Free Gun Work: The Further Exploits of Hayden Tilden by J. Lee Butts

didn’t matter one whit. Damned thing still managed to fester, get angry-looking as hell, and fill up with some god-awful-looking puss.
    When I finally got home, had to spend a week in bed. Ran a horse-killing fever and sweated like a tied pig. Elizabeth said as how I hallucinated like a certifiable eccentric. Gal claimed, and I have no reason to disbelieve her, that more than once I went and talked with folks not present. Worst of all, a time or two, she said I even expressed the desire for immediate death. Poor girl had to give up her days down at the bank and care for me the whole time.
    Was a godsent miracle Nate recovered enough to lend the woman a hand during her trials and tribulations. Grateful as hell he was there to help her with getting me up and around when she needed him. Amazing to me that a man with a hole in his side, and back, the size of a Yankee quarter, recovered as quick as he did. Still puzzles the hell out of me that I ended up sick as the proverbial dog because of a fistful of splinters from a pine board, and he got better.
    Truth be told, most folks now don’t remember, but it was easy to die back in them days. Man could dodge bullets every week of his life, catch a cold, and pass on from the pneumonia within a week. Simplest scratch might prove fatal. Spiders, scorpions, even something as simple as a bee sting could have ended a man’s life as quickly as a body would blow out a lamp before lying down in his bed. Come down with a fever, like I done from a fistful of wood splinters, and your fate very definitely hung in the balance as surely as if you’d fallen headfirst into a well. Can’t imagine what might’ve transpired if it hadn’t been for my dear Elizabeth. But I am sure if it hadn’t been for her, I might not be here today.
    â€™Course when my feverish spell finally passed, I got that beautiful gal’s standard lecture that always ended with her shaking an angry finger in my face and saying, “We’re one of the most prosperous families in the whole of northwest Arkansas, Hayden Tilden. Have more money in the bank than Croesus. You don’t have to go chasing murderous skunks all over the Indian Nations who will kill you for the cost of a plug of tobacco.”
    No point arguing with the woman. And besides, she already knew that no matter what she said, I wasn’t about to change anyway.
    Eventually, got to spend most of my forced leisure time relaxing out on the veranda of my house. Still think of those slow-moving days, spent with Nate and Carlton, with great affection. See, almost every morning, bit after ten o’clock, Judith Cecil drove ole sore-tailed Carl from their little house in town to my place on the bluff overlooking the Arkansas River.
    They’d roll up out front with Carl perched atop a fringed, silk pillow looking as if he could barely stand it. He crawled down out of that buggy like a man made of leaded cut glass. Crept up my steps. Flopped into an empty chair and barely moved all day long.
    Three of us often spent pretty much the whole afternoon just watching travelers pass on the road that ran by my house on its way to Van Buren. On the whole, most folks were right friendly. We’d wave and they’d wave back.
    Have to admit, though, us ole boys must’ve been a pretty sorry-looking bunch. Me hobbling around like a Barbary pirate on my sore leg. Nate all doubled over like a humpback, limping from here to there babying the hole in his side. Carlton shambling around, one hand attached to his lacerated behind as if he feared a piece might fall off or something. Spent the better part of three weeks sitting in our rocking chairs whittling, spitting, smoking, telling all kinds of lies about our past exploits, and griping over the state of our various hurts.
    Thanks be to a benevolent God, the insidious tortures of an idle life didn’t last very long. After nigh on four lazy weeks of profound loafing, beating Nate