Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
Teaser chapter
New Sheriff in Town
“The sheriff’s likely to be gone a long while, Buck,” Clint said. “I can’t stay here indefinitely, you know.”
“Yeah, well, what about until the Graves boys come back?”
“You think you could handle this job, Buck?” Clint asked him.
“No sir.”
“You don’t?”
“No sir,” Buck said. “I can back your play, but there ain’t no way I could do the sheriff’s job. Not yet, anyway. I ain’t experienced enough, or good enough.”
“It’s a smart man who knows those things about himself, Buck.”
“Thank you, sir.”
And it’s a smart man who knows what he has to do, Clint thought.
He took the badge out of his pocket and pinned it on.
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ANATOMY OF A LAWMAN
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Jove edition / August 2010
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ONE
Sheriff Jack Harper gritted his teeth at the pain. He was lying on his belly on a table in Doc Foster’s surgery while the doctor was digging into his back for two bullets the Graves gang had put there earlier in the day.
“Damn it, Doc!” Harper said.
“Lie still, ya damned fool!” Doc Foster growled.
“Are your hands shakin’, you old drunk?” Harper demanded.
“Shut up,” Doc said from between his own clenched teeth.
“Buck, you there?” Harper asked his deputy.
“I’m here, Sheriff.”
“Is that old man drunk?” Harper demanded. “Is he tryin’ to dig bullets out of my back while he’s drunk? Shoot him if he is. Shoot him before he kills me. Argh!!!”
“He ain’t drunk, Sheriff,” Buck Wilby said. “Honest, he ain’t.”
The truth was Doc Foster didn’t have any whiskey at all in him. It was the only way he could have dug the slugs out of Harper’s back without his hands shaking.
But even with steady hands, he could not get to the bullets. The two slugs of lead had both ended up perilously close to the sheriff’s spine. If Foster dug any more, he’d paralyze the man for life.
Despite the fact they were sniping at each other, the forty-five-year-old lawman and sixty-six-year-old doctor had been good friends for over twelve years.
“Damn it!” Foster finally snapped.
“Take it easy, Doc,” the sheriff said. “You ain’t really hurtin’ me that much.”
That was the point when the sheriff passed out.
“Doc, is he—” Buck asked.
“He’s alive, but that might not make him happy,” Foster said. “I’ve got to sew him up.”
“But . . . you ain’t got any lead out.”
“And I can’t get it out,” Foster said. “If I keep tryin’, he won’t ever walk again. He needs surgery in a hospital.”
“Where?” Buck a
sked. “What hospital?”
“Preferably somethin’ in a big city, “Foster said.
“You gonna tell ’im, Doc?” Buck asked.
“Of course I’m going to tell him, you idiot,” Foster said. “Get out of here. Go over to the hotel and get him a room with a good bed.”
“Yessir.”
Foster knew that his friend spent most nights on a cot inside his own jail, but he was going to need a good mattress to lie on.
Damn it, Jack, he thought, I’m sorry I’m not a better doctor, my friend.
Harper came back to consciousness slowly, and when he was finally about to focus his eyes, he realized he was lying in his stomach.
“Doc?”
“I’m here, Jack.”
“Well, get over here where I can see your ugly face,” Harper yelled. “What the hell happened?”
Doc Foster moved to where his friend could see him.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” he said. “I couldn’t do it.”
“What?”
“I’m not good enough to get those bullets out,” Foster said. “You need a surgeon in a good hospital for that.”
“Hospital?” Harper said. “I ain’t got any money for a hospital, Doc.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Foster said. “The town’s gonna pay for the surgery.”
“The town?” Harper asked. “Jesus, how’d you work that out?”
“I threatened ’em, and blackmailed ’em.”
“Threatened?”
“I told the Council if they didn’t pay for the surgery, they were going to lose a lawman, and a doctor. I also told them they’d be sitting ducks when the Graves gang came back.”
“And who’d you blackmail?”
“You don’t wanna know.”
“Well, thanks, Doc . . . I guess.”
“Don’t thank me, Jack,” Foster said. “If I was a better doctor—”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Doc,” Harper said. “You’re a country doctor. That’s all you ever claimed to be, and you’re a good one.”
“Well . . . I can arrange to get you to a hospital in Kansas City, or Saint Louis, as soon as—”
“No, not yet, Doc,” Harper said.
“Whataya mean, not yet?” Foster asked. “We need to get that lead out of you as soon as possible. If they move, you can be paralyzed for life, or they could kill you.”
“Not yet, Doc,” Harper said. “You were right about one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“This town is a sitting duck for the Graves gang with me gone.”
“You have a deputy—”
“Buck would be dead in the first ten seconds,” Harper said.
“Then the town will have to hire a replacement.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What are you proposing, then?”
“I’m gonna pick my own replacement,” Harper said, “and I’m not leavin’ town until he gets here.”
“What kind of fool—”
“Take down this telegram, Doc, and I’ll tell you where to send it.”
“You already got your replacement picked out?”
“Oh yeah,” Jack Harper said. “I just hope he’ll do it.”
TWO
When Clint rode into Guardian, Missouri, he thought he had stepped back in time. The town looked like Dodge or Tombstone in their prime. The streets were teeming with people and wagons, corrals were filled with cattle or horses. Outside of town he had seen another herd, which he found odd. Because he had recently taken part in what was supposed to have been the last great trail drive.
The telegram that had summoned him here had come from an old friend, a lawman named Jack Harper. He knew that Harper had been the law in Guardian for about a dozen years, but he had never managed to visit him here, and had never before received a telegram. The last time he had seen Harper had been about fourteen years ago, when they had ridden in a posse together in Colorado.
Guardian’s busy main street was pitted with holes and trenches, further indication of how well traveled it was. Not that he needed further proof. The fact that he had to steer Eclipse in and around different kinds of traffic was indication enough.
He found the sheriff’s office and reined Eclipse in. He dismounted, tied the horse off, and stepped up onto the boardwalk. When he walked into the office, it was another odd moment, as if he’d stepped into a sheriff’s office twenty years earlier. Many towns had updated their jails, and some had even modernized their law to include police stations, with uniformed men and a police chief. But he didn’t see any sort of modernization here.
There was a small rolltop desk up against one wall, a gun rack on the wall next to it. The office was empty, in need of a sweep, especially back in the cell block, which had three cells, all empty.
When the office door opened, he turned and saw a young man enter. He had a deputy sheriff’s badge pinned to his shirt.
“Can I help ya?” the man asked.
“I’m looking for Sheriff Harper.”
The man immediately looked suspicious.
“Why?”
“He’s an old friend,” Clint said, “and he sent for me.” He held up the telegram.
“You came?”
“I guess so,” Clint said. “I’m here.”
“You’re Clint Adams?”
“That’s right.”
“Wow,” Buck said. “The sheriff said you’d come. I’m Buck Wilby, the deputy.”
“He was right. You the only deputy?”
“Only one he has right now.”
“Where is Jack?”
“The sheriff is across the street at the Westgate Hotel,” Buck said.
“Should I just wait for him here, then?”
“Uh, no, I think he’d want you to go across the street and see him.”
“Okay,” Clint said, “tell him I’ll come and see him after I see to my horse and get myself a room.”
“The livery is right down the street,” Buck said, “but you already have a room waiting for you across the street—no charge.”
“Is that a fact?” Clint wondered what he had done already to rate a free room.
Buck and Clint stepped outside the sheriff’s office.
“I’ll walk my horse up to the livery and be right back.”
“The sheriff’s gonna be real glad to see you, Mr. Adams.”
They walked their separate ways.
THREE
When Clint walked into the hotel lobby carrying his saddlebags and rifle, there were several people checking in at the desk. However, Buck Wilby was coming across the lobby toward him.
“I got your room key for ya, Mr. Adams,” the deputy said.
“Just call me Clint, Buck,” Clint said.
“Okay, Clint. You’re in room five.”
“And where’s Jack?”
“He’s in room eleven.”
“He’s living in the hotel?”
“Um, not exactly livin’,” Buck said. “You’ll see when you go up. Ya want me to take your gear to your room?”
Clint took his key from the deputy and said, “I’ll take my stuff to my room myself. Then I’ll go to Jack’s room.”
“Well, okay,” Buck said. “Just knock on the door when you’re ready.”
“I can do that,” Clint said, and headed up the stairs, aware that the people checking in were frowning at him. How did he get a room ahead of them, they were probably wondering. One of them was a pretty young woman who was watching Clint for a different reason.
Clint checked his room, found it satisfactory. His window overlooked the main street, and there was no access from there.
He tossed his saddlebags onto the bed, and leaned his rifle in a corner. He wondered what all the secrecy was about, but figured he might as well go to room eleven and find out.
He left his room, walked down the hall, and knocked. The door was opened by an older man with white chin whiskers and wa
tery blue eyes.
“Yes?”
“Sorry,” Clint said, “I must have the wrong room. I was told I’d find the sheriff in this room.”
“Sheriff Harper is here,” the man said. “Who wants him?”
“My name is Clint Adams,” Clint said. “Jack sent for me.”
“So he did.”
“Let him in, you old reprobate!” Jack Harper shouted from inside the room.
“You heard him,” the man said. “Come on in. I’m Doctor Foster.”
“Doctor?” Clint asked, stepping into the room.
Clint saw a man lying prone on a bed, facedown, and the room had the smell of illness, or injury.
“Jack?”
“That you, Clint?” Harper asked. “Come around here where I can see you.”
Clint looked at the doctor, who nodded. He walked around to the side of the bed, where he and Sheriff Harper could see eye to eye.
“Clint, good to see you. Sorry I can’t get up,” Harper said.
“What happened, Jack?”
“A couple of the Graves boys came in to shoot up the town, maybe rob the bank,” Harper said. “I stopped ’em, but they shot me in the back.”
“Twice,” the doctor said.
Clint turned to the doctor.
“You get the lead out?”
“I can’t,” Doctor Foster said. He held his hands out. “I’m not good enough. If I go diggin’ in his back, I’ll paralyze him. He needs a surgeon and a real hospital.”
“Then why don’t you get him to one?” Clint demanded.
“He wouldn’t go until you got here and he could talk to you.”
Clint looked at Harper.
“Jack?”
“He’s right,” Harper said. “Don’t blame the old goat. He tried to get me to go.”
“What’s so important that you had to talk to me before you get two bullets out of your back?” Clint asked.