furnished down to its red drapes and French furni-
ture, and a treatment room for patients, waiting for
new ownership. As the town’s lawman, Jake held the
keys to the place and used it when necessary, like the
time he had to remove a hacksaw blade from Dice
Thompson’s gullet—Dice, stone-eyed drunk, made a
bet he could swallow the thing for he’d seen a man in
a circus once swallow a sword, two of them in fact,
but it became stuck in his windpipe and he could nei-
ther swallow it or expectorate it.
Jake had some of the men carry Dice over to Doc’s
and put him on the examine table where Jake chloro-
formed him and finally got the blade removed. Dice
still had a raspy voice. It was that sort of thing that
brought folks to Jake. He’d had to make up lies about
his skills—telling them he wasn’t a real doctor, just
somebody who’d learned a little something as an or-
derly in the big war. For real problems, he suggested
they travel to Bismarck for care. Few saw the reason
to go that far as long as the marshal showed the con-
fidence he did in setting their broke legs, and stitching
up their bad gashes and taking saw blades out of the
gullets of stupid men. Quite a few of them even called
him Doc Horn.
But he disapproved of such appellation and dis-
couraged them from referring to him in that manner.
It didn’t seem to matter to them much if he was a
real doctor or not. They offered him cash money, he
refused. They offered him chickens and baked pies,
some of which he accepted. They offered him to
come to dinner, which he also accepted. He estab-
lished the boundaries of the care he’d provide them,
and rarely broke those boundaries.
Now the Swede woman was in need of him, her
daughter bleeding out, it sounded like, from aborting
a child. He didn’t know if he could save her. Hemor-
rhaging was an evil thing that took the lives of too
many frontier women during or after childbirth. But
he had no choice except to try and save her.
He rented a horse from Sam Toe and rode hard
with the medical bag hooked over the horn of his sad-
dle, met the Swede woman along the road and passed
her without looking back. The homestead was ten or
so miles from town.
He’d asked Sam Toe for his best horse, a racer, as
it turned out, that Sam had just recently purchased
from a Montana cowboy who said he’d made a pretty
good living with that horse running him in stakes
races all over Montana and some into Wyoming. But
the cowboy admitted to having an addiction to
women and liquor and was down on his luck what
with winter coming on and no races to be found and
so sold his fine horse to Sam Toe for fifty dollars, sad-
dle tossed in.
It was a midnight-black stallion with a white star
on its face.
The son of a bitch can outrun the wind, the cow-
boy had bragged and Sam Toe passed on the brag to
Jake when he climbed aboard.
Jake tugged his hat down hard when it proved to
be true and made the Swede’s in under an hour.
2
William Sunday knew even before the physician
told him, that he was dying.
“How long?” he said, pulling up his trousers.
The physician Morris said, “You might make it till
winter, but most likely not till spring.”
“That’s damn hard news to take.”
“I’ve no doubt.”
“If I had come to see you sooner would it have
made any difference?”
Doc Morris shook his head.
“It wouldn’t have made any difference. The kind
of cancer you got is about like getting gut shot. Not
much anybody can do.”
“You’re sure that’s what it is?”
“Yes, I’m sure. But there are other doctors you
could go see. Here, I’ll write the name of the best one
I know and you go see him. Always best to get a sec-
ond opinion.”
William Sunday waved a hand.
“Not necessary,” he said. “I sort of known it was
bad for some time now. There were signs. Your word
is good with me.”
Doc Morris held forth the piece of paper he’d writ-
ten the name on and said, “You take it anyway in case
you change your mind.”
Sunday slipped on his coat, the one with the spe-
cial pockets sewn on the inside to hold his custom-
made pistols.
“You know who I am?”
“I’ve heard of you, Mr. Sunday.”
“Then you know I’m probably lucky to even be
walking around at my age.”
Doc Morris washed his hands and dried them on a
towel.
“Stop by a pharmacy and get yourself some of
this,” he said, writing something else on a second
