A Town Called Fury

Rafe gave him a friendly punch in the arm.

I don’t need this, Jason was thinking. He was becoming more confused by the hour about where the line between good and evil lay. And he was beginning to think that Jenny was right. Maybe he should just go across the street to the boardinghouse and put a slug between Davis’s eyes. It’d sure make things easier. Maybe the citizens should vote in a new marshal, too. Like, for instance, Rafe. That’d be about their speed.

Abe said, “Grab a chair, Rafe. Let’s all sit down and take a load off. All right, Jason?”

Jason lowered himself back down without replying.

Seated across from him, Abe said, “Jason, you look like somebody just stole your boat.”

The analogy was lost on Jason, who’d never lived on the water in his life, but he let it pass. “You two just boggle my mind, that’s all. I mean, you just killed a man, Abe, and when we got him to the undertaker’s, you didn’t pay him a bit of attention. And then when we came across Rafe, here—an outlaw of the first order—you treat him like your long-lost kin!”

“He prob’ly wasn’t much help at the undertaker’s ‘cause he can’t stand the sight of blood,” said Rafe. “And where the hell’s the third chair?”

Jason poked a thumb over his shoulder toward the place where he’d shoved his chair’s remains.

“Hell, that ain’t no chair,” said Rafe with a grunt of disgust. “That’s kindlin’!”

Dr. Morelli finally left the undertaker’s and headed up the street to the mercantile, this time taking care to switch to the other side of the street before he came to the alley. Once bitten, twice shy, he told himself, and stopped to take a long look into the mouth of it before he dared pass.

He’d been fretting about Solomon and Rachael’s baby all night and all day yesterday, too. He’d gotten down his old textbooks and read everything he could on heart problems, and on the very young, but he still couldn’t make heads or tails of it. He just knew that there was something wrong, something wrong inside, something that made a “whoosh” when it should have made a solid “thump.” She was too thin, and acted listless. And Rachael had told him that the baby hardly cried at all.

All of which was the wrong kind of news to hear about a newborn. He didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all. And the poor Cohens! If this baby died, he didn’t know that Solomon would retain his sanity. Rachael was the stronger of the two. She would suffer, but she’d be all right. But Morelli didn’t know that Solomon could stand to bury another child. He had changed his name mere months after the last boy died. What would he change it to this time?

Morelli shook his head and opened the mercantile’s door to that damned little jingling bell. It sounded far too happy for the home upstairs. Solomon was there to greet him.

“Morning, Solomon,” he said. “Just dropped by to check on little Sarah.”

Solomon looked relieved. “Glad you could make it, Doctor. We heard a lot of hubbub on the street, earlier.” He began leading Morelli back toward the stairs.

“Yes. It was all rather strange. Some man—someone I’ve never heard of—tried to gun down Father Clayton and myself from that alley, over by Milcher’s church. A U.S. Marshal came from out of nowhere and shot him before he could shoot us. All very odd, very odd. And rather sad, too.”

As they began to climb the stairs, Solomon said, “It’s a day for odd things, my friend.”

Morelli was confused until he heard the sounds of a baby. Crying! “Is that Sarah?!” he asked, amazed.

“It is, indeed,” replied Solomon, who had arrived on the landing. He waited for the stupefied Morelli to catch up to him, and then pointed to Rachael, who was sitting in their rocking chair, trying to calm the infant.

“Hello,” she said to Morelli with tears in her big brown eyes—but they were happy tears, not tears of heartbreak. “I’m thinking she’s better.”

Back at the marshal’s office, Abe and Rafe had just left to go have a drink or two at the saloon and catch up on old times, when Salmon Kendall came through the door. Before Jason had a chance to greet him, Salmon said, “Jason, I believe we’ve solved our water problem!”

Jason blinked. “What water problem?”

Salmon cocked his head and said, “Oh, c’mon. You remember last summer, don’t you?”

Jason did indeed. The whole town had suffered for weeks when both the creek and the well had run dry. They lost livestock and nearly lost some citizens, too, before a wagon train came through and saved their (by then, quite smelly) carcasses. He nodded, and said, “So what’s your solution?”

“We’re going to build a water tower.”

Now, neither Fury nor its citizens had the cash or wood or labor it would take to erect such a structure, and he warily told the same to Salmon.

“That’s why we need to use your office,” came the reply.

“You’re going to turn my office into a water tower?”

“No, no!” Salmon laughed. “We’re going to have a meeting to pick the men who’ll go up into the Bradshaws to cut down and mill the wood. We’ve got plenty of tar, don’t we? And more on the way?”

Jason nodded. “There’s always more on the way.” Had Salmon lost his mind?

As if reading Jason’s thoughts, Salmon said, “Don’t go thinkin’ I’ve got bats crowdin’ into my belfry, Jason. We know what we’re doin’.”

And so Jason came to be thrown out of his office on that morning while he watched the town elders slowly file in.

“You’re the jokers who made me marshal,” he said under his breath as he turned on his heel and crossed the street, headed for the saloon. Muttering, “I might’s well have a drink with Abe and Rafe while I’m in here,” he pushed through the doors, figuring he deserved one after what he’d been through this morning.

“Please, Doctor, say again that you aren’t fooling with us,” Rachael said.