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Short Stories & Tall Tales
Doc Hannah’s Honeymoon
Tom Sheehan
The marriage of Beth Neville and Doc Hannah had taken place, guests and the balance of the wedding party had departed a few hours earlier from Doc’s house outside Caliper, Texas, and night, darkness and ultimate romance fostered in the mix. Beth was in the bedroom changing for comfort and Doc Hannah was cleaning up a few odds and ends left over in the kitchen. The clatter at the porch threw everything out of kilter and the door was thrown wide open.
Two men, with drawn guns, entered the house, supporting between them a man who was wounded and bleeding. He was hatless, without gun belt or weapon in sight, and his eyes were caught up by an inner pain that showed on his face in steady grimaces.
“You got a customer, Doc,” one man said, as they dropped their wounded companion onto a couch. The speaker was a huge, brawny man in a colored calico shirt, a neckerchief knotted in place, and a bowler on his head rather than a sombrero that most cowboys in the area wore.
The big man spoke again. “He caught a bullet in his gut down range, Doc. You got a few hours to get him fixed up.”
Doc Hannah did not know any of the men.
It was not Doc Hannah’s first experience with a wounded bad guy brought to his door by saddle pards. It had been only six months or so since Bad Boy Ben Hooter had come in the door in the dead of night, crying, his kid brother slung over his shoulder.
Now, on this new occasion, Hannah did not look at the bedroom door, diverting the men by asking, in a brisk and important manner, “How long ago was he shot? Tell me the exact time. I have to know.” He grabbed his traveling bag from beside the door and knelt beside the new patient. The man’s shirt front was covered with blood, turning dark red from exposure.
Doc Hannah, keeping their attention on himself, was collecting information so he could pinpoint the hour of the crime, and the possible location, based on travel lore. At the same time he was hoping Beth would climb out the window and get away before one of the men found her. He could not remember if he had told Beth he kept a gun in every room, just in case. Here, in this room, the lone revolver was tucked into the couch on which the wounded man now rested, his moans breaking loose with each cough, as if a sucking chest wound was making headway on him.
The sounds were ominous.
“We came to you, Doc, because we heard down the trail you lived out here alone, not liking town life. We’re pure glad of that. I hope you got nobody comin’ out this way tonight, Doc. No late date or somethin’ like that. One of the ladies from town or from one of the ranches. You’re a good lookin’ doggie, Doc. But we don’t need no other company. You just get our boy Jed here all fixed up and we’ll be on our way. Best do a good job, Doc. He won’t like it none at all if you don’t do it up good. He had a bad temper before all this happened. No tell where it’s gone with him since then. I bet he’s meaner than a stuck peccary, it don’t go his way.” He assessed what he had said; “Me neither, Doc. Me neither.”
Beth, in the bedroom, had heard it all. Every word. In her slippered feet, she had put on a pair of denim dungarees and a sweater. Her dress and other wedding togs had been put away earlier, in the back of a chest; she’d not be wearing them again, she hoped. Even as she kept telling herself not to make a single sound, she studied the window. She’d have get out and do one of two things: go for help or find some way to divert the attention of the men so that her new husband could make a quick and safe escape. The outside of the house came into focus in her mind as she remembered how far the windows sat above ground level. This one, beside her, Beth hoped, was the same as the others, not far from the ground level.
The mirror on the bureau she noticed again, the one that Doc had purchased for her from a furniture drummer as one of her wedding presents, was bigger than the mirror in her bedroom back home on the ranch.
Looking into it, Beth saw a new bride who had been waiting for her new husband. Then, in a flash, she saw a girl still in her teens who was in a crisis. Staring at herself, looking into her eyes, she saw her mother’s bright blue eyes looking back at her. The nod on both sides of the glass was slow and deliberate.
She stepped to the window and, in a cursory sweep of her head, saw the butt of a rifle behind the mirror. The ball of breath, caught in her chest, she feared could be heard in the other room. There was the butt of a familiar Springfield Trapdoor Rifle, model 1873, the kind of weapon she was familiar with from using it for a few years on the ranch. It sat right behind the mirror on the back edge of the bureau. There was not much time, she decided, and looked at how she could get it free without making any noise. The assumption came to her that the rifle had to be loaded, ready to fire. With great ease and steady hands, Beth slid the rifle along the rim of the bureau, holding her breath and holding the butt firmly in her hands. The weapon slid cleanly along the bureau, making no sound.
When she had the rifle in both hands, Beth leaned it against the wall beside the window, placing the gun sight into a fissure in the wall so the rifle would not slip. The major test would be to get the window open as quickly and as quietly as possible. There was one latch on the window, and only a stick to hold the whole window open from the bottom at a slant in warm weather. The latch opened silently and agile Beth placed the notched stick against the window frame and pushed the window open, careful to prevent the stick from slipping, making a noise, drawing the unexpected visitors into the room.
Doc Hannah’s voice rose sharply from the other room, as if he was again trying to draw attention to his own person. “Dammit, man, will you hold his head up so he won’t choke on his own spittle. He needs air.”
“Don’t get me goin’, Doc, I don’t need none of this. I don’t want to be in your shoes he dies on us tonight. And I don’t like none you getting’ so fidgety, like someone’s comin’ to see you tonight. I sure don’t want none of those surprises.”
“I don’t give a damn what you’re afraid of, mister. I’m just worried about me and my patient, that’s all. Cut and dried, me and him. You don’t count for me.”
“Another voice, so far unheard, said, “Why’n’cha knock him on the head, Trooper? We ought to beat it out of here soon. If he ain’t goin’ to get him fixed, make him tell us now. I think he knows what’s comin’ to Hank. He knows already, I bet. Doc’s know things we never know, like right now.”
Beth at that moment leaned out the window and placed the rifle outside, tipping it against the house. If she made a noise she didn’t want them to see the rifle if they came rushing into the bedroom.
With one leg out the window, and holding the window with one hand, Beth lifted the stick and laid it down against the outside of the house beside the rifle. Then she lowered the window until it touched the crown of her head, drew her other leg over the windowsill and climbed out. When she lowered the window into place, only a single squeak was heard.
The heavy voice, reaching Beth outside, said, “What the hell are you smilin’ at, Doc? Paulie, go check and make sure nobody’s hidin’ in there. I swear I heard somethin’.”
A door squeaked. Paulie, the third man, said, “Nobody in here, Trooper. Looks like he was gettin’ ready for sleep.”
Doc Hannah, pleased and surprised, had a series of images run through his head. He envisioned Beth slipping out the window and moving slowly to the barn and going out the side door of the small barn with her horse, but without saddle, without reins, and without being frantic. He had married one special lady, and he loved her dearly, but he hoped she was about to break and run for it. That horse of hers could make it to town quicker than the bad guys could.
No sound of hoof beats came to him. No musical gallop. Nothing.
“Doc,” Trooper said, his voice angry, louder, “What the hell’s happenin’ now? Hank looks like he’s plain dyin’ on us.” The wounded man was caught up in a spasm of sound and bodily commotion. “You better not let him die, Doc. Him and his brother won’t like it very much.”
“None of them count much now,” Doc Hannah said, as he knew the wounded man had taken his last serious breath in life.
The gasp was audible in all corners of the room.
“That’s it, Doc,” Trooper said, “you did a lousy job. I ought to finish you now.”
Doc Hannah ducked as the window exploded and a round tore into the gun arm of Trooper, the hand on that arm not quite reaching his pistol.
“What the hell is that?” Paulie exclaimed, as he too ducked out of sight beside the couch, and Doc Hannah, physician, range boy for all his growing years, dove for the revolver hidden in the couch. He leveled it at Paulie, sitting on the floor, shaking his head, unsure of what had happened. Not until Hannah had pulled Paulie’s weapons from their holsters, and trained them on him, did Paulie realize what happened as Beth came rushing in the door and hugged her new husband, still in one piece.
The doc hugged her back.
“This is where I belong,” she said, not caring who heard her, not caring how long it would be before someone came from town to check on how their night had gone, and her doctor having another patient on his hands.
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