“Parmelee. That mother-fucking bastard!” The first almost spat the words.
“Amy!” the second cried in shock. “You’ll get us th’owed out! Then what?”
“No one’s being thrown out for profanity,” Doc told them, pressing fingers to Gina’s neck and finding a strong pulse. “Let’s get back to the beating. I assume that’s what this Parmelee did?”
Amy crossed her arms, apparently unconcerned about how it displayed her breasts. “It ain’t been the same since Phillipa left. Parmelee is a whore’s nightmare. Don’t know how, but he done found the roughest johnnies in Colorado. Advertises that we’ll do exotic. Like he can find every headsick fuck in the country … and ain’t no limit. Then Gina today, she had Collette and me giving her the relief. You know, like you said we should when we get the hysteria?”
Collette, the second, interrupted. “Well, we was on Gina’s bed, giving her the relief. She says it helps with two to do it, and Parmelee just busts in. He takes one look and bellows, ‘By damn, I ain’t even off to Central to kill that deserting son of a bitch, and you’re giving it to each other for free.’ And he just tore into us.”
Doc watched Gina gasp as he felt along her ribs, finding a hardening bruise. “He kicked her? That how he broke her ribs?”
“Yes, sir. After he’d throw’d her on the floor,” Amy added. “Collette and me, we just got hit and smacked a couple of times. But he was plumb gleeful going after Gina. She done give him lip a couple of times. Ain’t the first time he beat her, neither. Said she bit his cock one time when he had her playing his flute.”
“Why’d you bring her to me?”
“’Cause you’re a good man, Doc.” Amy stared down at him with desperate eyes. “We gotta get her help. Parmelee, he don’t got no doc. He just doses us once a month for the clap hisself. Says why should he pay a sawbones for what he can do for free.”
Doc took a deep breath. “Oh, hell.”
“Doc?” Butler asked, appearing in the parlor doorway. He was rubbing his eyes, wearing his long handles, partially exposed since the fly was unbuttoned. He glanced around at the girls, saying, “It’s all right, Johnny. Report to the sergeant that the rest of the men should stay in bivouac.”
“He thinks he’s a johnny?” Collette wondered.
“He’s referring to Johnny Baker, one of his phantom men,” Doc told her. “This is crazy Butler, my brother.” He turned. “Butler, go get my case. We’ve got work to do.”
As Butler vanished into the hallway, Doc asked, “What about Parmelee? Surely he knows you’re missing.”
Amy, arms still crossed, shrugged. “He lit out for Central City. The professor’s running the house. We took Gina off the line, of course. Then when the last of the johnnies left, Elvina and Circe grabbed the professor by the cock and dragged him off to Circe’s room. They figgered they could keep him the rest of the night with a twosome so’s we could get Gina looked at.”
“You gotta fix her,” Collette insisted, “so’s we can get her back a’fore the professor’s back on watch.”
Doc raised Gina’s eyelids. Even in the lamplight he could see the two different sizes of pupils. “She’s not going back,” Doc said sadly. “He kicked her in the head, too, didn’t he?”
“Doc,” Amy pleaded. “Come morning, if the professor don’t find her in bed, we’re all gonna pay. He’ll know he’s been had.”
Doc sat back, looking up at the terrified women. “She may not come out of this as it is. She’s got a broken jaw and an injured brain. When I press on her abdomen, it’s hard, which means she’s bleeding on the inside.”
Butler appeared, wedging himself into the small room and setting Doc’s case on the floor. He bent to open it.
Doc said, “I’m going to treat her pain with opiates, and I can bind her ribs. Once she’s out I’ll see if there’s anything I can do about her jaw. But if this girl’s got any chance to live, you’re not taking her back there.”
Collette’s thin face whitened, her wet hair leaking water onto her shoulders. “What are we gonna do? The professor’s gonna know someone had to help Gina get away. And he’s damn sure gonna know it was me and Amy.”
Doc carefully rearranged Gina’s wet hair then reached for his bottle of chloroform. “How about all three of you get out of there? If you want to relocate, I can find you safer houses either here or in Colorado Springs, Cheyenne, or Colorado City.”
He had not only discreetly been treating Margaret Jane Chase, Big Ed’s wife, but also the kingpin’s mistress from the theater at the Cricket. Ed owed him a favor or two.
Amy’s expression pinched, her eyes hardening. “And what’s in it for you, Doc? You get a piece of our action from here on out? A man don’t do for the likes of us w’thout he’s gonna get his pockets lined or get his johnson slick for free from now on.”
Doc smiled wearily, watching Butler’s lips quiver as he whispered to his men in secret. “Nothing’s in it for me. I can get you moved into houses under Big Ed’s protection, or at least up to Cheyenne with enough for stage fare to End-of-the-Tracks or Salt Lake. Meanwhile I need one of you to slip back and get those other two out without the professor knowing. And once you’re relocated, you’ll never, ever, mention this again to another soul.” He looked back and forth. “We clear?”
Amy looked warily at Collette. “If Circe and Elvina had any damned sense, they’d have doped him to the gills to keep him from thinking.”
Collette, however, remained fixed on Doc. “So, we just supposed to think you a saint? That it?”
“Actually, Collette, I don’t know what I did to offend God, unless it was pride. But I made my deal. If, by my actions, I can convince God to restore my brother’s sanity,
