“Sure it was,” Pritchard said, not harshly. “I saved her once. But she came back and found me. When she did, my troubles found her. It’s just like Alejandro said.”

“What about your family?”

“Saving what was left of my family is why I turned my back on them. You should know that better than anybody, Ditch. Do you think I want what happened to my fiancée to happen to Ma and Idelle?”

“Of course not,” Ditch said.

“Then you know why I can’t go with you. And why I have to remain Joe Atherton.”

Ditch only nodded.

“I’m sure you have your reasons for keeping your past hidden,” Franchard said. “If they’re good enough for you, they’re good enough for me and the Texas Rangers.”

“Thanks, Cap’n,” Pritchard said. “And thanks for the offer, Ditch,” he said to his friend. “Maybe someday I’ll take you up on it. For now, I’ll be stickin’ with the Rangers.”

“Suit yourself,” Ditch said. “Just don’t forget who you are.”

Pritchard looked from Ditch, to Franchard, to Ruiz, and then into his empty glass.

“I know who I am,” he said.

“Who’s that?” Ditch asked.

“Smokin’ Joe Atherton,” Pritchard said.

PART THREE - GUNFIGHTER

PART THREE

GUNFIGHTER

Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Atherton, Missouri, August 1872

Dovie sat in the parlor and sipped her tea, smiling, as her husband’s tortured screams echoed throughout their apartment. She knew Burnell’s howls could be heard outside their opulent penthouse, in the hotel rooms below, and probably even down in the lobby, restaurant, and bar.

Burnell had been receiving treatment for several years for what the town’s physician, Dr. Mauldin, referred to as “an affliction of the blood,” but which Dovie knew was really the “sporting pox,” as it was more commonly called. Burnell had no doubt contracted it from one of the “hospitality hostesses” he employed, or during one of his frequent trips to Kansas City where his consorting with prostitutes was common knowledge.

Burnell Shipley’s stomach had always bothered him, but over the past couple of years his skin had turned gray, his gums began to bleed, his eyesight had gradually begun failing, and he’d developed a tremor in his hands. He often spent as much as thirty minutes in the lavatory at a time, and usually moaned in anguish while relieving himself.

Dr. Mauldin visited weekly and treated his patient with doses of calomel. Shipley usually drank the mercury chloride solution while Mauldin rubbed an ointment made of the compound on the sores that had begun to spread over his obese body. But for the last several months, at least once every few weeks, the doctor was forced to come to their home at the hotel to inject the calomel, with a specially heated, red-hot syringe, directly into Burnell’s penis.