Stockton Cowboys Book 5: Saddling Cowboys

Chapter 2: Misfortune-2

August 14, 20—

Fargo wasn’t dead, though. Instead, he woke up in a lime green-colored room that smelled of Clorox and antiseptic. He lay in a bed with a twenty-seven-inch flat-screen TV hanging off the wall above his feet, in front of him. White sheets covered his immobile frame. To his right was a white curtain that spanned across a stainless-steel rod. Behind him was a wall of medical gadgets that he couldn’t even begin to determine what they were for. To his left was an IV hanging from a stainless-steel tripod on wheels. The IV bottle was connected to his left arm, supplying his reclined body with insulin. Beyond the tripod were three windows that overlooked Blue Coyote Park. Once he recognized the park, he knew that he was a patient at BC Community Region Hospital.

He could move his arms, legs, and neck, which clarified that he wasn’t a paraplegic . A red-headed female nurse walked into his room with an ear to ear smile. She was dressed in blue scrubs from her shoulders down to her toes. She was plump with a freckled face and could have passed as Fargo’s mother. “Hi, sweetheart. It’s good to know that you woke up. I’m Ginger Anne, your keeper for the rest of today.”

“My keeper?” he asked, feeling groggy and not at all himself.

“You can call me Nurse Ginger Anne. Most patients do. Some call me G.” She checked his IV bottle, fluffed his pillows behind his head, and asked, “Can I get you anything to drink, sugar bear? I suggest ginger ale or water, darling. Which one do you prefer?”

“Ginger ale, please.”

“Of course,” she replied, vanished from his room, and returned a few minutes later with a can of ginger ale and a straw, which she placed on a tall table with wheels for his use.

He sipped at the soda pop, thanked her, and yawned. Then he inquired, “What happened to me?”

She chuckled, waved at him with one hand, and said, “From one ginger to another, you’re lucky to be alive, sweetness.” Then she gently removed the can of soda from his right hand and placed it on the table in front of him. “Not so fast with this, you’ll make yourself sick.”

“I’m super thirsty,” he said, reaching for the ginger ale.

She gently tapped the back of his hand and said, “Let your tummy rest, then you can have more.” She took his temperature, which was normal, and then his blood pressure, which was also normal. And just before she was getting ready to leave him alone, telling him he could use the telephone or flat-screen within the room, he called out to her and asked about his accident, or whatever happened the night before. “I’m sure you know. Tell me everything.”

“You left your business, unlocked your Jeep Wrangler, and was attacked from the back. Someone used a blunt object on…”

“A gun,” he interrupted, remembering the tip of its cold barrel against his skull. “Whoever it was had a gun pointed at my head.”

“So you were bashed in the back of your head with it, fell to the gravel drive, passed out, and here you are, the day after.”

He felt the bandage for the first time positioned at the top of his neck and the back of his skull. His head was stinging with pain, throbbing. One good thing that soothed his was the sight of his Stetson on the windowsill behind her. He remembered it being knocked off his head, and was now glad to see that it was in the hospital room with him.

“You have a concussion, sweetheart. You’re going to be fine, though.”

“Who tried to kill me? And what happened to the money?”

Nurse Ginger titled her head to the right and asked, “What money?”

He told her about the saddles he had sold to Chip Cutter and the cash that he had collected from the patron. “I didn’t want to leave that much money in the store overnight and was going to take it to the bank and make a night deposit, which is normal behavior for me.”

“So whoever did this to you knew that you had the cash, right?”

“I guess so. We should call the police because they need to be involved.”

“They already have a report of the incident, but they don’t have these new details. I can arrange for them to reach out to you if you’d like.”

He shook his head, which was uncomfortable, and said, “I’ll get a hold of them myself. Don’t worry about it. Just tell me when I can go home.”

“In a couple of hours. We just want to keep an eye on you for a little while longer. How does that sound.”

To Fargo it sounded fine. His anxiety wasn’t fine, though, since he had was now missing over three thousand dollars that Cutter paid him in advance for. How exactly was he going to get the money back without ransacking his retirement fund or savings account? He didn’t have that kind of cash lying around his business or house. Nor did he have access to his irrevocable funds and investments.

What he also wanted to know was who had thieved the dough from him? Nine chances out of ten it was probably one of those high school hoodlums from Chess Street, which was just a few blocks away from Saddling Cowboys. Chess Street had a reputation of being of the lower class and littered with people on welfare. Gangs lived there in abandoned buildings and toted every kind of weapon around the city on them. An American ISIS could be found on Chess Street, excluding nuclear bombs.

Fargo wasn’t stupid and assumed the money that had been stolen from him would never be retrieved. The Blue Coyote Police Department was helpful for the community but was pretty oblivious regarding hard crime, particularly when it came to drugs being sold on Chess Street by gangs, an influx of handguns, and possible murder. Thieves were rarely, if ever, caught in Blue Coyote, which had a small police department of twelve women and men, most of which were part-time employees.

But a small police force and the thugs on Chess Street weren’t going to prevent Fargo from delving into the crime and learning who had f****d him over. Plus, he wanted his money back, all of it, not just a portion. Whoever had mugged him knew his schedule, which was routine, day after day. The culprit probably knew what he drove, when the store closed for business, and what bank he had made his cash deposits at. The fucker also probably even knew what Fargo had for breakfast every morning, that he was addicted to coffee, and that he was currently single. So it couldn’t have been one of the gang members from Chess Street because they were too busy doing gang-banging s**t and didn’t care a flying f**k about any of those significant details. There was no way in hell one of the thugs came after him. Whoever targeted him knew a lot about his life; every nook and cranny, and every ticking minute of his passing day.