Redemption

13

Once they had Teddy at the undertakers, Doctor Morelli set to work on him, and discovered that Abe Todd’s slug had taken him right through the heart. This explained the lack of blood flow to Jason, anyway. Abe didn’t seem as if he much cared, one way or another, because all he said after Morelli made his announcement was, “So now we only got Davis to fret about.”

He didn’t even bother to turn around. He just stood by the window, amid stacks of chairs and tables and other things (the undertaker also being the town’s furniture maker), and stared out into the street.

“We need to get back over to the office,” Jason said, lifting his eyes from the corpse. It really was a shame, he was thinking. Teddy Gunderson had his whole life ahead of him, but he’d chosen to throw it away. He shook his head. He turned to Doc Morelli, who was washing his hands in the basin. “You’ll wait for the undertaker, Doc?”

Morelli shook water droplets from his hands, then picked up a towel. “That I will, but he’d best hurry. I need to get up to see Solomon and Rachael’s baby.”

“How is she, anyway?”

“Not good, the last time I saw her.”

“Whole town’s prayin’ for her, Doc.” Well, most of it was, anyway.

Morelli nodded. “Let’s hope it helps.”

Jason and Abe crossed the street, went into the office, and took seats on either side of the desk before they realized they had company. Rafe Lynch sat on a bunk in the first cell. His head was hanging down, and Jason said, “Rafe?”

Rafe looked up. “’Fraid so. Heard the shot and figured it might be a good idea to get my butt over here. Was I right?”

“You were.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Rafe Lynch, meet—”

Rafe stood up and Abe turned toward him. “Abe Todd!” He broke out into a big grin. “Spiders and snakes, it’s been a coon’s age!” He walked toward them. Abe stood up and met him in the middle of the floor, and they pounded each other’s backs like long-lost friends instead of a marshal and an outlaw, Jason thought. He found himself on his feet, too.

“Hold your horses!” he said, breaking up the gabfest. “What’s goin’ on?”

Rafe, still grinning, said, “Why, me and Abe, here, are old buddies!”

“Knowed him since he was in diddies,” Abe said.

“Thanks for admittin’ how much older’n me you are.”

“You better watch your step, you punk kid!” Abe joked.

Rafe gave him a friendly punch in the arm.

I don’t need this, Jason was thinking. He was becoming more confused by the hour about where the line between good and evil lay. And he was beginning to think that Jenny was right. Maybe he should just go across the street to the boardinghouse and put a slug between Davis’s eyes. It’d sure make things easier. Maybe the citizens should vote in a new marshal, too. Like, for instance, Rafe. That’d be about their speed.

Abe said, “Grab a chair, Rafe. Let’s all sit down and take a load off. All right, Jason?”

Jason lowered himself back down without replying.

Seated across from him, Abe said, “Jason, you look like somebody just stole your boat.”

The analogy was lost on Jason, who’d never lived on the water in his life, but he let it pass. “You two just boggle my mind, that’s all. I mean, you just killed a man, Abe, and when we got him to the undertaker’s, you didn’t pay him a bit of attention. And then when we came across Rafe, here—an outlaw of the first order—you treat him like your long-lost kin!”

“He prob’ly wasn’t much help at the undertaker’s ‘cause he can’t stand the sight of blood,” said Rafe. “And where the hell’s the third chair?”

Jason poked a thumb over his shoulder toward the place where he’d shoved his chair’s remains.

“Hell, that ain’t no chair,” said Rafe with a grunt of disgust. “That’s kindlin’!”

Dr. Morelli finally left the undertaker’s and headed up the street to the mercantile, this time taking care to switch to the other side of the street before he came to the alley. Once bitten, twice shy, he told himself, and stopped to take a long look into the mouth of it before he dared pass.

He’d been fretting about Solomon and Rachael’s baby all night and all day yesterday, too. He’d gotten down his old textbooks and read everything he could on heart problems, and on the very young, but he still couldn’t make heads or tails of it. He just knew that there was something wrong, something wrong inside, something that made a “whoosh” when it should have made a solid “thump.” She was too thin, and acted listless. And Rachael had told him that the baby hardly cried at all.

All of which was the wrong kind of news to hear about a newborn. He didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all. And the poor Cohens! If this baby died, he didn’t know that Solomon would retain his sanity. Rachael was the stronger of the two. She would suffer, but she’d be all right. But Morelli didn’t know that Solomon could stand to bury another child. He had changed his name mere months after the last boy died. What would he change it to this time?

Morelli shook his head and opened the mercantile’s door to that damned little jingling bell. It sounded far too happy for the home upstairs. Solomon was there to greet him.

“Morning, Solomon,” he said. “Just dropped by to check on little Sarah.”

Solomon looked relieved. “Glad you could make it, Doctor. We heard a lot of hubbub on the street, earlier.” He began leading Morelli back toward the stairs.

“Yes. It was all rather strange. Some man—someone I’ve never heard of—tried to gun down Father Clayton and myself from that alley, over by Milcher’s church. A U.S. Marshal came from out of nowhere and shot him before he could shoot us. All very odd, very odd. And rather sad, too.”

As they began to climb the stairs, Solomon said, “It’s a day for odd things, my friend.”

Morelli was confused until he heard the sounds of a baby. Crying! “Is that Sarah?!” he asked, amazed.

“It is, indeed,” replied Solomon, who had arrived on the landing. He waited for the stupefied Morelli to catch up to him, and then pointed to Rachael, who was sitting in their rocking chair, trying to calm the infant.

“Hello,” she said to Morelli with tears in her big brown eyes—but they were happy tears, not tears of heartbreak. “I’m thinking she’s better.”

Back at the marshal’s office, Abe and Rafe had just left to go have a drink or two at the saloon and catch up on old times, when Salmon Kendall came through the door. Before Jason had a chance to greet him, Salmon said, “Jason, I believe we’ve solved our water problem!”

Jason blinked. “What water problem?”

Salmon cocked his head and said, “Oh, c’mon. You remember last summer, don’t you?”

Jason did indeed. The whole town had suffered for weeks when both the creek and the well had run dry. They lost livestock and nearly lost some citizens, too, before a wagon train came through and saved their (by then, quite smelly) carcasses. He nodded, and said, “So what’s your solution?”

“We’re going to build a water tower.”

Now, neither Fury nor its citizens had the cash or wood or labor it would take to erect such a structure, and he warily told the same to Salmon.

“That’s why we need to use your office,” came the reply.

“You’re going to turn my office into a water tower?”

“No, no!” Salmon laughed. “We’re going to have a meeting to pick the men who’ll go up into the Bradshaws to cut down and mill the wood. We’ve got plenty of tar, don’t we? And more on the way?”

Jason nodded. “There’s always more on the way.” Had Salmon lost his mind?

As if reading Jason’s thoughts, Salmon said, “Don’t go thinkin’ I’ve got bats crowdin’ into my belfry, Jason. We know what we’re doin’.”

And so Jason came to be thrown out of his office on that morning while he watched the town elders slowly file in.

“You’re the jokers who made me marshal,” he said under his breath as he turned on his heel and crossed the street, headed for the saloon. Muttering, “I might’s well have a drink with Abe and Rafe while I’m in here,” he pushed through the doors, figuring he deserved one after what he’d been through this morning.

“Please, Doctor, say again that you aren’t fooling with us,” Rachael said.

She appeared both anxious and thunderstruck. Morelli didn’t blame her, for he felt much the same way. “No, Rachael, I’m not fooling. I don’t understand why, but she seems much improved from yesterday. We’re not out of the woods yet, but I think we have a good chance of making it.”

Rachael scooped the squalling infant up from the table where Morelli had been examining her, and hugged her to her breast.

“Thank you, Doctor, and you should pardon me, but thanks should be to God as well!” She snuggled the child closer and Morelli could hear her whisper, “Sarah, oh, my little Sarah, praise Jehovah for your life! Praise Him for all good things!” Slowly, with a huge grin on her face, she sank down into the rocking chair while she murmured to the baby.

Solomon shook Morelli’s hand, and shook his hand until he thought it might drop off! “Easy there, Solomon,” he said at last, and Solomon let his hand go free.

“Sorry, Doctor,” he said, a little ashamedly.

Morelli clasped him by the shoulder. “Your wife’s right. You shouldn’t be thanking an old country doctor. You should be sending your thanks to God. He’s the only explanation for this.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Well,” he added, “I’ll stop by tomorrow to see how she’s coming along, all right?”

Solomon walked him down the stairs, asking only three more times about the baby. Yes, Morelli was sure, and yes, she was better, and no, it wasn’t his imagination.

Morelli finally left the mercantile, but he was walking a little taller. Thank You, Lord, he said in his mind. Thank You for watching, for paying attention, and for harkening to their words. Amen and amen.

He went not toward his home and his office, but out to the wagon train once more. And while he walked down the line of wagons, he said another little prayer, in his thoughts, for poor Frank Saulk, the man who had been hit by a saguaro arm before the wagons came to Fury. His wounds had been complicated by his wife’s failure to get out all the spines, although he couldn’t blame her. Most of what was left, peppering the back, was invisible to the eye and had to be felt for.

He didn’t suppose a screaming husband was the best patient, either.

He screeched when Morelli did it, too, but Morelli hoped to get the last of them out today.

If he didn’t, Frank Saulk would die.

When he got there, Frank was dozing fitfully in the back of the wagon, and his missus (who’d said, “Call me Eliza”) was off to the side, tending to a fire which looked like it had just been kindled. He greeted her, and proceeded to stick his head in the back of the wagon.

“Frank? Frank, are you awake?” he said, even though he knew Frank was conscious. He didn’t like surprising people, especially patients on their deathbeds.

Frank lifted his head and cranked it around. “Yeah,” he said, as if from another dimension. “Mornin’, Doc.”

Morelli climbed up into the wagon and squatted beside Frank. He hadn’t seen their children. Perhaps their mother had sent them off to play. He asked Frank how he was feeling, and Frank just made a face.

Morelli could see why. Frank’s back was an angry red and purple thing, almost a monster apart from the rest of him, and as septic as anything Morelli had ever seen, aside from some amputees during the War—some amputees who had later died. He smelled of death, too. Not a good sign.

“All right, Frank. I’m going to try to dig out the last few spines today, and then we’re going to see if we can’t clean up some of the pus. All right?”

“Whatever,” Frank muttered, and said no more.

Morelli began to go to work.

Meanwhile, Salmon Kendall was closing the meeting of the town elders, officially known as the Town Council. The men were on their feet and a few of them had already left when Salmon said, “Somebody should tell Solomon, up at the mercantile. You want me to do it?”

The other men (having heard and in some cases, whispered} about the Cohens’ sick newborn, were leery of setting foot in a house of sorrow, and all agreed. They would have Salmon do what they were afraid to.

When they had all filed out, he walked up the street and pushed open the jangling mercantile door. Surprisingly, he found Solomon in good spirits—very good, in fact.

“Solomon?” he said. “The baby’s better?”

“Oy, my friend Salmon!” Solomon effused, arms held wide as if to engulf the entire town—or possibly the entire world. Salmon couldn’t be sure, but he backed up a step. Solomon didn’t seem to notice.

“She is much improved!” he went on. “The doctor was here, and said she has a good chance now, but I know better. God will not allow her to die. She is beyond harm, a blessed child!”

Salmon hoisted his brows. “And you know this because . . . ?”

“Because I know, that is why,” Solomon said, and that was that. Or at least, Salmon took it that way. Sometimes, he had learned, Solomon was intractable once he got the bit in his teeth, which he seemed to have achieved now.

He moved on to more pressing things. He said, “The council just held a meeting. Sorry we didn’t call for you, but things have been pretty rough up here, and . . .”

“You didn’t wish to bother me?”

“Exactly. Anyway, we’re going ahead with the water tower. I’ve got volunteers to go up north into the Bradshaws to get the wood, and I’ll start making a list today of men to do the building and the tarring of it.”

Solomon considered this. “It will have to be very strong indeed if we have another storm like we had the other night. Can we make it that solid? And where did you decide to put it?”

“Yes, it’ll be strong, Solomon. We have plans to use reinforced crossbars on the legs and tie-downs. And I believe the weight of the water will hold it in place.”

“God willing.”

“Exactly. And you know that empty lot a couple door downs from the marshal’s office? The plan is to put in there. It’s centrally located so that everybody will have equal access to the water.”

Solomon’s brow wrinkled. “No one owns this lot?”

“Not a soul. Like most of Fury, it’s a land grab.” Salmon laughed at his own joke, but Solomon remained thoughtful.

“And the council members agree to all of this?”

Salmon nodded.

Hunching his shoulders, Solomon raised his palms into the air. “So be it, then.”

“Drink to it?”

Solomon smiled. He felt like having a drink just to celebrate the good news about Sarah, anyway. “So be it,” he announced, and marched over to the drawer where he kept a decanter of red wine, and also a whiskey bottle. He picked up the latter and held it out. Smiling, Salmon smacked his lips.

Solomon poured out two whiskeys. “To all good things which come from God,” he said.

“Imagine the fellers who go up to get the wood’ll have a little problem with that. You know, thinkin’ it’ll all come from courage and muscle and dumb luck. And later, they’ll attribute it to wisdom and foresight and a staggering knowledge of lumbering skills. Perspective’s funny that way. But I’ll drink to the Lord’s help, by God. May He bless this endeavor!”

Solomon raised his glass. “L’chaim!”

They clinked their glasses together, tossed back their drinks, and grinned.

About a quarter mile outside of town, Ezra Welk crouched on the brushy desert beside his grazing horse and slowly shook his head while absently scratching at his neck. What the hell had happened here, anyway? There hadn’t been a blessed living thing here, aside from the usual snakes and bug-critters, the last time he was through! But now, it seemed like somebody had not only built a good-sized stockade—and chopped down practically every single tree that had once lined the bank of the creek—but had sent to California for a wagon train.

At least, that was what was parked along the stockade’s southern wall. He assumed it was the same wagon train whose path he’d been following for the past few days.

At long last, he stood up and mounted his horse, having decided, after a long internal debate, to go ahead and ride in, to see what the hell was really going on. Just as well, because just as he settled down into the saddle and got his reins adjusted, a big, ugly dog near the wagons spotted him and began to bark. He would have just shot the damned thing, but it was on the end of a rope or something, and the other end looked to be held by a lanky kid.

“Get you later, dawg,” he muttered, and moved his hand away from his holster. For the time being, anyhow.

Ezra Welk didn’t make promises he didn’t keep.

He moved his horse ahead, down the gentle slope, and toward the stockade.