The impact was hard enough to send a series of cracks through the glass.
“You’d best calm down, Mike,” Caleb snarled. “Or so help me . . .”
Mike’s smile was deceptively calm as he reached out to grab the bottle one more time by its neck. “Or you’ll what?” Mike taunted. “I’ve had enough grief for one day, so I sure as hell won’t take no more from some Injun bartender.” Without another word and before Caleb could say anything else, Mike brought the bottle up and around in a quick arc that was aimed directly at Caleb’s head.
Caleb’s first thought was to reach for the shotgun beneath the bar. He could also have picked up a thick length of timber that sported plenty of dents from cracking against the skulls of men like Mike Abel. Instead, Caleb stepped back after too much deliberation and almost tripped over the barkeep behind him.
The bottle slammed into Caleb’s jaw with enough force to snap his head to one side and rattle his brain. Caleb could feel the bottle folding around his jaw as the cracks deepened and eventually shattered it completely. When the bottle exploded, Caleb’s world became alight with intense, throbbing pain.
“How’d you like that, Injun?” Mike taunted with a grunting laugh.
Before he knew what was happening, Caleb felt the floor teeter beneath him. His arms reached out for support, but his backside found the closed office door instead. As he bounced off the door, Caleb pulled in a breath while trying to right himself before he gave Mike the satisfaction of seeing him fall over.
That breath felt like his jaw was being sawed off, but at least it kept him upright.
“Get the hell out of here, Mike,” the barkeep said while bringing up the thick piece of lumber that was dented and bloodied at one end. “Or I’ll knock you into tomorrow.”
Mike held up his hands and backed away from the bar. “I’ll be back tonight for my game. And I expect to have my whiskey replaced with some proper liquor.” Before anyone could say or do anything else, Mike turned his back on the bar and walked out of the saloon.
“Jesus Christ,” the barkeep said as he rushed over to lend a hand to Caleb. “Are you all right?” While he was genuinely concerned with Caleb’s well-being, he was also raising his voice in the hope that he could drown out the sound of Mike’s laughter. Judging by the look on Caleb’s face, the effort wasn’t exactly successful.
[2]
“I’m all right.” With each syllable, Caleb felt more pain stabbing through his face. At first he thought his jaw had been broken. Then he reached up to feel the spot with one hand and realized the pain was coming from a different source.
The barkeep was examining him as well. Although he wanted to help, he pulled his hands back before he did any more damage. “You need to see a doctor. It looks like you got some glass stuck in you.”
Caleb had already figured that much out for himself. While the barkeep was being cautious, Caleb was touching his fingertips against various points along his cheek and jaw. Every touch was slick with a mixture of blood and whiskey. The blood trickled out from the numerous places he’d been cut, and the whiskey trickled into those same wounds to make it feel like fire was being pumped straight beneath his skin.
“Watch you don’t pass out now,” the barkeep said. “I’m not sure I can catch you. Carrying you to the doctor is right out of the question.”
Seeing the genuine concern on the barkeep’s face brought a bit of a smirk to Caleb’s. The smaller man seemed just as concerned that Caleb might be hurt as he was concerned for himself if Caleb happened to fall on top of him. While they were close in height, Caleb outweighed the barkeep by at least sixty pounds of muscle.
“Don’t worry, Hank,” Caleb said to the barkeep. “I should be able to stay awake long enough to keep from crushing you.”
“That’s not what I meant. Well, not entirely. I just figured that you should—”
“I know. I was just kidding.”
The relief on Hank’s face was just as evident to Caleb as it was to the few customers who’d made their way back to the bar in Mike’s wake. One of those customers was the old miner who’d only moved to make certain his drink didn’t get knocked over.
The miner grinned wide enough to display a set of teeth that looked like a crooked row of tombstones. His skin was weathered as an old saddle and sat just as comfortably over the frame of his face. “Take a lickin’ like that and still got it in ya to kid? That’s a hell of a thing.” Lifting his drink, he said, “Here’s to ya, boy!”
Caleb lowered his eyes and started to smile but found it too painful. His hands were busy picking pieces of the bottle out of his face. The pieces that were just stuck to his skin came off easily enough. Some of the others were wedged in like splinters, and the remaining chunks of glass were stuck in much deeper.
Even though Caleb was the actual owner of the Busted Flush, it was times like these that he truly felt like the kid everyone said he was. Fresh out of his teens, Caleb had been living a workingman’s life for so long that he felt twice his age.
“What do you think you’re doing, boy?” the miner asked. “You need to get to the doctor for that. You’re just makin’ it worse.”
Caleb rolled his eyes. Not only did doctors cost money that he didn’t have, but he saw it as a way of admitting that Mike Abel had won the fight.
“You ain’t any less of a man for going to a doctor,” the miner said as if reading Caleb’s mind. “Of course, if you want to put on a show, I’ll sure as hell watch. I ain’t never seen nobody tear their own face off before.”
Settling in against the bar, the miner took hold of his drink and fixed his gaze upon Caleb as though he was watching a song and dance revue.
Caleb looked back at him with his hand poised over the damaged side of his face until the old man’s words finally sank in.
“Can you watch the place for a while, Hank?” Caleb asked. “I guess I’ll be going to the doctor.”
Hank nodded and looked more than a little relieved. “Sure I can. If Mike comes anywhere near here, I’ll crack his head open like an egg.”
While the barkeep patted the club that still lay in arm’s reach, Caleb found himself glancing more toward the shotgun, which was a little farther under the bar. As if to pull his thoughts from where they were headed, Caleb felt a stab of pain from the side of his face.
“You able to walk, boy?” the miner asked.
Caleb nodded. “I can make it, Orville. Thanks.”
“Then you’d probably be better off going to a dentist. A doctor’d bandage up them cuts and maybe give you some tonic, but you’ll need something more than that unless you fancy losing more’n the glass from that jaw of yours. Trust me,” the old man added, leaning forward as if to draw more attention to his crooked smile. “I know what I’m talking about.”
“A dentist,” Caleb moaned. “This just keeps getting better.” Before he could protest more vehemently, Caleb realized his face was already swelling, and it was getting more difficult to form his words. “Where th dentis?” he asked, finding that it hurt a bit less if he kept his jaw still.
Hank walked behind Caleb to make sure he got around the bar and to the door. “There’s a few places I know of, but the closest one is on Elm Street between Market and Austin.”
“Wha his name?”
“It’d be Doctor Seegar you’re after. My aunt had to go to him a while back to get some teeth pulled, and he did a fine job. She’s been back to him since to get some false teeth made, and he did a fine job there, too.”
“I’ll be bag,” Caleb mumbled.
Hank nodded at first, then furrowed his brow and then finally asked, “Huh?”
“I’ll . . . be . . . back,” Caleb repeated, this time pronouncing each word painfully.
Nodding furiously, Hank all but pushed Caleb through the front door. “Take your time, take your time. I’ll make sure the Flush is here when you get back.”
As he stepped outside, Caleb took a moment to clear his head and pull in as much fresh air as he could comfortably manage. Even on the days when he didn’t get smashed in the face with a bottle, staying inside the saloon had a way of making him dizzy. Perhaps it was the combined scents of cigar smoke and liquor that sent his head to spinning. Then again, there was also the fact that when he looked at all those dented tables, battered chairs, chipped glasses, and rotting floorboards, he saw a pile of money that he would never get back again.
