The lawman and outlaw shot it out on the High Plains under a rising harvest moon one hundred miles northwest of Dodge City. Boots planted apart, the fugitive stood in plain sight some ten paces before a campfire, his hand hovering over his six-shooter. "At least he won't fall in the flames if he draws," the marshal said to his partner as they dismounted.
"You gonna try 'n talk 'im outa fightin', Mr. Dillon?"
"Take the horses and move out of the way, Chester."
"Yessir." Chester walked the horses a few yards, pulled his shotgun from the scabbard and took aim.
"Trace Remy?" said Dillon.
"You the lawman tracking me?"
"Matt Dillon. U.S. Marshal. You're under arrest for horse thieving, Remy. Get your hands in the air."
"I won't go back to prison," said Remy, his voice shaking. "I'd as soon die right here."
"Don't be a fool," said the marshal. "Do as you're told, three or four years you could be a free man."
"Four years hard labor would kill me. Slow. If I must die I want it quick."
"Didn't kill ya the first time," said Matt.
"First time was one year. I can't face it again." Remy drew his gun.
Darkening fast, the sky shrouded in shadows the man's slim form, which was a shade under mid height. His revolver looked like a splash of black blood against the gathering gloom. Matt snaked out his Peacemaker, pointed at the splash and pulled the trigger. The shot went high and struck the outlaw's right shoulder. Remy fired a bullet in the dirt and dropped his gun. He grabbed his shoulder, fell to his knees and flopped back in the grass, his hat bouncing off.
Matt holstered his gun and approached the fallen man, picked up Remy's gun and stuck it in his own belt. Chester lowered the shotgun, slid it back in the scabbard and led their horses to the nearby creek. He left them sucking the rippling water and limped to the marshal, who knelt beside Remy.
"Whereabouts he hit, Mr. Dillon."
"My shoulder," Remy gasped, writhing on the ground. "The slug's burning me."
"Throw some sticks on the fire, Chester," said Matt. His friend quickly obeyed, then dragged Remy's bedroll close to the flames. Matt lifted the wounded man and laid him on the bedroll. The marshal sat back on his heels, Chester leaned over the prisoner and they studied his contorted face.
Remy had an angular visage blanched of its natural tan, a sparse shadow of fine whiskers, sharp even features, dark-green eyes large and expressive, and curling brown hair. He looked about thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old. "It hurts," he moaned. "I am dying."
"He's bleedin' bad," said Chester.
Matt nodded. He and Chester looked at Remy's blood-coated hand clutching his shoulder and the spreading wet stain on his jacket. "He'll bleed worse before it stops," said the marshal. "Three days ride back to Dodge and no stage in these parts. That bullet has to come out."
"Please don't cut me," Remy faintly pleaded. "I can't . . . . Please."
"A knife's the only way to dig out the slug," Matt said. The prisoner started crying. "Sorry, Remy. I wasn't aiming to shoot you. I fired at your gun but it was too dark to shoot straight."
"Killer. You should've just let me go. I never shot at a man 'til you forced me to it," Remy wept.
"He ain't thankful a'tall you dint aim fer 'is heart, Mr. Dillon. Lucky for him I brought 'long them long-handled pincers like as Doc uses. Never kin tell when they'll come in handy."
"You have forceps, Chester?" Matt grinned slightly.
"I tole Doc we was settin' out to trail a horse thief an' asked if he had one extra. He said that thar's a smart notion an' give me them pincers in ma saddlebag."
Remy sighed. "Forceps won't hurt near bad as a knife," he whispered. "I'd die from a knife."
Matt eased him out of his jacket, vest and shirt, unbuttoned his blood-soaked flannel undershirt and pulled his arm from the sleeve. After tethering the horses, Chester heated water, and Matt soaped a clean bandanna to wash the seeping hole in Remy's shoulder. The marshal pressed the lips of the wound closed between his fingers while Chester dropped the forceps in the water. When it boiled, he fished the forceps out with a stick and doused them with cold water.
Matt held the forceps while Chester fetched a whiskey flask from his saddlebag. "Get on with it, Dillon, blast you," Remy whimpered, trembling. Matt made no reply. "You are tormenting me deliberate," said the prisoner, shedding more tears.
Matt raised Remy's head and Chester touched the flask to his mouth. "This here's whiskey," said Chester. "To dull the pain." Remy gulped, choked and coughed and gulped again as the liquor dribbled over his chin.
The marshal gingerly poked the wound while Chester hovered with another wet bandanna and sopped the spurting blood. Remy groaned and flailed, his face graying as his eyes filmed, and Chester held him still. He let out a guttural scream and passed out. Matt flourished the bloody bullet pinched in the forceps.
"You pried it loose, Mr. Dillon. Doc couldn't dug it out no quicker 'n you done."
"Blind luck," Matt said. He washed the wound again with warm soapy water, and Chester filled the ragged red hole with bubbling whiskey.
Remy screamed himself awake as the spirits scorched his mangled flesh. Chester poured the liquor in his wide-opened mouth and he hacked, gasping. Then he sobbed.
"He blubbers a sight much for a growed man nigh on forty years," Chester observed, folding a cloth to cover the wound. In a quivering voice Remy swore at Chester. Matt raised his brows and his sky-blue eyes twinkled, giving his friend a pointed look.
Chester's lean face flushed. "Wahl ah'm thirty-one years, Mr. Dillon," he mumbled.
"And I am thirty-eight," Remy weakly bit out. "Where's the difference, you fool."
"Yeah . . . . If you wasn't gunshot . . . ." Chester's tone was calm and hushed in the way he talked to patients he helped Doc tend.
Matt knotted their last two dry bandannas together and tied them snugly round Remy's shoulder while Chester fashioned a sling from a towel. They washed Remy's face with cool water, gave him some to drink and covered him with a blanket. Chester boiled smoked beef and spuds in a thick stew, propped the prisoner against a big smooth rock and spoon-fed him.
His ordeal had no effect on his appetite. Remy was a thin lightly built fellow who ate like a man twice his size. Rather like Chester himself, only the prisoner was some five inches shorter than the marshal's assistant.
Chester settled the patient for bed while the large ivy-green eyes glared daggers at him, daggers however of the false pasteboard sort used in theater plays, easily creased double and torn in two. Not a glare to daunt a caretaker with even a mite of backbone.
Remy went to sleep at once, his chiseled face slack. In slumber, he looked younger than Chester. "He's right peevish tendersome, ain't he, Mr. Dillon? Stands 'is miz'ry no better 'n a babe."
"Don't let 'im get to you, Chester. He's gunshot. I'm no doctor. Had to tear up his shoulder some to reach the slug. And he knows he's headed for prison. Remy's not a strong man. Not bodily or in his head."
"Oh I feel a l'il sorry for 'im. He wears on me a bit is all."
"Get some sleep," said the marshal. "It's three days to Dodge and we haveta tend 'im all the way. And it doesn't end there."
"It don't?"
"He'll be in jail 'til his trial," Matt said. Chester hunkered grumbling in his blankets. His soft drawl eddied out on a current of sleep and he snored. Matt lay on his back, fingers laced together on his belly and boots crossed at the ankles, gazing up at the orange, bright autumn moon. Stars crowded the vast sky, and a wolf howled in the distance. Matt's loaded gun in its holster lay at his elbow, and Remy's gun, chambers emptied, was in his belt. Chester's unloaded shotgun lay next to his sleeping form.
The marshal and his partner rose at sunrise, fed their prisoner cold biscuits with coffee and ate the same breakfast. Remy's sling was wet with blood, his face white under his tan complexion and his sharp features strained. "Is there more whiskey?" he said. The bottle was half full. Chester gave him a long swig.
"Think he kin ride, Mr. Dillon?"
"He lost too much blood. Might faint away and fall out of the saddle. And he's too weak to ride double. He'll be more comfortable on a pallet." Matt and Chester rigged a thick hammock of blankets between two logs, wrapped Remy in a bedroll and secured him to the pallet with rope round his chest, waist and legs. They raised the makeshift cot at a slant so no part of his body touched the ground, and tied the pallet in place to Matt's saddle horn. The marshal and Chester would take turns towing Remy behind their horses, switching every hour, with the one whose horse was not hauling the pallet leading the prisoner's horse by a tether.
"Will I live, Marshal?" said Remy. "I feel the wound bleeding."
"Not much we can do about that except walk the horses careful," said Matt. "Doc will sew you up when we get to Dodge."
"But will I bleed to death?"
Matt touched the prisoner's arm. "I don't know, Remy."
They paused every two hours to give the patient water. He slept through most of the first day of the journey back to Dodge, waking to eat a lunch of jerky. "So long as he tucks away food like that, he's not dyin'," said Matt.
Remy had stopped bleeding when they made camp at sundown. His sling was crusted with dried blood, and Matt said they wouldn't remove the bandaging cloths, that they stuck to the wound and stanched it. The prisoner sat up and fed himself supper. "I feel a sight stronger tonight," he said. "I have come through the worst of it, no thanks to you two. You, particular, Dillon. You shot me and butchered my shoulder. Durn near killed me." Matt didn't answer.
"Mr. Dillon shot you on account of you drawed first, Remy. An' you like ta died by now iffen he hadn't dug out the slug."
"Chester," said Matt.
"You treat me like I'm bad, Marshal," said Remy. "Well I am not. I never even shot a man, like I said last night. And the horses I stole were all from rich men who felt no loss. Stage line owners and monied ranchers and such."
"Thievin' is thievin'," said Chester. "Cain't make it right."
"I am not saying it's right. Dunce. I'm saying I'm not a bad man."
Matt thumped down his stew bowl and clattered the spoon in it. "Remy, how would you like to spend the night with a gag in your mouth."
"That would not surprise me. You've treated me ill all along."
The marshal gazed a moment at his prisoner. Remy lowered his head, fingering his sling. "The judge might consider what you said about not bein' bad when he sentences you," said Matt.
"Why should a judge heed anything I say? The court knows I served time before."
"He'll think on what you said if I intercede for you. The judge due to hear your case has a reputation for leniency."
"Why would you intercede for me?" said Remy. "You feel guilty about shooting me?"
"I believe you never shot anyone and only stole from rich men, like you said."
A hide-tinted haze hung low in the sky at sunup. A stiff breeze flattened the prairie grass, and a dusty tang filled the air and sprinkled the men's tongues.
Windstorm's a kickin' up, Mr. Dillon. Reckon we should wait it out?"
"Let's keep movin'. Think you can ride today, Remy?"
"I'm sure of it."
The wind rose swiftly after they broke camp, dirt thickly clouding the air. The gale started to whistle and howl, buffeting the riders from all sides. Matt's horse Buck and Chester's horse bent their necks, knees and hocks, dug in their shoes against the storm and walked a straight trail.
The prisoner's three-year-old mare was skittish. She whinnied, tossing her head and dancing. A big tumbleweed rolled past the riders, bumping the mare's legs. She reared, turned tail and galloped with the wind, heading back northwest.
"Remy's makin' a break for it, maybe," Chester shouted over the shrieking storm.
