The Loner: Seven Days to Die (7 page)

He woke up to the touch of something cool on his face, but it was a wet cloth, not ghostly fingers.

It felt good. The Kid sighed as he embraced that slight bit of comfort and tried to ignore the terrible pains that wracked the rest of his body.

“You’re awake, eh?” The voice belonged to the old, white-haired doctor. Thurber went on, “Just lie still, Bledsoe. You don’t want to be moving around much, and you sure as hell don’t want to roll over onto your back.”

The Kid’s tongue felt swollen to twice its normal size as he worked it out of his mouth and swiped it over dry lips. That didn’t help much, since his tongue was parched, too, but after a moment he was able to say, “Wh-where…”

“You’re in the infirmary,” Thurber supplied when The Kid couldn’t go on. “The warden wanted to throw you back in your cell, but I told him you’d die if he did that.”

“Th-thanks,” The Kid whispered.

“Oh, it wasn’t a lie. He beat you to within an inch of your life, and that inch would have slipped away without the proper care. You lost so much blood from your back and from the wound in your side that opened up again, there was a puddle of the stuff around your feet when they brought me to the whipping post. I cleaned you up and did what I could for you, but I’m afraid you’re going to have some scars on your back.”

The Kid might have laughed if he hadn’t been so weak. He didn’t give a damn about scars. He already had plenty of scars on his soul that would never heal. A few stripes on his flesh didn’t matter.

He lifted his head a little so he could look around. He was lying facedown on a narrow mattress on an iron bedstead, in a room with bare walls and a single high window with iron bars set into it. Several other beds were in the room, but they were empty.

The Kid still had the shackles on his wrists, and when he moved his feet slightly, he heard the leg irons clank. “Don’t they know I’m…too beat up to…go anywhere?” he asked Thurber, who sat beside the bed in a ladderback chair.

“They know, but it’s the warden’s orders that the irons stay on. He’s not taking any chances with you, whoever you are.”

It took a couple heartbeats for the implication of the doctor’s words to penetrate The Kid’s brain. When they did, his head jerked up, causing a fresh burst of pain that made him wince. He ignored it and said, “What do you mean? You know I’m not Ben Bledsoe?”

Instead of answering directly, Thurber reached out and brushed back the longish hair that hung over The Kid’s left ear.

“What happened here?” he asked.

The top of the ear was gone, leaving an odd-looking area covered by a healed-over scar.

The Kid closed his eyes for a second and cursed himself. He had gotten so used to his ear being mutilated that he never even thought about it anymore. It hadn’t occurred to him that the old injury could prove he wasn’t Bledsoe.

“An outlaw used his knife to cut off part of my ear while he and his gang were holding me for ransom,” he said after a moment. Frank Morgan had gotten him out of that deadly jam, and it was the start of the thaw between father and son.

“When did that happen?”

“Years ago,” The Kid said. Despite the terrible shape he was in, he felt excitement surge inside him. “Go get Fletcher and show it to him. That’ll prove I’m not Bledsoe!” A thought came to him. “Unless…no, that’s crazy.”

But he thought it was crazy that the outlaw who looked so much like him could speak Latin. “Bledsoe’s ear doesn’t look like this, does it?” he asked in a hollow voice.

Thurber chuckled. “It didn’t when he busted out of here. There’s no telling what might’ve happened to him while he was gone. It was more than a month before you were caught and brought back here, you know.”

“The wound on my ear is a lot older than a month.”

“Well, it looks older than that to me, all right,” Thurber replied with a shrug. “But you have to understand, I can’t
prove
that it is.”

“Of course you can! It’s your medical opinion. It’s
proof
. It would stand up in a court of law.”

Thurber shook his head. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, my friend, in this place, if it doesn’t convince Warden Fletcher, it doesn’t prove a damn thing.”

The Kid knew that was true, but now that he had a straw at which to grasp, he wasn’t going to give it up. “You can tell him,” he said. “You have to tell him.”

“Maybe I will. But even if I do, I’ve got a hunch it won’t really matter.”

The Kid groaned in a mixture of pain and disappointment, then he thought of another possibility. “Tell Miss Fletcher.”

Thurber frowned. “Jillian? Why would I want to do that?”

“Because she already has doubts that I’m Bledsoe. Convince her of the truth, and then both of you can try to persuade her father that I’m not lying.”

The doctor shook his head. “Sorry, but I’m not saying anything to that girl. The warden doesn’t like it when she takes any interest in the prisoners. Doesn’t like it one little bit. Getting her involved any more than she already is would just turn him against you that much more.”

Something about Thurber’s voice prompted The Kid to ask, “What do you mean, any more than she already is?”

The doctor’s fingers rasped on the white stubble on his chin. “That’s right, you’d passed out by then,” he said. “I guess Jillian found out somehow what was going on. She came running out, screaming at her father, and tried to take the whip away from him. He raised holy hell right back at her and told her she was forbidden to leave their house.” Thurber shook his head. “That won’t sit well with her. That young lady has a mind of her own, and she doesn’t mind expressing it.”

The Kid had seen evidence of it with his own eyes. He still thought Jillian Fletcher would be a good ally to have, along with the doctor. But he supposed the effort to enlist her help could wait. Given the shape he was in, he wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. He would have to heal up some first.

“What happens now?” he asked.

“You lay there and let that medicine I spread on your back do its work, that’s what happens now,” Thurber said. “I cleaned the wound in your side, took some stitches in it, and bandaged it again. Maybe it’ll stay closed better this time. I hope so.”

The Kid shifted his legs. They wouldn’t move very far.

“I’m chained to the bed, aren’t I?”

“Yes, but you don’t need to go anywhere. You need to rest.”

“For how long?”

“You’ll be here for a few days, anyway. Maybe a week or more.” Thurber got to his feet. “Just don’t get any fancy ideas about taking advantage and trying to get away. There are two guards right outside the door, and will be that many around the clock as long as you’re here.”

The Kid glanced at the window. It was too small for him to get his head through, let alone his body. It let a little air and light into the room, and that was all.

“I still wish you’d say something to Fletcher about my ear,” he said.

“I’ll think about it,” Thurber replied with another shrug, “but I can’t guarantee anything.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t want to get on the warden’s bad side any more than anybody else around here does.”

“He’s a lunatic. A cruel, ruthless lunatic. You know that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know anything,” Thurber said, “except that I want to draw my pay and not bring any trouble down on my head. That’s what I know…Bledsoe.” He left the room.

As the door closed and Thurber’s footsteps faded away, The Kid fought once more against the feelings of helplessness and despair welling up inside him and painfully tightening his chest. That one brief moment of hope had faded, but he couldn’t forget what he had seen and heard while he was chained to the whipping post. Rebel had come to him to offer hope and encouragement and extract a promise from him.

A promise that someday he would shoot Jonas Fletcher right between the eyes.

The Kid had to live in order to keep that promise. He couldn’t give up, no matter how hopeless things looked. “Stay with me, Rebel,” he whispered to the empty room. “Stay with me.”

Though there was no sound, he seemed to hear her speaking soft words of comfort to him.

Kid Morgan was in the infirmary at Hell Gate Prison for ten days. Part of that time, he suffered from a fever brought on by infection from his numerous wounds. Dr. Thurber said the fever had to run its course, and eventually it did, breaking during the night. When The Kid woke in the morning, his bedding was drenched from the cold sweat that had leached the sickness out of him.

By the time the guards came to take him back to Hades, he was weaker than a mountain lion cub, but his head was clear. The wounds on his back had scabbed over, and after examining them that morning, Thurber had declared they were healing nicely. So was the bullet gash in his side. The cut on his head from Haggarty’s gun was all right now, leaving only a small scar.

“Try not to get in any more trouble,” Thurber advised before the guards took The Kid out. “You’ve already lost more than your share of blood.”

The Kid nodded. His beard was full, which he supposed made him look more like Bloody Ben Bledsoe than ever. He was convinced Thurber doubted he was the outlaw, and so did Jillian Fletcher. It would have been a good start on ultimately winning his freedom.

But he wasn’t going to wait for that. The whipping he’d received at the hands of Jonas Fletcher convinced him the warden would never believe him, and as had been pointed out to him more than once, Fletcher’s word was law. If he stayed in Hell Gate for the months or years it might take to get out through legal means, Fletcher would kill him.

He had to escape as soon as he had his full strength back. There was no other answer.

When the guards marched him into Hades, the man-made cavern was empty except for other guards. The prisoners were locked up in their cells. The Kid wanted to talk to Carl Drake as soon as he could, but he’d have to wait for that opportunity.

He walked slowly into the Number One cell, the door of which stood open waiting for him. When The Kid was inside, one of the guards said, “Next time the warden asks you a question, Bledsoe, maybe you better answer him.”

The Kid sat down on his bunk and didn’t say anything. He was tired of arguing with those people.

The door slammed shut, the lock rattled as the key turned in it, and the bar thudded down in its brackets.

Home, sweet home,
The Kid thought bitterly.

He half expected he’d be put back on bread and water, but when evening rolled around he was taken out of the cell for supper. He shuffled to the tables, got a bowl of stew, and sat down to eat.

A minute later, Drake appeared beside him and sat down without waiting to be invited.

“How are you doing, Kid?” Drake asked in a low voice.

The Kid jerked his head in a curt nod. “I’ve been better,” he said, “but I reckon I’ve been worse.”

“Hard to believe anybody could be worse off than you were after that whipping, without being dead.”

The Kid glanced over at him. “You couldn’t see what happened from in here.”

“No, but some of the trusties could from their barracks. They talked about it a little, when the guards couldn’t hear. They said Fletcher whipped you until your back was nothing but blood.”

“It wasn’t quite that bad,” The Kid said with a slight shrug. “Plenty bad enough, though.”

“To tell you the truth, I figured we’d never see you again in here. Word filtered in that you were healing up, but I wasn’t gonna believe it until I saw you with my own eyes.” Drake regarded The Kid intently. “You don’t look very good…but that’s still a whole heap better than dead.”

The Kid lifted his bowl of stew, drank some of the juice, and licked his lips. “You still want to get out of here?” he asked in a half whisper.

Drake leaned forward. “Of course I do! You want to throw in with me?”

“As soon as I get my strength back,” The Kid said. “Then, whatever you have in mind, as long as it stands a decent chance of getting me out of here, count me in.”

“All right,” Drake said softly. “All right. Now you’re talking. The two of us can make it. I know we—”

He didn’t get to finish that declaration of confidence. Two massive hands came down on his shoulders, jerked him off the bench, and slung him across the stone floor of Hades. “I told you I’d get even with you for double-crossin’ us!” Otto roared as he stomped after Drake.

“Otto, no!” Drake cried as he came up on one knee after rolling over a couple times. “I didn’t—”

Otto wasn’t listening, and as The Kid looked on, he knew that in his current condition, he couldn’t do anything to stop the huge, bullet-headed outlaw. Otto drew back a big foot and swung it at Drake in a vicious kick.

Drake ducked under the kick, which would have broken his jaw if it had landed. He reached up and grabbed Otto’s foot, heaving and twisting as he surged up from the ground.

Otto yelled as he windmilled his arms and went over backward. He landed on one of the tables, scattering men and bowls of stew. His shoulder hit the pot, upset it, and sent hot stew splashing in the laps of a couple prisoners.

With angry shouts, the men jumped him and started pounding him. Drake crowded in and joined the effort.

Before they could do much real damage to Otto, several guards arrived and began pulling the men away from him. Rifle butts slashed, knocking the struggling prisoners apart. Other guards leveled their weapons and yelled for the prisoners to get on the ground. The fight was broken up quickly.

Otto clambered to his feet, still blustering threats, but he had to back away with the muzzles of the guards’ rifles threatening him. He pointed a long, blunt finger at Drake and said, “This ain’t over, you bastard. It ain’t over by a long shot.”

Drake came back to the table where The Kid sat and lowered himself to the bench. He looked shaken. A grim chuckle came from him as he reached for his bowl of stew that was still sitting on the table. “You see what it’s like,” he said quietly. “I knew something like this was going to happen sooner or later. I’m just lucky he didn’t bust my skull open or break my back before somebody stopped him. You can see why it’s important to me that we get out of here just as soon as we can. It’s my life we’re talking about.”

“Mine, too,” The Kid said, thinking about what Fletcher had done to him. “I’ll let you know as soon as I’m strong enough.”

“Make it soon,” Drake said, nodding. “Very soon.”