Free The Killing Machine by Ed Gorman Page A

and put her up against your average city man in a fight—and it’s likely the pioneer woman will win. Fourteen-, fifteen-hour days of the kind of hard labor you rarely get even in most prisons—she may be slim,she may look feminine as hell when she’s gussied up for a barn dance, but underestimate her at your peril.
    Then she was kissing me on the forehead and saying, “Thank you so much. I just want to learn the truth.”
    â€œSo do I.”
    She turned and walked out of the room. For a moment my eyes watched her slender, but very female, backside. But then my gaze drifted up to the wheelchair. I wanted to see if I could improve on my top speed.
    But first…a nap.

Chapter 7
    T wo days later, I left the hospital. My gun arm remained in the sling, my knees trembled sometimes, and I had a vague headache.
    I put on a pretty good show for the townspeople who saw me make my uncertain way down the hospital steps and onto the sidewalk. A few people walked very wide of me, as if whatever I had just might be contagious. A few of them politely stepped aside to let me dodder my way past them. The hospital had urged me to let one of their people accompany me. But pride wouldn’t let me. Who the hell couldn’t survive a minor gunshot wound? Apparently, I couldn’t, not with any stamina or grace, anyway. I stumbled once, falling to my knee as if I were proposing marriage to a ravishing ghost woman nobody but I could see. Another time, drained, I fell against a hitching rack and stayed there for a good three or four minutes. But finally, and for no reason I could figure out, I got some serious strength back. I didn’t wobble nearly as much, the cloudiness of my vision cleared up, and I even managed to get a few smiles from passing pretty women as I doffed my hat.
    The first thing I did was go to the café where I’d had the good steak the other night. I ate a slab of meat as close to raw as I could get without making the cook sick. I’m a believer in the curative powers of animal blood.
    The serving woman started smiling at me as I kept asking her for more bread and then a few more potatoes and then just a wee bit more beef. She was ahead of me in the dessert department. She brought forth a slice of chocolate cake that had to exhaust her just to carry. She set it down in front of me, along with a clean fork, and watched me begin to attack that cake with a passion I usually saved for the bedroom.
    She laughed. “You been lost in the mountains, have you?”
    â€œPretty close. Lost in a hospital.”
    â€œWell, you’re makin’ up for lost time today.”
    The second thing I did was stop in a store and buy myself a shirt. I traveled with three. But the one with the bullet holes needed replacing. The clerk said that I should try and buy a shirt that went with my sling, but I said that that didn’t matter to me. I hoped to have the shirt a whole lot longer than I had the sling.
    â€œYou have some kind of hunting accident, did you?” he said. “I mean that’s a gunshot wound, isn’t it?”
    Wasn’t any of his damned business. “Bear.”
    â€œBear?”
    â€œUh-huh. Took a big bite out of my shoulder.”
    â€œMy Lord, that musta hurt.”
    â€œWell, it did a little bit. But the bear was worse off than I was.”
    â€œYou shoot him, did you?” He was eager for the whole story.
    â€œNope. Bit him right back. Right on the same spot on his shoulder that he bit me on mine.” I smiled big and wide and crazy. You know how bullshitters smile. “I guess I surprised him so much he just skedaddled out of the camp I’d made and never bothered me again.”
    The clerk didn’t have much to say after that. He wrote up my order and seemed mighty relieved when I left. Maybe he was afraid I’d take a big bite out of his shoulder.
    The third thing I did was go back to my hotel. Not to my room, but to the