Do Not Forsake Me(14)
Brian took the brown bottle from him and corked it. “Jake should have shot you dead, Marty. Be glad you’re breathing. You should thank him.”
“Thank him? He wounds men and then brings them back here for his son-in-law to patch up so’s the government can turn around and send them to prison or to hang! Pretty good setup, ain’t it? Even you make money off it. I’ll find a way to get you too. You’ve got a good-lookin’ wife, Doc, and her bein’ Jake’s daughter makes the thought I’m havin’ even sweeter.”
Brian put the bottle of laudanum back into his bag. “You touch my wife and Jake will have you begging for death when he’s done with you, and you damn well know it. And I have ways of making wounds hurt even more! You remember that, you worthless sonofabitch.”
“Whoo, you touched a nerve, Marty!” the one called Stu joked. “Doc Stewart don’t often cuss.”
“Why don’t you give some of that painkiller stuff to poor Brad over there?” Marty grumbled to Brian.
“He can’t even sit up to drink it. If he starts choking, it will lead to coughing, which will in turn bring him unbearable pain,” Brian explained. “He could even vomit and gag to death, so he’s got to just lie there and not move for a few days.” He rose and asked Sheriff Sparks to let him out of Marty’s cell.
Sparks rose and took a ring of keys from where they hung on the brick wall of the jail, then came over and unlocked the cell door, immediately pulling his six-gun and holding it on the prisoners until the doctor exited and Sparks again locked the door.
“Hey, you want to know somethin’ else about Harkner?” Marty shouted to Trubridge. “He cheats on his wife! He’s supposed to be a great family man. Bullshit! On our way back, he stopped off at a brothel—got a bath and a shave, and you can bet he got somethin’ else, ’cuz he slept there the whole night! I wonder what that perfect wife of his thinks about that!” He laughed. “How about you, Doc? Your father-in-law cheats on your mother-in-law when he’s out there supposedly doin’ good work for the government. And he’s gettin’ paid for it!”
Brian Stewart glanced at Jeff Trubridge, ignoring the remark. “I told you not to bother Jake any more today,” he told Jeff.
Jeff followed Brian out the door. “I understand. Maybe you would talk to me?”
Scowling, Brian faced him. “Anything you want to know, it’s Jake’s place to tell you, not mine.”
Jeff studied the well-built, good-looking young man who stood about five feet ten inches but had electric-blue eyes. “You’re married to Jake’s daughter, right?”
“I am. And Jake Harkner is one of the finest men I’ve known, so don’t be thinking I’m going to tell you horror stories about the man.” He turned away again. “Not that he doesn’t have any horror stories to tell you himself.”
Jeff kept pursuing him as he walked. “Did he really kill his own father?”
“That’s a very touchy subject for him. I’d be very careful asking him about it. You’d better get his wife’s permission to ask any questions at all first, and even then, you’d better get to know them pretty well before you even touch that subject.”
“What about what that man in there said—about Jake stopping off at a brothel on his way home? I thought he was supposedly a devoted husband.”
Brian stopped again, running a hand through his hair. “He probably stopped for a bath and a shave so he wouldn’t come home a filthy mess. His son probably did the same thing. That doesn’t mean they did anything more than that.”
“But…”
“Look, Trubridge, you are asking the wrong questions of the wrong man. All I can say is you have to really know my father-in-law to understand how he could spend time at a brothel without cheating on his wife. People just like to make more of it than it is.”
“Would he tell his wife?”
Brian grinned. “Of course he would. One thing the man isn’t is a liar and a cheat. And Randy wouldn’t miss the fact that he was clean-shaven when he got here. He usually comes back with a couple-week-old beard. She knows Jake Harkner better than he knows himself, and there’s no pulling the wool over her eyes when it comes to that man. Now leave me alone and don’t be hounding my wife, either. Evie is staunchly devoted to her father and won’t answer one single question from you unless she knows her father and mother have approved.”
“But…how did you and Evie Harkner meet?”
“In Laramie, Wyoming, where she and her mother lived while Jake was in prison there. Randy Harkner helped me with my practice. I actually tended to Jake once, when his jailers beat the hell out of him. He’d landed in the prison hospital with cracked ribs and pneumonia. If it weren’t for my wife and her mother’s relentless hounding of the prison warden to be allowed to see him and let me treat him, Jake would have died.” Brian turned and kept walking again. “I swear, Randy Harkner would have shot the warden herself just to land in prison so she could be with her husband.”