“He once killed a bad man for me.”
“Oh.” Smith gazed into the fire. “I suppose that he also gave you a lot of presents and treated you well too.”
“Yes.”
“He was a murderer and a thief,” Smith snapped. “You must know that he rode with the Marble brothers, who are just about as rotten as they come.”
“My leg is hurting bad.”
“Here, drink some of Red’s whiskey. It’s rough, but it’ll ease the pain.”
Betty drank it straight. Smith shook his head. “A lady always ought to drink from a glass, not the damn bottle.”
“I told you, I’m no lady. Don’t want to be no gawdamn lady either!”
“At least you’re honest.”
“What are you going to do about my leg?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Splint it. Get me to a doctor.”
“I’ll splint it, but I’m not riding for a doctor. I got others to hunt for.”
“Joe and Dave Marble?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you going to try and kill them too?”
“I am.”
She managed a thin smile. “I’ll be happy when they kill you instead.”
“Not too much chance of that,” he replied. “I’ll shoot ‘em just as dead as I did old Red Skoal and that sonofabitchin’ Trabert. There’s a fella named Jake Mill that is supposed to live over by Cortez. I mean to kill him too.”
“He’s mean.”
“That gang was all mean.”
“Red was always real good to me.” Betty’s eyes glistened with tears.
“Hard to figure a man out sometimes,” Smith admitted. “But the fact that he was good to you don’t matter none to me. I should have made him suffer instead of killing him so fast. I … I showed no patience.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Maybe I am. But you better be nice to me or only one of us is going to make it through this night.”
Betty met his eyes and then she looked away, whispering, “I’ll be real nice to you, mister. But first, you got to splint my gawdammn leg so the bone don’t set crooked.”
“Be a pleasure,” he said, grinning wolfishly before heading back outside to find a flat, straight board and some binding.
Chapter 13
“Your leg isn’t broken,” Smith announced after a careful examination. “It’s purple and swollen bad—probably hurts like hell—but I’m sure that it’s not broken.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“My father was a country doctor,” Smith answered. “I used to make the rounds with him when I was young. I’ve seen a lot of blood and broken bones, but I’m not looking at either right now.”
“Your father was a doctor?”
“That’s right,” Smith replied. “He even went to medical school. He wanted me to become a doctor and take over his practice after he finally retired. But I wanted nothing to do with that.”
“So your father saved lives but you take them,” the woman said.
“That’s right. When I was fourteen my father was called out in the night to attend to a man who had been shot in the leg with a scattergun. It was a terrible wound and he had to amputate if he was to save the man’s life.
“Trouble was, my father couldn’t stop the bleeding as he began to cut the leg off. The man was a bleeder and he died screaming and cursing. His two brothers, who were off getting drunk in town, blamed my father.”
Smith took a deep, ragged breath and his eyes grew hard and distant as he continued to speak. “About midnight, they both rode home to find my father and their dead brother. They went crazy, then shot and badly wounded my father. After that, they had some fun carving his legs off at the knees. I heard they laughed as he bled to death.”
Betty shivered. “They sound like terrible men.”
“They were,” Smith choked. “My father did his level best but they killed him anyway. So I killed them.”
“You? A boy?”
“Yes,” Smith said.
“But how?”
