Sheep's Clothing (2 page)

I was on my way to the kitchen when I heard a knock at the front door. I turned to look through the front window, and saw an angel smiling in at me—Sarah Cook, my next-door neighbor.

Ah, Sarah! Ever since I first met her, I counted myself fortunate that Salvation was lucky enough to have such a beauty amongst its residents. She wove blankets for her neighbors—including myself—and was never without a kind word for anyone. She was beautiful and delicate and kind, with golden hair like corn silk and blue eyes like the sky on a cloudless day. Every time I looked upon her my heart leapt with joy.

She had lived with her older brother Kyle ever since their parents died. He was half again as broad in the shoulders as I, the result of tending the sheep that gave the wool for Sarah’s blankets. I held a great amount of respect for the man, not entirely due to his relationship with Sarah.

I’d heard tales of him unleashing unholy amounts of what-for on a wide variety of offenders, from coyotes after his sheep to wanderers who thought it would be a good idea to start trouble in Salvation.

Because of the scarcity of women living in the Territories, a lovely young woman like Sarah had her pick of bachelors out here, but to my unending delight she’d taken a fancy to me.

“Good morning!” I greeted her as I opened the door to her. She had in her hands a basket, from which bakery smells issued. Her hair fell in curls around her face.

“Morning, Doc,” she replied. Most folks around here called me Doc. “I baked some muffins this morning and thought I’d whip up an extra half-dozen for yar breakfast.” She offered the basket, which I took. “I hope I didn’t catch ya with a patient,” she added, “I heard a god-awful racket late last night and I got a bit worried about ya.”

“I…” I glanced back towards the kitchen doorway, where I expected to find Mr. Cowrie—and found to my relief that he had elected to make himself scarce for the time being. “…No. Everything’s fine—just had a late night emergency call, is all.”

She frowned. “I do hope it wasn’t anything serious.”

“No… nothing—nothing serious.” I wasn’t about to elaborate on the matter, to spare her ears the gory details of surgery.

“Well,” she said, “I have some blankets to work on for the Harvest Festival. I hope to see ya there.”

The Harvest Festival! I’d nearly forgotten! In mid-September Salvation would hold a festival for the upcoming harvest—and clearly Sarah planned to attend.

“I hope to see you there as well,” I replied, my heart hammering. “This will be my first.”

“I expect ya
’ll have fun there,” she said. “There’ll be music and dancing and feasting until the cows come home.”

“I look forward to it,” I said.

She kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll see ya later, then.”

After she left, I leaned against the doorframe, waiting for my head to stop spinning. I had no idea what to expect with the Harvest Festival, even with Sarah’s description, but I resolved to be there no matter what, if only to see her. I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

Well. I still had a patient to attend to, one who was doubtless awaiting breakfast. I gathered myself and headed for the kitchen. Cowrie looked at me appraisingly.

“Ya look like ya’re on Cloud Nine,” he observed, his gaze flicking briefly towards the front hall.

              “Yes. Well.” I cleared my throat. “My neighbors sometimes pop by for a visit in the morning.” I started rummaging in the pantry.

             
“She sounds like someone special,” he said offhandedly.

             
I felt my face grow hot as I surfaced with a slab of bacon. “She is, actually,” I said, and to my relief he dropped the subject. I commenced frying breakfast, and decided to try a different topic. “So, what brings you to Salvation?”

“I’m looking for a man. Been looking for this man for a long time, and I think I have him about pinned down.”

“Oh—are you a bounty hunter, then?” I’d heard stories of such men—some good, some bad.

He shrugged. “I’ve hunted men for bounties before—but this one… this one is personal.”

I looked at him. He had hate in his eyes—hate and loathing. “What did he do?” I asked.

“There was a girl I was fixin’ to marry. Pretty as ya could ever want. He killed her whole family and took her away with him.”

I was shocked by the casual description of such heartless depravity. “A kidnapper?”

He growled. “He didn’t do this for money. He… bound her, like. Turned her to his will. Last time I saw her, my pretty bride was gone, with something else in her eyes instead.”

“I’m sorry,” I said honestly. I’d heard of such things before in the city, cases of wives beaten by their husbands until they lost the will to live—though such things were nearly unheard of in the frontier. I poked at the bacon absently so it wouldn’t burn.

“He’s a monster—a leech, feeding off what ain’t his. I won’t rest until I tear his heart out, the way he did mine.”

I saw the bacon was done, so I pulled the pan off the fire, scraping the bacon onto a plate. I had little doubt that Wolf would do his level best to make good on his threat—injury or no. “So, what’s this man look like?”

“Oh, ya’ll know him when ya see him. He looks like the
Devil hisself is riding along in his carcass.” He considered further. “Other than that, he’s a handsome feller. Red hair. Pale. Nice clothes. But his eyes… no soul in them. None at all. It’s like lookin’ a rattlesnake in the eye, if ya look at him right.”

“How dangerous is he?” I asked.

“Oh, dangerous as ya please. He’s got no moral compass at all—but he’s a charmer. That’s the most dangerous part of all.” He took a portion of the bacon and tucked into it. “So,” he continued with his mouth full, “what can ya tell me of the land and the people?”

“I don’t know the land as well as most,” I admitted, “but I know the people well enough.”

He nodded. “Tell me about the people, then, and what ya know about the land.”

I told him of the woods to the north, which legend held were haunted by the spirit of a woman who froze to death while trying to find her children. To the east was mainly farmland, which he indicated seeing on his way in. To the west was grazing for sheep and cattle. To the south one could find the entrance to the Medicine Cavern.

“Why do ya call it the Medicine Cavern?” Cowrie asked.

“From what I’ve heard,” I explained, “The man who founded this town took shelter in a cave while headed west. It was raining hard, and his children were very sick, but after staying a night in the cave the children felt all better. Upon questioning, the elder of the two revealed that his throat had been dry, so he drank water from a lake he found further in. He found it so cool and sweet that he brought some back for his brother, who also drank it. So the man decided to put down roots here, and sank a well into the Cavern so other people who came here could drink from it. It wasn’t long before other people came to live near the well… and Salvation was born.”

“Ya believe that story?”

I shrugged. “It’s a nice legend, but I’m not sure about the truth of it. I’m a bit old to believe in fairy tales.”

“Legends have their beginnins somewhere,” he pointed out with a smirk.

“Well, the people certainly have put their faith in the water, to be sure, and they tend on the whole to be healthier and stronger than most city folk I’ve seen—but this is the frontier. You’d have to be made of stern stuff to survive out here.”

He shrugged noncommittally. “Tell me more about the people, then.”

I told him what I knew of the local people. Most folks in Salvation had a couple of jobs that went together—for example, the blacksmith was also the farrier, and the brother of the animal doctor. Most of the women above the age of twelve knew how to cook.
Michael ‘Pack’ Packard owned a field just outside of town where he grew corn and wheat, and his wife Angela kept chickens and was a superb baker, churning out the best cornbread and meat pies I have ever tasted. James ‘Gib’ Gibson, the brewer, was wed to Marybell ‘May’ Gibson, who ran the Lucky Lady, Salvation’s watering hole and inn, where travelers could stop off and rest before heading on to parts further west or east.

William Baker kept cattle, and at this time of year he could be counted upon to supply some of the best steaks I’ve ever tasted, and some of the finest leather goods in his part of the country. And, as mentioned before, Kyle Cook kept sheep, which produced wool for the blankets that Miss Sarah wove.

He stopped me in my monologue after I mentioned the Lucky Lady. “Tell me more about that place,” he said. “Popular?”

“As popular as might be expected,” I replied, “It’s the only inn for a couple days’ travel in any direction—and it’s a good place to restock for people headed west. After Salvation, it’s about six days to the next town, or three if you’re headed back east.” I paused. “Unless your man’s a good hunter, he’s likely to stop there.”

He frowned. “Oh, he’s a damn good hunter,” he murmured, mainly to himself, it seemed. He scowled. “But I aim to outfox him. For every hunter, there’s always one better at it.”

I cleared the dishes from the breakfast table. Hunting men was not exactly how I would spend my time, but clearly he intended to rid the frontier of a dangerous man. Whatever his quarry’s crimes were, he would certainly answer to God for them.

I washed up and packed my medical bag for my usual morning rounds. As an afterthought, I also fetched the shard of metal that I’d dug out of Wolf’s side the previous night and stuck it in my pocket. Wolf glanced up at me as I made sure everything was in its place.

“If you’ll excuse me, Wolf, I need to make my rounds this morning. I should be home by ten. I trust you won’t burn down the clinic while I’m gone.”

“Dun ya worry about that,” he replied, frowning, “I got a few things of my own to fix up before I can go after him.”

“I should think you would worry more about healing first,” I said at the door.

“Dun ya worry about that, neither,” he replied, “I’ll be fine, thanks to ya.” I did hear a note of genuine gratitude in his voice, and I wondered if he had strayed closer to death than he wished to indicate or even than I was able to determine. I donned my hat and headed for the door.

“Keep yar eyes peeled,” he said as I opened the door, “and make a note if ya see anything that’s off.”

“I shall certainly do so,” I replied, and headed out.

My first stop was to the local smith. The owner was a powerfully-built man named Thomas Stone, who worked the metal while his oldest son James manned the counter. James was nowhere near as muscular as his father yet, but I had seen the boy box, and he had laid low men twice his size.

James smiled as I walked in.

“Morning, Doc!” he beamed. “How can I help ya?”

“I was just dropping off a bit of scrap metal I dug out of a patient recently,” I said, taking the wedge of metal from my pocket and setting it on the counter.

“What’s it from?” he asked, picking it up and holding it to the light.

“The point of a knife, I think,” I said. “Someone stabbed him and broke it off.”

“Let’s get this cleaned up, then, so I can see what we’re dealing with.”

He washed the dried blood off the shard and polished it until it gleamed. He held it up again, and then squinted.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I… don’t think this is steel.” He lowered it back down so I could see the print of his thumb stand out clearly against the polished surface. “See that?”

I nodded.

              “I just need to test one more thing,” he said, and rummaged until he found a compass. He set the compass on the counter, waited for the needle to settle, and passed the wedge of metal over it. The compass didn’t so much as twitch. He grinned. “Thought so.”

             
“What?” I asked.

             
“I think ya’ve got yarself some pure silver. Ya said this came from a knife?”

             
I nodded.

             
“Well, I can’t think why someone would want to make a knife of this stuff. It’s too soft for anything ya’d want to use a knife for. That’s probably why the point broke off in yar patient.”

             
“A keepsake, maybe?” I ventured.

             
James snorted. “What kind of spendthrift would stab someone with a silver keepsake?”

             
That I couldn’t answer. James was willing to pay a half-dollar for the knife-point, though, and I went on my way.

I had a few regular clients that I liked to check on regularly, mainly because the folks of Salvation tended to live uncommonly long, but the only incident of any real note occurred at the house of the mayor, Samuel Cavanaugh, and his wife Carolyn.

The Cavanaughs lived in a big mansion at the northeastern edge of town, with a large garden in the back populated by a sizeable grove of fruit trees. Samuel was a large man in his fifties, sturdily built due in equal measures to healthy breeding and the fresh air of Salvation. He typically kept his graying whiskers in neatly-groomed mutton chops, and the small army of servants conspired to keep his clothing tidy and well-mended. Carolyn was a lovely woman in her forties (though where she was in that decade I did not care to speculate) whose frequent bouts of insomnia and sleepwalking—a condition that had been around since before my arrival—left her looking drawn and hollow-eyed more often than not. The previous day I’d mixed up for her a new soporific, which I hoped would allow her to get a solid night’s sleep free of her evening jaunts.