“I am,” said Chance.
“You’re a liar,” said the man.
“Take your hand off my arm,” said Chance.
“I know that South-talk,” said the man. “You’re from the South.”
“Once,” said Chance.
“We whipped you,” said the man.
He removed his hand from Chance’s arm and pulled off his jacket, put it on the bar, and put his hat on top of it. Chance noticed that the men in the bar had gathered around, but leaving an open circle near where they stood. Chance thought that someone might as well come up now and draw a scratch line on the floor. How drunk is he, Chance asked himself. Damn drunk, Chance answered his own question.
“We whipped you once,” said Totter, wiping his underwear-clad arm across his face, “and by God we can do it again.”
“Forget it, Corporal,” said Chance.
Chance had been four years old when the war had ended. He doubted if Totter had been much older. Maybe six or seven.
Chance tried to take the drink calmly, but when he lifted it to his mouth, Totter’s arm lashed out and splashed it in his face-The rim of the glass stung his cheek.
It was quiet in the saloon.
Chance put the empty glass down on the bar, with a small click. His face was expressionless. He did not look at Totter directly, though he watched him in the mirror. “You owe me for that drink, Corporal,” said Chance.
Totter, in the mirror, spat in his hands and wiped them on the sides of his trousers, across the yellow stripe that ran to his boots. Then he balled up his fists and hunched over.
Chance noted that Totter was standing with his left side turned a bit toward him. Judging from Totter’s fists this was not a boxing stance, but a natural precaution, protecting himself from a kick. Chance suddenly realized that Totter would not be a particularly pleasant man to fight, particularly not in a saloon. Totter knew what he was up to, and what he guarded against he presumably would not be above doing. If there was a fight it would not be a good one to lose. Therefore, Chance told himself, there must be no risk of losing it.
But Chance did not want to fight.
He had enough trouble.
There would be a sheriff in this town, undoubtedly, and if he were picked up in a brawl, there would be questions, difficulties.
But Totter owed him for a drink.
“I’ll forget this,” said Chance, still not facing Totter, “if you buy me that drink.”
When Totter charged, Chance was not at the bar. He had moved to one side and Totter plunged into the wood. As he did so Chance’s hand seemed to brush at his throat and, choking, Totter sank to the floor, his hands at his neck, his face turning black.
No, said Chance to himself, there would not be a risk of losing it.
What Chance had done could have caused death, if done by an amateur hand, with too much force, too clumsily, not properly, but Chance, a skilled physician, had not broken the cartilage that would have closed the windpipe, that might have closed the life of a drunken soldier in the dusty town of Good Promise, South Dakota.
Chance hauled Totter to his feet and half threw him over the bar, taking the man’s wallet from his hip pocket, and gouging about in it until he found a liberty nickel which he tossed to the bartender, who filled his bourbon glass for him and shoved it back to him, along with two Indian-head pennies in change. Chance returned the pennies to Totter’s wallet and shoved it back in the man’s hip pocket; then he sat Totter down on the brass rail at the foot of the bar, and Totter slid from it to the sawdust floor, sitting there, holding his throat.
“He didn’t even hit him,” said one of the men watching.
“Get up, Jake,” said a soldier standing nearby.
“Get him, Jake!” urged another.
But Jake Totter sat in the sawdust, holding his throat, trying to get oxygen into his lungs.
Chance chucked down the drink.
He looked down at Jake, who was breathing better now, but with difficulty. The burly figure sitting on the floor was now, it seemed, sober, sick, enraged. He rolled over on his side and threw up against the bar.
As Chance watched him, Totter struggled to his knees, fumbling at the holster at his side.
“Don’t, Jake!” yelled one of the soldiers.
The service revolver in Jake’s unsteady hand jerked out of the holster.
Edward Chance’s Colt had slipped from its holster and before Jake could bring his gun up Chance fired once into the body of Jake Totter, who yelped and grunted and was spun back against the bar, rolling along the floor, hugging his right shoulder.
Chance put the weapon back into the holster.
“Get a doctor,” yelled somebody.
“No doctor closer than Fort Yates,” said one of the soldiers.
A couple of soldiers had turned Jake over.
They pulled his hands from the wound. There was a large, irregular scarlet stain on the white underwear and a powder burn.
One of the soldiers looked up at Chance. “The army will get you for this, Mister,” he said.
“Jake was gonna plug him,” said a man in overalls, peering in between a couple of ranchers.
“Get a doctor,” said somebody else.
“I ain’t gonna ride to Fort Yates,” said one of the townspeople. “Not these days I ain’t.”
Chance wondered what was wrong about riding to Fort Yates, wherever that was, these days. There were a number of things he didn’t understand about this town, the people. They seemed to be afraid, jumpy. He was out of touch.
“There ain’t no time to go to Fort Yates anyway,” said a rancher.
“Jake’s a goner,” said one of the soldiers.
“No,” said Chance. “It’s a simple wound, no complicating fracture.”
“How do you know?” asked someone.
“Because I planned it that way,” said Chance.
He moved one of the soldiers away and knelt beside Jake, unbuttoning the long underwear and shoving it away from the wound.
He touched Jake expertly, who looked at him vaguely through half-closed eyes, his head lolling to one side.
“Get a doctor,” said somebody.
Chance stood up, wearily. There was a bitter smile on his face, a tired, bitter smile.
“I’m a doctor,” he said. “Put him on a table.”
Chapter Five
After treating Totter, Edward Chance lost little time in riding from Good Promise, and as he rode he often turned his head, looking for any distant dust that might be rising from behind him, but there was only his own dust, and it settled undisturbed on the prairie in that late October afternoon.
So he was running again.
But where could he go this time?
Corporal Jake Totter, the man he had shot, would live. The wound would be painful, but was not dangerous.
It had been clearly self-defense.
Still Chance had little doubt that the army, if not the sheriff of Good Promise, would wish to apprehend him, perhaps for purposes of an inquiry, and so he rode, not pushing his horse, but steadily.
As he crossed the open prairie, staying away from the occasional roads that rutted its endless sage and buffalo grass, he paid no special attention to where he was going, or the direction. For one thing he didn’t know the country. For another he was motivated to do little more than put miles between himself and Good Promise, and to stay away from towns and farms in doing so.
Suddenly Chance reined in his horse.
Looking down, he saw a small cottonwood wand, not much more than a foot high. Tied to the tip of this wand, moving a little in the prairie wind, was a small, cloth bag.
Chance dismounted.
He jerked the small bag from the stick wand and opened it. It was filled with brown, dry flakes, and when Chance lifted it to his nose and smelled it, his guess was confirmed. Tobacco. Or at least partly tobacco.