Free The Eye of the Hunter by Frank Bonham

Earp going to a shoot-out? Are sidewalks off-limits for shoot-outs?”
    They voiced a little nervous laughter.
    Then Henry said, “Leo?” and the man moved close to him. “Is this the kind of reporting Ambrose usually does?”
    Leo held his rifle across his shoulder like a tramp’s stick, front sight first. “Ben is as tricky as a blind bull, Henry. He persecuted Frances Parrish’s father so cruelly—she was a Wingard, you see, Dr. Wingard’s daughter—that he up and died.”
    Henry looked at him and wrinkled his nose in distaste. But he was loving it, finding out about Frances while discovering Ambrose’s weak points.
    â€œIt was over the Narcotics Act. You know about it, of course.”
    â€œPut controls on narcotic substances? Yes, but what did Ambrose have to do with that?”
    â€œWell, every last doctor in the country had his own pet syrup, or bitters, or whatnot, and every last concoction was laced with opium! Except Doc Wingard’s. It had cocaine.”
    Budge Gorman put his face close to Henry’s and bawled, “Henry, it was hell to pay when they took away all them drugs! Mrs. Ormsby’s Bitters would cross your eyes and set you to singing ‘Camptown Races.’ And don’t you know people was scurrying around like fire ants trying to find something just as good?”
    Henry laughed. “No fooling!”
    The tall, bearded man called Elmo said, “Dr. Wingard called his the Viennese Doctor’s Wine of Coca. He was my doctor, and I used his concoction when I felt poorly. But he always said, ‘Don’t overdo it, Elmo—don’t overdo any drug.’ He was a fine man. Yes, indeed. But don’t quote me....”
    Henry looked at him in disbelief. “Don’t quote you? I think that’s a pretty nice thing to say about a man.”
    â€œUh, well—Ben’s got everybody believing ... I mean, nobody wants to stand out, do they?”
    Henry put his rifle on his shoulder. “Okay, I’ve got it.” And he thought with relish of how he was going to make the foppish publisher stand out that night.
    As they walked, he was appraising each store they passed—a drugstore, several saloons, Proto Brothers’ General Store, another drugstore called Chenoweth and Mix, a music store, a meat market. Complete little town, hidden away here on the border! Like a model, a creche.
    â€œWhy did he call it the ... whatever?”
    â€œSome recipe he read in a medical magazine. A famous Austrian doctor was boosting it as a tonic.”
    â€œA doctor for crazy people,” Leo said. “A Dr. Freud, in Vienna. So Wingard compounded this coca stuff, no worse than anything else, and Ambrose took it—took quarts of it, Frances told me, after the trouble. Half the stuff he published made no goddamn sense at all. But when Doc Wingard wouldn’t give him any more, he began printing stories about him selling it in secret! Wingard tried to sue him, but the court threw out the case. Oh, they was wild times in Nogales!”
    â€œAnd then he died?” Henry prompted.
    â€œYes. He’d lost most of his patients. And a fine doctor, I reckon.”
    â€œBut don’t quote you?”
    â€œWell ... a lot of women cut Frances dead as well, and then—after all that!—Ambrose had the nerve to go to the doctor’s graveside service!”
    â€œNo!” Henry looked at his rifle, as though to share with it the appalling story.
    â€œAnd Frances slapped him in the face with his own bouquet! There was rose petals and cigar ash all over him. Ambrose has never forgiven her. Now it sounds like he’s out to persecute her.”
    â€œIf that isn’t that the damnedest, rottenest thing I ever heard. Come on, boys. I’ve got to hear Ambrose’s side of the story. I hope for his sake he’s got one.”
    He halted before the Globe office; it was on the left and the Frontera