Man From Boot Hill (10 page)

Virginia City, Montana
1866

Nick was in his early twenties and barely more than a kid. He’d tried to make amends for the hell he’d raised, but found himself with a group of vigilantes who were worse than any gang Nick had ever joined.

One of those men stood over him after beating Nick within an inch of his life. His name was Red Parks and he’d just finished slicing off several pieces from Nick’s hands. The smile on his face was just as wide now as it had been when he’d done the cutting.

“Your days as a bad man are over, all right. I promise you that,” Red told him.

The next thing Nick heard was a quick series of pops.

Each pop was a shot from Red’s gun.

Each bullet blew off the mutilated remains of
Nick’s middle and ring fingers like bottles being shot off a fence.

Once those shots died away, the men who’d called themselves the Vigilance Committee watched Nick squirm until he finally passed out. Their eyes were still glaring down at the young man when a sound from outside the old barn caught their attention.

“Someone’s coming,” said one of the men.

Red reached behind him to find a burlap sack that had been tucked under his belt at the small of his back. Pulling the sack over his head, he adjusted it until two holes cut in the rough material lined up with his eyes. The rest of the men in the barn followed suit.

“Let’s go,” Red told his men. “We’ve done plenty for one night.”

Most of the hooded men nodded and filed out the door like a parade of scarecrows. Two of them lingered over the bloody kid curled up on the floor. Their eyes glared down at Nick through the holes in those burlap sacks and seemed unable to look anywhere else.

“What about him?” one of the masked men asked.

Red looked over as if to admire his handiwork one more time. “Leave him. He’ll probably never even wake up.”

“And what if he does?”

“Then he’ll serve as a warning, just like I said before. He’ll show all his murderous friends what
happens to their kind if they come near Virginia City.” Red walked out of the barn to address the locals who’d gathered outside.

The one man left behind stared down at Nick with his gun in hand. Since he wore a long brown coat, heavy boots and gloves along with the mask, his eyes were the only part of him that was exposed. Those eyes stared down at Nick the way they’d stare down at a wolf caught in a trap. He started to lift his gun and aim at Nick’s temple, but hesitated. If anyone else but Red had set that trap, he wouldn’t have hesitated to put the boy out of his misery. The hooded man knew all too well he might be the next one in such a predicament if he went against Red’s orders.

Reluctantly, he holstered his gun and left the barn.

Outside, Red had already convinced the locals that there wasn’t anything in the barn for them to see. Some of the locals took Red at his word. The rest knew how unhealthy it was to question him.

Nick woke up with the stench of blood filling his nostrils. He tried to straighten up, but that sent a wave of pain through him that nearly dropped him right back into unconsciousness. As he started to keel over, he caught himself with his hands against the floor. For a moment, he thought he’d slapped both hands against a red-hot grill.

A scream worked its way up from the back of his throat, but was muffled when it reached his tightly shut mouth. Nick’s jaw tightened reflexively and
he flopped over so he wouldn’t have to use his hands again. As he lay there on his back, the memories of what had happened rushed back to him.

He couldn’t stay in that barn.

Red couldn’t find out he was alive.

He had to get out.

Nick started to crawl toward the barn’s rear door when he heard voices coming from outside. The surge of blood from his panicked heart was like a fresh load of coal shoveled into a steam engine. He got to his feet and charged toward the back door without a moment’s hesitation.

When he got to the door, he tucked his hands against his body and slammed his shoulder against it. The door had been latched shut, but gave way easily under the young man’s attack. Nick bolted into the night and kept running until Virginia City was behind him.

Along the way, he spotted a few shocked faces trying to get a glimpse at him, but none of them was covered in burlap. Nick’s lips curled into a feral snarl as he used the pain churning inside of him to fuel his steps. He ran into the darkness before he stopped to think about where he was headed.

After a few seconds of squinting and filling his lungs with air, he guessed he was headed toward the mountains. Anything more than that was beyond his ability to grasp, so he kept on running until his legs felt close to collapsing under his weight. Even then, he managed to run for a few hours more.

Feeling something warm on the back of his neck, Nick jerked awake and pulled in a mouthful of dirt. His legs were pumping as if still running, and he reached out to turn himself over. His mangled hands still hurt, but the pain had become Nick’s only companion. He pushed through it and forced himself up.

Nick was crawling on the ground with trees surrounding him on all sides. His eyes darted back and forth, searching for anything to let him know which direction he should go in when he managed to stand up and start running again. All he had to go on was the direction his head was already pointing. Guessing that was the way he’d landed when he was running the night before, Nick pulled himself up and kept moving.

The sunlight hurt his eyes when he tried to look over his shoulder. Once his brain cleared a bit, he figured he was running south or southwest. After a while, his legs started to cramp and every breath was almost too much of a labor for him to accomplish. Cursing his own body for being so weak, Nick dropped to one knee and pressed the back of one hand against his mouth.

He didn’t know how long he stayed in that spot.

It seemed like his feet were rooted there for hours.

When he tried to move again, Nick felt as if he’d only rested for half a second.

The sounds of feet crunching against fallen leaves and twigs made Nick’s next breath catch in his throat. His could only see two blurry figures moving toward him. One of the figures was bigger than the other, so that was the one he chose when he attacked.

Nick lunged off of both legs with his hands held in front of him. Working off of pure animal instinct, he tried to grab the bigger of the two’s throat to show that he wasn’t weak. His bloody hand made it to the man’s neck, but the pain from his mangled fingers was too much to bear.

Blackness flooded through Nick’s head and his legs turned into straw, crumpling him to the ground as his hand snagged upon the other man’s collar. Using his last bit of strength, he reached up with his other hand to try and finish off the job he’d started.

The man in front of Nick was slightly shorter than him and at least thirty pounds lighter. His short, brushy hair was a subtle mix of light brown and some red. A neatly trimmed mustache covered his upper lip and a pair of small, round spectacles sat on his short, rounded nose. The eyes behind those spectacles were wide with shock and fear.

The second of the two figures was a woman. She was slightly shorter than the man and slender in build. Her long brown hair came almost down to her waist and was tied into a single thick braid. She rushed over to the man, but stopped short of getting within Nick’s arm’s reach.

“Don’t come any closer,” the man said. “He’s a wild one.”

“I can see that, Doug! He might hurt you!”

Doug waved to her and slowly eased his other hand around Nick’s wrist. He was able to peel Nick’s grip from his collar without much effort. “He’s hurt. Pretty badly by the looks of it.”

The woman stepped closer. She moved tentatively at first, but then relaxed when she saw Nick was practically hanging off of Doug’s arm. “Oh, my God,” she gasped. “Look at his hands.”

“I know. There’s plenty of other wounds as well. We’d better get him back to the house.”

“What?”

“We can’t just leave him here, Sue. He’ll die.”

“You don’t know that.”

“These wounds are fresh, but they can become worse if they’re not tended to. Now help me carry him to the house.”

Sue was less than a few feet from Nick, but she eyed the boy as if he was a distant curiosity. The harshness in her face melted, but only when she turned again to her husband.

“Please,” Doug said. “I’m not about to drop this boy here and walk away like I never saw him.”

“Fine.” She sighed and went to Nick’s other side, sliding in under Nick’s other arm. “But if he takes a swing at me, I’ll drop him like a hot rock.”

“Fair enough.”

When Nick woke up for the second time that day, it was one of the most disconcerting moments of his life. The memories of what had been done to him by the Vigilance Committee were still fresh in his mind, as was his flight into the woods. The sight of a normal room and the feel of a normal bed were complete oddities.

A face looked down at him and smiled warmly, which put Nick even further off his guard.

“What the hell’s going on?” Nick snarled as he sat bolt upright and pushed his back against the wall. “Who the fuck are you?”

“My name’s Douglas and that woman behind me is my wife, Sue.”

With a bit of effort, Nick focused his eyes enough to see the woman standing at the opposite end of the room. She was pretty, but very nervous. She was also holding a shotgun aimed at Nick’s bed.

“You assholes working for Red?”

Doug squinted and shook his head. “I don’t know a Red.”

“Red Parks,” Nick growled as if the name was an obscenity. “I know I didn’t run far enough away for you to not know him.”

“Oh, you mean the man who leads those vigilantes in Virginia City?”

“That’s the one.”

“I don’t know much more than his reputation, but I can tell you that men like him were why we moved out of town to live here.”

“How far did I make it?” Nick asked.

“Did you come from Virginia City?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you made it just over seven miles,” Doug told him.

Nick felt the weight of those miles drop onto his shoulders. The aches in his muscles flared and he barely had enough strength to keep his head up.

When he looked around again, the quaint little room felt much less like a fever dream. The window was open and decorated with frilly curtains. The furniture looked new and was all freshly dusted. In fact, Nick felt more like a guest in a nice hotel than a bloody fugitive stretched out on a stranger’s bed.

Looking back to Sue, Nick asked, “Why’s she got a gun?”

“Well,” Doug told him, “you haven’t been very easy to manage.”

“God damn, did I give you them bruises?”

Doug winced as if he could feel the dark spots
on his cheek and jaw with renewed intensity. “Yep. You sure did.”

“Sorry about that.”

Doug smiled right away and shook his head. “Don’t even worry about it. I’m more concerned with what happened to you.”

When Doug reached out to pat Nick’s hand, Nick reflexively pulled his arm in against himself. A good amount of the blood had been cleaned away, but the bandages had also soaked up more than their share.

“If you don’t want to say anything now, that’s fine,” Doug said. “But at least let us get you a doctor. With you being so…rambunctious before, we didn’t want to start in on stitches until you had a chance to wake up.”

“Did you clean me up?” Nick asked.

“No. My wife did that. I had to hold you down.”

Nick ignored the shotgun in Sue’s hands and looked into her eyes instead. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Her face lost some of its hardness as a timid smile began to shine through. When it did, she looked even prettier than before. “You’re welcome.”

“Will you agree to see a doctor about those hands?” Doug asked. The moment he saw Nick nod, he stood up and let out a relieved breath. “Great. Our neighbor was an army medic. I’ll
bring him over and he can do what he needs to do. Sue, I think you can put that shotgun down now.”

Sue looked as if she’d been asked to undress in front of the young stranger. “What?”

“The shotgun. We don’t need it anymore. This young man was just out of sorts. There’s no need to—”

“It’s all right,” Nick said. “Actually, I don’t blame you if you want to keep it. I must look like some kind of animal right about now.”

Although Sue softened up a bit more, she didn’t deny Nick’s statement. She also didn’t put down the shotgun. She did, however, lower it so he wasn’t forced to look down its barrel.

“Since we’re all situated here,” Doug said to his wife, “I’ll take over guard duty and you can send the girls to fetch Bill Mather before making something to eat for our friend here.”

Sue nodded, but didn’t leave until Doug came over to her and took the shotgun. She whispered something in his ear and then nodded to Nick. “Sit tight,” she said. “Bill will be here before you know it.”

After Sue had left the room, Doug pulled up a chair and sat down. He was just about to say something when Sue poked her head in again and fixed him with an intense glare. Flinching as if he’d been knocked in the head, Doug held the shotgun in his hands rather than setting it to one side, as he’d just been about to do.

“Things around here have been a little…rough,” Doug said. He shrugged down at the shotgun and explained, “We moved far enough away so we wouldn’t have to watch those vigilantes ride down the streets, but that also means we need to protect ourselves.”

“I understand,” Nick said. “A lot worse than you have pointed a gun at me.”

“I don’t believe I got your name.”

Before he answered that, Nick paused to wonder how far his own name might have spread. Since he was too tired to think that much, he simply replied, “Nicolai Graves.”

“That’s a name you don’t hear too often. I’ll bet most folks call you Nick.”

“Yes sir, they do.”

“How long have you lived in Virginia City?”

Since the genial smile was still on Doug’s face, Nick figured he wasn’t a known member of the Committee outside of Virginia City. “A few years now,” he said, to answer the question.

Reflexively, Doug’s eyes went to Nick’s hands and the bloody cloths that were loosely wrapped around them. Although another question obviously gnawed at Doug’s brain, he kept from speaking it out loud.

Nick leaned back and savored the silence, no matter how awkward it was.

Over the next twenty minutes or so, Doug seemed perfectly happy with sitting quietly and letting Nick
rest his eyes. A bit later, the front door swung open and several sets of footsteps echoed through the house.

“Sounds like the girls are home,” Doug said.

Sure enough, two little girls with blonde hair poked their faces into the room before being pulled out once more. As soon as they cleared the path, a skinny old man wearing a brown suit came into the bedroom. His egg-shaped head was bald on top with a ring of gray hair around the back.

“Bill Mather, this is Nick Graves,” Doug said in his normal, friendly tone.

Mather squinted down at Nick and said, “Let’s see what the problem is.” After pulling a stool next to the bed, Mather sat down and peeled away the bloody cloths. “Jesus Christ,” he squawked. “What happened to your hands, boy?”

“They were shot,” Nick said through clenched teeth. Just looking at the wounds was enough to re-ignite the rage inside him.

“He’s got other wounds, too, but his hands are the worst,” Doug said.

“Well, we’ll just see about that.”

Mather systematically examined Nick from top to bottom. The only sounds he made were the occasional grunts and mutters to himself. His hands worked quickly and without much concern for Nick’s comfort. It reminded him of stories he’d heard from men who’d fought in the War Between the States. They’d told Nick that the doctors in
those field hospitals were sometimes worse than the assholes who’d put the bullet in you.

As much pain as Nick felt, he made less noise than Mather. He moved when he was pushed or pulled in one direction or another and he gritted his teeth through the rest. When he saw the needles come out to stitch him up, Nick picked a spot on the wall and stared at it.

“This is going to hurt,” Mather said. “You want a drink or something to bite down on?”

Nick glanced at the old medic and then shifted his eyes back to the spot he’d picked on the wall. He shook his head and swallowed hard, knowing that Red would love nothing more than to see him squirm right about now. That was all it took for Nick to steel himself.

It took hours for Mather to do what he needed to do. In that time, Nick didn’t make a sound.

It was early evening when Doug walked out of the bedroom. Sue fixed him with an upset look and asked, “Shouldn’t one of us be in there?”

Doug propped the shotgun in a corner and shook his head warily. “That poor young man’s barely able to sit up straight. If he’s strong enough to take a swing at Bill, I think that’s a good sign.”

“Did he try anything like that?”

“No. He just stared at the wall.”

Doug and Sue did the same thing until the bedroom door swung open again. Mather stepped out, wiping his brow, and then took the spectacles from his nose so he could clean them.

“How is he?” Doug asked.

“I’d say the bigger question is
who
is he,” Mather grumbled. “Did either of you find that out before taking him into your home like a stray?”

Ignoring the look he got from his wife, Doug said, “He was bleeding and lying on the ground. What was I supposed to do? Just let him lie there and die?”

“If he was some killer on the run from the Vigilance Committee, then yes. That’d be the smartest thing to do.”

Sue covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, my God. Is he a killer?”

“I don’t know, but I do know those wounds are mostly from gunshots. Some of the others looked like the bayonet wounds I saw in the war, but they could have come from a knife. Either way, that young man was in a serious fight. The last time someone was tore up that bad and on the run out of Virginia City, it was from that Committee. Has anyone been looking for him?”

“No,” Doug said. Turning to his wife, he asked, “Did anyone ask about him while you were out?”

Sue shook her head. “No.”

“Then maybe he got clear of whoever shot him up,” Mather offered. “Considering the condition he’s in, they probably think the young man’s dead.”

“His name is Nick Graves,” Doug told him.

“I don’t care if his name is Ulysses Grant. If he’s a killer with other killers after him, it’d be wise for
you to be rid of him. Especially since you’ve got the girls to worry about.”

“Thanks, Bill, but we can make that decision.”

“Suit yourself. I cleaned and dressed the wounds as best I could. He needs plenty of rest, but he might just make it. Judging by how he took the stitches and everything else, I’d say it’s nothing but bullheadedness that’s kept him alive this long.”

“What about his hands?” Sue asked with a wince.

“You saw ’em for yourself. They’re shot to hell, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about that. Still, they’re not fatal wounds. By the looks of it, whoever shot him up was either trying to rip him apart or was just one hell of a bad shot. Since there was a knife involved, I’d put my money on the former.”

“What’s a knife got to do with it?” Doug asked.

“You have to get up close for it to work,” Mather replied warily. “Takes a bit more resolve.”

Doug nodded as if he was learning a foreign language. “Right. Of course.”

“So,” Mather said as he headed for the front door, “you want me to ask the marshal about your guest in there?”

Doug looked to his wife, but didn’t get much more than an uncertain shrug in return. Taking a deep breath and letting it out decisively, Doug said, “No. We’ll keep an eye on him until he’s feeling a little better.”

“That should give you until tomorrow at least,”
Mather said. “He passed out when I was filing down the bone of one of his fingers. Anyone else, I’d say they would be laid up for a while, but that one in there will probably be trying to get up in the morning.”

Although he tried not to squirm at the casual way Mather tossed out those last few sentences, Doug wasn’t able to hide the fact that his face was now white as a sheet. “All right, then. What do I owe you for this?”

“We’ll work something out. Right now, I just want to get some sleep. Talk to you both later.” With that, Mather threw a wave over his shoulder and left.

Both Doug and Sue jumped at the sound of the slamming door.

“What in God’s name do we do now?” Sue asked in a frightened whisper. “That man may be a gun-fighter or an outlaw.”

“He doesn’t have a gun on him,” Doug said as if to comfort himself along with his wife. “And he’s in no shape to harm anyone, even if he…” Suddenly realizing he couldn’t comfort anyone by going along that line of thought, Doug stopped himself. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to think of anything better to say before one of his little girls came running into the room.

The girl wore a cute little blue dress, but was small enough that a potato sack could have covered her just as well. “Does the scary man want my blanket?” she asked.

“No, princess,” Doug said. “He’s sleeping just fine.”

Without another word, she nodded and ran off.

“You’ll keep an eye on him,” Sue said to her husband. “And you’ll have that gun close by when you do it. I’ll fix a plate for him in case he gets hungry during the night.”

And, just like that, the decision was made.