The early morning August sun cast a cool shadow across the hawk-like face of Doctor Emmett Calrod as he stepped off the stagecoach. He unloaded his trunk and doctor’s bag, placed a couple of dollars into the driver’s hand, and thanked him for going this far out of his way to Gore City. Though, as he looked out at the short corridor of buildings lining a sleepy dirt road through his crystal glasses, “city” was hardly appropriate. The town clearly had great aspirations for its future that had not seemed to manifest as hoped. The pale cliffs of Gore Canyon loomed over the town, having promised mineral wealth that did not exist. A mining company office nearby sat abandoned, windows cracked and dusty, and the rest of the town didn’t look much different. The wind kicked up a small cloud of dirt from the empty street, his black duster billowing in the breeze.

“Dr. Calrod?” a young woman approached him as the stagecoach pulled away. Her hair was tied back into a ponytail and she wore a dingy buckskin jacket, her ruddy, serious face looking him up and down. She extended her hand to him without waiting for confirmation that he was, indeed, Dr. Calrod. He politely shook her hand, her grip feeling warm and firm.

“You must be Miss Beaumont,” he replied. Yesterday, he’d returned to Denver after a brief sabbatical in Sacramento and been promptly told by the city that his presence as the newly appointed state coroner was needed in Gore City after an “incident”. The telegraph he was handed didn’t specify much more than that, other than the names of two people: Abigail Beaumont and Jack Durham.

“Please, Abigail will do just fine. Nobody calls me Miss Beaumont,” she laughed, a nervous, sharp edge in her voice. “May we speak in private Dr. Calrod?”

With a nod, he was led down the road by Abigail, following a short distance behind her. Dr. Calrod reached down and gently tapped the side of his hip, checking that his Colt Army revolver was still there on his belt. Just to be safe. Even in familiar places, let alone strange ones, it would be foolish to drop his guard. Only a few people passed by as he walked, out of the corner of his eye he could see them glare or lean to whisper something to whoever they were with.

The walk through the run-down town was short lived as they approached the town smithy. It was about as run down as the rest of the buildings, the dry summer air drawing the scent of smoke and oil out from the forge. It was tended to by a young man who looked to be about the same age as Abigail. His gloves and apron hung on his slight frame like they were meant for somebody twice his size. Soot-stained blond hair hung down in his face while he hammered away at something small and red hot.

“Jacob!” Abigail yelled. The man looked up, forehead drenched with sweat. His eyebrows shot up at the sight of the doctor, and he quickly quenched the piece of glowing hot metal with a quick, sharp hiss. He tossed it into a bin full of finished nails, took off his gloves, and hurriedly disappeared into the smithy’s storefront. The two of them followed, Dr. Calrod placing his luggage by the door as Abigail locked it behind them and drew the curtains.

“This is my brother, Jacob,” she said, gesturing to the blond man. “I apologize for dragging you out here but…,” Abigail trailed off as she and Jacob pulled up some chairs to a cleared off table in the store. “I needed to be the first one to tell you about Jack.”

Dr. Calrod sat in the chair across from Abigail and Jacob and produced a small, thin notebook from his pocket along with a small pen. He flipped it open and set the nib against the paper.

“No need to apologize. Tell me about Mister Durham,” he asked. Jacob seemed to wince at the sound of the name. Abigail drew in a deep breath before answering.

“He’s…he was a friend of ours. He was a cowhand, working for Daniel Callahan at his ranch to the north of here. He came here in the spring to help with calving season and stuck around afterwards. I never did learn where he was from…” she recounted, pausing to consider her next words as she wrung her hands. “He got in trouble a lot. He’d blow all his money on whiskey and poker games and then pick fights when he couldn’t drink or gamble anymore. Woke up in a jail cell a lot of mornings. Not many folks around here liked him.”

“You were awful fond of him,” Jacob spoke, his voice surprisingly deep and hoarse. The words dripped with venom as they left his mouth.

“And you weren’t?” she grumbled, glaring at him.

“Jesus—Abigail!” Jacob erupted, turning bright red. The two began to bicker, angrily talking over each other. Dr. Calrod blinked before emphatically clearing his throat. The two fell silent, shrinking into their seats.

“Sorry sir,” Jacob mumbled. “He just…meant a lot to us.”

“It’s quite alright. I appreciate your…candor regarding Mister Durham’s character,” Dr. Calrod replied, “I understand you two must be upset.” He scribbled down snippets of the conversation in the notebook. Cowhand. Drifter. Arrived in spring. Often drunk & disorderly. Promiscuous. Deceased? His pen lingered at the dot on the question mark.

“Can either of you elaborate on what exactly happened to Mister Durham?” he asked. Abigail heaved a deep sigh and shared a worried glance with Jacob.

“Well, I think it’s better if you see it yourself,” Abigail said.

Both of the Beaumonts refused to accompany him as he left, instead opting to give him directions to the town’s doctor and telling him that he “can’t miss it”. All of the experience he’d gained over his many years of medical practice had made him rather stoic, but an unfamiliar apprehension had still been brewing in his gut since he’d arrived in Gore City. He’d extracted bullets from the torsos of screaming French soldiers, pulled rotten molars, amputated limbs, delivered children, cleaned infected wounds, he’d even pulled wayward fish hooks out of the eyes of two young anglers in Kansas City. However gruesome any of it was, none of it could have prepared him for the scene outside of the doctor’s office.

In the midst of the small crowd that had gathered, Dr. Calrod stopped in his tracks, processing the sight before him. A headless cowboy stood there, dressed in mud-stained leather boots, chaps, and a black cotton vest over a gray shirt, shuffling cards with the deftness of a practiced card sharp. In between his shoulders was a stump of thick neck tightly wrapped in off-white gauze, secured by a red neckerchief. His dexterous hands completed the card shuffling routine, producing applause from the small crowd that had gathered around him. He tucked the deck back into the band of his hat and placed it onto his neck, tipping it gently. The crowd became more lively with praise.

“Thank you, thank you!” shouted a man in a bowler hat as he sidled up next to the headless ranch hand. Dr. Calrod hadn’t noticed him initially amidst his disbelief, but he’d apparently been here the whole time, hawking some kind of mineral tincture described in a sign set up nearby. Feeling his professional obligation rouse him from his stupor, the coroner approached the man and cut him off amidst his spiel.

“Excuse me,” he began, his authoritative voice cutting through the energy like a scalpel. “My name is Doctor Emmett Calrod, Colorado state coroner. I’m here to examine the body of Mister Jack Durham.”

The other man smiled, a row of porcelain teeth peeking out from under his mustache. “Why, Jack Durham is right there, examine him all you like!” he said, gesturing to the headless man, now standing with his arms at his sides, swaying gently as he stood still. Dr. Calrod imagined that if he had eyes, they’d be staring off in the distance.

“I’m sorry?” he asked, confused.

The man turned away from him. “Alright everybody, head on home! Doc’s got important business to attend to,” he hollered, waving off the crowd. He turned back to Dr. Calrod and held out his hand as the crowd dispersed, mumbling disappointments.

“Ezekiel Small. Most folks here call me Doc,” he explained. “Let’s talk inside.”

He performed his examination of Jack Durham in Ezekiel’s makeshift office. He sat him down onto a wooden table and pulled up his sleeve to take his pulse. On a table nearby his notebook lay open to take notes. Male, around 20-25 years. Tan complexion. 5 feet, 3 inches tall (likely 6 feet with head).

“So, tell me, what happened?” Dr. Calrod asked as he continued to conduct his examination. He undid Jack’s shirt buttons and scrawled a few more notes. Lean build. Body hair is black, coarse. Multiple bruises, various stages of healing.

“Well,” Ezekiel began, “a week ago I found I was missing some of my medicines, so Marshal Simons and I went down to the saloon to ask Jack a few questions. Jack was drunk, like he usually was.” Dr. Calrod listened as he continued to scrawl notes, stopping to run his hands along Jack’s body, poking and prodding where needed. Alcoholism corroborated by others. Pox scarring on torso. Knee-jerk reflex intact.

“Simons tries putting the cuffs on him and Jack starts fighting back, yelling about how he didn’t do nothing, and he swings at him, and Jack throws his punches what like the devil himself. He got on top of Simons and started beating the hell out of him,” Ezekiel continued, casting glances back and forth between the coroner and Jack’s body. Mild bruises around wrists. Fingernails worn, but clean.

“When we pulled him off, he wasn’t moving. The son of a bitch beat Simons to death. So Jack takes off running up Gore Canyon, and we chase after…err…”

Dr. Calrod re-buckled Jack’s belt and turned to his notebook. No sign of venereal disease. “You said ‘we’. Who else was involved?”

“Well, me and the other fellas in the saloon. I couldn’t name them all. It was dark, we couldn’t see him or each other very well, but we could hear him breathing hard while he ran.”

Dr. Calrod put up his stethoscope to Jack’s chest and listened. Breathing rate is elevated. There was no use in delaying the inevitable. He reached up, gently loosened the neckerchief, and started to pull the gauze away layer by layer. Its color shifted from white, to pink, to a deep red as Ezekiel kept talking.

“And up there on the north side of the canyon, the trail gets steep and rocky pretty quick, and we hear him slip on the rocks and yell, and then fall down the side of the canyon. It’s a long way down from up there, you could hear him hitting the rocks. We waited to hear if he was calling for help but it was just… silent,” Ezekiel recounted somberly. Suddenly, his mournful tone shifted, becoming almost irritated. “We all came back into town and told everybody Jack Durham’s dead, but then what happens? Next morning he walks back into town missing his whole damn head. Scared the hell out of the saloon keeper when he strolled in and smacked his hands on the bar like he was ordering a beer.”

Ezekiel fell silent as Dr. Calrod wordlessly lifted the rest of the gauze away, revealing a bloody mass of mangled flesh bulging out of a stump of skin. It was messy, but amidst the ragged edges of torn skin and muscle he could make out the structures of the neck. His esophagus and windpipe were nestled in the meat next to each other, two pink tubes flexing involuntarily as he breathed in and out, deeply and slowly. The vertebral column jutted out about half an inch, an off white peg of bone with a bundle of nerve tissue emerging from the center, tangled up in the muscle and blood vessels like spindly roots of grass. The center of the stump surrounding the vertebrae was covered in dark scabs, kept damp by the gauze. Around it was raw, pink flesh where the skin and fat had tried to knit themselves back together in vain denial of the trauma’s severity. Along all the edges of the stump was a jagged bruise with edges like the teeth of a saw, red and tender on Jack’s leather skin.

“See, I’ve been caring for him,” Ezekiel continued, pointing at Jack’s neck, almost beaming with pride. “I think the reason he’s still walking around is on account of my mineral tincture. I mix it into the oatmeal he gets every morning. Here, watch this.” He took an empty bottle from a nearby shelf and placed it in Jack’s hand. They watched as he tightened his grip on it and tilted it up to the empty space above his neck, as if he were drinking. His esophagus flexed, the remains of his larynx bobbing up and down in tandem with the motions of swallowing. Dr. Calrod hummed absently, staring at the live cross-section of a half-healed neck in front of him following the last dregs of its muscle memory.

He took a brief reprieve from the sight to scan over his writing, but according to what he’d written, Jack wasn’t dead. Everything he’d recorded, his heart rate, breathing, reflexes… it all indicated he was still very much alive. He looked back up at Jack, now having returned to a still stupor after his grip on the bottle loosened. Had he not known any better, he’d have thought he was looking at the victim of a guillotine. Yet there he was; walking, breathing, eating, drinking, all despite the gory mess of neck stuck between his broad shoulders right where his head should have been. He snapped the notebook shut and tucked it back into his pocket along with the pen.

“I think it’s best if Mister Durham stays inside with his wound covered.”

“Oh… well if you insist,” Ezekiel said, covering up Jack’s neck with gauze again, tying it off with the neckerchief. Dr. Calrod watched as the mess of mutilated flesh disappeared under the gauze once more. Jack shifted uncomfortably as the knot was tied, his fingernails digging into the wooden table. His body was stiff and hunched, the muscles in his forearms tense as he readjusted to breathing through the gauze. He almost looked like a dog that was ready to bite.

“Do you have someplace to sleep tonight?” Ezekiel asked, somewhat startling the coroner. “I have a spare room you could take upstairs while you’re here. It’ll save you the money at the saloon.” The offer was unexpected, but appreciated. He accepted it, cautiously following him upstairs. As he went, he watched Jack finally loosen his grip on the wood. He slumped forward, heaving a hollow sigh through the gauze.

Dr. Calrod hung his coat on the rack, watching the last of the sun set behind the maw of the canyon. Ezekiel dismissed himself once the coroner had gotten comfortable, retiring downstairs to close up the office and feed Jack. He undid his belt, placing the holster with the Colt revolver on the nightstand before cleaning himself up. He shut off the gas lamp and climbed into bed, exhausted. Through the swirl of the day's events in his head, the image of Jack’s headless body and the faint sound of scraping filtered into his dreams as he drifted to sleep.

The next morning consisted of Dr. Calrod walking in circles around Gore City. His first stop was the Daniel Callahan’s ranch, where he was screamed at by his wife, Mrs. Helen Callahan, to get off their property. After notifying her that he was the state coroner, he was in turn notified that Jack got fired in June for trying to steal money from them, and Dan had been out of town since early July, long before the night of Jack’s supposed accident.

Walking back from Callahan’s ranch, he passed by Ezekiel’s office. He saw that he’d set up the sign advertising his mineral tincture again, an array of little green bottles lined up in front of it. The sign promised a wealth of benefits from the mixture, which was made of water “freshly distilled” from Gore Canyon’s river. It could cure all types of illnesses, sharpen your eyesight, even reverse hair loss, all for the price of two dollars a bottle. Ezekiel stepped outside, carrying more bottles in a wooden crate. He stopped in his tracks upon seeing Dr. Calrod.

“Oh, doctor,” he said, surprised. “I didn’t expect you to be back from Mr. Callahan’s ranch so soon.” Dr. Calrod noticed him shuffling backwards to block the open doorway behind him. His skinny frame couldn’t hide the fact that Jack was standing right behind him, cowboy hat sitting on top of his neck stump with the same deck of cards tucked into the band of the hat. Dr. Calrod’s face contorted in frustration.

“If I must remind you, Ezekiel, you were instructed to keep Jack inside.”

“Well, his neck is covered, why can’t he come out here and help me keep the lights on?”

Dr. Calrod didn’t know where to begin for reasons why. Because he’s a walking goddamn corpse and nobody in their right mind needs to watch him do parlor tricks? In the end, he settled on something more professional.

“If I must also remind you of the office I hold as the state coroner, I suggest you heed my advice.”

Ezekiel scowled, picking up the sign in a huff and pushing past Jack as he took it inside. Jack stood in the doorway, arms hanging limply at his sides as his hat slipped forwards on his neck stump. As Dr. Calrod turned and left for the smithy, he heard the door slam shut, Ezekiel shouting from behind it. He continued to gather information.

The Beaumonts both hadn’t been out that night and didn’t have much information to offer, other than Jacob making a handful of disparaging remarks regarding Ezekiel Small and Jack’s former employer. As Jacob returned to making nails at the forge in a huff, Abigail told him not to mind it any. She said she would be hunting up in Gore Canyon that evening and would let him know if she saw anything. The rest of the town’s residents were hardly any help, either claiming no knowledge of the night’s events or outright refusing to speak to him, with countless doors getting slammed in his face.

Dr. Calrod had put off the next stage of his investigation given his distaste for such establishments, but steeled his nerves as he blew into the Gore City Saloon like a cold gust of wind. The din of chatter and the smell of cigar smoke washed over him as he approached the saloon keeper with his notebook in hand.

“Evenin’,” the saloon keeper coughed, a surly frown plastered on his face. “What’ll it be?”

“Nothing, thank you,” he glared at the saloon keeper over his glasses. “What can you tell me about Jack Durham?” The saloon keeper froze, eyes widening as the frown melded into something more nervous.

“Come again?” he grumbled through gritted teeth.

“Jack Durham. I’m sure you remember him walking into your establishment a few days ago without his head,” Dr. Calrod spoke flatly. The patrons of the saloon had grown quieter, stopping their conversations to eavesdrop.

“Sounds like Doc’s told you all you need to know,” he said, baring his teeth in a fake grin. Dr. Calrod could feel stares start to fall on him. He instinctively placed his other hand on top of the holster at his belt.

“I’m interested in what happened here in this establishment the night before,” he said, leaning on the counter with his notebook in hand, “and what you might know about that.”

“All I know about that bastard is he’s the reason I’m missing twelve bottles of whiskey back here. Twelve!” the saloon keeper snapped. “As far as I know, he got what was coming to him after all he did.”

“And what was it he did?” the coroner asked, finding the remark odd.

“Hell, what didn’t he do?” somebody at the bar next to Dr. Calrod interjected, “can’t count the number of times he’s been kicked out of here for cheating at cards.”

“He once tried to break my nose ‘cause I asked him where he was from!” another man added. The bar started to erupt in a cacophony of posthumous indictments. Jack swindled me out of twenty bucks. He broke a bottle over my head once. He branded me with a red-hot cattle iron. He stole my sweetheart. He wasn’t loyal to me.

“Now heaven don’t want him…and the devil don't either!” someone shouted. Everybody in the saloon burst out laughing.

“See? There isn’t a soul in Gore City he hasn’t wronged,” the saloon keeper laughed. “Especially not since he knocked the marshal out cold the night he was-” The place suddenly fell silent. Dr. Calrod felt the stares slide off of him and onto the saloon keeper, who stiffened up suddenly. He heard somebody curse just loud enough to hear. Dr. Calrod smiled wryly as he slowly removed his hand from his belt and dug the fountain pen from his pocket. The sharp nib dug into the paper as he fixed his gaze on the saloon keeper.

“Tell me more. The night he was…?”

“The night that Jack ran off into the canyon,” the saloon keeper started to sweat, swapping glances between him and the patrons behind him. “I misspoke.”

“What part of the canyon did he run off into?” Dr. Calrod asked, pressing him harder. He made sure to keep his tight-lipped smile, ignoring the saloon keeper squirming behind the counter as he struggled to remember something.

“Up the…the southern trail. I mean–”

“Sal, keep your damn mouth shut!” somebody shouted. “I think you best be running along, doctor.”

“Thank you for your time,” Dr. Calrod said, smiling. He was fine being excused, he’d gotten what he needed. That and the smell of liquor was starting to turn his stomach. He tipped his hat and left as briskly as he came in, hearing the saloon erupt in a cacophony of shouting behind him.

Dr. Calrod knocked on the door of Marshal Simons’s home. He was expecting silence, or perhaps a teary eyed relative answering the door to alleviate his doubts as he waited patiently, tapping his foot against the wooden porch. He knew there weren’t many options after this, he’d have to consider the possibility of returning to Denver in need of assistance. He rapped on the door again. This time, though he had to strain to hear it, he could make out the sound of footsteps coming from within, followed by seeing a gas lamp turn on in the window. A man peeked through the curtains by the door, his eyes going wide seeing Dr. Calrod standing outside. He pulled the curtains shut and the gas lamp was extinguished swiftly afterwards. No matter how much more he knocked, whoever it was in there wouldn’t budge. He knew what this likely meant, but now there was nobody left to talk to.

As he turned away, he was met with Abigail Beaumont, face red and panting heavily. Following just behind her was Jacob, his expression a mixture of confusion and worry.

“Dr. Calrod,” she huffed, “I know what happened to Jack.”

Before he could say anything in return, she motioned to have him follow. As she and her brother led him up the southern trail of Gore Canyon, he had a sinking feeling that he knew what happened to Jack too. The trail was rocky and narrow as it climbed into the canyon, mere feet away from a dizzyingly steep drop. The uphill terrain was tough for him to navigate even with what little daylight was left, he couldn’t imagine keeping his footing at night.

Then, as he crested the stretch of trail, he saw it. An old, gnarled bristlecone pine with roots precariously clutching at the edge of the canyon cliff, dangling on its outstretched branch, a noose. Jacob covered his face with his gloves, but couldn’t hide the faint sobs that started to shake his shoulders. Abigail approached him, placing a hand on his back. Dr. Calrod set about retrieving the noose, and with the aid of Abigail’s hunting knife, sliced the length of rope free from the branch.

It was a lasso, tied in a crude hangman’s knot. The loop was stained rusty red and cinched tight, only a couple inches in diameter. The height of the drop combined with the thin rope must have sliced clean through his neck. Dr. Calrod made no mention of it to either of them, but he could see bits of flesh stuck in between the ridges of the tough rope. He coiled it up, gingerly holding it in his grasp. The Beaumonts looked at him expectantly. Words failed him.

“You have my condolences,” he said, removing his hat. It was all he could think to say. The wind blew up through the canyon as the sky grew red, the scent of pine and dust like a somber sigh. He turned around, leaving the siblings alone to mourn by the tree where Jack Durham was hanged.

Night had fallen by the time Dr. Emmett Calrod returned to Gore City, the air carrying an unusual chill. The coroner let himself into Ezekiel’s office, seeing him emerge from the examination room, hands smeared in red.

“Doctor Calrod, I was wondering wh–” Ezekiel stopped, the color draining from his face when he saw the noose in his grip.

“Where is Jack?” Dr. Calrod asked, his voice on a razor sharp edge. Ezekiel slammed the door shut behind him. His eyes were wild with fear.

“Where did you-”

“I think you know exactly where. Now where is Jack?”

“I think you better take your things and leave, doctor. You’ve overstayed your welcome.”

Dr. Calrod ignored the threat and brushed past Ezekiel, pushing the door open. The smell of copper hit him like a train. The exam room was littered with blood stained gauze, with Jack bound to the wooden table by thick leather straps. His breathing was heavy and labored, clothes splattered with half-dried blood. A small tray of Dr. Calrod’s tools lay next to him, soaked in red.

“One of his blood vessels reopened, I tried to-”

“Be quiet.”

Dr. Calrod approached him, uncoiling the noose. He held it up to Jack’s neck, the ridges of the rope matching up with the sawtooth bruise almost perfectly. As the edge of it grazed the skin of his neck, Jack started to thrash against the leather straps in a panic. He dropped the noose, rushing to unbind him before being grabbed by the shoulders and thrown across the room by Ezekiel.

His head hit something hard on the way down and his vision went blurry, hearing his glasses slide across the floor. His hand flew down to his belt on instinct, fingers wrapping around the wooden handle of his revolver and pulling it from the holster. Ezekiel’s boot swung into his stomach over and over, sunbursts of white hot pain piercing his stomach and making him howl.

“I swear I’ll kill you before you send me to the gallows for hanging that degenerate!” Ezekiel growled. Dr. Calrod could see something shiny and metallic in his grip. “By the time your bosses in Denver find out you’re dead, I’ll be long gone. And Jack will be making me money from here ‘til California!”

Dr. Calrod could taste metal in his mouth. He fumbled for the gun in the murk of his concussion as he watched a shadow black out the warm light behind Ezekiel. Jack Durham loomed over him, deep, guttural wheezes emanating from his exposed trachea as he huffed in exhaustion. He grabbed Ezekiel’s arms as he whipped around, the scalpel wrenched from his grip by strong, deft hands. He could hear the bones in Ezekiel’s hand snap from the sheer brute force. He hollered and pummeled the headless cowboy with his fists as the fight spilled out into the road.

The screaming swam through Dr. Calrod’s head as he grappled to stay conscious, pushing himself off the floor and finding his glasses. He crawled out into the night with his gun in hand, watching Jack lift Ezekiel and slam him into the ground like he was just a bale of hay. His hands wrapped around his throat, fully engulfing Ezekiel’s thin neck in his grasp. Dr. Calrod watched him kick and thrash as Jack bore his whole weight down, his cries for help coming out hoarse and strangled, until the sound of Ezekiel’s neck breaking silenced him for good. Jack loosened his grip, his senses knowing when he’d finished the job. He’d done this at least once before.

Dr. Calrod had his finger on the trigger. Jack slowly stood up, the crunch of gravel under his boots the only other sound besides his own heart beating in his neck. A bead of cold sweat trickled down the side of his head, and as Jack turned to face the coroner, his trembling hand fired the gun.

The bullet hit its target, ripping straight through Jack Durham’s heart. The crack of gunfire almost seemed to split the sky like lightning as a patch of red slowly began to blossom through his shirt. Dr. Calrod looked at Jack, almost in disbelief that he’d actually pulled the trigger. Jack’s hand went up to his chest, tenderly touching the gunshot wound. His fingers were slick with blood, the night air becoming metallic as it dripped onto the dirt. Jack Durham reached up, tipped what would have been his hat, and stumbled away, leaving a trail of blood into Gore Canyon.

Dr. Calrod realized what he’d done.