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tabletop to cover dinner and we drifted toward the lobby. Hew Clay brought us around back, through the kitchen, and revealed the bed he had made for Magra.
    I still didn’t like the idea of her sleeping in a stockroom with the house cat, but once again Hew was true to his word: it was clean.
    “This will do for now,” I said. “Thanks for your assistance, Mr. Clay.”
    “Call me Hew, Marshal. Miss Magra, you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask. Hear?”
    “Thank you for everything you’ve done, Mr. Clay.”
    “My pleasure, I’m sure. Marshal?”
    We left her to get acquainted with her new surroundings.
    “I want that girl protected,” I told Hew once we were alone. “The men who killed her father might try for her next.”
    “I’ll do what I can, Marshal.” He pulled me aside again. He liked to stand between the plant and cuspidor. Maybe it was his special place.
    “Marshal, listen,” he began, “I really do want to help that girl. You see, my wife, Alma Jean, well, we lost our little boy a time ago. I know what that’s like, losing a loved one. I promise I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
    “I appreciate that sentiment, Hew. You got any protection in this hotel?”
    “I’ve got a head knocking stick under the front desk. A three-foot long hickory stave, capped with iron.”
    “What about a gun?”
    “I kept the Navy Colt I used during the war. Never could hit anything with it, though.”
    “Best clean and load it and start practicing. Where does the doctor stay in town?”
    “Doc Toland’s office is down on Front Street. It’s the first two-storey building you’ll come to, above the tailor shop.”
    I followed his instructions and climbed the steep stairs on the side of the two-storey building to a wooden door on a small, railed landing. A brass nameplate said:
    R EX T OLAND, M.D.
    S URGEON & G ENERAL P RACTITIONER
    I knocked and went on through into an empty waiting room.
    “Doc Toland?”
    He emerged from the back surgery, wiping his hands on a boiled towel. He was a narrow-faced man with grey muttonchops and rheumy brown eyes behind a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. Late forties, medium size, receding chin. The cuffs of his black frock coat were dusty and there were chemical stains of various colours on his vest.
    “Can I help you?” he asked. He stood bent forward at the waist, his shoulders slightly bowed.
    “I’m the new U.S. Marshal,” I said by way of introduction. “I’ve come to ask a favour.”
    “Happy to meet you, Marshal.”
    “Mind if we sit?”
    He hesitated a second. “Come on back to my surgery.”
    We found a couple of chairs in the room behind his front office. Doc Toland had shelves stacked with bottles of all shapes and sizes holding all measure of minerals, salts, powders, and solutions. A weighing balance, mortar and pestle, and fluted glassware used for reactions and distillation were on a worktable. In a glass-lined case below the window were steel knives, probes of various lengths, and a pair of brass forceps.
    The room smelled strongly of lye soap, alcohol, and raw turpentine.
    “Brought that equipment with me when I left Atlanta,” he explained with a wink, “under, um, fantastic circumstances which we will not delve into for the sake of propriety.”
    “A lady by any circumstance, Doc?”
    He leaned forward, animated. “My boy, she was a red-haired siren of a most tantalizing and dubious nature. She was also the wife of the hospital administrator.” He fell back in his chair like a broken doll. “I can still hear the shotgun blast in my sleep.” He put a hand out on a nearby shelf. “Anyway, this gear comes in handy. I’m the only fully equipped medical doctor outside Santa Fe.”
    “Doc, that’s what I want to talk about. I’ve got a real job ahead of me and it’s apt to get violent. Both for me and the men I have to go against.”
    He was dubious. “Not sure what you’re getting at, Marshal.”
    “I’ll say it straight out, Doc. I