again, another horrible, horrible bashing...this time on our dear Frank...and Bookbinder's daughter? those bagels and coffe do sound good *g*
CHAPTER TWELVE - The Liver Gentleman
Jesse hadn't slept the entire night and by the time he'd just closed his eyes and gotten comfortable, there was a knock at the door and Charlie came in, fully dressed and packing clothes.
"Get up Jesse." He said, throwing the clothes onto the foot of Jesse's bed. Then, he stood like a statue with his rifle down at his side, waiting for Jesse to rise.
Sitting, Jesse rubbed at his eyes, not really feeling like it'd been an entire night yet.
"We're leaving."
Throwing his feet over the side of the bed, he plucked up his underwear and pulled it around his shoulders again, reaching down a moment to kiss Zee's necklace before tucking it beneath his collar. Then, pulling at the clothes, he slowly and somnolently tugged them on. Fisting on his new boots, he rose and took the large black duster and black stocking cap into his hands, following Charlie out the door.
The buggy was ready outside, the horses snorting milk in the cold morning air. The sun was barely peeking up over the hills, giving them a shimmering gold lining.
Yawning, Jesse climbed into the front of the buggy, up next to Charlie and drew his collar up around his neck, huddling down into the large, warm coat.
Putting his foot up on the brake bar, Charlie swatted the reigns and gave a whistle, the team - well seasoned - began to trot.
The ride had been long; Charlie and Jesse reaching the train platform by the time the sun had risen and given the sky a soft pink hue. Jesse'd slept some of the way, occasionally jostled awake by a rut in the road, or when he fell against Charlie's shoulder. But they hadn't talked, hadn't even said one word to each other.
Now, Jesse had his arms crossed over his chest and he was leaning against the platform building. While Charlie stood tall behind the parapet, serene among the passing parasols that ladies had draped over their shoulders.
By the time the sun had reached a man's standing height over the black stain of the hills, the train came puffing into the station. The engines screamed as they were commanded to stop and great puffs of white smoke billowed out from beneath its large, iron belly.
Amid the rabble of the midnight passengers, a large, balding man with a crack in his nose and across his eye lumbered off, carrying a large black bag and the face of a man once caught under a stampede. He was dressed in little more than a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, suspenders, and a pair of tan trousers. The shirt wore tight over his large belly and stoop shouldered frame, mutated that way by the man-hours he had spent over riddled corpses from back in Chicago. His forearms were large and hairless, scrubbed clean and made strong from years of use. His thinning hair shone silver in the sunrise, his large white beard gleaming pink. The eye with the scar was glazed over, turned a milky blue and arrested in its socket, while the other twisted back and forth, looking for whom it was that requested him.
"Dr. Fly?" Charlie went up to him, seeing the man nod, and put out his hand, shaking it firmly. "It's Charlie...it's a pleasure to see you again sir." A great grin spread across the pompous man's face.
"Charlie my boy," the man rocked back on the heels of his shined shoes. "You're so big!"
"The Colonel feeds us well enough, sir." Charlie smiled. It was first time Jesse'd seen Charlie smile. He had a good smile.
"How's the family?" the doctor chuckled.
"They're fine sir."
"This is Jesse James," he motioned over to Jesse, who came forward and thrust out his hand towards the old man.
"The great Jesse James, eh?" The man said mockingly and scowled. He had a Georgian drawl that flattered his words, making them sound soft and gentle, even though they weren't meant to be. Producing a folded newspaper from his arm he thrust it out towards Jesse, smacking him on the chest, a disappointed look on his face. "Don't look like much." He never reached to take his hand, Jesse's own hand slowly retracted down by his side again, laying against his pistol.
"I keep pulling bullets out of men like you and for what? So you can go and harm another innocent? Your kind of people make me sick, nothing but going around scaring the dickens out of virtuous woman and children, killing people who haven't done so much as looked at you. Nothing but chicken shit wearing clothes and carrying six guns..."
"If you'll step this way sir," Charlie cut in and led the doctor over to the buggy and helped him in, the buggy shifting on its wheels at the added weight, before he and Jesse climbed up into the front.
"Will it be a long ride?" Dr. Fly stuck his head out of the door. "I'm only doing this for you and your family Charlie, not because I care."
"Three hours at most sir." Charlie looked back then slapped the horses with the reigns, getting them into a trot.
"He got a rock stuck up him or something?" Jesse glared back towards the buggy.
"His wife and daughter were taken from him in a stagecoach robbery back in Chicago by a posse with some injuns. They were raped then got their skin cut off. They tried to take his skin too, but he woke up in the middle of it and killed them. That's why he's got them scars on his face."
"What about yours?" Jesse asked and Charlie's face only fell as he turned away, staying silent. Covering for himself, Jesse went back on topic of the doctor. "Is he any good as a doctor?"
"He doesn't let his emotions get in the way when he's doing his job, if that's what you mean." He looked back over to Jesse's unimpressed face. "He's good as anyone, Jesse," he sighed, "he use to be our family doctor until we moved out here."
Jesse spit over the side of the coach. "You sure he's good?"
"I swear." He looked over again, holding Jesse's gaze. "I'd trust him with my own sister."
Jesse sat back as he scratched at his throat, feeling the dark whiskers hiss.
~
"Pardon the horse Dr. Fly." Charlie said as he led the old man around the stallion.
"Drunk, or just stupid?" Asked the doctor irritatedly as they went up the stairs.
"I was in a hurry," Jesse corrected gruffly as he followed them up the steps and into the house.
~
Dr. Fly shook his head, stooped over beside the bed with Frank's wrist held up in his pudgy white fingers as he turned it back and forth, looking at the wound. He mumbled to himself for a while before he set Frank's arm back against his side.
Jesse was leaning against the back wall, his arms over his chest, watching intently. Charlie had his arm around Annie, who was chewing on a piece of her hair, watching Frank. Only the Colonel and Elsie weren't in the room presently.
The old man sat back, reaching over to take a drink from his shot glass, tipping it into his thin lips. "Well, the bullet's still in there and needs to come out," he pulled at the covers down around Frank's waist, revealing the wounds that Annie had stripped and scrubbed clean before the doctor's arrival. "The best we can do here is bandage it and watch for any signs of infection, and here," he pulled the blankets further down, revealing the large hole cut out around his wound from his pants. He put a hand on the wound, poking gently, Frank's face twinging. "I think this will be the worse to get the bullet out. Sunk in pretty deep."
The doctor moved his fingers across the bruises, walking them along the discolored, tender skin.
"How's he besides?" Charlie asked.
The doctor sat up as straight as he could with his crooked back on the stool, putting his large, forearms against his hips.
"Dog might as well be dead," he sighed, "been through some mighty bad times."
He turned to Jesse, who was clutching at Zee's necklace and staring hollowly at Frank's pale face. Noticing that all the faces in the room where on him, he straightened himself up from the wall, tucking the necklace back into his shirt, never saying anything.
"Bullets could come out now, or tomorrow."
"Depending on what?" Charlie asked.
"On how many men I have to help me."
Jesse stepped forward, claiming his participation.
"Two sir," Charlie said, stepping up next to Jesse, glancing at him before turning back to the doctor.
Dr. Fly frowned, then shook it from his face, "Alright then..."
Pushing up on his rolled sleeves to make sure they were tight enough on his biceps, the doctor pulled the covers down completely to the end of the bed.
"You ever done anything like this before?" Dr. Fly asked the boys as they moved to their positions around Frank.
"Yes sir," Jesse said, but Charlie was shaking his head.
"When?"
"About seven weeks ago," he reached up to pull at his collar, revealing the wounds. "Had it done to myself."
"You remember a lick of it?"
"No."
Dr. Fly turned back to Frank and lifted his arm to place it jack knifed over him, lying it on the pillows.
"Miss Ford," the doctor looked to Annie, "you mind getting me one of them rags you had before and heating up some water for me?"
"Sure," she pattered around, doing what was suggested to her before coming back. She replaced the big bowl with bloody, greasy water onto the top of the stove to let it warm up again.
"Wake him up," he spoke and she came around towards Frank's head, leaning down to run a hand through his hair. She whispered in his ear and such, stroking his head as his eyelids fluttered open.
"You've got some bullets in you that need to come out and they're going to hurt like all hell." The doctor said apathetically - his voice cold as he worked with a rag at the wounds, despite how Annie had done her best to scrub them down. Frank grunted at the pain, but was not given any remorse.
"You, take his legs. Charlie, take his arm there. And Miss Ford, you take his hand there."
Jesse slightly remembered something like this happening to him.
"Put that rag there in his mouth," Annie had some trouble getting Frank to open his jaw, but when he did, she made sure he bit down hard on it.
Then, without warning, the doctor's hands were digging around unceremoniously in Frank's wrist. Frank grunted in hateful surprise and began twisting around. His neck kept craning as the doctor's chubby hands worked their way deeper into his arm, touching bones and muscle.
"Look at me, don't look down." Annie was putting her hand on the side of Frank's face, keeping him from seeing. She had her face up almost touching Frank's, making him look at her and only her.
She grasped his other hand firmly, her knuckles white from his grip on her long, slender palm. The veins on the sides of his neck stood out like tree roots while his jaw looked like it was about to break itself with his teeth so tight on that rag.
With a snap and a sucking sound, the doctor's gray hands came out of Frank's wrist with a round bullet pinched between his fingerpads. He dropped it onto the floor to have it roll against his boot, leaving a bloody trail when he suddenly and almost voraciously went into Frank's thigh, not giving any time for pain to dissipate.
With Frank's reaction to this wound, he nearly sent both men flying across the room. And Jesse nearly dry heaved at the sight and the smell of it, having to turn loose of Frank's leg and put a hand up to his mouth. Charlie quickly went down to catch Frank's legs when they went to kick again.
"Either do your job or get out!" The doctor was intent over the spillage of blood and sight of shattered muscle. And Jesse stumbled forward, regaining his stomach as he reached out and grabbed onto Frank's ankles again.
"Up here boy!" The doctor yelled as something popped somewhere inside Frank and a spray of blood came up out of his leg, getting the doctor's white shirt and spraying so far as to splatter against Jesse's face. "My hands're too big to get it."
Jesse found his breath caught in his throat as he moved up to help the doctor, who came out of his brother, grabbed his wrists and suddenly floundered Jesse's hands into his brother's thigh.
Frank wasn't screaming, even through his clenched teeth, he didn't have enough breath or cogency to scream.
Jesse had to turn away to keep from puking. "It's towards the back, I touched it but I couldn't get it." The doctor leaned back in his chair to give Jesse some room as he wiped at his hands with a towel.
"Feel it?"
Frank was shaking now, shivering like a dying man and Jesse could feel it from the inside of his brother. Through the muscles, and the juices, and the blood, he could feel Frank dying from the pain.
"Wait," Jesse squeezed out of his teeth as his swimming fingers touched something, pushed it away and he had to shove his hand farther up to try and reach it, feeling like he was shoving his hand into a watermelon with the crust still on it.
Pulling out, bullet in tow, Jesse produced a glob of muscle still attached to the bullets, wrapped around it and dusted black from the soot.
Saliva leaked down the side of Frank's face, as his eyes closed and squeezed out tears. Charlie backed up off of his legs as he put his hands out for the swooning Jesse. But, righting himself, he stared discernibly at the gore wrapped bullet.
"I take you can gauze him up?" Dr. Fly flat eyed Annie, who looked up momentarily from the side of Frank's wet head and she nodded, still stroking his hair, comforting him back to sleep again. "He should keep for the night."
Grunting as he got up, the doctor went over and thrust his hands into the warmed bowl of water, forcing some to spill onto the floor. Wiping them down with a dirty towel, he went back over, gathered up his bag that he'd never opened and went towards the door, Charlie rushed to catch up to him.
"What do we do now?" Charlie shut the door behind them, closing out the conversation.
"I'd get that man and his brother as far away from this house as fast as you can." The doctor spoke quickly, walking quickly away from the room.
"He's in no condition to be moved now." Charlie furrowed his eyebrows.
"Doesn't matter." The doctor conceived. "Drop him at the hotel if you're so inclined, they'll hole him up there till they need to ride off again. Or, even better, drop them at the sheriff's station, they'd be happy as hell to get two of the South's most wanted men. But if you were smart, you'd bury them both out in the desert."
"Thanks for you help Dr. Fly, I'll have your money sent to you by next week." Charlie put out a hand and stared at the gruff doctor until broke his rough shoulders.
"Charlie, my boy, you've always cared too much..." the doctor broke into a smile and reached around, hugging him before pulling back, reaching into his bag and pulling out a blue bottle. "Give him three spoonfuls of this when he wakes up again and keep giving him liquid, but nothing with liquor. Change the dressings twice daily and call someone around for me if he takes on a fever, it'll mean infection. I'll be at the Black Hawk Inn, room 2."
Charlie took the bottle and watched the doctor waddle down the stairs, before going back into the room.
Frank had fallen into a sleep again, his leg and wrist and side gauzed and he was lying on face down, grunting. Jesse was sitting in a chair, staring at the gory bullet still clutched between his fingers, while Annie was on her hands and knees at the bottom of the stove, scrubbing at the bloodstains from the spilled water.
"Jesse?" He looked up at Charlie's voice, pulling himself out of a sort of haze. "Would you help me? I've got to move that horse before it starts to bloat."
Nodding slowly, Jesse pushed himself out of the chair and looked one last time to his brother, before he followed Charlie silently out the door.
CHAPTER TWELVE - The Liver Gentleman
Jesse hadn't slept the entire night and by the time he'd just closed his eyes and gotten comfortable, there was a knock at the door and Charlie came in, fully dressed and packing clothes.
"Get up Jesse." He said, throwing the clothes onto the foot of Jesse's bed. Then, he stood like a statue with his rifle down at his side, waiting for Jesse to rise.
Sitting, Jesse rubbed at his eyes, not really feeling like it'd been an entire night yet.
"We're leaving."
Throwing his feet over the side of the bed, he plucked up his underwear and pulled it around his shoulders again, reaching down a moment to kiss Zee's necklace before tucking it beneath his collar. Then, pulling at the clothes, he slowly and somnolently tugged them on. Fisting on his new boots, he rose and took the large black duster and black stocking cap into his hands, following Charlie out the door.
The buggy was ready outside, the horses snorting milk in the cold morning air. The sun was barely peeking up over the hills, giving them a shimmering gold lining.
Yawning, Jesse climbed into the front of the buggy, up next to Charlie and drew his collar up around his neck, huddling down into the large, warm coat.
Putting his foot up on the brake bar, Charlie swatted the reigns and gave a whistle, the team - well seasoned - began to trot.
The ride had been long; Charlie and Jesse reaching the train platform by the time the sun had risen and given the sky a soft pink hue. Jesse'd slept some of the way, occasionally jostled awake by a rut in the road, or when he fell against Charlie's shoulder. But they hadn't talked, hadn't even said one word to each other.
Now, Jesse had his arms crossed over his chest and he was leaning against the platform building. While Charlie stood tall behind the parapet, serene among the passing parasols that ladies had draped over their shoulders.
By the time the sun had reached a man's standing height over the black stain of the hills, the train came puffing into the station. The engines screamed as they were commanded to stop and great puffs of white smoke billowed out from beneath its large, iron belly.
Amid the rabble of the midnight passengers, a large, balding man with a crack in his nose and across his eye lumbered off, carrying a large black bag and the face of a man once caught under a stampede. He was dressed in little more than a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, suspenders, and a pair of tan trousers. The shirt wore tight over his large belly and stoop shouldered frame, mutated that way by the man-hours he had spent over riddled corpses from back in Chicago. His forearms were large and hairless, scrubbed clean and made strong from years of use. His thinning hair shone silver in the sunrise, his large white beard gleaming pink. The eye with the scar was glazed over, turned a milky blue and arrested in its socket, while the other twisted back and forth, looking for whom it was that requested him.
"Dr. Fly?" Charlie went up to him, seeing the man nod, and put out his hand, shaking it firmly. "It's Charlie...it's a pleasure to see you again sir." A great grin spread across the pompous man's face.
"Charlie my boy," the man rocked back on the heels of his shined shoes. "You're so big!"
"The Colonel feeds us well enough, sir." Charlie smiled. It was first time Jesse'd seen Charlie smile. He had a good smile.
"How's the family?" the doctor chuckled.
"They're fine sir."
"This is Jesse James," he motioned over to Jesse, who came forward and thrust out his hand towards the old man.
"The great Jesse James, eh?" The man said mockingly and scowled. He had a Georgian drawl that flattered his words, making them sound soft and gentle, even though they weren't meant to be. Producing a folded newspaper from his arm he thrust it out towards Jesse, smacking him on the chest, a disappointed look on his face. "Don't look like much." He never reached to take his hand, Jesse's own hand slowly retracted down by his side again, laying against his pistol.
"I keep pulling bullets out of men like you and for what? So you can go and harm another innocent? Your kind of people make me sick, nothing but going around scaring the dickens out of virtuous woman and children, killing people who haven't done so much as looked at you. Nothing but chicken shit wearing clothes and carrying six guns..."
"If you'll step this way sir," Charlie cut in and led the doctor over to the buggy and helped him in, the buggy shifting on its wheels at the added weight, before he and Jesse climbed up into the front.
"Will it be a long ride?" Dr. Fly stuck his head out of the door. "I'm only doing this for you and your family Charlie, not because I care."
"Three hours at most sir." Charlie looked back then slapped the horses with the reigns, getting them into a trot.
"He got a rock stuck up him or something?" Jesse glared back towards the buggy.
"His wife and daughter were taken from him in a stagecoach robbery back in Chicago by a posse with some injuns. They were raped then got their skin cut off. They tried to take his skin too, but he woke up in the middle of it and killed them. That's why he's got them scars on his face."
"What about yours?" Jesse asked and Charlie's face only fell as he turned away, staying silent. Covering for himself, Jesse went back on topic of the doctor. "Is he any good as a doctor?"
"He doesn't let his emotions get in the way when he's doing his job, if that's what you mean." He looked back over to Jesse's unimpressed face. "He's good as anyone, Jesse," he sighed, "he use to be our family doctor until we moved out here."
Jesse spit over the side of the coach. "You sure he's good?"
"I swear." He looked over again, holding Jesse's gaze. "I'd trust him with my own sister."
Jesse sat back as he scratched at his throat, feeling the dark whiskers hiss.
~
"Pardon the horse Dr. Fly." Charlie said as he led the old man around the stallion.
"Drunk, or just stupid?" Asked the doctor irritatedly as they went up the stairs.
"I was in a hurry," Jesse corrected gruffly as he followed them up the steps and into the house.
~
Dr. Fly shook his head, stooped over beside the bed with Frank's wrist held up in his pudgy white fingers as he turned it back and forth, looking at the wound. He mumbled to himself for a while before he set Frank's arm back against his side.
Jesse was leaning against the back wall, his arms over his chest, watching intently. Charlie had his arm around Annie, who was chewing on a piece of her hair, watching Frank. Only the Colonel and Elsie weren't in the room presently.
The old man sat back, reaching over to take a drink from his shot glass, tipping it into his thin lips. "Well, the bullet's still in there and needs to come out," he pulled at the covers down around Frank's waist, revealing the wounds that Annie had stripped and scrubbed clean before the doctor's arrival. "The best we can do here is bandage it and watch for any signs of infection, and here," he pulled the blankets further down, revealing the large hole cut out around his wound from his pants. He put a hand on the wound, poking gently, Frank's face twinging. "I think this will be the worse to get the bullet out. Sunk in pretty deep."
The doctor moved his fingers across the bruises, walking them along the discolored, tender skin.
"How's he besides?" Charlie asked.
The doctor sat up as straight as he could with his crooked back on the stool, putting his large, forearms against his hips.
"Dog might as well be dead," he sighed, "been through some mighty bad times."
He turned to Jesse, who was clutching at Zee's necklace and staring hollowly at Frank's pale face. Noticing that all the faces in the room where on him, he straightened himself up from the wall, tucking the necklace back into his shirt, never saying anything.
"Bullets could come out now, or tomorrow."
"Depending on what?" Charlie asked.
"On how many men I have to help me."
Jesse stepped forward, claiming his participation.
"Two sir," Charlie said, stepping up next to Jesse, glancing at him before turning back to the doctor.
Dr. Fly frowned, then shook it from his face, "Alright then..."
Pushing up on his rolled sleeves to make sure they were tight enough on his biceps, the doctor pulled the covers down completely to the end of the bed.
"You ever done anything like this before?" Dr. Fly asked the boys as they moved to their positions around Frank.
"Yes sir," Jesse said, but Charlie was shaking his head.
"When?"
"About seven weeks ago," he reached up to pull at his collar, revealing the wounds. "Had it done to myself."
"You remember a lick of it?"
"No."
Dr. Fly turned back to Frank and lifted his arm to place it jack knifed over him, lying it on the pillows.
"Miss Ford," the doctor looked to Annie, "you mind getting me one of them rags you had before and heating up some water for me?"
"Sure," she pattered around, doing what was suggested to her before coming back. She replaced the big bowl with bloody, greasy water onto the top of the stove to let it warm up again.
"Wake him up," he spoke and she came around towards Frank's head, leaning down to run a hand through his hair. She whispered in his ear and such, stroking his head as his eyelids fluttered open.
"You've got some bullets in you that need to come out and they're going to hurt like all hell." The doctor said apathetically - his voice cold as he worked with a rag at the wounds, despite how Annie had done her best to scrub them down. Frank grunted at the pain, but was not given any remorse.
"You, take his legs. Charlie, take his arm there. And Miss Ford, you take his hand there."
Jesse slightly remembered something like this happening to him.
"Put that rag there in his mouth," Annie had some trouble getting Frank to open his jaw, but when he did, she made sure he bit down hard on it.
Then, without warning, the doctor's hands were digging around unceremoniously in Frank's wrist. Frank grunted in hateful surprise and began twisting around. His neck kept craning as the doctor's chubby hands worked their way deeper into his arm, touching bones and muscle.
"Look at me, don't look down." Annie was putting her hand on the side of Frank's face, keeping him from seeing. She had her face up almost touching Frank's, making him look at her and only her.
She grasped his other hand firmly, her knuckles white from his grip on her long, slender palm. The veins on the sides of his neck stood out like tree roots while his jaw looked like it was about to break itself with his teeth so tight on that rag.
With a snap and a sucking sound, the doctor's gray hands came out of Frank's wrist with a round bullet pinched between his fingerpads. He dropped it onto the floor to have it roll against his boot, leaving a bloody trail when he suddenly and almost voraciously went into Frank's thigh, not giving any time for pain to dissipate.
With Frank's reaction to this wound, he nearly sent both men flying across the room. And Jesse nearly dry heaved at the sight and the smell of it, having to turn loose of Frank's leg and put a hand up to his mouth. Charlie quickly went down to catch Frank's legs when they went to kick again.
"Either do your job or get out!" The doctor was intent over the spillage of blood and sight of shattered muscle. And Jesse stumbled forward, regaining his stomach as he reached out and grabbed onto Frank's ankles again.
"Up here boy!" The doctor yelled as something popped somewhere inside Frank and a spray of blood came up out of his leg, getting the doctor's white shirt and spraying so far as to splatter against Jesse's face. "My hands're too big to get it."
Jesse found his breath caught in his throat as he moved up to help the doctor, who came out of his brother, grabbed his wrists and suddenly floundered Jesse's hands into his brother's thigh.
Frank wasn't screaming, even through his clenched teeth, he didn't have enough breath or cogency to scream.
Jesse had to turn away to keep from puking. "It's towards the back, I touched it but I couldn't get it." The doctor leaned back in his chair to give Jesse some room as he wiped at his hands with a towel.
"Feel it?"
Frank was shaking now, shivering like a dying man and Jesse could feel it from the inside of his brother. Through the muscles, and the juices, and the blood, he could feel Frank dying from the pain.
"Wait," Jesse squeezed out of his teeth as his swimming fingers touched something, pushed it away and he had to shove his hand farther up to try and reach it, feeling like he was shoving his hand into a watermelon with the crust still on it.
Pulling out, bullet in tow, Jesse produced a glob of muscle still attached to the bullets, wrapped around it and dusted black from the soot.
Saliva leaked down the side of Frank's face, as his eyes closed and squeezed out tears. Charlie backed up off of his legs as he put his hands out for the swooning Jesse. But, righting himself, he stared discernibly at the gore wrapped bullet.
"I take you can gauze him up?" Dr. Fly flat eyed Annie, who looked up momentarily from the side of Frank's wet head and she nodded, still stroking his hair, comforting him back to sleep again. "He should keep for the night."
Grunting as he got up, the doctor went over and thrust his hands into the warmed bowl of water, forcing some to spill onto the floor. Wiping them down with a dirty towel, he went back over, gathered up his bag that he'd never opened and went towards the door, Charlie rushed to catch up to him.
"What do we do now?" Charlie shut the door behind them, closing out the conversation.
"I'd get that man and his brother as far away from this house as fast as you can." The doctor spoke quickly, walking quickly away from the room.
"He's in no condition to be moved now." Charlie furrowed his eyebrows.
"Doesn't matter." The doctor conceived. "Drop him at the hotel if you're so inclined, they'll hole him up there till they need to ride off again. Or, even better, drop them at the sheriff's station, they'd be happy as hell to get two of the South's most wanted men. But if you were smart, you'd bury them both out in the desert."
"Thanks for you help Dr. Fly, I'll have your money sent to you by next week." Charlie put out a hand and stared at the gruff doctor until broke his rough shoulders.
"Charlie, my boy, you've always cared too much..." the doctor broke into a smile and reached around, hugging him before pulling back, reaching into his bag and pulling out a blue bottle. "Give him three spoonfuls of this when he wakes up again and keep giving him liquid, but nothing with liquor. Change the dressings twice daily and call someone around for me if he takes on a fever, it'll mean infection. I'll be at the Black Hawk Inn, room 2."
Charlie took the bottle and watched the doctor waddle down the stairs, before going back into the room.
Frank had fallen into a sleep again, his leg and wrist and side gauzed and he was lying on face down, grunting. Jesse was sitting in a chair, staring at the gory bullet still clutched between his fingers, while Annie was on her hands and knees at the bottom of the stove, scrubbing at the bloodstains from the spilled water.
"Jesse?" He looked up at Charlie's voice, pulling himself out of a sort of haze. "Would you help me? I've got to move that horse before it starts to bloat."
Nodding slowly, Jesse pushed himself out of the chair and looked one last time to his brother, before he followed Charlie silently out the door.