The phone was ringing when Ernest Shaw walked into his office. He hurled himself at the desk to get it.
“Cody Enterprise, Shaw. Oh, hi Joe, what’s up?”
“Mornin’, Ern. Say, a dude riding near my ranch yesterday got beat up when his horse bolted. Fred Morris just told me about it, I guess the guy was able to get into town and see Dr. Trueblood last night. Have you heard anything?”
“Nope, but I’ll check into it and let you know. Thanks for the tip.”
Shaw put down the phone and opened the top drawer of his desk. It was filled with packs of Wrigley’s gum: Juicy Fruit, Spearmint, Double Mint. As he pulled out a pack of Spearmint he yelled, “Johnston!”
A slight young man with warm brown eyes and early graying hair appeared in the office doorway.
“Yes, boss?”
Shaw tore off the gum wrapper.
“Get over to Doc Trueblood’s office and ask him about a man he treated, probably late last night. He was out by Joe Jones’s Majo Ranch yesterday. Find out who he was, and what happened.”
“Okay.”
As Johnston hesitated, Shaw asked him, “What?”
“Why do you chew so much gum? Why can’t you smoke cigars like other newspaper publishers?”
“I don’t like cigars, I like gum. Now get going. And turn on that fan over in the corner as you leave.”
Shaw spent the next hour making phone calls and talking to another reporter about the bidding process for grading the Powell-Cody road. He was handing a piece of Spearmint to Betty at the receptionist desk when Johnston walked in.
“What took you so long?” Shaw asked him.
“The doc wasn’t in his office or at home, but I ran into his wife, and she said he was at the courthouse. So, I went over there and got the story.”
“Again? He lost one election and so he haunts the place. What did he tell you? Is it worth a line or two in next week’s paper?”
“I think so, everybody likes to read about city people who try to act like cowboys when they come out here.”
Johnston opened a notebook and took a pencil from behind his ear, which he waved around as he talked.
“A guy from Chicago or someplace is staying at that dude ranch out in the Sunlight Basin, and he and a friend decided to ride out by the river near the Majo. He was on a bay named Goofy, which I guess should have been tame enough for him, but it wasn’t. For some reason the horse took off and ran the dude through some brush and his face got cut up pretty bad.”
Johnston turned a page, wrote something, and continued.
“There was nobody at the ranch, but the guy’s friend knew where the ranger station was, so they rode out there. Chuck Easley was on duty. They borrowed his car and drove into town and didn’t get here until somewhere close to midnight. They woke up the doc. Went over to his office and he stitched up the man’s face.”
“Ouch.”
“Well, you know Trueblood always has a good supply of whiskey on the shelf. And it sounds like the fellow was used to drinking, because he took a few slugs and just smiled through the whole thing.”
“Do we know who he is?”
“He’s a writer or something. I guess he’s done a couple of books about the war.”
“Huh. Where is he now?”
“He and his friend drove to the ranger station and picked up their horses there, then they went back to the ranch.”
“Okay, we’ll use this for the August 20 edition. Write it up and get it ready. Let me think…here’s the headline: ‘Dude Injured at the Majo on South Fork.’”
Johnston nodded and Shaw asked him, “What was his name?”
The reporter flipped the pages of his notebook.
“Hemminger? No, that’s not right…oh, here it is. Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway.”
Shaw snorted.
“Well, I never heard of him. And he won’t go far with a name like that.”
The two men chuckled, Johnston went to his typewriter, and Shaw opened a new pack of Juicy Fruit.