“You’re sure this’ll work, Doctor?”
“My good woman, it has never been known to fail. Ten years.” He thrust high a declamatory finger. “Ten years did I live among the multitudes of heathen Aegypt, perusing the primordial scrolls, learning all there was to learn, acquiring great knowledge, until at last I understood the mystic formula of the great and wise pharaohs. Trust in me, and all will be well.”
In point of fact, Dr. Mohet Ramses had never been to Aegypt. But he had been to Cairo. Cairo, Illinois, where he had practiced a number of trades, none of which were remotely related to medicine, until the furious father of an outraged daughter had gone searching for him with gun in hand. At which point Dr. Mohet Ramses, alias Dickie Beals of Baltimore, Maryland, had sought and found expediency in a life on the road. A most profitable life.
The sun was going down, the town’s two saloons were lighting up, and the venerable doctor was anxious to be on his way.
“Good luck to you, good woman, and to your husband, who should begin soon to exhibit a salubrious response to the most noteworthy liquid. Give him a spoonful a day followed by a piece of bread and you will find yourself gazing in wonder upon the medical miracle of the age. And now if you will excuse me, there are others who have need of my services, access to which I am sure you would not wish to deny them.”
“No, sir, no! And thank you, Doctor, thank you!” She clutched his hand and, much to his disgust, began to kiss it effusively. He drew it back with as much decorum as he could muster.
“A woman ought to consider carefully what she’s kissin’.”
The deep voice boomed out of the shadows, and a man rode into view from behind Ramses’s wagon. He was enormous, as was the preposterous mongrel of a steed he bestrode. For an instant Ramses panicked. Then he saw that the man was an utter stranger to him, and he relaxed.
The rider wore thick buckskins and showed salty black hair that hung to his shoulders. An incipient conflagration in his beard would’ve died for lack of oxygen, so thick were the bristles. His eyes were the color of obsidian and darker than a moonless night.
He dismounted from the ridiculous stallion and lumbered over. A huge hand reached toward the woman, and she flinched instinctively.
“May I see that, ma’am?” His voice turned gentle as a cooing babe’s.
“What… what for, sir?”
“I am by nature an inquisitive man, mother. I’d have a look to satisfy my curiosity.” He squinted at Dr. Ramses. “Surely, sir, as a man of learning, you’ve no objection.”
Ramses hesitated, then stiffened. “I, sir? Why should I have any objection? But you delay this poor soul’s treatment.” He indicated the wagon and its pitiful human cargo.
“Not fer long, I reckon.” He reached out and plucked the bottle from the woman’s uncertain fingers.
Ramses had to repress a grin. If this stranger had been the aforementioned local physician, there might have been trouble, but there was nothing to fear from a gargantuan bumpkin like this. He watched amusedly as the giant opened the bottle and sniffed at the contents.
His smile vanished when the mountain man swallowed the oily contents in a single gulp.
The old woman let out a cry and, astonishingly, threw herself at the giant. She hardly came up to his waist, but that didn’t stop her from flailing away at him with her tiny fists. She might as well have been trying to reduce Gibraltar to dust.
Gently the giant settled her. A thick finger wiped at her tears. “Easy, mother.” He tossed the empty bottle to Ramses, who caught it reflexively. “There weren’t nothin’ in that bottle that could’ve helped your man.”
“Now, sir,” declared Ramses, a fount of mock outrage, “I really must protest! If you were a man of science, I might accept—”
The huge form turned to him. “Listen well, ‘Doctor.’ I am Mad Amos Malone, and I am a man of many things. But what is in any event called fer here ain’t science.” He jabbed a huge forefinger toward the buckboard. “That man there is dying, and he needs somethin’ rather stronger than what you’re offerin’ him. He wants to live, and I aim to help him.”
“You, sir?” It was growing dark rapidly. Night fell quickly on the open plains. “How might you intend to do that?”
“By helpin’ these folks t’ help themselves.” He smiled reassuringly at the old woman, white teeth gleaming from within the depths of the beard. “You just calm yourself, mother, and we’ll see what we can do.”
Ramses thought to depart. There was nothing for him here but a distraught old woman and a man crazy from too much time in the wilderness. But Ramses was curious, and he already had the woman’s dollar. Maybe the mountain man was some sort of competitor. If he had something worthy to sell, they might, as any two men engaged in the same trade were occasionally wont to do, strike a bargain. The doctor was ever ready and willing to improve his inventory.
To his disappointment, the mountain man returned from fumbling with his saddlebags with nothing but an old wooden cup. It was scratched and chipped and appeared to have been carved out of a single piece of some light-colored hardwood. It had a thick brim and was in appearance nothing remarkable.
He offered it to the old woman, whose tears were drying on her cheeks. “Here, mother. Use this to give your man a drink of water.” He gestured toward the town pump, which sat in a small Spanish-style square in the center of the street.
“Water?” She blinked in bewilderment. “What good will water do my Emmitt? He needs doctorin’. He needs this man’s medicine.” She indicated Ramses, who smiled condescendingly.
Malone spoke solemnly. “Let him drink from that old cup, mother, and if it don’t help your husband, I’ll buy you another bottle of this gentleman’s brew myself.” Whereupon he produced from a pocket a shiny gold piece. Not U.S. issue but a disk slick with age and worn by time. Ramses’s eyes widened as he recognized the ornate cross and Spanish lettering on the visible side. In his whole life he’d seen only a single piece of eight. It had belonged to a New Orleans gambler. What the mountain man flashed was worth rather more than a dollar. Ramses was glad he’d trusted his instincts and stayed.
“Sir, you are as noble as you are curious.”
The giant’s eyes seemed to disappear beneath overhanging thick black brows that drew down like a miniature portcullis. “Don’t be too sure o’ that, friend.” It was not a threat, but neither did the big man’s tone inspire Ramses to move nearer the speaker.
Unsteady and bewildered, the woman shuffled to the well. The men heard the pump handle creak, heard the attendant splash of water. She made her slow way back to them and, after eyeing the giant blankly, climbed with surprising agility into the back of the wagon. There she dubiously but lovingly tipped the wooden lip of the cup to her husband’s parted lips.
“Here now, darlin’. You got to drink, even if it is just water. You got to, so’s this man’ll buy us another bottle of the doctor’s medicine.”
The dying old man wheezed and tried but failed to lift his head. Some kind of unvoiced communication passed between them, as it can only between two people who have been married so long that the two have become one. She spilled the water into his mouth, and he gagged, choking, the liquid running out over his parted, chapped lips and down his furrowed cheek. Ramses suppressed a smile. A pitiful exhibition but one that, given the circumstances, he was quite willing to endure. In the giant’s fingers the piece of eight shimmered in the fading light.
The old rancher coughed again. A second time. Then he sat up. Not bolt upright, as if hit by lightning, or shakily, as if at any moment he might collapse again. Just steady and confident-like. His wife’s eyes grew wide, while Ramses’s arguably exceeded them in diameter.