A Jail Cell for Jess Harper
By Badgergater
Summary: It's not the first time he's awakened in a jail cell, but this time is different (missing scene for the episode A Grave for Cully Brown) Takes place after Jess was shot in the saloon
Author's Note: Thanks once again to Hired Hand, the best beta in the business.
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His head hurt.
A lot.
Like he'd been kicked by a horse.
Or run over by the stage, four up and all, all four wheels, all sixteen hooves, and probably stomped on by the driver's boots, too, just for good measure.
Pounding, throbbing, thumping pain raged through his skull, like it was shattered into a million tiny pieces, leaving his body completely beyond his control.
He moaned, or thought he did, not at all sure he actually made a sound, and fell back into the pulsing darkness.
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His head still hurt, but he was, ever so slightly, winning the battle to be human, even though the agony boiling inside in his skull still made coherent thought impossible.
But he could move now, get at least a few of his muscles to ever so slowly obey his commands. He drew his legs up toward his chest, curling into a fetal position. It didn't make the pain any less, but it somehow felt better.
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Someone was talking to him, at least, it seemed like maybe that's what the noise was, a person's voice, but it was distorted. The words were as loud as thunder, rumbling echoing noises like the roar of a passing train, sounds that he couldn't measure out into words that had meaning. All they did was make his head hurt worse.
As if that was possible.
He sank back into the welcome peace of unconsciousness.
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"Cully Brown, can you hear me?"
Getting no response, the old doctor shook his head sadly as he packed his tools back into his medical bag and exited the jail cell. "Well, he's lucky to be alive at all, sheriff. Whether he'll ever walk or talk again or not, now that I can't say," the sawbones informed the lawman. "Head injuries, they're mighty tricky. Sometimes fellas just never do wake up."
The sheriff nodded. "Makes no never mind to me, doc. He's a dead man one way or t'other." But, the greedy lawman thought with a smile, a dead man worth a thousand dollars.
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His head still throbbed unmercifully, but it was slightly, very slightly, less, enough for him to be aware that he was human, and alive. Enough to remember that his name was Jess Harper, born in Texas, lived now in Wyoming, and worked at the Sherman Ranch and Relay Station.
He didn't know what had happened to him, or where he was, or why there was so much pounding pulsing throbbing pain rattling around inside his skull, but he could, at least inside his head, create the words and frame the questions.
It was a start.
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"Wake up, Mr. Brown."
Who in tarnation was Mr. Brown, and why did people keep asking him about the man? "Wha?" Jess wondered, unaware that it was the first rational, coherent response to another human being produced by his brain in more than 24 hours.
He tried again to ask his question, but the only thing the doctor heard was faint, disjointed mumbles.
"He's trying to speak. That's progress," the old physician told the sheriff. "Just might be he'll come out of this after all."
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Real awareness returned with a sudden surge of clarity, a change as instantaneous as his sudden descent into oblivion had been. One moment Jess had been wrapped inside his own throbbing skull, and the next, he opened his eyes and looked around him.
All he saw was darkness.
He was lying on something that was too soft to be ground but not comfortable enough to be his own bed. Jess' first instinct was to sit up, and that movement set the world to tumbling wildly. He clutched his head and moaned, slamming his eyes shut, but that didn't stop the pain in his skull, or the sensation of spinning around like a wobbly top or the way his stomach was rolling like a small ship caught in a really big storm. He stayed stubbornly sitting up though, until long moments later he finally took the chance to open his eyes once more.
There was a tiny bit of light coming from a window high up in the wall to his left, just enough for him to make out his surroundings.
There was one brick wall, and another and another, and where the fourth wall should have been, there were iron bars, floor to ceiling.
Oh no.
He was in a jail cell.
With a moan, still holding his head, the cowboy sank back down into his blankets, wondering what he'd done this time to end up in the calaboose with his skull feeling like an over-ripe watermelon ready to burst.
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"Cully Brown?"
This time the doctor's question got an answer. "Jess," he answered automatically, "Jess Harper."
"Harper? Oh, yes, your friend from the saloon. Harper is fine. He's left town. You were the one who got shot, Cully."
He was confused. Opening his eyes, Jess looked around the cell, but there was no one there except an old man standing over him, the stethoscope hanging around his neck marking him as a doctor. There was another man watching from outside the open door of the cell, a big man wearing a star pinned to his shirt, making him the local law. Carefully, with the doctor's hand on his arm bracing him, Jess sat up on the edge of the bed.
"Cully is fine?" Jess asked.
Now it was the doctor's turn to look perplexed, wondering if that blow to his patient's head had permanently addled the prisoner's brain. "Yes, *you* will be fine, Cully." Or so he hoped. The patient/prisoner looked totally, completely confused, and that was not a good sign.
Jess looked from one man to the other, wondering what game they were playing, wondering if his brain was more scrambled than he realized. "I'm not Cully Brown. I'm Jess Harper. Cully Brown was that man I was havin' a drink with in the saloon. I met him out on the trail."
The marshal looked disbelieving, chuckling with dark amusement. "Nice try, mister. But we know who you are."
"I'm Jess Harper, from Laramie," he answered promptly. His head was spinning again, the pounding growing in intensity, and he had to concentrate hard to keep the room from circling around like one of those whirligig toys little kids played with. "What happened to me?"
"You were shot, two nights ago, over in the saloon. The bullet clipped you alongside the head," the doctor explained, finishing up his task of fastening a new bandage into place around the prisoner's skull. "You're very lucky."
"Lucky? My head don't feel lucky."
"A hairsbreadth further to the left and you'd be dead, young man," the dour-faced doctor informed him solemnly as he left the cell, the lawman carefully closing and locking the door behind the departing physician.
Jess reached a hand up and touched the tender lump just under the hairline on the left side of his head. "Who shot me?"
"Bounty hunter," answered the sheriff with a grin like the cat who'd just devoured the canary.
"A bounty hunter? Why would a bounty hunter shoot me?"
"He was after you, Brown, but you turned the tables and killed him," added the sheriff, looking smug. "We found a poster on you in his pocket."
Jess thought maybe his hearing had been damaged by that bullet, because what he was hearing made no sense at all. "Look, how many times do I have to tell you that I'm not Cully Brown. I'm Jess Harper. From Laramie. And there's no bounty hunter chasin' after me. I'm not wanted." At least, he was pretty sure he wasn't, though there'd been a couple of incidents in his long ago past where he'd flirted with the fine line between law and outlaw, and there just might be some old paper on him floating around.
"This poster says otherwise," the sheriff countered with a feral grin, opening up the paper he'd taken from the dead manhunter's pocket. "It says right here that there's a one thousand dollar reward for you in Denver."
"I never broke the law in Denver." Jess was sure of that.
The lawman laughed heartily. "There appears to be some disagreement about that, Mr. Brown."
"I ain't Cully Brown. I'm Harper, Jess Harper, from Laramie, Wyomin'." Jess snapped angrily, wincing at the stabbing pain in his head caused by his own loud voice. More softly then he added, "That fella I was drinkin with, I met him along the trail. He never told me he was wanted, but he said his name was Cully Brown."
"Riiiight," the sheriff smiled, his disbelief laced with amusement. "And the letter in your pocket, addressed to Cully Brown, and the gun you were wearing, the one with the CB burned into the grip, those were his, too I suppose?"
"Well, they ain't mine!" Jess answered sharply, immediately regretting the loud words because they caused the pounding in his head to increase in a particularly nasty way.
The sheriff laughed.
Jess' temper flared and his voice rose angrily, despite the thumping in his skull. "Look, sheriff, all you've got to do is send a wire to Laramie. I've lived there for the past three years, workin' for Slim Sherman and the Overland Stage Company. Sheriff Mort Cory knows me. He'll verify what I'm sayin' and who I am."
"Mort Cory, you say."
"Yes, Sheriff Mort Cory. He knows me real well. I've even filled in as his deputy a whole bunch of times."
The sheriff looked skeptical. And devious. "Wires cost money, mister. I don't waste taxpayer's money on wild stories."
"So I'll pay for it."
"With what?"
"I've got five hundred dollars."
The sheriff laughed again. "Son, you don't have five hundred cents."
Jess jumped to his feet, then had to grip the cell bars to keep from falling over as a wave of dizziness swept over him. He swayed, his knees wobbling alarmingly, and the only thing that kept him upright was his hands locked in a tight grip around the iron bars. "Sheriff, I was carryin' five hundred dollars cash money in my wallet, money from a cattle sale."
"What, you're a rustler, too?" The thought that there might be even more reward money raced through the sheriff's brain.
"If that money's gone, someone took it!" Jess countered hotly. "I work for the Sherman Ranch, right outside of Laramie…."
"And I'm the king of England." The lawman shook his head in mock humor, his low chuckle full of scorn. "Brown, I've never met the likes of you for spinnin' a tall tale."
"It's no tall tale! And I'm not Cully Brown!"
The sheriff turned to leave. "I've heard some fast talkers in my time, but you sure do take the cake, mister."
"Sheriff, look, just send the wire to Laramie! It'll prove I'm not Cully Brown."
The lawman waved a placating hand. "Sure, sure, I'll send it. I'll send it. Anything to shut you up."
As he closed the door behind him, closing off the prisoner's continuing loud protests, the sheriff muttered, "Oh yeah, I'll send a wire all right, Cully Brown, a wire to Denver. Telling them I'm a'comin' to collect that re-ward."
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