“I beg your pardon?”
“I have to know,” Katie said again. “The men I was with: Shardeen, Whitey, and Red. They used me, degraded me. I have to know if any normal man will ever want me again.”
“I promise you, Mrs. Kincaid,” Jim said, “that’s not something you need to worry about.”
“Thank you,’ Katie said. Without another word, she turned and walked away from him, disappearing into the morning darkness. Jim stood there for a long moment afterward, wondering if the encounter had really happened. Or if it was merely a hallucination, brought on by a trick of fatigue and shadow.
Chapter 14
Alamosa, Colorado
When the sun came up, Clay Allison was sitting out on the hotel balcony, holding his hand to his aching jaw. The pain had kept him awake all night and he was now groggy and irritable.
He took a drink of whiskey, swirled it around in his mouth, then spat it out. He had been doing that throughout the night and, so far, had gone through three bottles. It seemed to help some, but it was a terrible waste of whiskey.
Clay had come into town the day before to have his aching tooth pulled. The dentist didn’t believe in using chloroform, nor did he offer a tincture of laudanum. As a result, the extraction had been extremely painful. Clay accepted it, however, as being necessary for the greater good of getting rid of his toothache.
It now seemed, however, that it was all for naught. The pain of the extraction had eased, but the toothache was still there. Clay spent the night in agony, waiting until the dentist opened his office again so he could go see him.
Gradually, the little town began to come awake. A loaded freight wagon rolled slowly out of town. The smell of sizzling bacon began drifting up the street. Across from the hotel, the proprietor of the general store opened his doors, then stepped out onto the porch wearing a clean, white apron and began sweeping. Down the street the blacksmith started working, and the ringing of his hammer played counterpoint to the scratch of the broom.
Finally Clay saw a small, nearly bald man with rimless glasses walking up the sidewalk, heading toward the dental office. Dr. Chidister was whistling a jaunty little tune as he sauntered along. He reached his dental office, marked by the hanging sign of a tooth, opened the door, and went in. The little sign in the window was turned from CLOSED to OPEN.
“It’s about damn time you came to work,” Clay mumbled angrily.
Clay stood up from his chair, rinsed his mouth out with whiskey one more time, spat over the balcony railing without regard as to who or what was below, then followed that with a healthy swallow. He had been going through the same procedure all night, rinsing, spitting, then drinking. As a result he was very drunk.
Clay left the hotel and walked across the street to the dentist’s office. An old man with white hair and a beard was sitting in the dental chair. His head was tipped back and his mouth was open. Clay’s entrance into the office wasn’t a quiet one. He slammed the door hard behind him, causing both doctor and patient to look around.
“Get out,” Clay said to the patient. He indicated the front door with a jerk of his hand.
“What?” the patient asked.
“See here, you can’t come in here and run my patients off like that,” the dentist said.
“Yeah, I can,” Clay said easily. He pulled his pistol and cocked it, then looked directly at the patient. “Ain’t that right, Mr. Peabody?”
“That’s right, Mr. Allison,” Peabody said, getting up from the chair and taking off the apron Dr. Chidister had draped around him. Peabody worked as a clerk in the leather goods store and knew Clay Allison by sight. In fact, as Clay’s ranch was so close by, most knew him by sight. And all knew him by reputation.
Clay waited until Peabody was gone. Then he climbed into the dental chair.
“I must say, Mr. Allison, you do have a way of getting someone’s attention. Now what can I do for you?”
“My tooth is still hurting,” Clay said.
Chidister laughed lightly. “Oh, I’m afraid that is quite impossible.”
“You may think it is impossible, but I’m telling you it’s still hurting,” Clay said. “Fact is, the son of a bitch is killing me. See what you can do about it.”
“All right, let me have a look,” Chidister said, leaning down over Clay’s open mouth. He looked down inside, then clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Oh, my, this is awful. How could this have happened?”
“How could what happen?” Clay mumbled through his open mouth.
Chidister cleared his throat, nervously. “Mr. Allison, uh, we all make mistakes,” he said.
“Mistakes? What kind of mistakes?”
“A rather big mistake, I’m afraid,” Chidister said. “I’m going to have to pull the tooth that is bothering you.”
“Wait a minute. Didn’t you pull that tooth yesterday?”
“I’m afraid not. I, uh, pulled the wrong tooth,” Chidister said.
“What!” Clay bellowed, yelling so loudly that people half a block away could hear him.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Chidister said. “But such things happen all the time. I’m not the first person to make such a mistake.”
“Well, you are the first person ever to make a mistake like that on me,” Clay said. Although he had just put his gun away, he pulled it again and jammed the barrel into Chidister’s belly. “Now you make sure to pull the right one this time.”
“Y-y-y-yes, sir,” Chidister stuttered.
Because he was frightened and nervous, Chidister’s hands fumbled and quaked as he worked in Clay’s mouth. Allison let out a bellow of pain as Chidister, dripping with sweat, finally pulled the tooth out, then held it up for Clay to see.
“Here it is,” he said. “As you can see, it is rotten with decay.” He smiled. “I reckon I got the right one this time.”
“Why didn’t you get it right the last time, you son of a bitch?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Allison,” the dentist said.
“Get in the chair,” Allison ordered.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Are you deaf? I said get in the chair!”
“No, sir. Of course I’m not deaf. I just don’t understand what you want,” Chidister said as he sat down.
Clay picked up the pulling pliers, still dripping with his own blood and saliva. “Open your mouth,” he ordered.
“What?” Chidister asked in a weak voice, beginning to understand what Clay had in mind.
“I said open your damn mouth,” Clay said. “You owe me two teeth, and I aim to take ’em.”
“Mr. Allison, you . . . you can’t be serious!”
“Oh, I’m dead serious. Open your mouth, friend. I’m either going to pull two of your teeth, or I’m going to blow your brains out. And it makes me no never mind either way. What’s it goin’ to be, Doc? Do I kill you? Or do I pull a few of your teeth? It’s up to you.”
By that evening, there wasn’t anyone in town who didn’t know the story of Clay Allison pulling two of Dr. Chidister’s teeth. Chidister was not a popular man in town. As a dentist, he was rough-handed, and the fact that he didn’t use any painkillers—claiming that he didn’t believe in them, though others said he was too cheap to use them—made his extractions even more painful.
As it turned out, Clay Allison wasn’t the first person to have the wrong tooth pulled. As a result, several people wanted to express their thanks to him for doing something they would like to have done but lacked the nerve to do so.
The good citizens of the town expressed their thanks by buying drinks. By nightfall, Clay had long forgotten about his toothache. He was so drunk that he no longer felt anything. His state of inebriation created a condition that he seldom experienced. He was unable to perform when he took Hazel Lee up to her room above the Silver Nugget Saloon.