Morgan awoke, confused, when the rising sun speared through the window of his room straight onto his eyelids. He held up a hand against the glare and sat upright, groaning at the stiffness in his back and legs from sleeping in a hard wooden chair with his feet propped on the bed. There was nowhere else to sleep; his room in Waldron’s boardinghouse was Spartan in its furnishings. A narrow bed, dresser and washstand, the wooden chair. No rug softened the floor, no pictures or wallpaper adorned the walls. Morgan spent little time in his room, and when he left it only the clothes in the dresser hinted that he had ever been there.
He padded on stocking feet to the washstand and poured the basin full before plunging his face into it. The cool water made him gasp and helped clear away the miasma of sleep, but as his dreams retreated his memories advanced, memories of the breakneck ride through the dusk to the Williams farm, and of what he and his deputies had found there. Morgan pulled down the towel from its bar and dried his face, then turned to the bed and its occupant.
His face swathed in bandages and his head held in place by padded wooden blocks, Dove Ed Williams lay on his back beneath the quilt, unmoving, just the way he had been laid there the night before, his breath so shallow that Morgan had to move closer to detect the rise and fall of his chest. The flesh of the boy’s face, where it was visible, was an angry, swollen purple, and Morgan knew that beneath the dressings it was even worse. Dr. Sherman had few words of reassurance. “You Welshmen have hard heads,” he said to Morgan, “But not as hard as the blade of a shovel.”
Morgan pulled on his boots with a soft curse. Though his own injury was healing nicely, the night in the chair had caused it to stiffen up, and he limped downstairs to the kitchen, where Effie Waldron had already made coffee and was busy making bread. As he helped himself to a cup she looked up from her bread dough and said, “How’s the boy?”
“Still asleep.”
She pounded down the dough. “He gonna die?”
“Doctor said his skull ain’t broke, but he took a hell of a lick to the head.” Morgan shrugged. “He might, might not.”
She turned to face him, aiming one flour-coated finger his way and pinning him with her blue-grey gaze, her face florid with exertion under her iron hair, bound in a severe bun. “Don’t want him dying in my house, you hear?” With her other fist, she punched at the dough for emphasis, raising pale clouds of flour from the table. “You brought him in here. If he dies, you take him out.”
“I’ll be sure to give him your good wishes,” said Morgan. He headed up the stairs, cup and saucer in hand, while the thuds and thumps of Effie Waldron making bread took on a new savagery behind him. They had carried Dove Ed to Morgan’s room before Effie knew what they were about, and she would not soon forget it.
In his room, the boy lay in the bed with one eye open, but otherwise in the same position as Morgan had left him. “You awake or dead?” Morgan said. The eye twitched in his direction, and Morgan saw that the other was too swollen to open.
“Don’t try to move yet,” he said. “Doctor said you was to lay still and rest.”
Dove Ed tried to nod his head and Morgan saw him wincing. He drank some coffee.
“Told you so,” he said. The boy swallowed and closed his eye. In a moment he snored gently.
* * * * *
When Morgan returned to his room after breakfast, bearing a bowl of broth, he found Dove Ed awake once again and even sitting up slightly. The padded blocks lay askew on the bed and the pillows were pushed back to support the boy against the headboard.
“Brought you somewhat to eat,” said Morgan. “Doctor said to try soup first lest your stomach be weak or your jaw be sore.”
He held out the bowl and spoon to the boy, who took them with exaggerated care as he tried to avoid turning his head. With the same deliberate movements he spooned up the broth, brought it to his lips, and drank. Morgan could tell it caused him some pain, but the boy ate the bowlful with the regularity of a pendulum. When he had finished Morgan took the bowl and offered a napkin.
As Dove Ed dabbed his lips Morgan said, “How’s the head feel?”
“Hurts,” said the boy in a hoarse voice, barely above a whisper.
“I bet,” said Morgan. “You remember me? I knew your Da and Ma.”
The boy began to nod but caught himself in time. He said, “Mr. Morgan.”
“Sheriff Morgan, now.”
With the pain in his face and head, Dove Ed could barely move, but Morgan saw him freeze at this news. His one visible eye grew wide and the bruised skin over the other grew taut, trying to open as well. “Is this jail?” he said.
“No. It’s Waldron’s Boardinghouse.”
Some of the tension went out of Dove Ed’s face and shoulders, but his eye still roved about the room, fixing on the door and the window.
Morgan said, “You can leave if you want to.”
The boy drew back the bedclothes and made as if to swing his legs out, but before they so much as touched the floor he groaned and raised his hands to his head. Morgan went to his side, moved his legs back under the covers, and helped him sink back against the pillow.
Morgan said, “Or you can stay a while longer, till Dr. Sherman has another look at you.”
“Thanks,” gasped Dove Ed, and lapsed back into unconsciousness.
* * * * *
They passed most of the day in the same manner, exchanging a few words between Dove Ed’s bouts of sleep. Around noontime, since the boy had kept down the broth, Morgan brought him some fresh bread softened in milk, and the boy ate every morsel with care for his teeth and jaw. Mid-afternoon, Alex Sherman stopped in and made Dove Ed hiss in pain by prying open his swollen eye. Morgan could see the white was clouded with crimson and he looked away, but Dr. Sherman pronounced himself pleased with the examination.
“The pupils are the same size, so I expect you’ll heal up nicely if you don’t strain yourself,” he said. Morgan asked him to pass that news on to Effie Waldron, if he wouldn’t mind, and Sherman Malad City
“I’ll get her to prepare a poultice for that eye,” the doctor said. “And I’ll bill the Sheriff’s office for the visit, shall I?”
Morgan pulled a fat roll of banknotes from his trouser pocket and smiled as the doctor whistled silently. He peeled off a bill and proffered it, saying, “Now, Alex, you make it sound like you don’t expect payment at all.”
“I expect it, just not so soon is all.”
Once Dr. Sherman had clattered down the stairs on his way out, Morgan shut the door and turned to see Dove Ed slumped back against his pillows, eyes closed. He assumed the boy had passed out again until Dove Ed murmured, “Where’s my gun?”
Morgan held his peace for a moment while he settled himself in the wooden chair beside the bed, hoping the boy was falling asleep, but in the same quiet, insistent voice Dove Ed repeated, “Where’s my gun?”
“In the dresser drawer.” Morgan folded his arms over his chest. “What you want with it?”
“Show me?”
“You ought to sleep.”
“Show me, please.”
Morgan turned his palms up in acquiescence and opened the bottom drawer of the dresser. The room was small enough he could reach in without rising from the chair and withdraw the pistol, a workmanlike Whitney single-action .36 with a well-worn grip and small marks of use on every surface. The faint odor of burnt powder rose from the weapon, which hadn’t been cleaned since being fired the night before. Only when he heard the scrape of the drawer did Dove Ed open his good eye for a look. Morgan expected him to try and take the gun, and despite the fact that it was unloaded he was not about to hand it over, but the boy only nodded and said, “That’s fine.” His eyelid fluttered and his breathing grew regular.
Morgan sat and watched him sleep, the pistol now forgotten in his lap. Between the bandages and the bruises, he could see little of Dove Ed’s resemblance to his father, but then Hugh was two years in the grave now, and his features ruined by drink years before that. When he died, Hugh looked nothing like the straight-backed man who stood beside Morgan at the yoke of a creaky, ill-made handcart, pushing their few worldly possessions and those too feeble to walk or too big with child over miles of prairie, wind-blown sand, and rocky trails from Iowa City to Salt Lake. Dove Ed’s birth three weeks later bolstered Hugh’s faith in his new-found church and land, but nothing could make it strong enough to survive the death of his wife nine years later. As for Morgan, his faith died long before that.
A tap at the door roused him and he realized he had been nodding off where he sat. “Come in,” he said, and knuckled his eyes.
Effie Waldron swept in, a pan of poultices in her arms and a disapproving look in her eye. She took in his bleary expression and snorted. “Must be nice to sleep the day away when honest folk are working,” she said. She set the pan on the washstand and Morgan caught the sharp medicinal scent of the poultices.
“I was up late,” he began, but he knew his protests fell on deaf ears. To Effie Waldron, a Jack Mormon was worse than a Gentile. Gentiles were ignorant of the Truth; Jack Mormons knew the Truth but couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it. And apostates like Dove Ed were the worst of all, those who had seen the Truth and rejected it out of hand.
Whatever her opinions of Dove Ed and his family, though, Effie’s hands were gentle enough as she applied the medicinal cloths, still warm, to the boy’s battered face. Her ministrations woke him and he flinched from the touch of the poultice. But he thanked her graciously enough so that she promised to check in on him after supper. “But keep that on your eye, mind,” she said. “It may sting, but not as much as you will if I find you without it.”
After she had gone Dove Ed said, “It smells like a tanning shed and stings like nettles.”
Morgan smiled. “Means it’s good for you.” He noticed the boy staring at him and all at once realized that he still held the pistol. As they looked at each other, their smiles faded, but neither spoke until Morgan hefted the piece and said, “Good gun.”
Dove Ed shrugged and looked at his lap.
“I heard it did the job for you last night.”
“Who says?”
“Tom Mulvehill. He said one shot was all you needed.” Morgan watched the boy closely, gauging his reaction from the expression on his face, the set of his shoulders, the rapidity of his breath. But the boy might have been deaf for all the heed he gave. “He said somewhat more, as well.”
“What?”
“He said it’s the first time you hit what you aimed at.”
A laugh or a snort, Morgan could not decide which, forced its way through Dove Ed’s lips. Morgan turned the Whitney over in his hands, feeling the angles of the barrel, the firm resistance of the trigger and the hammer. “I’m useless with a pistol myself,” he said. “Do you suppose all Welshmen have the same trouble?”
“Is Cash all right?” Dove Ed said.
The question surprised Morgan. “He’s fine. A bit worse for wear, but he’s out at your Da’s farm with Mulvehill, probably trying to get that great bloody door out from under the house.”
At the mention of the door, Morgan noticed a subtle alteration in the boy’s demeanor, from total disinterest to the kind of studied nonchalance most often seen on stock thieves as they swore that they had bought their cattle from a rancher down the valley, you must know him, Sheriff, tall fellow, dark hair? Seeing this boy, this son of a friend, trying to assume the same innocent mien left Morgan feeling tired and discouraged. He hooked the chair with his foot and sat astride it reversed, the Whitney dangling from his finger by the trigger guard.
When he spoke again, Morgan did his best to keep weariness and disappointment out of his voice. “That big black iron bastard that almost crushed Mulvehill. Took me and two deputies to lift it even enough for him to squirm out. Where did you ever come across such a thing?”
The boy dissembled badly. Morgan could see him struggling with the question, unsure how to answer. “Corinne,” he said at last.
Morgan waited, giving Dove Ed a half-smile of encouragement until he added, “We bought it from a bank that burned down.”
“Is that right?”
“Yessir.”
“Well what do you plan to do with it?” Dove Ed opened his mouth to answer, but Morgan held up a hand and shook his head. “Never mind, none of my business,” he said, because it was plain as if it was written on the boy’s forehead that whatever he said next would be a lie, and Morgan didn’t think he could stand to hear it.
Instead he continued, “Corinne? Is that where you met Mulvehill and Joyner?”
“Yessir.”
“And Jacob Putney?”
“Yessir.” The answer came slower this time.
“Did you know Putney killed two men in Corinne? He had stolen money and guns on him; he was on the run. How come he came here? Was he looking for you?”
“What did Tom and Cash tell you?”
Morgan thought Dove Ed looked flushed, although it was hard to tell through the bruises. “I want to hear what you think, Dove Ed,” he said.
Dove Ed thought it over for a long while, and Morgan kept his peace and let him. “I think Tom and Putney knew each other,” he said. “From someplace else, and there was bad blood between them. Tom whipped him and took his gun.”
“This one?”
Dove Ed nodded. “I guess Putney took it personal.”
“That would do it.” Everything he had said jibed with the story Morgan got from Mulvehill and Joyner, and also with the news Mart Goddard had brought from Corinne, but a great deal was left unsaid.
“What was the bad blood over, Dove Ed?”
“I don’t know. Tom didn’t say.”
All at once Morgan decided he had had enough of cat-footing around the subject. He wanted to grab hold of Dove Ed and shake him until the truth spilled out and stained the bandages and the bedclothes. He wanted to scream at the boy, no, the man who thought he could lie to perhaps the only person in the world who cared what happened to him. He wanted to shout every profanity, obscenity, and blasphemy he had ever heard, anything to widen Dove Ed’s eyes and force him to pay attention. He fixed his stare on Dove Ed, who must have seen something of his emotions in his face, for the boy flinched and said, “I’m awful tired, Mr…Sheriff.”
Morgan rose. “All right,” he said. “I’ve work to do, anyway. I have to arrange for Jacob Putney to be sent back to Corinne.”
He had the satisfaction of seeing the boy’s eye widen in alarm. “You mean he ain’t dead?”
“I never said you killed him. I just said you hit him.” Morgan held up the pistol. “If I show him this, is he going to tell me the same story you did?”
Dove Ed’s hands plucked at the quilt in agitation. He would not look at Morgan.
“You rest,” Morgan said. He dropped the weapon into his coat pocket.
On his way out of the house, Effie Waldron stopped him to ask, “Will you be needing another room tonight, or do you plan to sleep in your chair again?”
“No thank you, Miz Waldron,” he said. “I don’t believe our guest will be staying the night.”
He left the boardinghouse, Dove Ed’s gun dragging at his coat on the right-hand side. He had no intention of showing it to Jacob Putney, or of asking him any questions, since Dove Ed’s bullet had killed the man stone dead. Morgan sighed and trudged away, heading for the undertaker’s, where he would make arrangements for the body to be transported back to Utah
* * * * *
He returned before suppertime. The streets were shadowed by the mountains and the aroma of Effie Waldron’s cooking greeted him at the front door of the boardinghouse. Upstairs at the door to his room, Morgan hesitated, then rapped gently before turning the knob, unsure of what he would find inside.
Dove Ed sat on the bed, fully dressed. His clothes, the same ones he had worn the night before, were as clean as Effie Waldron could make them, but pale brown stains still showed on the shirtfront and collar where Dove Ed had bled on it. The boy’s shapeless hat rested on the bed beside him; the bandages around his head and face no doubt made it awkward to wear. Strapped across his hips was the gunbelt, still with its holster empty. Dove Ed rose and nodded as Morgan entered.
“Feeling better?” Morgan said.
“Yes sir.”
“Leaving, are you?”
“Yes sir.”
“Even before supper?” Morgan inhaled deeply. “Smells like it’s almost ready.”
“No sir. I put you out too long already. I ought to go now.”
“All right.”
The question hung in the air, unspoken, but Morgan refused to answer it. He waited, looking Dove Ed in the face, until the boy asked it. “What did Putney say?”
“What do you think?”
“I think Jacob Putney is a liar, no matter what he said.”
“I think Jacob Putney is a liar, no matter what he said.”
“Well, you’re wrong. He ain’t a liar. He’s dead.”
Morgan watched Dove Ed absorb this news with a slight frown, but could not decide what caused it. Was that remorse that colored his expression? Or satisfaction?
Dove Ed said, “Then may I have my gun, please?”
“What for?”
Dove Ed frowned deeper, perplexed now.
“What do you need with it? Who else do you plan to shoot?”
“I don’t plan to shoot nobody.”
“But you will. You keep company with those two roughs, with that Mulvehill and that Joyner, you will shoot somebody or be shot yourself, I promise you. You didn’t plan to shoot Putney, did you now?”
“Sure I did.”
“And maybe one day soon I’ll ride up to some run-down farm and it’ll be you with your life leaking out into your lap, did you think of that?”
“I have.” Dove Ed held his hand out. “And if I’m to be shot, I’d rather I had my gun with me when it happened. Can I have it, please?”
Morgan fished in his coat pocket, pulled out the Whitney by the barrel and held it out at arms length for Dove Ed to take. He looked away while the boy reloaded the pistol with pre-measured cartridges wrapped in waxy paper and small silver percussion caps from a pouch on his belt. The click of the cylinder and the creak of the tamping lever as he worked were the only sounds in the small room until Dove Ed slipped the revolver into his holster and said, “Goodbye, Sheriff.”
“Wait.” Morgan turned, his right hand clenched into a fist. Dove Ed eyed him warily. “Your mount’s in the livery stable near the salt works. Just tell them the sheriff’s office will pay the costs.”
“Thank you.”
“One more thing. There was a reward offered for Putney, and if anyone deserves it, it’s you. Might be a while coming, though.” He extended his arm and opened his fist. There on his palm lay five heavy gold coins etched with eagles. “They were in Putney’s pocket with a lot of folding money. Probably took them from the rancher he killed.”
Dove Ed made no move toward him. Morgan jounced the coins so they rang sweetly in his hand. “Go on, take them,” he said.
The boy held out his hand again and Morgan dropped the twenty-dollar pieces into it.
“Thanks.” Dove Ed retrieved his hat from the bed, slipped out the door and Morgan heard him go down the stairs and out of the boardinghouse. He listened to the footsteps recede down the street toward the livery stable, and then he couldn’t hear them any more. He sat down on his bed, put his hat where Dove Ed’s had been, and rested his face in his hands. When Effie Waldron looked in to say that supper was ready, Morgan told her he wasn’t hungry tonight.
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