X-RAY COWBOY

The following story is mostly fiction -- but not all.

When I got off the stagecoach at Guthrie, Oklahoma, I thought it was as boring and flat a piece of land as I had ever seen. The soil looked like rust off some old piece of junk and the sky stretched on forever with little white puffy clouds. But at least there was a town there, and a bustling one at that. You see, I had come from back east, Philadelphia, in search of adventure in the land of cattle, cowboys and gold. I needed the town of Guthrie more than it needed me. I planned to ply my barbering trade just to earn enough to continue heading west to Los Angeles. My only brother lived out there and he told me I could get rich out there just cutting beards and hair.
The first thing I did in Guthrie, after of course stopping by the saloon, was to inquire about renting a chair from the barber next to the general store. Hank Butkins, the barbershop owner, and I did a fair amount of dickering before coming to a fifty-fifty arrangement. Hank drove a tough bargain and would keep half of what I made.
After a few days in this hot and stuffy shop, I met a man that changed my whole life. I had done enough book-learnin’ to carry on okay in the art of conversation. This helps the barberin’ business, you know. Well, as I was conversin’ with old Doc Roberts, he seemed mighty impressed with what I remembered from encyclopedias about the human body. I also put in my two cents on the subject of electricity and the like. Well, wouldn’t you know it, Doc Roberts asked if I would stop by his office to help him with somethin.’ He said he had some new glass tube device from Germany that could make pictures of bones right through the skin, and he thought I could set it up with him.
So that afternoon, I left the barbershop early to head over to Doc’s office. As I crossed the dusty street, I nearly got runned over by some long bearded fool on a liver colored horse. At Doc’s office, we set about putting together the pieces of his new contraption he called an X-rayomatic. Wouldn’t you know it, all the instructions were written in German. Doc and I mixed some photographic chemicals and painted them onto glass plates. When we thought we had every thing right, I set my hand on one of these plates. Doc turned on the glass bulb for five minutes. Then we dipped the plate in more chemicals until a fuzzy image appeared. It showed the bones of my hand along with my ring. We spent the entire night making these bone pictures of each other with the X-rayomatic.
The next day, Doc stopped by the barbershop actin’ kind of upset and in a hurry. He asked, ‘Could I come over and make some pictures with the X-rayomatic for him?’ A cowboy had been shot twice and he wanted to find the bullets in his chest.
So, we rushed outta there like two wild animals and went across to his office. Harry Colton lay on the examining table looking white as a ghost. I recognized him by his long beard as the wild rider of the liver colored horse that almost trampled me the day before. I brought around the X-rayomatic and had Colton lay on a large prepared glass plate.
“What in tarnation? What’s that thing?” he asked.
“It just makes a picture. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt you,” I replied.
“Well, it can’t hurt me anymore than what I’ve done to myself,” said Colton drifting off.
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s just I have a bad habit with pickin’ fights with the wrong people,” he said.
When I got done with the two pictures, Colton sat up. His color had gotten more pink. The pictures showed only one bullet along his spine.
“Can’t go after that bullet,” said Doc, “Too dangerous—don’t want to end up a cripple, do ya?”
“Naw. I’ll just have to tough it out,” said Colton.
After Doc cleaned and sewed up the hole in Colton’s back, I handed Colton his denim shirt from the chair. Colton headed toward the door. Then I noticed a silver neck chain on the chair. Picking it up, I saw it had a large bullet-shaped pendant hanging from it.
“Wait a second,” I said. “This wouldn’t be yours. Would it Colton?”
“Ah. Thank you kindly, sir. I almost literally left my brother behind.”
I heard what he’d said, though I didn’t understand it. I was just about to let him go but then I just had to know what he meant by that odd statement.
“Mr. Colton. I’m sorry. I didn’t quite get that. Did you say that you almost left your brother behind?” I inquired cautiously, not wanting to upset a wounded ranch hand.
“Yeah, you got that right,” he said as he took off his hat to put the chain back around his neck. “You see, my brother got killed just three weeks ago. Maybe you read about it in the Guthrie Gazette. They found him along a dried streambed two days ride from here. The marshalll said he died of thirst, but when I saw the boot marks on his head, I knew he had taken a beatin’ and been left to die. I suspect the marshalll had somethin’ to do with it, but what can I do? My brother wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t deserve to be left to the buzzards like that. Anyway, he had always told me that if he died before me, then he wanted his remains put into a bullet. So, when I was at that funeral parlor down the street making arrangements for his cremation, I asked the owner if it could be done. Then he pulls out this big catalogue from San Francisco. And sure enough, there is a drawing of this here urn shaped like a bullet,” Colton said proudly, holding up the shiny silver and brass pendant for me to examine.
Not knowing how to respond I simply said, “That’s quite a story. You take care of yourself now, sir.”
He looked at me with narrowing eyes, put on his hat and said, “It ain’t a story and I will take care of myself – cuz sure enough nobody else will!” And with that, Harry Colton left Doc’s office. I never saw him again but I heard he’s in a prison somewhere in Arizona. As for me, in about a month’s time I’d saved up enough to buy a ticket to Los Angeles, where I now sell the X-rayomatic to doctors on the west coast.