November 2012 BB Challenge Words: Surrender; Prisoner; Iron; Pirate; Confederate

XxXxX

11

Dr. Edmonds was quick to take charge of both Adam’s and Joe’s care; and Hoss was just as quick to let him. What Hoss didn’t like was the way the doc tried to shoo him away from his brothers.

“I certainly can appreciate your interest in watching over them,” the doc told him. “I ask you also to appreciate that I have a job to do—a very important job, one that will require a great deal of concentration. I cannot abide any interruptions.”

“I wouldn’t think of interruptin’ you,” Hoss argued.

“You would do so, nonetheless. Family members always do. They have good intentions, of course, when they feel obliged to question my actions or bring to my attention some physical change of which they believe me to be ignorant. Inevitably, all they succeed in doing is wasting precious time neither I nor the patient can spare. So please…step outside, will you? You can send in one of the others to assist me, instead.”

“But doc, I—”

“I’ll help.” Startled by the soft voice calling in from the doorway, Hoss turned to find young Buford Schultz standing there with his hat in his hands. “I’d like to help.”

“You do that, Buford.” Chet Schultz snickered.

Hoss didn’t want to look at the man. And he didn’t need to. Buford’s oldest living brother presented no threat trussed up like he was in that chair.

“You do jest that,” Chet went on. “You help ’em jest the way Pa taught ya’.” Deranged laughter pulled Hoss’s spine straight as could be and balled his hands into fists.

“I mean it,” Buford said into all that laughter. He locked his gaze on Hoss, ignoring his own brother; and it sure looked like he meant it, too. “I’m sorry for what happened. I’d like to make it right, if I can.”

The laughter died. “You’d better be playin’ em’, kid,” Chet warned. “It’s bad enough to think you’d surrender to these buzzards what killed Jasper and Buck.”

“They were only tryin’ to protect their own.” Buford’s eyes stayed on Hoss. “Same as we’d a’ done.”

“You know better’n that, boy. The one they were after protectin’ killed Pa!”

“He said he had to. You heard ‘im. We all heard ‘im. He said Pa would’a killed him if he didn’t shoot.” The boy was getting nervous, twisting his hat every which way.

“Outside, please!” the doctor shouted. “Leave me to my work!”

Hoss sagged, his anger punched right out of him. He’d interrupted the doc, after all. “You help the doc, boy,” he said softly, giving Buford a quick nod. Then he swiveled around; and sucking his anger right back in again, punched it out at Chet to emphasize words Dusty would say if he were here right now—if he were here, rather than back in Virginia City waiting for his grave to be dug. “And you hobble your lip!” For an instant, he wished the finger he stabbed toward Chet Schultz was an Arkansas toothpick so he could shut the man up for good with the kind of knife the pa of all these Schultzs had used to cut Joe’s arm bad as it was.

Don’t go grabbin’ the brandin’ iron by the hot end, Dusty scolded in his thoughts. That’s nothin’ but burro milk he’s spittin’ out. Ain’t no point listenin’.

Hoss dropped his arm to his side. “One more word out’a you and I’ll call that Simon Walker fella back in here to finish what he started before he went for the doc.” He thought he felt a moment’s satisfaction when Chet’s pallor went as grey as a Confederate uniform. But then he looked to where the doctor was working on Adam, and he saw his brother was even greyer.

And he knew the only real sense of satisfaction he could hope to get would come when he knew for sure both Adam and Joe were on the mend. And not a second before.

XxXxX

An hour later, Hoss didn’t even notice the cold anymore. He figured that either meant it had warmed up, or he’d gone so numb it didn’t matter. Whatever the reason, he felt fine enough sitting outside on the damp trunk of a fallen tree. Its positioning allowed him to keep his eyes on the line shack while he listened for anyone calling to him from inside; that was all he really wanted to notice.

But after a while he realized he was listening also to Simon Walker, who had taken a place beside him on that log.

Hoss wasn’t quite sure when Simon had started to talk about his life—or why he had—but something about the story kept Hoss’s attention. It wasn’t that he liked the story. In fact, it sure sounded like a lonely life. He tried to imagine himself walking from place to place with no one beside him but animals that couldn’t much want him there, anyhow. And then he tried to imagine himself alone on the Ponderosa, with only his pa beside him. He didn’t like either thought.

“Chet Schultz is your prisoner.”

The abrupt change in subject caught Hoss off guard. He turned his gaze from the shack for the first time since he’d sat down, looking finally to the man beside him. “Huh?”

“Chet Schultz. He is your prisoner until the posse arrives to take him to jail.”

“Yeah?”

“What about Beauregard?”

Hoss followed the man’s gaze to where the second youngest of the Schultz boys had laid himself down on that homesteader’s sled, keeping company with the dogs. The bandage wrapped around his head was already soiled. “What about him?”

“Is he a prisoner waiting for the posse, a patient waiting for the doctor, or a wounded animal left to the mercy of nature?”

“He chose to be there!” Hoss answered defensively. “Said he didn’t want to have to look at Joe anymore.” Hoss still wasn’t sure why. Did that boy regret hurting Joe, like Buford? Or was he angry Joe wasn’t dead yet, like Chet? “He’ll get his time with the doctor soon as Adam and Joe are fixed up as good as can be for now. And then he’ll go with the posse, same as Chet.”

“And Buford?”

Hoss met Simon’s gaze, unsure how to respond. Then he looked at the door to the line shack, where Buford, Sheriff Coffee and that homesteader were all helping Doc Edmonds tend to both Adam and Joe. “I don’t know,” he answered softly. “Only thing he seems guilty of is turning away from his family. I reckon that puts him more on our side than theirs.”

“Are you a judge?”

“You know I ain’t!”

“Then how can you decide innocence or guilt?”

“What are you gettin’ at?”

“There is only one person who can say whether Buford Schultz took part in hurting your brother.”

Hoss threw Simon a bewildered look, saying nothing.

“Your brother.”

Hoss sighed. “Yeah. I reckon that’s true. You think we ought to put Buford in jail with his brothers, unless Joe says different?”

“If you hold to the laws protected by your Sheriff Coffee, you may be obligated to. According to those laws, he is guilty of something, whether it is hurting your brother or standing by and allowing his brothers to hurt Little Joe. Exactly what he is found guilty of will depend on your brother’s statement and a judge’s ruling.”

“How could you think he allowed his brothers to hurt Joe? He wouldn’t have been able to stop ’em!”

“I didn’t say he could.”

“Then if he couldn’t stop them, how could you say he was guilty?”

“I didn’t say he was.”

“Dang-nammit! You’re soundin’ like Adam—talkin’ in circles an’ not makin’ any sense at all!” Hoss’s gaze strayed to the line shack. Had the doc finished his surgery? Maybe he should go back inside and check on his brothers.

I cannot abide any interruptions. The doctor’s words repeated themselves over and over again in his mind. …Wasting precious time neither I nor the patient can spare.

He couldn’t, Hoss decided. Much as he wanted to, he just couldn’t go in there and waste the doctor’s time.

Hoss’s frustration faded into sadness, when Simon spoke again. “A topic as wieldy as that of innocence or guilt requires a great deal of consideration.”

Should have been Adam out there frustrating Hoss instead. “You sure you didn’t go to Harvard or some other place like that?” he asked.

“I read.”

“Yeah?” Hoss was starting to feel more angry than frustrated. “Well, I read too; an’ when I consider a wieldy topic I think it through from start to finish without twistin’ it all around. Now you can’t tell me you didn’t say Bufurd was guilty of something, one way or another.”

“I said he is guilty based on the laws your sheriff protects.”

“There ain’t no other laws.”

Simon drew a deep breath—a lot like Adam would do if he were getting frustrated himself over Hoss’s inability to read through his twisting thoughts. “There are ships in the Atlantic targeting Union vessels. According to Confederate laws, the crews of those ships are privateers; they might even be said to be aligned with the Confederate army. According to Union laws, they’re pirates, guilty of murder and theft.”

“None of that’s got anything to do with what happened to Joe.”

“Sometimes guilt and innocence are as clear as a cloudless sky.” Simon shook his head. “And sometimes it’s more a matter of perspective.”

“Perspective?”

“The way you see it, compared to the way your sheriff sees it, compared to the way the Schultzs see it.”

“How do you see it?”

“My perspective is not the one that matters.”

“That may be so; but I’d still like to hear it.” It was strange. The man looked nothing like Adam. So why was he reminding Hoss so much of his older brother?

Simon studied Hoss for a long while before responding; and Hoss saw Adam in his eyes. Then Simon nodded and looked toward the line shack. “From my perspective, Buford is as guilty as I am.”

“Why would you be guilty?”

“I wouldn’t. I’m not. But I have been found guilty before. Not by judges or courts, but by people who counted me guilty only because of who they believed me to be.”

“You don’t figure we should believe Buford is like anyone else in his family?”

“I figure we should count him for who he proves himself to be, and not for the family he was born into.”

Maybe most of the conversation hadn’t made a lick of sense to Hoss. But that last part made all the sense in the world. Buford wasn’t a bad kid; he was just a kid who’d got stuck in a family full of folks who were about as bad as bad could be.

Still, Hoss couldn’t help but wonder—in a sick-to-his-stomach, worried kind of way: Is that how Joe would feel?

XxXxX

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