Sawbones

Book 1: Sawbones

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

Johnstone Justice. What America Needs Now. Bestselling authors William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone give the classic American hero a real shot in the arm—in this epic story of a Rebel doctor fighting for justice in the aftermath of the Civil War . . . VENGEANCE WITH A SCALPEL On the blood-stained battlefields of a divided nation, Dr. Samuel Knight used his surgical skills to treat wounded Confederate soldiers. In the brutal prison camps of the Union Army, he offered his healing services to fellow captives who’d given up hope. But now, with the war over and the South in ruins, the good doctor faces his hardest challenge yet: to save himself . . . Penniless and hungry, Knight has to beg, borrow, and steal to survive in a post-war hell that used to be his country. By the time he reaches his home in East Texas, it’s been taken over. Ruthless Union soldiers rule over the town with an iron fist. A Yankee carpetbagger is living in his old house—and the jackal has forced Knight’s wife to marry him. A normal man might give up, but Dr. Samuel Knight is going to take back what belongs to him. With a heartfull of grit and a hunger for revenge and with swift, surgical precision, he’ll stick a bullet in every dead man walking . . .

Release date: September 25, 2018

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 385

Sample

Dr. Samuel Knight doubled over as pain drove into his belly, worse than any knife wound. He forced himself to stand upright. Sweat beaded his forehead, and it wasn’t from the sultry late spring day in East Texas. He was used to such weather. He had grown up in the Piney Woods. The agony came from the void in his stomach from lack of food.

Or maybe he had poisoned himself with the weeds he had eaten the day before. His time spent in the Yankee prison camp at Elmira, New York—Hellmira, the starving, disease-ridden inmates had called it—had hardly been as bad. There the tainted food caused different symptoms. Diarrhea. Vomiting.

He gasped when stomach pain doubled him over again.

“Must have been hemlock and not wild carrot I ate.” Desperation had made him careless. Wild carrot leaves looked fuzzy, hemlock didn’t. But with his vision blurred at times from lack of food, making such a mistake was all too easy because the leaves were similar. The only luck he had was being alive. Hemlock killed as surely as a Yankee minié ball to the head.

He talked to himself to get his mind on something other than the pain threatening to swamp him. It worked, concentrating on his wife and the homecoming she would give him when he got to Pine Knob. How they would celebrate! All night. For a week!

It had been years since he had seen Victoria and almost as long since he had written her a letter. The Yankees hadn’t permitted their prisoners to send or receive letters, even if Victoria had known where to write him. The more he thought of her, the better he felt. The brutal pain died down enough to let him keep walking along the muddy road. He had no particular destination in mind today. But soon, soon he would be back in Pine Knob and home. All he had to do was to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Home. Where he had grown up. The house. His wife, Victoria. His heart beat faster as he concentrated on his mental image of her. The pocket watch case with her picture had been stolen by a bluecoat the first day he had been taken prisoner after the Battle of the Wilderness. The watch had never kept good time, but her picture was the real reason he kept the battered gold case.

Closing his eyes, he pictured her waving weakly to him the day he had ridden from Pine Knob on his way to Richmond and the Louisiana Hospital located there. He had begun as an assistant surgeon and quickly found himself teaching classes to first-year medical students. Too few of them had any aptitude, but Surgeon General Samuel Preston Moore had assigned most of them to forward units under the Bonnie Blue flag. Attrition in medical ranks proved almost as great as among those on the front lines.

Disease ran rampant, not caring if a doctor or private or butternut-uniformed general suffered.

His feet moved a little faster. He knew what he’d left behind back East, and he knew what lay ahead. Home and hearth and Victoria.

Hunger pangs tore at him again when a tantalizing odor made his nostrils flare. Without realizing it, he left the road, cut across a grassy yard and found a game trail leading through the pines to a small, well-kept house. His mouth watered. It had been too long—a lifetime—since he had tasted freshly baked peach pie. Knight stumbled forward, ignoring everything around him but the pie set on the windowsill to cool.

He braced himself, hands on either side of the window, as he leaned forward, closed his eyes and took a deep whiff. He turned giddy with anticipation. Eyes popping open, he looked around. Stealing a pie was wrong. Stealing was wrong, but starving to death had to be a sin of some sort, too. Hands trembling, he picked up the pie. The pain as heat stung his fingers proved far less than the knife thrusts of hunger in his belly.

He turned to steal away with his booty. Not ten feet away a girl, hardly six years old, looking all pert and small, dressed in a plain brown gingham dress, gazed up at him. Her stricken look froze him in place.

“That’s for my birthday party,” she said in a choked voice. “Please, mister, don’t take it. I ain’t got anything else.” She shuffled her bare feet and looked at the ground. Her shoulders shook as she tried to hold back sobs.

“I just wanted to get a better look at it. It smells wonderful.” He held out the pie. His belly grumbled.

“Mama made it special for me. She got the peaches fresh from Mr. Frost. He’s got an orchard of fruit trees. Apple, pear. Peaches are my favorite.” She took a step back.

He knew what she saw. Knight might have been a scarecrow come to life. Standing almost six feet tall, he was down to a hundred and twenty pounds, ribs poking out, face gaunt, his long, unkempt dark hair greasy and pushed back out of his feverish eyes. Scarecrows in the field were dressed better, too. His trousers hung in tatters, his shirt had more holes than a woodpecker’s dinner, and his coat would fall apart if he dared to remove it. He wished for the first time in months that he still wore his Confederate uniform. It had been presentable, but it had rotted away in the harsh winter spent at the prison camp.

She stared into his eyes and took another step back. Her small hand covered her mouth in horror. He knew his blue eyes were sunken and bloodshot, turning him into a bogeyman.

A bogeyman stealing her birthday pie.

“It’s a mighty fine-looking pie.” Knight turned and placed the pie back on the windowsill. “Happy birthday.” His hands shook, as much from emotion as from hunger. Not daring to look back, he hurried away, found the path through the woods and got onto the road again.

Tears ran down his cadaverous cheeks. “I’m reduced to stealing from a little girl. No, no, no.”

He stumbled on, trying to convince himself he was a good man, only driven to desperate acts by all that had happened to him. Life in the prison camp had been harsh. When the Confederacy finally capitulated, they had no resources to help those prisoners kept by the Federals. He and all the others had been turned out, put on trains going south, and then abandoned in Richmond without food, money, or hope. Those civilians in the onetime Confederate capital were hardly better off. They certainly did not want diseased ex-prisoners in their city.

“I’m better than that,” he told himself aloud. “I am.”

“Reckon you might be, if I knowed what you was talkin’ ’bout.”

Knight took a few more steps before he realized the voice was not coming from inside his own head. He stopped and looked around. Undergrowth started only a few feet from the road. Sparse trees quickly grew into a dense forest blocking his view after more than a dozen yards. A rustling made him home in on the short, tattered man emerging from behind a barberry bush.

Knight knew he wasn’t the only one down on his luck. This man, with his scratched face and tangled, sandy hair, was in no better condition. As he hobbled out, Knight realized he was in even worse shape. The right leg twisted outward so the foot plowed up the dirt as he came forward.

“You don’t look like no threat to me,” the stranger said. “Are you?”

Knight shook his head and immediately regretted it. Dizziness hit him from the simple movement. Surprisingly strong arms circled his shoulders and held him upright.

“Sorry. Been a while since I had anything to eat.”

“You got the look of a soldier about you, but not exactly. Hard to put my finger on it.” The man steered Knight to the side of the road and a stump, where he collapsed. “You some kind of officer for the Rebs?”

“Captain,” Knight said, seeing no reason to hide it. “I was a doctor attached to Jeb Stuart’s cavalry unit.”

“You’re nuthin’ but skin and bones. You ain’t sick now, are you?”

“Hungry. Can’t get anyone to give me the time of day, much less a decent meal. I’ve walked most of the way from Richmond. A few gave me rides in a wagon, but not many. Not enough.” He thrust out his stick-thin legs.

The man came around and put his foot up against the sole of Knight’s shoe, then bent and got a closer look.

“Our feet’s ’bout the same size, but you got a hole in that shoe big enough to shove a silver dollar through.” He reached over and poked with his finger. “That anything more’n old, rottin’ newspaper you got shoved in there?”

“All I could find.”

“You are truly a man down on his luck, Doctor . . . ?”

“Dr. Samuel Knight from Pine Knob. That’s where I’m heading.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Doc. I’m Jake—Jacobs. Leonard Jacobs. Folks just call me Jake, though.” He hobbled around and sank down on a log next to Knight’s stump.

“Thank you for your kindness, Jake. You . . . you got any food?”

“Reckon I’m in a similar situation as you, Doc. Nobody wants to help out a gimp.” He thrust out his left leg and rubbed it. “Too many soldiers returnin’ for me to find a decent job. And the Federals, curse ’em all, they moved in with Reconstruction blowin’ at their backs, and took over ’bout everything. No spare food for any son of the South.”

“You?”

“Me and you, from the sound of it, Doc. But I got an idea, only there’s nuthin’ I can do for it.”

“Food?”

“More’n just food. All we can eat and a few dollars, to boot. Likely only them damned Federal greenbacks but what good’s a hunnerd-dollar bill with Lucy Pickens’s fine portrait on it? Or even a five-hunnerd piece of scrip sportin’ that great general, Stonewall Jackson?” Jake tipped his head to the side and squinted in Knight’s direction. “You ever see Confederate money with denominations that large?”

Knight shook his head.

“Well, sir, I did and am proud of it. Only them Federals stole it all away and left me with a bad leg and nothing more’n the clothes on my back.”

“What of food?” It was all Knight could think of, right at the moment. “How do we get food?”

“You ain’t adverse to doin’ a little thievin’, now are you? If it’s from turncoats cozyin’ up with the carpetbaggers?”

“I was tempted to steal a peach pie from a little girl. Anyone helping the Yankees is fair game.”

“That’s the spirit!” Jake slapped him on the back and almost knocked him off the stump. “Now, I got me a plan, but with my bad leg and all, I can’t rightly do much by myself. The two of us workin’ as a fine Rebel team, now, we have a chance.”

Knight turned slightly to face Jake. The man rubbed his leg as if it hurt him.

“I’m not going to be much help. I’m so weak. My eyes don’t focus all the time.”

“You don’t have to see too good. That’s the beauty of my plan. We’re not a half hour’s walk from a town.” Jake looked hard at him. “Call it an hour away, what with your shoe and that hole and all. It’ll be dark when we get there. I’ll keep an eye peeled for the marshal or the owner comin’ round all unexpectedlike while you break in and scoop up food for the pair of us.”

“It’s a store?”

“A restaurant. Best of all, the damn fool owner keeps all the money he takes in hidden behind his stove. We get food and money, money from carpetbaggers eatin’ their fine meals all in style while the rest of the town starves ’cuz there ain’t no money. The Yankees have sucked the townspeople dry with taxes and fines and levies.”

Knight had to speak up over his growling stomach. He rubbed it until it subsided. “I swear, I can feel my backbone when I press in like this.”

“You say you’re on your way to Pine Knob? That’s another hunnerd miles to the west. A long walk, but a couple days’ hard ride iffen you set astride a horse. Maybe three or four days if you take it easy. You could be in the bed next to your lovin’ wife ’fore you know it. What’s her name again?”

“Victoria.”

“You and the missus must have a lot of catchin’ up to do. Get the money from the damned carpetbaggers and you can buy a horse, a good one, and let it run. As featherlight as you are, you can gallop it all the way and it won’t feel nuthin’ but the saddle.”

Knight closed his eyes and imagined himself home. It seemed like a fantasy to him, a dream he had given up on. Victoria. Home. Bed and food and Victoria.

The thought of his lovely wife kept him moving. They reached the small town a little after midnight, if Knight judged the position of the stars right. The streets were deserted. He looked around for the saloon, but even it had shut down.

“Why isn’t it open? The saloon?”

Jake laughed harshly and shook his head. “It don’t open on Sundays. They got some religious feelin’ in this town, even if it is overrun by damned Yankees.”

“Sunday?” Knight said dully. He had lost track of time, how long he had been walking, the day of the week. All that had mattered was taking one more step to get back to Pine Knob.

Victoria. He had to be with his wife again, but the impact of what he was about to do crashed in on him. “I can’t rob a store on the Sabbath.”

“You don’t have to. By now it’s past midnight. It’s Monday, not Sunday. We got to hurry. The proprietors will be in there soon to start the day’s cookin.” Jake spat. “Cookin’ for the carpetbaggers. They line up and make all kinds of nasty remarks about us, about us Rebs and Southerners. They especially hate Texans.”

Knight felt adrenaline pumping through his veins. He straightened. Everything Jake said was likely true. He had met with little charity as he crossed the country. The towns run by the Reconstruction judges and lawmen were the worst. He had almost gotten lynched for nothing more than passing through one town in Louisiana.

“That’s the place. You get on ’round back and break in. I’ll keep watch. The deputy makes rounds whenever he wakes up.”

“What’ll you do if he comes? He’s likely armed. Do you have a gun?”

Jake laughed harshly, took hold of the tails of his coat and pulled them away from his body to show nothing but his suspender buttons.

“If I’d had a six-gun, I would’ve hocked it for a square meal. Listen for a mockingbird. You hear one, that’s me warning you.” Jake came over and slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Doc. I know I can trust you. What’d I say about the money box?”

“Behind the stove.”

“Get going. I’m gonna find a lookout spot.”

Knight watched Jake hurry off. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t focus well enough to figure out what it was. Then he forced everything but the robbery from his mind. The restaurant stood in a simple wood-frame building. Around back he found a locked door. He tried it, but it had been barred on the inside. Trying to force it open wouldn’t do him any good. Even if he had strength enough to kick in the door or slam it open with his shoulder, that would cause too much of a ruckus. The town slept peacefully. Sudden noise like that would awaken the dead.

Or worse, the deputy marshal.

He pressed his hand against the door and applied a little pressure, only to give up trying to push it inward. Running his fingers down the poorly fitted frame he found a spot that yielded when he pulled outward. Sitting on the ground, shoving his feet against the wall, and pulling with what strength remained to him caused one panel to pop free. He landed flat on his back, staring up at the stars. Clouds moved in from down south, coming off the Gulf of Mexico and bringing a spring storm.

He sat up and ran his arm through the opening, then slowly worked his way up until his fingers brushed the locking bar. Heaving, he lifted the bar and let it drop to the floor inside. The door opened on well-oiled hinges. He was in.

Knight tumbled forward and almost passed out from the odors in the kitchen. Food. Fresh and wonderful. Mouth watering, belly rumbling, he crawled forward and pulled himself up to a table. Greedily stuffing stale bread into his mouth caused him to choke. Common sense took over. Eating more slowly, he let the bread make its way down his constricted esophagus into his belly. New rumblings told him he might puke. His stomach and food had been strangers for too long. A dipper of water helped ease the complaints.

More bread gave him reason to continue. As he scavenged for food that would go into a flour sack, he kept eating. Cheese. A bit of beef so tough that his teeth wobbled as he gnawed on it. Pickles from ajar. Okra. He ate anything and everything until he felt bloated.

He turned to filling the flour sack for Jake and his meals later rather than eating. When the sack weighed him down, he went to the cast-iron stove and reached behind it. He cut his fingers on a sharp-edged metal box. Fumbling it out and dropping it on the kitchen floor, he saw that a small padlock held it shut. He hunted until he found a knife and tried to force open the lock. Before he applied enough leverage, a warbling sound came from outside.

The noise puzzled him for a moment, then he realized Jake sounded a very poor mockingbird’s call. He stuffed the metal box into the top of the food-laden flour sack, tucked the knife into his waistband and went to the door. A quick look out made him catch his breath. A dark figure stalked along.

The clouds moved away from the moon enough to cause a glint off a badge. Worse, the deputy carried a shotgun in the crook of his arm and he came directly for the opened door. Knight touched the knife, then knew facing down an armed lawman with a butcher knife was suicidal. He closed the door, then lifted the locking bar. It fell into place just as the deputy reached the outside.

“You in there, Gus? That you? Open up. Gus? Augustus!”

The deputy began banging on the barred door with the shotgun’s stock.

Knight caught his breath, wondering what to do. Then he realized the only way out was through the main dining room and out the front of the restaurant. The energy given him by the food heightened his senses and put spring into his step. He felt better than he had in weeks. He dodged through the red-and-white checked cloth-draped tables to the front door held shut by a lock. Without thinking, he slid the knife between the hasp and door and pulled down with every ounce of strength he had. The nails holding the hasp ripped free. He burst out into the street and looked around frantically. Jake’s plan had ended with them leaving the restaurant undetected.

“Don’t just stand there. Come along.” Jake motioned to him from the corner of the building.

“What about the deputy?”

“Don’t worry your head none ’bout him. Just hightail it.”

Knight had considered asking if they could go to a livery stable and steal a horse. That was a damned sight worse than stealing food and some money. Men got their necks stretched for such a crime, but he wasn’t sure how far and fast he could run, even with his belly full.

Besides, was it really a crime stealing a Yankee’s horse? After all they had done to him and the other prisoners in Elmira? They owed him more than a horse. They owed him a life.

“No time to dawdle. We might have the whole town comin’ down on our heads.” Jake scuttled away, moving fast for a man with a bum leg and forcing Knight to trail behind. He found himself hard put to keep up with the man.

They left the town and plunged into a wooded area darker than the inside of a cow. Somehow, Jake found his way through the stygian night. Knight wasn’t as skilled at avoiding low branches or even tree trunks. He bounced from one to the next, following his partner in crime more by sound than sight. After what seemed an eternity he popped out into a clearing.

Jake stood at the edge, hands on his knees, bent over and panting harshly. He looked up as Knight approached. “You hang onto the loot? Lemme see.” Jake grabbed the flour sack from his feeble grasp and held it open. The tin box tumbled out to the ground. “You got it! I’m rich!”

“I got us enough food to last a few days. If we use some of the money to buy horses, we can be in Pine Knob real soon.”

“Pine Knob? Oh, yeah, Pine Knob.” Jake looked around, found a rock, and smashed the small lock. “Lookee here. There must be a hunnerd dollars inside. I knew that son of a bitch was rich, but I never thought he had this much salted away.” He looked up and danced a little jig.

Knight stepped closer. The stacks of greenbacks might amount to that much. A few silver cartwheels rattled about in the box. Jake grabbed them and stuffed them into his coat pockets.

“Is your leg all right? You seemed mighty spry after the way you were dragging it around when we met.”

“My leg? Oh, it’s hurtin’ something fierce, Doc. We got the time. You think you can do something about it for me?”

Knight went to him and knelt, then looked up. “Which leg was it? You’ve been limping on both legs . . . and neither.”

“It comes and goes, the pain does. It’s my right leg. See?”

As Knight looked down, Jake launched a kick that caught his benefactor under the chin. Knight’s head snapped back, and he sat heavily, stunned. Through blurred eyes he saw Jake lifting the rock he had used to break the lock. Then the world went dark all around him.

Samuel Knight smiled and rolled over, pulled the pillow tightly under his head, and settled down. He was home. Back in his own bed. Warm and safe.

“Victoria?” He reached out for his wife and recoiled when his hand smashed into a rock wall.

He worked hard to open his eyes against the crusted gunk gluing the eyelids together. A quick swipe broke the seal and let him stare directly into an unfamiliar wall. Struggling, he sat up, swung around, and dropped his feet to the cell floor. Cell? He panicked. In front of him rose iron bars. He was in a cage again, just as he had been at Elmira every time he tried to help his fellow prisoners of war.

“You finally decided to wake up, huh?” A portly man came from the shadows on the far side of the cage. He pushed his face forward until his chubby cheeks pressed into the bars to get a better look at Knight. “You don’t look like you got the strength to do the dirty deed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Go on, play innocent. That won’t cut it when you get to court. We’re on the circuit for Karl Lassiter, the toughest judge ever to come to Texas, or so folks claim. Don’t know about that, but he has sentenced three men from town to hang since the end of the war.”

“A Reconstruction judge?” Knight spit out the words.

“He’s from Wisconsin, that’s true, and he was an elector for Abe Lincoln. Ain’t sayin’ that’s how he got this job, but the way things are these days it didn’t hurt none.”

“You’re going to hang me?”

“Not me. Judge Lassiter. And a jury of your peers.” The man pulled back from the bars. For the first time Knight saw the marshal’s badge pinned on the taut cloth of a vest. “I’d say you deserve it, if Slowpoke dies.”

“Slowpoke? Dies?” Knight held his head and winced when he touched the large lump where Jake had clobbered him.

“Don’t reckon you’d know my deputy’s name. We call him Slowpoke. Slowpoke Bennet. Now that I think on it, I’m not sure I ever heard his real name. Might be Clarence. If I have to make up a tombstone, it’d be proper to put his Christian name on it.” The marshal mumbled to himself.

“I was attacked. A man named Jake. Leonard Jacobs, I think was his full name.”

“Now, don’t go lyin’ just to save your neck, mister. You hit Slowpoke with a rock and put him into a coma. Doc Phillips ain’t sure he’ll ever come out of his stupor, though it’s hard to tell the difference between him layin’ in bed now and when he was sleepin’ on my desk while he was on duty.” The marshal chuckled, shook his head, then sobered. “I ain’t got no call jokin’ about him. He was a decent man. Not too bright, but he did his job, such as it was. If it was left to me, you’d swing for ambushin’ him, no matter if he dies.”

“I never touched your deputy. Jake hit me. It’s Jake you want.”

“You denyin’ you broke into Gus’s restaurant and stole his money? Where’d you stash it? The money box was empty when we found it. And don’t you go tryin’ to say one of my posse stole it. They were all family. Two brothers and a cousin. Honest as the day is long, the lot of them, even if Cousin David did stray a mite when he stole that scrawny calf, but that was when he was younger and full of piss and vinegar . . . and a considerable amount of ’shine.”

Knight put his head in his hands and leaned forward, trying to think. Jake had hit him. The man had set him up. The reason he limped first on one leg and then the other was that neither was injured. It had all been a ruse to get a sucker to take the risk of breaking in and stealing the money from the restaurant owner. His hunger and weakened condition had made him easy to hoodwink.

Now he was going to swing for a crime Jake committed.

“Is your doctor well trained?”

“Now, why do you ask that? Doc Phillips is a good man.”

“I’m a doctor and saw too many wounds during the war. Traumatic injuries can be treated, and I have the experience.”

“Well, now, Doc Phillips ain’t a medical doctor. He’s a vet. Damn good one. He saved Ramon Zamora’s prize bull last year when nobody thought it was possible. Then he did a good job on—”

“I can help. Let me see what I can do for your deputy.”

“Anything to bamboozle me into lettin’ you out of that iron cage? No, siree. You ain’t gettin’ me to turn the key in the lock. Not today, not until Judge Lassiter orders you to appear in court to stand trial.”

The marshal lumbered off, puffing from the exertion. A door leading into the outer . . .