“Horse fell and busted my leg . . . About a week ago . . . Rose took care of me until she had to quit . . . She's goin' to have a baby—and no doctor inside a hundred miles. I reckon she’ll die.”
It took Sam Graybull some seconds to comprehend fully. A pint or more of raw whisky on an empty stomach does not make for quiet thinking. The fact that he could retain even a semblance of his faculties proved the toughness of the killer.
“Doctor, eh?” Sam Graybull pushed back his muskrat cap and ran blunt fingers through his shock of coarse black hair. “Doctor? Yeah, you sure need one, don’t you, Pete?”
“Not me, Sam. Her. She’s out of her head, kinda.”
“Dyin’, Pete?”
“She will, I reckon. There has to be a doctor when a baby comes.”
Sam Graybull passed his hand across his eyes. He knew nothing of childbirth. There had never been room in his killer’s heart for sympathy for man or woman. Life and the losing of life meant but little to him. He nodded, black brows knit in a thoughtful scowl. Then he stepped outside and brought in the jug.
He poured three drinks into tin cups.
“Do us all good, Pete. Then we’ll kinda figger this thing out.” He took one of the cups and went into the next room.
“Howdy, Rose. Git outside o’ this. Nothin’ like it to kill pain.”