The stubby, rotund physician — his rumpled suit looking as exhausted as he felt — had just gotten back to town after delivering the latest Haywood baby when rancher Burl Owen rolled up in a wagon with Swenson laid out in back of it.
Sometimes it seemed those were his only patients here in Trinidad — newborn babies and freshly-made corpses.
Burl had been irritable as hell, after being shuffled around from some deputies at the jailhouse who didn’t want anything to do with the corpse, and undertaker Perkins who had insisted that the first stop for the deceased be the doctor’s office for a death’s certificate.
Luckily, somebody had come along to help the doctor cart the body up to his office by way of the outside wooden stairway in the alley. The volunteer was, of all people, the stranger who’d shot four of his other most recent patients.
Now the late Swenson was on the table, on his side, so that the doctor could get a look at what appeared to be the fatal wound.
“You figure this is a murder,” the doc said to his new helper.
“That’s how I figure it.”
Everybody thought they knew better than their doctor.
“Mister,” Doc Miller said, “nobody in this town or anywhere else would be bothered murdering Old Swenson.”
“So I hear. But wasn’t there bad blood between him and the sheriff?”
The doctor nodded. “Bad blood that got resolved by Swenson selling Harry Gauge that little spread of his, finally.”
The doc leaned in for a closer look at the wound, black and clotted now. Deep. Oval-shaped. Hard damn blow.
The stranger said, “I imagine you’ve seen your share of wounds like that before.”
“Quite often. Some were caused accidentally.”
“Not most?”
The doc shrugged, raised both white eyebrows. “Most were from a gun-butt blow from behind.”
“This could be that?”
“That, or he fell on some farm implement.”
“Out by the relay station?”
“Or an odd-shaped rock. Still. That indentation does look like a gun butt...”
“Enough for you to change your diagnosis?”
“This could be murder, yes... but... hell.”
“What is it, Doctor?”
“Stand back a bit, would you, son?”
The corpse’s shirt had got untucked near the bottom, giving the doctor a troubling glimpse of something. He moved the body onto its back. Pulled up the shirt. Took a close look at the man’s belly, where it was broken out in red pustules.
The doc said, “Help me with his trousers... but don’t touch him.”
The stranger did as he was told.
The doctor had a look at the man’s legs, which bore the same red blisters. Quickly he took a sheet and covered up the body.
More to himself than his guest, the doc said, “This corpse needs to be buried immediately.” Then meeting the stranger’s eyes, he said, “Perhaps you might help. You’d be performing a service. You could help avoid a panic.”
“What kind of panic?”
“You ever see these signs before, son?” The doctor lifted the sheet, indicated the stomach. “Step closer. Don’t touch.”
“Don’t worry.” The stranger’s eyes widened. “My God — is that... cowpox?”
The doctor covered his patient up again. “Exactly right. And it can wipe out a town like this and leave nothing but the grass... and I’m guessing that’s why Old Swenson here got himself killed. Somebody didn’t want him spreading this foul thing.”
But the stranger was shaking his head. “That’s not why, Doc.”
Almost amused, the doctor said, “You have your own diagnosis, do you?”
“Not exactly. And my suggested treatment is the same as yours — bury him.”
“You’re willing to help? Not afraid of infection?”
“I’ll follow your lead, Doc, as to precautions.” The stranger’s expression was grave. “But the reason Old Swenson was killed is even worse than you think.”
Chapter eleven
It was going on three in the morning when Harry Gauge rode back into Trinidad.
He could have bedded down under cool sheets to rest his head on down-stuffed pillows at any of the ranch houses on the spreads he owned; but with what he had sent his bunch off doing right now, Gauge figured being seen — and thought of — as the sheriff made better sense.
Anyway, he could catch a few winks at his office and then, bright and early, go and deal with a certain town problem — that gunfighter, who he’d come to believe was almost surely Wes Banion. Time to show Trinidad that strangers couldn’t just ride into town and start shooting down deputies...
Gauge had figured to stretch out on a jail cell cot, but found Rhomer had beat him to it, sleeping it off in their nicest accommodations. His number two man looked disheveled and battered, his left ear bandaged, the white of it stained red.
The sheriff kicked the cot until the red-bearded deputy woke with a start, propping up on his elbows, dark blue, bloodshot eyes popping.
Gauge frowned at him. “What the hell happened to you? Horse throw you?”
Rhomer swallowed thickly, held one side of his head, then sat up, rattling the chains that held the cot to the wall. “Hell... really tore one on over at the Victory. Is it morning?”
“It’s the A.M., but it ain’t morning. Your ear’s bleedin’.”
“One of Lola’s girls got rough and I got rough and...” He grinned stupidly. Touched his bandaged ear, grimaced. “Kind of got bit.”
“Well, I hope you gave her as good as you got. Is our shootist still in town?”
Rhomer nodded. “I think he’s over at the hotel. But that ain’t the half of it.”
Gauge sat next to him. “What is?”
The deputy swallowed, apparently not relishing the taste, and gathered his thoughts, such as they were.
“When I went over to the doc’s,” he began, “to get this flapper patched up? Doc and Banion... I mean, I figure it’s Banion...”
“So do I. Go on.”
“Anyway, Doc and Banion come down the steps carryin’ somethin’ — somethin’ all wrapped up in a sheet. Now, I figure right off it’s a body...”
Wincing, Gauge thought, I really do need to find a brighter second-in-command.
“... and then I was sure it was a body, when I saw this hand flop down, and the doc kind of picks it up and tucks it back under. The doc, he was wearin’ work gloves, what’s a doc wearin’ work gloves for?”
“I don’t know. Go on.”
“Anyhow, the doc and Banion cart this body out back and walk past the houses to where it’s nothin’ but country, and just disappear off into the dark. Did I say that there was this shovel laid out on top of the body, on the sheet?”
“No. You didn’t.”
Rhomer nodded shrewdly, eyes narrowed. “I figure that was a body that they was goin’ out to bury in the boonies.”
“Seems at least a possibility.”
“Anyways, I sat on the stairs in the alley there, by the bank, waitin’ for the doc to get back. When he finally does, Banion ain’t with him. Or the body, neither, of course. All he has is that shovel.”
“Did you ask him what he’d been up to?”
“Well, yeah, in a way, but mostly I was hurtin’ and wantin’ him to tend to my ear. I lost a piece of it, and he done some stitchin’. So we was just jawin’, while he was sewin’, and I ask him where he’d been and such. I josh him—‘You off diggin’ for gold, Doc?’ He laughs a bit and says, no, he just had this-here dead dog to bury.”
“Bury a dog. Middle of the night. You just let that slide, did you, Vint?”