Dinosaur Wars

Chapter twenty-one - Discovered!

Dita remained unconscious for all that night and was still unresponsive the next morning. Adam kept up a constant barrage of protest.

"My friend needs a doctor!" he shouted through the bars. "He needs medical attention. He's out cold – are you just going to let him die?"

The deputy, Lance Griffith, young and surly and uninterested, mostly responded by telling him to "shut his gob". At one point, irritated by the constant commotion, he threw a bucket of cold water over Adam.

He then stuck his face up to the bars. "I oughta come in there and whip you myself."

But Adam kept at it. When he ran out of breath, he ran a metal cup along the bars. Eventually the sheriff, Silas Spink, showed late in the morning. He heard what the deputy had to say, caught another onslaught of noise from Adam, then looked with hooded eyes through the bars at the uncoscious prisoner.

"Hell, get the doc in. Prisoner's got to be healthy enough to hang."

The sheriff and deputy laughed at the joke.

The doctor arrived with Deputy Griffith half an hour later. His black beard jutted out in front of his chin and his thick round spectacles gave his eyes a dark, glossy stare, like a seal. A tatty silk tophat perched on his head threatened to topple off any moment.

He pulled a half-smoked cheroot from between his red lips, looking from the line of cells where Adam held onto the bars to the other side.

"So where's my victim?" he asked with a rasping voice.

Griffith unlocked Dita's cell door and pushed it open. The doctor strolled in, placing his fat leather bag on the floor by the bunk.

He pushed Dita's head back with one hand and used a thumb to hike up one eyelid after another with the hand that still held the cheroot. Griffith looked on.

"He's still alive," the doctor said. "And no brain bleed."

He then reached down and yanked open his bag. He pulled out an aural tube, a stethescope, then began unbuttoning Dita's shirt.

With a sudden shock, the consequences of hollering for a doctor dropped like stones into Adam's heart.

"What are you doing?"

The doctor turned and raised his head to look at him. The physian's black, penny-round lenses gleamed, but he said nothing. Instead, he turned back to the patient and bent his head down to the listening tube, moving it about to hear the pulsing of the chambers and valves of the heart. He moved the instrument from one spot to another. Then suddenly, he leapt back, as if electrocuted.

"What?" the deputy asked.

"This one's got mammaries!"

The deputy stepped back from the bars. "Hell, is that catchy?"

The doctor raised his big, magnified eyes to Griffith. Then he laughed, loud and long.

"I don't want catch nothin'," Griffith said.

"Oh, I don't think you'll catch this particular disease, even though it affects half the population."

"Is it that bad?"

"Worse than you could ever imagine."

The deputy backed farther away from the cell. The doctor reached down, about to unbutton Dita's britches.

"Leave it! Just leave it!" Adam shouted.

Again, the physician turned his head toward Adam.