Chapter 11

 

 

Late that night, I awoke from where I sat slumped in my chair to the sound of Jacobi’s voice calling my name. My eyes were slow to open, but the minute I recognized my name, my feet hit the floor.

Doc and Miss Laura stood beside him. Miss Laura’s face was puffy, as if she’d been crying. Doc looked grim and plumb wore out.

I carefully climbed up on the vacant side of the bed. It was plain to see Jacobi was still not ‘lucid’, even though he was calling for me. I looked up at Doc.

“His fever’s risen—it happens at night sometimes. He says he has to tell you something. Any idea what that might be, son?”

I did have an idea, but it was too horrible to even take hold of and face. I had been pushing it back down every time it tried to make me take a hard look at it, because I couldn’t bear to think it might be true. It had flitted around in my brain ever since it had happened, but at the time, I had not been thinking clearly. It was like a puzzle, but now that the pieces all fit, the picture was too unbelievable to recognize and acknowledge.

Yet, in the next instant, I had to admit that what I had most feared had been exactly what had happened.

Jacobi’s eyes were still shut. He tossed and turned fitfully, but I knew it wasn’t just the fever that was distressing him. His lips were dry, but when Miss Laura tried to put a damp cloth to them, he pushed it away impatiently, speaking in spurts.

“The girl…I had to, Will. Red Eagle…he…you don’t know…” He thrashed, pushing the covers down in one movement, pulling them up a scant moment later. “I couldn’t…let him take her.”

In that terrible instant, I knew exactly what had been troubling me. The rifle shot that had come from behind me as I ran toward Red Eagle that day—that day that seemed so long ago and far away now, that rose up in my nightmares without warning, and haunted me at times, during the daylight hours. I hadn’t given that gunshot a second thought at the time—not with Papa and Mama lying dead on the ground and Red Eagle with his hand wrapped in Lisbeth’s flaming red hair, his knife poised above her. I’d run with no thought for myself, and no purpose but to do what I could to kill that murderin’ red demon before he did me in, as well.

When the rifle shot came, it had barely grazed my consciousness on its way to killing my sister.

And now, without a doubt, I knew who had fired it. A white man. A man I had admired. A man I owed my life to, not once, but twice.

The anger of it burned through me, scorching my soul and blazing hotter, for a moment, than my anger at Red Eagle had ever burned. For that instant, I was consumed with bitter loss and disappointment that rivaled the day I’d lost my entire family.

Jacobi Kane had killed Lisbeth. He’d been behind us, tracking us the whole way all those long days I’d been Red Eagle’s captive, watching. When the chance had come for my rescue, he’d seized it. I supposed I should be grateful that he’d outlasted the Apaches and gotten me back safe from them, but right now, my chest felt like it was going to explode.

“What girl is he talking about, Will?” Doc’s voice broke into my rolling thoughts, cutting across the anger and disillusionment, bringing me back to the here and now.

“My sister,” I said after a pause. “Lisbeth.” I sat quiet for a minute before adding. “He shot…he killed her—when the Apaches came.”

Miss Laura let out a gasp but Doc only nodded, as if it didn’t surprise him—not even a little bit.

“I—I miss her—” I broke off and Doc reached across Jacobi to lay a hand atop my head. A single tear dripped onto the bed before I could blink it back. I was mortified.

“I know, son. I know. But—I’ve known Jacobi a good long time, and I’ll tell you straight up, he wouldn’t have done it if he coulda seen any other way around it. He—probably figgered bein’ dead was better’n what Red Eagle had in mind for her. A young woman like that—she wouldn’t’ve stood a chance of bein’ more than a—a—captive slave—”

There wasn’t any need for him to say more. My mind did the rest. I squeezed my eyes shut and thought back to the next morning after I’d killed Red Eagle, when I’d stood beside Jacobi in the early light of dawn. His words came back to me again.

There’s a lot worse things that could’ve happened to Lisbeth other than bein’ a ‘red man’s woman’.

Jacobi had known what those ‘worse things’ were, by the conviction in his voice; things that I could only imagine. But to kill someone…my mind twisted and turned. Did I trust anyone to make such a terrible decision? Especially for the taking of someone who was so dear to me? Though Jacobi had followed Red Eagle for days, finally rescuing me, did that make up for his killing of my sister?

I felt a shift in my surroundings somehow. When I opened my eyes, I saw Jacobi was staring up at me, and he was lying still as stone. He drew a deep breath, then raised his left hand slowly toward my face.

Sweat stood beaded across his forehead, and Miss Laura took up a fresh cool cloth and laid it there for an instant. He never noticed. She drew it away, kneeling beside the bed. Doc didn’t say a word. The world grew tight around us, until it was only me and him, and Doc and Miss Laura were like two specks of dirt.

“Will…” Jacobi’s voice was hoarse, and I knew it wasn’t just the fever that made it so rough. I could see in his dark eyes that he was hurting from the wound Red Eagle had given him, but it was nothing to compare with the pain in his heart, and in his soul. It had never occurred to me until that moment how dearly his deliverance of Lisbeth must have cost him.

Right now, I could see something that touched me more than anything else ever could have. Jacobi needed something from me. He needed my understanding—not my forgiveness. He needed me to know there was nothing else he could’ve done, and that killing Lisbeth had been an act of mercy that would haunt him the rest of his life. There was nothing for me to forgive—he just wasn’t sure if I knew it yet.

“I’m sorry, Will.” Jacobi’s voice was strained. “I…had no…choice.”

Somehow, I got the feeling the air was heavy and thick with something that wasn’t being talked about…something Doc knew, and maybe Miss Laura…everyone but me. Jacobi Kane had come close to asking something of me that he would’ve regretted later…something that wasn’t truly mine to give him.

But I had to do what I could to ease his mind about it all. I had to be a man—my own man—as Papa had been so ever-lovin’ fond of tellin’ me from the time I could recall.

“You’re right. There wasn’t nothin’ else to be done, Mr. Kane.”

At that, Jacobi looked as if I’d slapped him or done somethin’ unspeakable. ‘Mr. Kane,’ I’d called him. And I’d done it on purpose, to put the distance between us that he craved. Mama always said not to stay where you weren’t wanted. Well, right now, I didn’t have me a choice. But I did the best I could do, circumstances bein’ what they were, to set things right on all counts.

I looked straight down into Jacobi’s almost-black eyes, and I said, “I thank you for what you done. Lisbeth—she was proud. Ain’t no tellin’ what woulda become of her, if Red Eagle had taken her.” I nodded, my gaze still fixed with Jacobi’s. “It—It was…the right thing to do. Sometimes, doin’ right is the hardest thing a body can do.”

I saw relief come into his expression, and from across the bed, Doc shifted his stance to put a fatherly arm around Miss Laura.

The heaviness of the room lifted, and Jacobi’s rugged features relaxed as he closed his eyes again.

“That was the finest speech I ever did hear, son,” Doc said quietly. “And the truest, too.”

I nodded, but I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. A dull ache filled me. ‘Son,’ Doc had called me. But I’d never be any man’s son again, and the emptiness of that thought was almost too much to think on, at least right now.

Resolutely, I climbed off the bed, as careful as I could and crossed the room to lay on the cushioned chair. I was suddenly so tired that I felt as if I couldn’t hold my eyes open.

The last thing I remembered was Miss Laura’s hand on my hair, gentle-like, the way my Mama used to do when Papa wasn’t around. It crossed my mind Miss Laura knew what bein’ alone—totally alone—meant. And it came to me that from that look I’d seen in Jacobi’s eyes…he did, too.