The Sunshine Killers by Giles Tippette Page B

handle?”
    Tomlain gave him a look. “I figure he got handled. I figure they’ll find him the first spring thaw. Just like I planned it.” He turned and spit. “Hell with it. Let’s get a drink.”
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    In Juno’s room Letty was bending over Saulter. She had opened his shirt and cut his undershirt away. The exposed bandage was soaked and crusted with old blood. She began cutting it away with the scissors. “Damn fool men,” she muttered under her breath.
    Juno and Brenda were by her side and the other three women were crowded in just at the door. They all looked like Letty: half-pretty, young women, fancily dressed in a cheap way, but hardened long before their time by their profession. They watched intently, not unkindly, but with an apprehension about Saulter’s presence. “Goddammit,” Letty said over her shoulder, “don’t all you stand there gawking. One of you go down to the parlor. One of them fools from across the street is liable to get the urge even this early in the morning and I wouldn’t want them wandering around the house looking for company.” Nobody moved. “Go on, goddammit!” Letty said angrily. She glared until one of the girls disengaged herself unwillingly and went down the stairs.
    Letty cut the bandage through in two places and then tugged it loose with an effort. It came off hard, stuck to Saulter by the dried blood. He was still asleep or unconscious, but he stirred restlessly with the pain.
    â€œOh, it’s hurtin’ him!” Brenda said.
    Letty paid her no attention, just went on stripping off the bandage. When she’d exposed the wound all the other women gasped. It was ugly. The bullet wound itself would not have been too serious. It was far enough to the side to have missed his vital organs. But the flesh around it was massively bruised and purple and the skin was shriveled and sick looking. The bullet hole was clean, with ragged edges that would have healed themselves.
    Letty shook her head. “Ain’t that a mess,” she said disgustedly. “Fool got himself shot and then that Ray Tomlain give him a little fist doctoring. Wonder he’s alive.” She felt around the wound with tender fingers. Saulter groaned and thrashed. “Broken ribs in there, but there’s nothing we can do about that. Let’s get it cleaned up. Juno, get me that hot water and some lye soap. Then I want some of that rotgut whiskey to pour in the wound. That ought to finish him off. Then we got to turn him over and get at it from the back. So I’ll need some help.”
    Brenda pointed at the gunshot hole. “Wonder how he came by that?”
    â€œOh, shut up, Brenda. Men don’t need no reason to do things like this to one another. If they ain’t a reason they’ll think of one or else do it out of meanness.” She began to probe around the wound, feeling the extent of the ribs Tomlain had broken.
    As she worked, Saulter stirred in pain. His eyelids flickered a little, but they didn’t open. Somewhere inside his head his mind was working and he was remembering, remembering the same feeling of pain when he’d got the wound.
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    It was a big saloon tent, the kind you’d find in a forward line camp of a railroad that was laying transcontinental track. It was like the many others scattered around the work site at the rail head. There were other saloon tents, a few cook tents, and one whorehouse under canvas. They were there because the men who were building the railroad knew that you couldn’t take men out across a desolate wilderness and work them in satisfaction without fulfilling basic needs that they had besides food and water. The tents moved as the work did, never staying so far behind that a man couldn’t easily reach them from the dormitory cars. During the day they were mostly slow, quiet enough so that you could hear the distant ring of iron hammers driving