The Accomplice

When he started thinking along those lines, it made the knock from the bottle a lot less painful.

As he started walking down the street, Caleb did his best to get his mind off the fact that his face looked like a porcupine’s backside. His mouth hung open a bit and he had to suck in the occasional strand of bloody saliva dangling from his lip. Even so, he still managed to try to nod at the people he passed along the way.

Dallas was a good place to be for someone like Caleb. It was also a good place to be for someone like Mike Abel or the gambler who’d hung him out to dry the night before. There were plenty of people who wanted to make fortunes and plenty more willing to take them.

For Caleb, Dallas had been one opportunity after another. It was the place he’d wanted to go ever since he was old enough to realize that the world stretched beyond the boundaries of his father’s ranch. It was the first place he’d gone when what had seemed like a small fortune had been dumped into his lap after a fever had culled some of the members of his family.

Dallas was alive and breathing. It teemed with folks who moved along its streets like blood pumping through a giant’s body. It had noises and sights all its own. But as much as Caleb loved it there, he wondered if there wasn’t even more that he was allowing to pass him by.

He got that way when the receipts for his saloon didn’t come out right or if a liquor salesman gouged him in a particularly creative way. Thoughts of selling the Busted Flush to the highest bidder or just burning it to the ground had entered his mind more than once. But thoughts like that came to any businessman every now and then, so Caleb just put his nose right back against the grindstone and kept pushing forward.

After all, he was a businessman now.

Right and proper.

Straight and narrow.

His father was proud of him, and the rest of his family loved to puff out their chests when they talked about how Caleb had made a name for himself as a prosperous businessman in the wilds of Dallas.

Then again, proper businessmen didn’t normally get their faces split apart and punctured by a liquor bottle.

It wasn’t a long walk to Elm Street. The journey took him into a busier section of town where it was easy to just keep his head down and blend into the churning crowd. There were folks of all shapes and sizes going about their business. Most of them seemed to be making a lot of noise as they haggled over the price of salt or made predictions for the date of the next thunderstorm.

Before too long, Caleb found himself staggering up to a narrow building that was just tall enough to blend in with most of its neighbors. The lower portion of it was marked as A. M. Cochrane’s Drug Store. Caleb walked around to a set of stairs leading to the upper floor marked by a simple painted sign that read J. A. Seegar and J. H. Holliday. Dentists. Satisfaction Guaranteed.

The door at the top of those stairs opened into a small yet comfortable waiting area. At the moment, however, the only place he truly would have been comfortable was somewhere about a hundred miles from the spot he was in.

“Can I help you?” asked a girl who was only slightly younger than Caleb. “Do you have an appointment?”

Before Caleb could make a noise or even attempt to put an answer together, he saw the girl’s eyes become wide as saucers as she covered her mouth with one hand.

“Oh my goodness,” she said. “Of course you don’t have an appointment. Did you fall down?”

“No. I wa hi.” Even though it hadn’t been long since the last time he’d tried to speak out loud, Caleb felt as if his jaw had rusted shut. He winced partially from the pain and partially from the knowledge that he was going to have to repeat himself at least one more time.

“You were hit?” the girl asked. “That’s terrible. Is your jaw broken?”

Still a little stunned that he’d been understood at all, Caleb shook his head. “No. There jus the glass in —”

The girl stopped him with a quickly raised hand. “That’s good enough. You probably shouldn’t try talking any more.”

“Id Docto Seegar in?” Caleb asked against the girl’s orders.

“Dr. Seegar is with a patient right now and he’ll probably be busy for a while. His partner is available, though.”

Caleb’s eyes wandered over to a nameplate propped up on the edge of the desk in the reception area. The words on it were the same as the ones painted upon the shingle hanging outside the office.

The girl stood up as one of the doors leading farther into the office was pulled open. “Dr. Holliday,” she said, “there’s someone here who needs to see you.”

[3]

Caleb leaned back in a chair that allowed him to stretch out as though he was meant to take a nap. His feet were propped up off the floor, while his upper body leaned back far enough for the inside of his mouth to be examined by the slender man who sat beside him.

Actually slender wasn’t exactly a proper word to describe Dr. Holliday. He was so thin that his skin hung on him like a sheet draped over a skeleton. His cheeks were pale and sunken, but his eyes glimmered with an inner light. Even with all of this, Holliday still kept from looking weak. It was a hell of a feat, but he pulled it off all the same.

The dentist sat on a stool next to Caleb’s chair and was just finishing up his preparations when he looked over and gave his patient a personable smile. “Not exactly the most comfortable accommodations,” he said in a smooth, southern drawl. “But considering the scrape you got yourself into, I doubt a feather mattress would make much difference.”

Caleb nodded, knowing better than to try to speak unless it was absolutely necessary.

“I assume it’s safe to say this wasn’t self-inflicted?” Holliday asked.

After waiting long enough to see that the dentist was truly expecting a response, Caleb shook his head. “I go hi wi a bo—le.”

“A bottle? I usually prefer to keep the bottle on the outside and the liquor in, wouldn’t you agree?”

Caleb couldn’t help but smirk at Holliday’s easy manner.

Reaching out with both hands, Holliday eased open Caleb’s mouth and leaned forward for a better look inside. Short, blond hair was parted evenly upon the dentist’s head. A thin mustache covered most of his upper lip, and the closer he got, the more gaunt he looked. His skin was pasty, yet his hands were strong and unwavering. As he leaned in to examine Caleb’s jaw, a subtle wheeze could be heard under every one of Holliday’s breaths.

“I do believe I’ve seen you before,” Holliday said while he reached for a pair of pliers and began tugging at the shards of glass embedded in Caleb’s jaw.

Although Caleb couldn’t respond, the questioning look in his eyes was picked up immediately by Holliday.

“You run the Busted Flush, don’t you?”

The moment Caleb’s expression shifted, Holliday plucked one of the glass pieces from where it had been lodged. The pain came in a sharp jolt but faded quickly since the glass had only been wedged into skin rather than bone.

The sound of glass clattering against the inside of a tin cup rattled through the small room, followed by the sound of Holliday coughing twice into the back of his hand.

“One down,” Holliday said. “Halfa bottle to go. Normally, that statement makes me so much happier. Of course, I’m usually referring to emptying the bottle glass by glass.” His thick southern accent colored every word, lending to his speech a smooth, rounded texture.

Sitting in that chair, Caleb did everything he could to get his mind away from what was being done. That left only the dentist himself to occupy his thoughts, since that pale, sunken face was practically the only thing he could see. Fortunately, Holliday seemed more than happy to fill the air with the sound of his own voice.

“I’ve been to the Flush more than once,” Holliday continued as another chunk of glass was plucked free and dropped into the cup. “Rough place. There are some good games held there, though.”

Pain stabbed close to Caleb’s chin.