COTTER

Cotter went to his room and sat at his large open desk. He pulled out a small box from a right-hand drawer to place Charlie Garrison’s latest letter in it. On second thought, he re-read the letter.

Dear Jake:

Time is flying. The fertile population in Endura was extremely active last fall. We’re now delivering babies almost every other day and have more scheduled throughout the summer. We’re anxious to try out your technique with the low dose ether. Have you talked this Pignast guy into coming to Texas? We really could use him. I have one lady helper who assists with nursing duties in the hospital who’s getting good with anesthesia but she can’t perform on her own yet.

Victor Vlack is getting worse. His chief hired gun is trigger-happy and provides us with at least one patient a week with a gunshot wound or pistol-whipping injury. He’s mean. I wrongly told Vlack that Stan and I’ll be increasing our staff when you get here. We’ll need another female assistant and hopefully your anesthesia person will join us. He outright told us that increasing the size of our clinic and hospital is a bad reflection on Endura. He claims it’ll go against him in his bid to get elected as Representative.

His gunslinger, Ken Boda, stares at us in the street like he wants us dead real bad. I hate to tell you about the bad side of living here but we were always up front with each other.

How is everything at the winery? Have any of the hired badasses shown up yet? I can’t help thinking about you and I being in similar situations. You’ll be leaving one frying pan to go into another. In the end, I feel we’ll prevail.

You don’t say much anymore about your future bride. Are you still engaged with a wedding right after graduation? We’ll try to get her settled in Endura with our best Texas hospitality.

Keep writing,

Charlie

Cotter sat back in his chair after he put the letter in the box and closed the drawer. My goal in life is to bring quality medical care to the west. The thought was always there. Charlie Garrison’s letters reminded him of his father’s feelings during the war. They were both appalled by the inadequate medical services outside of major cities. There will be two jobs in Endura for me. One is to help Charlie with the new hospital and the other to help cope with Vlack–and now Ken Boda.

He walked to the bed and draped his two Colts over the bedpost next to his pillow.