A Town Called Fury

Jason filled him in, and he repeated Abe’s sentiment almost word for word. Then he said, “Don’t s’pose we could go check it out, could we?”

“Gotta get Davis back. Gotta check on Ward. After that . . .”

Rafe nodded. “Gotcha, Marshal. Me, I’m wantin’ to look in on ol’ Ward myself.” Then he brightened. “Did you see? He got Davis in the side, shot him right through the meat. Served the rat bastard right!” He spat into the weeds, as if to underscore what he’d just said.

“Only thing that would have served him better,” Abe said, “was if Ward had got him straight through the heart.”

Jason tended to agree with Abe, but said nothing, except, “Well, he’s sure shot now.”

“Think we can move this up into a jog, Jason?” Rafe asked. “I’m growin’ weary of ploddin’ along, and I wanna get back and see how ol’ Ward’s doin’.”

Jason goosed Cleo into a soft jog and the others followed suit, with Rafe muttering, “Thank God.”

Davis survived the trip back to town (more’s the pity), and Ward was still breathing, although Morelli wasn’t any too hopeful about his recovery. “The one in his shoulder isn’t too bad,” he told Jason, “but that other one went right through his lung. Patched him up the best I could, but . . .” He shook his head.

Ward lay there on Morelli’s table, with tubes coming out of him, tubes that drained pinkish fluid into glass jars. He looked like a ghost, he was so pale, and Jason said a silent prayer over him in the hope that somebody, somewhere, was listening.

They left Davis on a bench outside the surgery, and Morelli, after a cursory examination, said he didn’t look good at all, not with that slug in his side, and not with Rafe’s bullet having just missed his heart. He said he’d try, though.

It was all Jason could ask.

He wanted somebody left alive to hang.

And every one of them, to a man, got so wrapped up in Ward’s situation, dangling between life and death, that all thoughts of MacDonald and the dammed creek flew clean out of their heads.

For the time being, anyway.

19

The next morning, Jason woke to horrible news: Ward was dead. He had passed during the night, Morelli had told Jenny, who was up and awake to answer the door when he dropped by. Morelli seemed upset, as did Jenny, but Jason, while he shed a silent tear or two, thanked God that at least Ward hadn’t suffered at the end. He thanked Him for Ward’s life, and he thanked Him for Ward’s friendship, and for Ward’s company, even though it had been short-lived.

And then he prayed that God would let Davis live, so that he might have the pleasure of executing him.

He had never felt like this before, not even when his father passed, and while he couldn’t change the way he felt, he wondered that he, in fact, did feel that way.

When he got to the office, Morelli and Abe had already moved Davis over to the jail, and locked the patient safely in a cell. Abe, after saying how sorry he was about Ward’s demise, said the doc had warned him that Davis wouldn’t regain consciousness for at least two hours or so, which was fine with Jason. The less time he had to spend in the presence of Davis’s conscious mind, the better.

He had come to the conclusion that the man—if he was a man at all—was evil incarnate.

After Abe left, Jason went to the back room and wept again, crying for Ward, for himself, for Jenny, and for the town, but mostly for Ward. And then he pulled himself back together, and vowed this would be the last time he would ever cry for Ward. The very last time.

But Davis was going to pay, all right, and pay with his own life if Jason had any say in it. Briefly, he wished he could make him suffer, then booted the thought from his mind. Vengeance wasn’t his to parcel out. That belonged to a higher power.

One whom he fervently hoped was keeping His eye on the situation.

Morelli’s second stop of the morning was at the mercantile, where he found the whole family in good spirits. Baby Sarah was doing wondrously well, and Solomon and Rachael were well aware of it. Morelli was pleased that what he’d wished for had come to pass. Time had healed the infant, time and faith and love all mixed together. He knew he certainly hadn’t had anything to do with it.

He prayed with the Cohens (although he refrained from crossing himself until he got outside, in deference to their beliefs), and while he told them their daughter wasn’t out of the woods yet, she was well on her way.

The Cohens were delighted, naturally, and offered Morelli a glass of the sweet wine they favored, which he accepted. They weren’t aware of it, but he wasn’t looking forward to his next call. He’d be going out to the wagons to check on Frank Saulk’s poor, spine-peppered back. He didn’t have much hope for a positive outcome.

At last, he bid good-bye to the Cohens, went outside, crossed himself, and set out at a brisk clip, through the gates.

He found the Saulks’ wagon surrounded by weeping women and dry-eyed men, doing their best to comfort their wives. The Saulks’ children were beneath the wagon, comforting each other, and he found Eliza Saulk in the wagon, sitting quiet and pale beside her husband’s body.

“Eliza?” he said softly, leaning into the back of the wagon to get a better look at Frank. Even from this distance, he could tell Saulk was dead. For one thing there was the odor, but Frank had smelt of death long before he died. No, it was the pallor of the body, the utter and compete stillness of it. “May I come in?”

She nodded in the affirmative.

He climbed up and officially made certain that Frank had passed—during the night, he thought—then covered the head with a sheet and turned toward the new widow.