'Get back in there.' McLaren says suddenly, realizing that he's being confused.
'No, wait just a minute. There's a document in there that I think you'll find makes really interesting reading. Mr. Humby has written down the whole thing, right down to the bit where he hired someone to put dynamite in your house to make it look like it was me.'
'I don't want to read no document.' The panic in his eyes was there only briefly but it betrayed him. It can only mean one thing. He cannot read.
'I'll fetch it for you,' she continues, ignoring him, knowing that she can now safely claim that the hand-written report says anything at all.
She puts it down in front of him and is startled for a moment when he does a very good job of theatrically reading it. Her instincts are right though, and when he puts it back down he is clearly still unaware that the paper is just a report of a mine cave-in.
'He hired someone to dynamite my house?' he says.
'He was trying to make me look bad. He didn't care about you. Didn't you read there the bit where he says not to worry if you get blown up or not. He even says it might be better if you were killed.'
'I can't believe it. This must be some sort of trick. Did you write this?'
'Don't you recognize Mr. Humby's handwriting?'
He shakes his head slowly. The whiskey isn't helping. She is getting through though.
'Why don't you ask him?'
'He's here?'
'No, he went to fetch the Judge, but you could go after him.'
McLaren stands up. He sways a little and catches himself on the desk.
'You've got to stay here though. He'll kill me if you aren't still in there when he gets back.'
She tosses her head back laughing.
'You fool, he'll kill you anyway, can't you see that? Read the document,' she adds, knowing how the words hurt him, 'read the document again and you'll see, you don't owe him anything.'
McLaren is still shaking his head. It seems too much to take in.
'After all I've done for him,' he says, mostly to himself.
She stands, arms folded, waiting while the revelation seeps through the whiskey. Perhaps she should say more? No, he seems riled enough. Let him think. Stop talking and let him think.
'I just don't understand.
'He paid someone to do it.' She taps the paper as confirmation.
'That's so low. Why, cheating at cards would be more forgivable than that! You don't ruin a man's house like that. And then to pretend that it was someone else. I've a good mind to put a bullet in him.'
That is exactly the sentiment she was hoping to induce.
He starts to walk towards the door, muttering to himself under his breath.
'You!' he says suddenly, turning round. 'I never liked you.'
She gasps. Can he really be thinking so clearly that he realizes he's been duped?
'I never liked you,' he says again. 'You've helped me by showing me this paper.' He snatches it off the desk. 'And I'm going to show it to Mr. Humby and make him explain himself. But I never liked you and you've helped me here. You didn't need to do that. I'll thank you for it.'
With that he strides out, wrestling clumsily with the door.
He is gone. She realizes she has been holding her breath. Now is the time for action. She needs to get out of there. It won't take long for McLaren to find someone to show that piece of paper to, someone who can read who will tell him what a fool she has made of him. He'll come looking for her then and he won't be in the mood to be thanking her.
She rushes to the door and peers out through the glass. What if someone sees her in the street? How does she know who is a friend and who is Humby's man? She knows that hesitating will be her undoing but she stands frozen, watching people coming and going in the street, oblivious to her.
'Come away from the window or they'll see you.' A man's voice behind her.
She whirls round, wanting to grab for some sort of weapon but flailing at thin air.
'Come away from there. Back here.' He steps out of the shadows. It is Mannion, the shop keeper, her friend, she recognized the voice but in her panic couldn't place it. It seems obvious now. 'There is a door at the back that will be safer.'
The little shop keeper has a shotgun resting awkwardly under his arm. She wonders what it must have taken for him to leave his shop with that weapon in his hand.
'There's a back door?' she says stupidly.
'All these places have back doors.'
She hurries over to him, all the while glancing over her shoulder, frightened that McLaren or Humby will be back.
'I saw that McLaren man leave out the front,' says Mannion, 'and I figured you'd be tied up in here, or worse. I'm so pleased to see that you're not.'
'Nowhere near as pleased as I am to see you. I need to get out of here.'
'I have a horse saddled up behind my store. Have you thought about where you will go.'
'Back to the ranch, I guess.'
'Is that safe?'
'I need to see that Billy is okay.'
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
'The good news is that the bullet went straight through,' the barber says.
Logan is gritting his teeth trying not to yell as the wound on his arm is prodded at. The dose of whisky they've given him to dull the pain is having no effect at all.
'It does seem to have pulled your shoulder out of its socket though. I'll need to pop that back in if you're ever going to regain the use of that arm.'
He isn't really listening to the barber, more to the whooshing noise his own blood makes in his ears and tries to dissociate himself from the pain. It catches him by surprise when Wilson pins him to the chair and the barber braces himself with a foot in Logan's armpit.
He yells. He yells at the surprise. He yells at the pain. He yells at the slurping, crunching noise that his shoulder makes as it goes back into place. And then the pain subsides.
It aches and throbs, but he can live with that. He can feel a tingling sensation in his fingers and wonders if he'd been able to feel his fingers at all before.
'You're lucky. If Wilson had taken much longer getting you here, we wouldn't have been able to put that back. I'll bet it feels better now.'
Logan mumbled his thanks, still marveling at being able to move his hand.
'I'll sew up this hole in your arm and then you'll be good as new.'
He watches the barber thread a needle and start to sew the flesh of his arm. The tugging of the needle and thread feels like it ought to hurt but it is as though he has used up all his hurt and he feels nothing.
'Where did you learn to do this?' he asks.
'My father was a surgeon. I did the training myself but in the end I decided I didn't like spending all my time looking after sick people.'
'So you shave people instead?'
'Why not? It's a way of making money from my skill with a razor without needing to have people like you bleeding all over me.' He cuts the thread as he finishes the last stitch. 'This might sting a bit.' He says quickly before splashing alcohol over it.
Logan gasps. He was right, that stings.
'Take care with that arm. You won't be able to use it much and if you're not careful you'll pull the wound apart and it'll hurt like hell.'
He mutters his thanks again. The arm seems stiff but he can move it a little without it being too agonizing.
