The Wrecker (Isaac Bell 2)

“You sure did! We found a chunk of it. And a trail of blood right to the edge of the lights. But not enough to kill him, unfortunately.”

“Find him! His name is Philip Dow. There’s ten thousand dollars on his head. I want to know if he is working for the Wrecker.”

The Southern Pacific Company doctor was a rough-and-ready sort used to the puncture and crush wounds encountered in railroad building. Bell was relieved that he was singularly unimpressed by the bloody furrow that Dow’s .45 caliber slug had plowed through his flesh and muscle. The doctor washed it thoroughly with water. Then he held up a bottle of carbolic acid. “This is going to hurt.”

“Blood poisoning will hurt more,” Bell said, gritting his teeth. There was cloth in the wound. “Pour it on.”

After the doctor dosed it with the fiery disinfectant, he dressed it. “You may want to rest it in a sling for a couple of days. But the bone’s all right. Bet it hurts like the blazes.”

“Yes,” Bell said, grinning at Marion, who looked a bit pale. “Now that you mention it.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of that.”

The doctor took a hypodermic needle from his leather bag and started to draw a clear fluid into the barrel.

“What’s that?” asked Bell.

“Morphine hydrochloride. You won’t feel a thing.”

“No thanks, Doc. I need a clear head.”

“Suit yourself,” said the doctor. “I’ll change that dressing tomorrow. Good night. Good night, ma‘am.”

Marion shut the door behind him.

“Clear head? Isaac, you’ve been shot. You’re white as a ghost. The pain must be awful. Can’t you take the rest of the night off?”

“I intend to,” said Bell, reaching for her with his good arm. “That’s why I want a clear head.”

40

“Father, dear father, come home with me now,“ sang the Ventura County Temperance Glee Club, sixty voices strong.

James Dashwood craned his neck, hoping to spot slope-shouldered blacksmith Jim Higgins, who had run when he showed him the sketch of the Wrecker. Isaac Bell was betting that Higgins had taken the abstinence pledge at a temperance meeting. This meeting, in the beet-farming town of Oxnard, filled a tent big enough to hold a circus.

Dashwood had attended six such meetings already, enough to know the ropes. Nimbly, he dodged the smiling mother

s who nudged their daughters in his direction. Men were outnumbered by women whenever the pledge of abstinence was sought. Few were young as he, or as clean and neatly turned out. More typical was the prospector sitting next to him, in a patched coat and floppy hat, who looked like he’d come to get out of the rain.

The singers finally finished. Ushers rigged a powerful acetylene-lit magic lantern. Its long lens shined a circle of light on a screen on the other side of the tent. All eyes watched the circle. Some sort of show was about to commence.

The next speaker was a fiery Methodist.

“The rank and file of the red-nosed corps scorn us as Utopians!” he thundered. “But to proclaim that there ought to be no place in the world for intoxicating drink does not make us Utopians. We are not conducting a dangerous experiment. Practicing personal abstinence is no new thing. The danger comes with trying to live with drink.”

He gestured toward the magic lantern.

“With the aid of a powerful microscope and this magic lantern, I will now demonstrate that to imbibe distilled spirit is to drink poison. When you drink intoxicating liquor, you poison your mind. You poison your family. You poison your own body. Watch the screen, ladies and gentlemen. Under the enlarging powers of this microscope, I place this glass of pure natural water drawn from the well of the church down the road and project it on the screen.”

Greatly magnified, the well water was alive with swimming microbes.

He held up an eyedropper, inserted it down the neck of a bottle of Squirrel whiskey, and drew brown liquid into it.

“I now place a single drop of whiskey in the water. Only one, single drop.”

The magnified drop of whiskey struck like mud fouling a pond. A brown cloud spread through the water. Microbes fled, swimming frantically toward the edges of the glass. But there was no escape. Writhing, shriveling, they fell still and died. The prospector seated beside Dashwood shuddered.

“Look at all them slimy varmints,” he said. “Last time I’ll drink water that don’t have whiskey in it.”