as his beard.

“Little tussle?” Will asked.

“Sumbitch caught me soon's as I put the iron to him. That's why I got him rigged like that.” Lucas grabbed the beer bucket with a hand on either side and drank it dry in four long, gargantuan glugs.

Will moved to his horse's flank. The new brand was covered with udder balm, but the livid pink-red flesh showed through. It was a fine piece of work: the
IIII
had been transformed into a neat
HW
.

“You done real good, Lucas. I'd be mighty proud to buy us beefsteaks an' maybe another beer or two.”

“Lemme put your horse in a stall an' dump some laudanum in his yap 'fore he busts up all his teeth.”

Will watched as the smith put his shoulder against Slick's right shoulder and took a good grab on the
horse's pastern. Will shook his head in awe. Lucas was damned near carrying a twelve-hundred-pound horse into a stall.

The tincture of laudanum was in a brown glass bottle with a capacity of a pint or so. Lucas took a hard twist on Slick's nose. The teeth chattering stopped. The smith poured half the bottle and maybe a bit more into Slick's gullet. Three minutes later Lucas unfastened the rig. Slick stood on all fours for a bit of time and then nuzzled Lucas like a foal begging for a piece of apple.

The few folks at the rickety tables in the hotel dining room barely looked at Lucas and Will as they walked in and sat at a table. Lucas took over the ordering when the waitress—a hefty lass with a sweet smile that'd make Satan head for the nearest church to repent—walked up.

“What we need is this, Millie: two of the biggest beefsteaks ya got, barely cooked, a heap of mashed taters, maybe some of the carrots you do up with butter on 'em, an' six schooners of cold beer.”

Millie brought the tray of beer first. The men lit into it.

Lucas set an empty schooner down and caught Will's eyes, holding them.

“Somethin's been itchin' me, Will, an' I'm tryin' to figger her out. Not much more'n a hour ago I tol' you your bro an' his family was killed an' his place burned to the ground. You took you a little walk and then come back an' that was it. See? Now here we are gnawing beef an' suckin' beer, like nothin' bad never happened. Why's that, Will?”

Will Lewis held the blacksmith's eyes.

“I don't know that it's your business, Lucas, but you been real good to me—busted a couple of heavy laws with your runnin' iron an' your papers—an' you deserve a answer.”

Will hesitated for a time. “I took a floggin' in Folsom—thirty strokes—for killin' another con in a fight. I'd seen other men under the lash screaming an' cryin' and beggin', an' it made me sick. When it was my turn I made me a promise: there wasn't nothin' I couldn't take—but what I could do was find a way to make things even.”

Will took the last beer from the tray and drank half of it. “After I stole the warden's horse, I went to the cabin of the man who laid the whip to me an' hung the sumbitch from a tree by his wrists an' put an even thirty on him. See, Lucas, what I done was mark that bill as paid. That's what I'm gonna do with this One Dog an' his crew—mark their bills paid in full.”

“We need more beer,” Lucas said. “You want some red-eye, too?”

“Beer's fine. I already got me half a stumbler on.”

“Ya know, tryin' to do what you plan is pure crazy. Some more men . . .”

“I'm more'n likely gonna get killed doin' this, right? That's OK. But if I brought friends in, the whole mess wouldn't be all right. 'Cause those boys'd be killed, too. I'll hire me some guns when an' if I think I need 'em. Nobody cares if those types get killed, not even their own selves.”

The steaks came—an honest two inches thick and dropping off all the way around the big dinner platters. They were singed outside but bleeding inside—cooked perfect. The mashed potatoes were as white
as a new snowfall, and the serving spoon stood up like a soldier at attention in the middle of the bowl. The carrots were soaked with melted butter with a touch of garlic, an' they tasted just fine.

Lucas wiped his mouth with his sleeve and chuckled.

“What?”

“Ain't real hard seein' you et in stir.”

Will was confused for a moment and then looked down at the table and at his right hand. His left arm was wrapped protectively around his plate, his hand in a tight fist. When he used the knife to cut his steak, Lucas saw that the handle was tucked into Will's palm and that the blade was between his thumb and forefinger, ready to attack in any position.

Will chuckled softly. “Ol' habits die hard. In Folsom, a man who doesn't guard his plate is gonna go hungry.”

“You have much trouble inside—'sides killin' that fella?” Lucas asked.

“Everybody has trouble in a prison like Folsom,” Will said. “Some real bad boys in there. Show some weakness an' you'll end up bent over a barrel with your drawers down.”

“What about the guards?”

“The screws? They'd be first in line at the barrel.”

Lucas began to speak but stopped. The two men finished their meals and called to Millie for another tray of beer.

“You got somewhere to stay while you're in Dry Creek?” Lucas asked. “Thing is, I got a decent li'l room up in my hayloft I usta live in 'fore I was married. It's got a real bed. It's a tad warm durin' the day, but cools down good at night.”

“I'll take it an' pay up when I leave. Thanks.”

Lucas wiped foam from his mouth with his sleeve and looked down at the table, avoiding Will's eyes. “About Hiram's farm . . . ,” he began.

“What about it?”

“Ain't no reason to go out there, Will. None 'tall.”

“I gotta pick up a trail somewhere.”

“Nothin' to pick up,” Lucas said. “We had rain since, and some hard wind. Anyways, the sonsabitches headed for Mexico with the beef, jus' like they always do.”

“OK.”

“You're goin' anyhow, right?”

“Yeah—if you'll rent me a horse. Slick's gonna be on vacation for a bit.”

“I don't have nothin' with the class of your Appy, but I got a couple head of good horses got some manners an' will take you where you want to go.”

“Sounds good. Say—ain't it about time to have us some more beers?”

“
Some
more, my ass.” Lucas grinned. “I'm wantin' a
lot
more.”