Dead Trouble Read Free

him go not five minutes later, forking the sleek buckskin he had prepared for the Ranger, his wife trailing him on a slower dun, skirts and hair flying.
    ‘What the hell we gonna do?’ a man asked Longhair. ‘We’ll have to get rid of that Ranger. Someone’ll come lookin’ for him.’
    Longhair pointed to a man who was obviously the worse for drink slouched in a corner. He was middle-aged , unshaven, dressed in soiled frock-coat and grey-flannel trousers that had seen better times.
    ‘Throw a bucket of water over him and drag him out to look at the Ranger. Kid said he ain’t quite dead yet.’
    ‘Hey! The hell you got in mind!’
    Longhair’s eyes were tight and small again. ‘Like you said, Blackie, they’ll come lookin’. That we don’t want.’ He jerked a thumb to the drunk in the chair. ‘He used to be a sawbones – killed some kid on the operatin’ table back East an’ crawled into a likker bottle and been livin’ there ever since—’
    ‘Christ! He couldn’t do nothin’. Anyway, what the hell you want him to do?’
    ‘He can tell us if the Ranger can travel. If he can, we take him down to Big Hat and dump him at the infirmary there. Better if the Rangers find him alive or bein’ looked after than dead. We all swear he never come here. They might still come but it won’t be the same, like if they’re lookin’ for someone who killed one of their kind, but we can tell ’em it was Kid McKittrick shot him if we have to, give ’em a trail to follow, get ’em away from here.’
    The men looked dubious.
    ‘Risky, Long,’ said Blackie.
    ‘Sure. But better’n havin’ to close down the whole blame town and clear out – or have it done by Rangers out for blood! It’s our only chance, way I see it. Now get that old has-been sobered-up as much as you can and get him on his feet. Chuck, Mungo, you come with me and we’ll see what we can do for the Ranger till Doc has a look at him.’
    They thought he was mad. But now that McKittrick was dead, Longhair was the most feared man in Red Flats. They moved to obey.
    The drunken ex-sawbones let out a strangled, choking yell as someone tipped a pail of cold water over him. Someone else hauled him out of his chair and slapped his face until his eyes began to focus. Then they shook him, took him out to the horse-trough, dunked him half a dozen times, and dragged him out to the room where five dead men and one dying awaited him.
    They found Longhair and Mungo crouched over Deke Cutler.
    ‘How’s he doin’, Long?’ asked Blackie, holding one arm of the sagging, drenched doctor who was swayingfrom side to side, wondering what was happening to him.
    ‘Don’t think he’s gonna make it,’ Longhair said grimly. ‘Slap that sawbones around until he knows where he’s at. Do it, goddamnit! If this son of a bitch dies we’re all in more trouble’n you can shake a stick at!’
    Blackie’s hand smacked back and forth across the doctor’s slack face. He moaned and protested feebly but didn’t seem any more aware than previously.
    ‘Ahhh! It ain’t no good, Long! He ain’t gonna help. You ask me, we better bury the Ranger and quit the Flats before a troop comes ridin’ in and kicks us out! We’re finished here!’
     
    Doctor Hugo Farraday was a burly man who wheezed a lot. His fingers were stained darkly with nicotine, as was the bushy moustache under his large nose. Anyone coming out of chloroform and seeing that face looking down at them could be forgiven for thinking they had ended up in Hell.
    But when he spoke, his voice was soothing, quiet, gentle – as were his big hands.
    ‘Deke? That right, they call you “Deke”?’
    Cutler’s heavy-lidded eyes fluttered a little and he was some time before he nodded. He tried to talk but his voice was too raspy for anything to be understood. Doc Farraday’s right hand pressed him gently back against the bedsheets.
    ‘Try to relax. Just wanted to make sure you were coming out of the anaesthetic.