The Disappearance of a Fearless Hero – Extended Epilogue

Ira Goldman was eager to close his office and get back to his wife, Ines. She was five months pregnant, safe and happy back at the Leech family farm. The new house was ample for their needs of space and privacy, sharing the property with Will and Celeste and their young daughter, Sofia.

Freddie was still active at the farm, with Will having taken the position of sheriff after the debacle three years before. So much had happened since Norman Scott and Kyle Jacobi had tried to drive them off their land, including a marriage, a birth, the death of Doc Landers, and the establishment of Ira’s office as the leading doctor not only in Lexington but all of Kentucky.

But he was grateful not to be working as hard as he’d imagined. Will kept the peace in town; crime and violence seemed to be at a minimum, lower than they’d been in the years before Ira had arrived with him from the nearby mountains. It limited his doctoring to injuries sustained at the Blue Moon Saloon, and the ravages of alcohol on the body.

This day seemed like so many others before it; the town was quietly growing, in scope and size and populace. The nation was putting its terrible war behind it, and a new century was slowly approaching. In less than two decades, they would be entering the Twentieth century. Ira dared to hope that the nation was ready to leave its violent ways behind it, the same way Will had done.

Will was as at home in the city and the farm as he’d ever been in the mountains, though Ira hadn’t known him during the peak of his bounty-hunting years. But he knew Will had forever changed his life, and for the better. And the nation seemed ready, willing and able, to do the very same.

The sun was going down and it was time to close the office. It had been another day without drama, without trauma, and that was Ira’s idea of a good day. He would go home, share a meal with the whole Leech family, and share their dreams of the future—that was Ira’s idea of a good night and a happy life.

The door flew open and several men rushed into the office. They carried another man with them, and yet another closed and locked the door behind them. They pushed past Ira and to his cutting table, stretching the man out on it.
They numbered four men in total, and the one who had first pushed his way in was the first to speak. All wore bandanas over their faces, their hair greasy and long.

“You the sawbones,” the leader asked Ira, who was already looking over his prospective patient.

“I am, Dr. Ira Goldman. And you are—?”

“This man’s brother, Doc. He… he had an accident, that’s all you need to know about it. But he’s gut shot and he needs doctorin’.”

Ira looked him over. His face was pale, his clothes caked in black, crusted blood. He’d been bleeding for some time, and he barely seemed strong enough just to lay there and die.

“Save him, Doc,” the man said. “Dig the bullet out and close him up.”
A lump rose in Ira’s throat. “I… I’ll do what I can, of course, but… it looks like he’s lost a lot of blood.”

“I know damn well he has,” the leader said, “I got eyes! You got ears? This here’s my kid brother, Doc. Now, you save him—and make it quick, or we’ll be leavin’ two graves here ‘fore movin’ on.”

Ira didn’t need for the threat to be made any clearer. “All right, well, you boys make yourselves comfortable, then.”

They didn’t, lording over Ira while he prepared his equipment and turned to leave the room. The leader grabbed Ira’s arm and spun him around. “Where you goin’?”

“I need fresh water to wash my hands. He’ll get an infection if I don’t. Even if I get the bullet and close him, he won’t last a week if he infects.”

The men looked at one another, and the leader said to another, “Go with him, make sure he comes back quick.”

Ira said to the leader, “Now, you listen to me. I’m a doctor, and I don’t run out on my duty.”

“You wouldn’t last the night,” the leader said.

Without a flinch, Ira answered, “I wouldn’t want to.” He stepped around to the barrel of rainwater by the office, where he filled a metal pitcher and turned to bring it back inside, the guard watching him closely.

The fire had to be started, the water heated to cleanse it of infectious materials.

But the leader became more and more agitated as the moments before the surgery crept on.

“Get on with it, sawbones!”

“You rush me and your brother’s as good as dead! Don’t tell me how to do my job or what time to do it in!”

The two men stared each other down. “All right, Doc, but you just remember—we bury him, we bury you right alongside.”

Ira nodded and returned his attention to his patient. He applied some chloroform to a handkerchief and held it over the man’s face while the others looked on. The clothes had to be cut away, the charred and mangled meat of the wound trimmed so the gash could be closed.

Ira couldn’t help but think of his own family. Though he had no brothers, Will had become like one. They’d become the best of friends, as Celeste and Ines had.

To think of losing any of them was more than Ira could stand, and it very nearly distracted him from his duties even more than the four deadly men ready to gun him down right there and then.

Ira put a wooden spoon in the patient’s mouth, wedging it between his teeth before turning to the gang’s leader. “I’ll need some of you to hold him down.”

The leader said, “Didn’t you give him that stuff, knock him out?”

Ira shook his head. “That’s just for the pain, but his body’s nervous system is gonna be rattled head to toe once I go in. You, hold his ankles; you, hold his arms at the wrist.” Their leader seemed to consider it before nodding and stepping back. The two other men took their position holding the man down while another stood guard at the door and their leader looked on.

Ira went to work digging into the wound to find the bullet. Judging by the size of the wound, Ira would guess it to be a smaller gage, no bigger than a .36. But that was more than enough to kill bigger, stronger men than this one, Ira knew all too well.

Ira poked his scalpel deep into the wound and the patient’s body bucked, a savage rebellion to the invasive steel. The men leaned down to hold him in place, the patient panting as his jaws clenched down on the wooden spoon, adding his own teeth marks to countless others.

“Jesus, Doc, stop it! Yer killin’ him!”

“I’m tryin’ to save his life! The fact that he’s bucking like this means he’s still strong, that’s good sign for his recovery. But you gotta let me tend to my business!” Ira stared the leader down and the man finally nodded and stepped away, letting Ira go on with the operation.

The minutes crawled onward, the windows darkening with the fall of night. He’d been expected back at the farm, and his absence would be noticed. Will would be on his shift for another hour. Ira only hoped nobody else would stop by, either from the farm or from any other business in Lexington, of which there was a growing number.

The patient kept bucking and writhing; Ira kept looking for the bullet. It would make a certain sound against the scalpel, and Ira’s trained senses would tell him when he’d found it. If not, the patient’s wild struggle would be a good indicator. It could also send the bullet further in.

He would retrieve it with a pair of long tweezers made especially for the task.
Blood kept filling the wound and spilling over. Ira said to the leader, “You, I need your help.”

“What, me?”

“I need you to clean the wound, sop up some of this blood.”

“Me? Ain’t you got a nurse or something?”

“I’m between nurses right now,” Ira said. “You wanna wait ‘til I hire one, finish your brother’s operation then?”

There was no time to argue about it. Getting no response, Ira said, “Take a rag from over there and bring it to the cutting table.” The man did as instructed as Ira turned back to the patient, the leader joining them. “Sop up the blood so I can see what I’m doing.”

“Christ, Doc, yer bleedin’ him to death!”

“You are, if you keep working your jaws. Now, do as yer told!”

The man complied, mopping up his kid brother’s blood while Ira dug for the bullet, the patient still struggling on the table.

Ira finally stopped, the distinct feel of the bullet hitting the end of his tool.

“Okay, I think I’ve found it. You boys hold him down, strong as you can. That bullet’s gonna be all banged up and twisted. It won’t come out easy… or pretty.”

“All right, all right,” the leader said, “let’s just get this done with!”

Ira could hear the growing desperation in the man’s voice. Whatever crime they’d committed, against whatever adversary, the man clearly loved his brother.

His distress at his brother’s suffering was palpable, reminding Ira that most men shared certain things in common, whatever decisions they may have made in life.

With only a few terrible exceptions, all men loved their brothers if they were allowed. Men strived to protect and to nurture their own. Ira was no different, nor Will, though their methods were, as were the results.

Ira applied his greatest care, as he always did, regardless of who lay before him.

He eased the long, steel tweezers into the bloody, ragged hole, slowly approaching the buried bullet. When the tip of the tweezers tapped the slug, the patient bucked again. Ira knew that just one or two more such reactions would pull the slug deeper, perhaps too deep to retrieve.

“Hold him steady, you idiots!”

The men quickly complied, leaning down harder on their young associate while Ira released the tweezers just a bit and pushed down to get a good grip on the slug. He could feel that it was bent and twisted, jagged edges threatening to mangle the wound on the way out as it had on the way in. That could cause more bleeding, and another ruptured artery would spell certain death for patient and doctor alike.

The patient struggled and the men held him down while Ira used his greatest skills and senses to imagine the open end of the tweezers. He could feel them closing on the slug, slipping on the bloodied piece of metal. He tried several times to get a good purchase on it, finally managing to close the tweezer’s tips down on it. Ira felt the tool grab and hold the slug.

“Okay, I got it,” Ira said, “I got it. Pulling it up, your boy’s going to thrash around like never before. But if I can get it out and he makes it that far, he’s got a good chance.”

“Don’t let him die, Doc!”

“Your boys do like I tell ‘em, that’ll go a long way.”

“All right, boys, you heard the doc!”

The men shared a glance before leaning down harder, Ira taking a deep breath before pulling the tweezers up slowly. He could feel the sharp burrs catching the torn meat, pulling up bits of flesh that grabbed it and tried to keep the slug there, buried within. The patient tensed and twisted, the men kept him down, his jaws threatening to bite right through the handle of that wooden spoon.

Sweat poured down the sides of Ira’s face. “You,” he said to the leader, “wipe my brow.” The man stood confused, until Ira barked, “You want this boy to live, get a new rag and wipe my damned brow!” The leader of the gang jolted into action and turned to retrieve another rag, then wiped down Ira’s forehead.

Ira focused on raising that tool up, careful to apply just the right amount of pressure. Squeezing the tweezers too tightly would send it slipping and closing, losing its hold on the slug to send it falling back and even further in. If he held it with too little pressure, the bloodied slug would simply fall out and to the same effect, likely a fatal one.

Ira held his breath, heart beating fast as his hand remained steady. He eased the tweezers up, metal covered with red blood. Ira’s eyes were fixed on the tweezers as the tips finally cleared the wound. The slug was secure in the tweezers’ pincer tip, and Ira finally had it cleared of the still-bleeding hole.

“Okay,” he said, exhaling, “you sop that blood, I’ll close him up.”

“Good work, Doc,” the leader said, “really.”

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Ira said. “Just do as I tell you, we’ll see how things shake out.”

He went about sewing up the wound, his ad-hoc assistant wiping the blood away as the others relaxed their hold on the man, even as he flinched through the process of dressing the wound.

Finally, the stitches were tied off tight, and gauzes were layered down and taped to the man’s torso. It took another ten minutes to get the long bandages around his torso to keep the pressure strong and prevent the loss of the gauze, the stitches, and the patient’s life.

“That’s it then, Doc,” the leader said. “We’ll take him and go.”

“You… you should wait. Or at least let him stay. He needs rest. I won’t make any mention of it, of any of you. I’m honor-bound not to disclose any details about my patients. You can come pick him up in a few days, no need to worry about a thing.”

The leader looked at the other two, the guard at the door watching with an obvious interest even with his face half-covered.

“Can’t do that, Doc. We’ll be real gentle with him, though.” He said to the two others, “Grab some of these sheets, we’ll tie a sling ‘tween yer horses and ride him to Louisville.”

“Please reconsider,” Ira said. “You could be signing the man’s death warrant.”

“Sorry, Doc. But there’s only one man dying here tonight.” He drew a long knife from a leather sheath on his belt. “Now it’s my time to do some cuttin’!”
Ira said, “No, please!”

“Don’t struggle, it won’t hurt so much.”

“I’ve got a wife, she’s pregnant!”

“That’s a damned shame.”

“I won’t say anything,” Ira said, his voice cracking just a bit. “I took an oath!”

“So did I, Doc… no loose ends.”

The leader advanced on Ira, moving with deadly quickness.

But Ira was faster. The men hadn’t noticed that Ira had been armed the whole time, a gun belt under his doctor’s robe. The Colt seemed to appear out of nowhere by the men’s frightened expressions, eyes wide over their bandanas.

Bang!

The leader stepped back, stunned. He looked down at the new wound in his belly, as if the impossible had happened. People assumed all doctors to be men of peace, and they were… when they could afford to be. But Ira only lived then because he’d learned to defend himself as well as treat others.

It was a shocking lesson for those who had to learn it up close, as the leader’s staggering stance made clear once again. The leader glanced at his brother, lying motionless before him. He seemed to know as he looked back at his own stomach, a matching wound, that the results would likely be the same. He’d have to fight for his life, and at the mercy of the doctor’s hands. And this doctor had just escaped a deadly betrayal at the hands of the life he’d have to save.

Ira stood, ready for whatever the leader was going to do. Sadly, he lunged in a desperate attempt to avenge himself, not convinced that Ira would have been merciful and dedicated to saving the man, before seeing him to the gallows.

But there would be no opportunity for the gallows, at least not for the leader. His second lung drew another blast of gunfire, and the man fell where he stood, dropping his knife to the bloodied floor.

Ira turned his attention to the other men. They stood in what seemed to Ira to be utter and complete disbelief.

“I suggest you boys turn and ride for your lives. Scatter, go your own separate ways and never meet again. Ride out of Kentucky and never return.” After another stunned moment, Ira barked, “Go, you fools!”

They broke and turned, scrambling out of the doctor’s office to leave Ira alone with the two stricken men. One lay dead at his feet, by his own hands; the other lay recovering, also by his own hands.

Ira sighed, knowing it would be a sad story to tell Ines and the rest of the family.

But it would be one Ira and Will would tell together. The sheriff had to know about the events, the recovering patient still had to be tried for his crimes, the other had to be recorded as a death in self-defense before the case was closed and the man properly buried.

Ira draped the dead man with a sheet and stepped out of the office to get Will and bring him in to explain all. He’d survived by his wits, by his skills, by the code which had led him to both rescue and revenge, of life and death.

THE END

---

Readers who read this book also liked