The barn was a tangle of beams that crossed each other and tilted out from the foundation. Flames continued to flicker in spots, but for the most part everything had burned away that could. Earl lay on his back in the wavering light, pinned to the ground by a charred beam twenty feet long lying across his midsection. His chest bellowed in and out amid breathless cursing. Cross was kneeling beside him, cradling Earl's head in his lap and repeating something I didn't catch over and over beneath his breath. His Spencer lay in the tall grass a few feet away.
“He was walking past the barn when it came down,” Yardlinger whispered. “He heard it and tried to get out of the way, but he slipped and fell. He's all busted up.”
“Help me.”
I looked at Cross. His seamed cheeks were slick.
“Give me a hand and let's get this thing off him. We got to get him to a doctor.”
Still whispering, Yardlinger said, “That's another thing. One of the wooden pegs they put barns together with is sticking in his belly. We'd gut him like a fish if we tried lifting the beam.”
“Poor dumb bastard.” Major Brody gazed sadly at the heaving figure. I hadn't realized he'd followed us from the house until he'd spoken. “We best dig a hole right here. He'll mess up something terrible, we try to tote him back to town.”
Cross cursed and lunged for his rifle. I backhanded the Major across the face with the Deane-Adams, sending him sprawling, and stepped between them to level the gun at Cross. He froze with his hand on the weapon, then let go, one finger at a time. He settled back on his heels, rocking to and fro with Earl's head in his lap and murmuring gently.
The Major sat on the ground rubbing his bleeding cheek. “What in hell did you hit me for?” he groaned. “He was the one going for iron.”
“He wouldn't have gone for it if you rode herd on your big mouth. Next time I'll put a bit in it.” I stashed the gun and turned to Yardlinger. “They've got medical help up at the house. Tell him to slap a bandage on the boy's leg for now and come out here.”
“He needs a shovel, not a doctor.” But he retraced his steps to the house.
“You hear that, Earl?” Cross was saying. “Help's coming. We'll get you fixed up in no time.”
The young deputy didn't hear him. His back was
arched and his mouth worked, air moving in and out shallowly. Blood bubbled in his nostrils.
I bent over the Major, now supporting himself on one elbow. “I didn't think they were that close.”
“Closer'n two toes in a tight boot.” He spoke petulantly, holding his handkerchief to the injured cheek. “Earl's old man used to take turns betwixt whaling him and his ma. One time he busted the kid's head with a horse collar. Randy seen it and used a quirt on the old man. Him and Earl been together since.”
“Where's that goddamn doctor?” Cross was looking at me, but his eyes were out of focus. Distractedly he lowered them to the boy and stroked his pale yellow hair. Earl began to hiccough, the spasm jerking him. Suddenly his shoulders lifted and his head snapped back, tearing a keening cry from his throat, like the horse had made before I put it out of its misery. For an instant he froze in that position, and then he sank back down and his head lolled to one side. His eyes and mouth remained open.
“That's the ticket,” Cross said. “Rest. Save your strength.”
“Randy, he's gone.” It didn't sound like my voice.
“He ain't.” He resumed rocking and petting. “Where's that goddamn doctor?”
In the background, charred wood hissed and popped as it cooled. Beams and rafters glowed in sections, looking like the snakeweed we used to pull apart and put back together as kids. Major Brody got up grunting.
Moments later Yardlinger returned, flanked by a
short man wearing a sheepskin coat and a Buffalo Bill beard and carrying a black leather satchel scuffed brown at the edges. Randy looked up at him like a Mexican gazing at a plaster saint.
“He hurts bad, Doc.”
“Not any more he don't.” PetitâI supposed it was himâglanced from the corpse to me. “You the one sent for medical help?” I nodded. “You look like you should know a dead'un when you see him.”
“He wasn't dead when I sent for you.”
“Dead or dying, it adds up the same. I got to get back to someone I can save. You been busy tonight.” He turned away.
Cross leaped across Earl's still form and spun him around by the shoulder. The Spencer was in his hand.
“What the hell kind of a doctor are you?” He was shouting, waving the muzzle under Petit's nose. “We got a man here needs patching!”
The former medic's eyes sought mine. Sad eyes, calm as a toad's. “He always like this?”
“He's pretty shaken up.”
“I noticed that. Can you call him off?”
I held back. Cross had the rifle cocked and his finger rested on the trigger. I didn't want to startle him into spraying Petit's brains all over western Montana. The barn's abused timbers groaned and spat. Then the weapon drooped in Cross's hands and he started to cry. I reached out and gently twisted the Spencer out of his grasp.
“Obliged,” said Petit and continued on his way.
I took the rifle off cock and handed it to Yardlinger.
“Think you and the Major can undo Earl from that beam?”
“I think so. It isn't all that heavy. A few more pounds on the sunny side and it might only haveâ”
“And if the barn were made of steel it wouldn't have fallen at all. Wrap Earl in his saddle blanket and sling him over his horse. Bring the animals up to the main house when you're through.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Pay my respects to the host.”
I returned to the bedroom in time to hear Petit ask Turk for laudanum. The foreman turned to the woman half-breed and said something in halting French. She replied, shrugging. Turk turned back.
“There ain't none.”
“Whiskey, then.”
At “whiskey,” the woman's face brightened and a stream of rapid French followed. In the middle of it Turk said, “Three bottles.”
“Tell her to get them. All of them.”
She hurried out, her skirt scuffing the floor.
The foreman watched Petit open his satchel. “Think that's a good idea? I hear drinking that much in a short time can kill a man.”
“There are worse ways to die. Besides, some of it's for me.”
By this time the boy in the bed had given up any pretense of bravery and was exhaling curses, his voice rising to a shriek whenever the pain grew acute. His trousers had been cut away and his bare leg lay atop the counterpane with a temporary bandage wound around the gaping hole in his thigh.
My kerchief had been replaced by a clean white rag knotted loosely above the wound, the ends left out for quick tightening. Petit did nothing to make the patient more comfortable. I guessed that was so the boy wouldn't notice the instruments the former medic was taking from his satchel and laying side by side on the table next to the bed. The hacksaw's teeth looked sharp enough to shave with.
“Go outside,” Turk told the four men who had helped carry in the boy. “Find out how many men we lost.”
“Not yet.” Petit held the saw over a chipped enamel basin and drenched the blade with liquid from a pint bottle. A hospital stench flooded the room. “They'll be needed.”
“For what?”
He left the saw soaking in alcohol and rammed the cork back into the bottle. “Because whiskey is a rotten anesthetic.”
“Christ's sake, Tom, you don't mean you're reallyâ”
“I'm a cowhand, not a surgeon.” His face darkened. “I don't know the first thing about piecing them slivers back together and neither does Doc Ballard in Breen. That leg'll start mortifying tomorrow. You know how fast gangrene travels? Two inches every hour. It's coming off.”
“No!”
The boy's hoarse scream buzzed in the rafters. He seized Turk's sleeve. His face was gray, the whites of his eyes luminous by contrast. “Abel, don't let him take my leg. How'll I sit a horse?”
The foreman smiled uncomfortably and blustered, “Nothing to it, Jim. We'll whittle you one of them pegs and you'll be bouncing around like a jackrabbit in no time. Hell, you can tell the girls you lost it fighting injuns. They'll be all over you.”
“No peg,” Petit said. “Not when it's above the knee.”
The lamp hissed on the table.
“Abel.” Jim's grip tightened on the older man's arm. “If you let him cut it off I'll shoot myself in the head. If you hide every gun on the Six Bar Six I'll cut my throat. If you throw away my razor I'll set myself on fire with that there lamp. You can have someone watching me all the time, but he's got to take his eyes off me once, and that's when I'll do it.”
The woman returned with the three bottles of liquor. Turk took one and yanked the cork with his teeth. “Have a pull, Jim,” he said, spitting it out. “It'll make you feel better.”
For a moment the boy's gaze remained on the foreman. Then he released Turk's sleeve as if throwing it away and seized the bottle. As he upended it, Petit leaned across the bed and whispered: “Leave me the four men and clear out. I need room to work.”
“You going to be able to handle him?” Turk sounded dubious.
“That's what the four men are for.”
Turk nodded toward the boy, who was choking from the whiskey. “You reckon he meant what he said? About killing himself?”
Petit glanced uneasily at Jim and slid his hand under Turk's arm, drawing him away from the bed. The bottle made plopping noises as the patient tipped it up again.
“I must of helped the surgeons lop off arms and legs a hundred times in the war,” whispered the medic. “Maybe fifteen of them lived. It wasn't on account of blood loss or gangrene or even fever, though they all got that. They just didn't want to. I don't think he'll last long enough to kill himself.”
“Well then, why in hell bother, if he's going to die anyway?” He was almost choking with the urge to shout. Petit shushed him.
“I asked the surgeons the same thing. They said it wasn't their job to stand by and watch a man die. If it wasn't theirs, it sure as hell ain't mine.”
He straightened, looking like a doctor. “Leave Clarice here with the hands. I'll need a nurse.”
“Where's Mather?” I asked Turk, in the living room.
He snatched my collar and gathered it up in both fists. An inch shorter, he glared up at me. His beard bristled and his eyes were bloodshot.
“I lost three men tonight, not counting that boy. One was in the barn when a bushwhacker's bullet busted a lantern and he burned to death with six horses. Two more to gunshots. There might be more. I been kind of distracted. If you'd let me settle with Pardee last night in town, none of it would of happened. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't bust your neck.”
“I'll give you five,” I said. “At this range, any one of them would do the job.”
He glanced down. In his rage he'd failed to notice the Deane-Adams prodding him in the belly. He let me go with a shove.
I put the gun away and handed him the Colt I'd taken from Jim. “I wouldn't give it to him for a while. What happens now?”
He rotated the cylinder, inspecting the rounds. Only one had been fired. “Now I finish what I set out to do last night.”
“I can't stop you,” I said. “I wouldn't try, on your own ground with only three deputies. But if one Terwilliger man dies from other than natural causes, I'll pick out a rope for you personally.”
“That your kind of law?” Having put the Colt in his pocket, he was jerking spent cartridges from the cylinder of his Smith American and replacing them from his belt. Brass shells plinked to the floor. “It's all right for the small ranchers to do murder but not for the big ones to hit back?”
“If men from the Circle T killed your men and fired that barn, they'll stand trial. That much I can guarantee.”
“I heard all about your guarantees. How's that deal you made with Pardee stand now?”
“Pardee's brother was murdered. I'll make an arrest on that too. The rope will decide who's right and who's wrong in this war.”
He holstered the big .44. “Funny thing about ropes. The way they stretch and snap back, you can never be sure who they'll hit.”
“It's the same with bullets,” I said.
“Not when you're standing behind them.”
He stalked out, providing me with a fine view of his back all the way out the door. I didn't take advantage of it. I guessed I was mellowing with age.