Chapter 2

 

 

THE walk to Lila’s house wasn’t far, just a few blocks on this sunny day, but Gideon felt himself awash with frustration. That Indian was going to die just to save his leg, and there seemed no point in that. But maybe he wouldn’t. MacCray would have said if there was no hope, and offered a bottle for the pain, maybe sat vigil. He wouldn’t put himself or the Indian out for no reason at all. And not for that half-eagle, either.

His spirits bolstered a bit, he reached Lila’s and let himself in through the front door. The sitting room was empty, but that wasn’t uncommon. With the passenger trains going through today, travelers would be here getting their urges met before they had to leave, so Lila and the others would be occupied. He sat down in a wingback chair and pulled a magazine off the end table, turning the pages absently and looking at photographs of the national park not far south. It was what brought the tourists through Livingston, though Gideon hadn’t made the trip himself. Too expensive, and the tour took three days he hadn’t had whilst he was working.

A noise in the back hall brought his head up, but it wasn’t Lila. Josephine Howard, the house’s madame, strolled up the hall and into the room, welcoming him with a smile.

“Gideon Makepeace, I didn’t think we’d be seeing you again! Lila’s currently entertaining,” she started, “but—”

“Thank you kindly, Miz Howard,” he cut in, “but I ain’t looking for company today.”

Miz Howard dropped her ample frame into a chair across from him. “Then what can we do you for?”

“I….” He paused, realizing just what he was doing. “It looks like I might be staying in town for a few more days,” he said. “I wondered if I might rent that back room for me and a friend, seeing as it’s empty right now?”

She shrugged. “I suppose we could save you a little money over a boarding house room,” she offered.

“It’s not just that, Miz Howard. The friend is hurt bad, and Doc MacCray’s looking at him right now—he got gored by a wild pig, and his leg’s infected.”

Miz Howard frowned at him. “So why isn’t he staying at the doctor’s office? MacCray’s got sick rooms.”

Gideon glanced around to make sure no gentleman callers were within earshot—locals frequented this house, too, after all—and lowered his voice. “He’s an Indian, ma’am. Doc MacCray don’t think it’d be safe for him to be seen reaching above his station like that.”

Miz Howard’s face darkened by degrees. “And he thinks it’d be safe for us, putting an Injun up?”

Gideon leaned forward, earnest now. “I reckon that’s for you to decide. I know you kept a Mexican here, and there weren’t no trouble. Lila said you’d actually kept a Chinese boy here for a time, and nobody gave you problems about him either.”

“No problems we couldn’t manage,” Miz Howard said slowly. “But Gideon, they were employees. And we did have to pay off the cops to leave ’em alone, especially the Chinese boy. But we’ve got no reason,” she said, talking herself out of any offer. “No reason to justify keeping an Injun here. I’m sorry, but even your pretty face isn’t enough.”

Gideon snorted and tilted his head just so. He wasn’t particularly vain about his looks, but he knew he had them. He’d gotten the best parts of both his parents, and he knew it—in dirty blond hair that curled a little when he didn’t tame it, in a long, lean frame honed from hard work, and in his mother’s eyes.

Miz Howard glared at him. “Don’t you go batting those blue eyes at me, mister. I’ve seen ’em all. I won’t put my girls in danger. Couple of ’em won’t appreciate having a redskin on the property, anyway.”

Gideon offered his most charming smile. “You telling me you can’t handle your gals?”

Miz Howard frowned. “I’m telling you it ain’t worth it for no benefit, Gideon. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry, ma’am, I want you to help out a good customer and a hurt stranger—and Doc MacCray—for good pay. I’ve got money. You just need to tell me what I’ll owe you for your trouble.” He sighed and just put the truth all out there. “You know even if a boarding house would keep us, the locals’d get wind of it and try to run him out of town. He can’t walk. He’s that bad off.”

She chewed on her full bottom lip, thinking. “There’s no guarantee folks won’t try and run him off this place, too,” she said slowly.

Gideon waved a hand. “The men won’t cause you trouble for fear you’ll reject ’em when they come calling to satisfy their own needs.” He knew that much about the whoring business, and he’d seen Miz Howard turn away fellas who’d got too rowdy or who’d tried to cause trouble for her girls up on Callendar Street, then slinked back here expecting their treats like nothing was changed. “The cops’ll shut ’em down even if they do try, because you already pay to keep ’em out of your business.”

“My whoring business, Gideon,” she said, but he knew already that she was giving in. So did she. Gideon looked down to hide his grin.

“Doc MacCray thought it was a good idea,” he said, being delicate about the fact that she and the doctor had regular trysts.

“MacCray doesn’t run this house,” she said firmly, but then she sighed. “If I have to pay the cops extra, it won’t be coming out of my pocket.”

“No, ma’am,” Gideon agreed. Transaction settled. All they needed to do now was iron out the details.

“You know it’s no never mind to me what color a man’s skin
is—” she started, airy and sophisticated, and Gideon snorted loud enough to cause her to glare at him. “All right, fine,” she snapped, irritated. “The redskins… too many of ’em like their liquor too much. And they smell funny.”

She was right, about the smell at least. Indians did smell different—not funny, but woodsy and wild, and not at all like a sweaty white man or one who’d washed with lye soap or used the perfumed waters and powders most city folks did.

“This Indian just smells sick, ma’am.”

She frowned at him. “I expect we can keep him hid from the law for a bit, but the minute they start asking for their share, you or your Indian friend will be paying it.”

Gideon nodded. He had forty dollars. Jedediah had four. Surely that would see this through, one way or the other.

 

 

“HE’S got grit,” Holt MacCray announced when Gideon eased back into the office. “Barely made a sound while I cleaned that wound out—but he didn’t turn me down on the third dose of laudanum either.” MacCray grinned as he rolled down the sleeves of his shirt and buttoned the cuffs. He’d tossed his apron to one side but not before Gideon saw the splotches of red and yellow. The room smelled of sickness, carbolic and other chemicals that Gideon couldn’t put a name to, and under it, the bitterness of infection and the copper tang of blood.

Jedediah lay stretched out on the room’s long table, one arm over his eyes, the other one at his side. His injured leg was bent at the knee and raised up by a pillow, and Gideon looked at the clean bandage wrapped around it, the white of the cloth stark against the dark of Jedediah’s brown skin.

“He needs to stay off that leg,” MacCray went on. “Which won’t be a problem for a while, as I doubt he can carry any weight on it right now. I cleaned it out as best I could, and soaked the bandage in carbolic too for good measure—read about a boy whose leg healed up fine by keeping it wrapped in carbolic-soaked bandages, but that’s just an article in a medical journal.” He frowned, thoughtful, his bushy eyebrows drawing down. “We’re going to have to keep a close watch on it.” He pointed to three bottles on the counter near the door. “There’s more carbolic and some rubbing alcohol—I’ll want to check the wound again tonight, probably wash it out again. I’ll come by again in the morning. The third bottle’s laudanum, use it when you clean the wound—it’ll hurt like a son of a bitch, but he knows that already.”

MacCray walked to the counter and picked up a small bottle of white powder, holding it out to Gideon. “There’s something else, too. Got this from a friend back East. It’s called salicylic acid, and if it doesn’t bother his stomach too much, ought to help his pain. I haven’t tried it much, but I reckon your friend here is as good a place to start as any.”

Gideon took the bottle and studied it. “Sally—sali—what?” Gideon asked, eying it warily. It reminded him too much of the coca he’d seen some folks use that made ’em high and twitchy.

“It’s distilled from willow bark,” MacCray said, impatient now.

“White willow bark?” Jedediah asked from his bed, which got MacCray’s attention even faster than Gideon’s.

“Yes.”

“My people use that. We make tea from it, for aches in the joints.”

MacCray cast Gideon a superior look. “See? If it’s good for arthritis pain, it’ll be good for his.”

Gideon palmed the bottle, mollified. “What do I do? Mix it with water? Like a tincture?”

MacCray nodded. “Just like, but not with the alcohol,” he agreed. “Half a teaspoon or so in warm water. If it works as well as I’ve heard, it should ease the pain and help with the fever. Did Josephine give in?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Back room at her house.”

MacCray smiled. “Good. I visit there regularly enough. It won’t look out of the way for me to drop by.” He looked over Gideon’s shoulder to where Jedediah was trying to sit up on the table. He was weak and wobbly, and his eyes were wide and unfocused. Gideon didn’t know if it was laudanum or fever.

Gideon walked to the table in time to keep Jedediah from falling off it. Instead, the Indian fell against him, and his long hair spilled across the back of Gideon’s hand, soft and smelling woodsy. How Miz Howard could think this was a bad smell was beyond Gideon. “Let’s get you out of here,” he whispered, helping Jedediah first into his pants, then off the table, and holding him up when his knees buckled. “Good thing you’re not heavy.”

“Keep him away from strong drink,” MacCray said as he picked up his coat.

“No, no alco… no,” Jedediah said, trying to form the words even as he swayed drunkenly in Gideon’s hold.

“No,” Gideon agreed, laughing. “Let’s get you to bed.”

MacCray led them out the back, promising to stop by that night. It was only seven blocks to the whorehouse, but Gideon came close to fetching Star and giving this man a lift. He was wobblier than a new colt, from pain or drugs or plain old exhaustion, at this point. But now that MacCray had locked up his office, Gideon couldn’t conscience leaving Jedediah somewhere alone, not all vulnerable like this.

“You up for a stroll? It’s not far,” he said.

“I am.” Jedediah shook his head, and blinked his eyes against the afternoon sun. “I feel drunk.”

“That’ll be the laudanum,” Gideon agreed. “It’ll help you sleep, once we get you abed. And it’s got to be cutting that pain some.”

Jedediah nodded. “Yes.”

“All right. Take it easy now,” Gideon ordered softly, wrapping Jedediah’s arm around his shoulder and doing what he could to keep any weight off the injured leg. Jedediah carried more of his own weight than he probably should have, but it made getting through the streets easy enough. In this part of town, most of the people they met were tourists with their own agendas, men and women who didn’t pay much attention to Gideon or the slight figure hobbling along beside him. Jedediah paid more attention to walking than to any of the passersby.

They went down an alley off Lewis Street, snuck along behind the Baptist church until they hit Clark Street, and turned onto B a block north of the whorehouse. “Almost there,” Gideon promised, because a sweat had broken out on Jedediah just from this short walk. Taking the little path between two buildings, they entered through the back of the house, as Miz Howard had asked Gideon to do. Jedediah gave no resistance until they were halfway into the back hallway, then he stopped abruptly, pulling away from Gideon. “This—it’s a—there are women here,” he said, but his words were slurred enough that it took Gideon a second to understand him.

When he did, he frowned. “You don’t like women?” The very idea of it was strange to him.

“Dangerous,” Jedediah mumbled, looking around. “Get a man killed.”

 Gideon smiled. “That, they can,” he agreed. “But not today. Besides, I don’t reckon you’ll be up for the dangers they offer. Not for a while. Come on, let’s get to the room.”

Jedediah frowned, but he offered no resistance as Gideon led him into the little room in the back corner of the house. Miz Howard had left linens, so Gideon sat Jedediah in the room’s straight-backed chair and made up the bed, talking to ease things along.

“I know a gal here, got to know her pretty good out of bed, too—she plays backgammon like you wouldn’t believe. But the lady who runs this place, Josephine Howard, she’s the one I made the deal with. You’ll get to stay here until you get better, and I’ll make up a pallet on the floor, help look after you between doctor’s visits.”

Jedediah blinked some more and looked around the little room. “This and your doctor… this is not four dollars and sixty-seven cents.”

“No,” Gideon agreed genially. “But I’ve got money, and when you get better, you can figure out how to pay me back.”

Jedediah’s lips turned up in a pained, if real, smile. “Optimist,” he said again.

Gideon grinned. “Come on,” he said once he’d got the bed made to his satisfaction, “let’s get you horizontal.”

Jedediah rose on his own, using the wall for support, and practically fell onto the bed. Remembering how MacCray had propped up the leg, Gideon pulled the pillow out from under Jedediah’s head and lifted the leg gently, sliding it underneath. “I have a pack, north of town,” Jedediah said, but his voice sounded willowy and faint, like he was falling asleep right this minute.

“I can fetch it for ya.”

“No, I….” Jedediah pushed up onto his elbows, and seemed to force alertness into his frame. “I will probably die,” he said, and while Gideon wanted to object, he’d seen that wound. “If I do, you should take my things. Sell them for whatever you can get. It is all I have to repay your kindness.”

“Less talk of dying,” Gideon frowned, and tried to ease him back down.

“Less lying,” Jedediah argued, struggling against the pressure of Gideon’s hands on his shoulders.

He was stronger than he looked, and Gideon was just about at the end of his patience. “Make you a deal, Jedediah,” he said shortly. “You get the sleep your body’s so clearly aching for. When you wake up, we c’n talk about death all you want.”

The Indian seemed to take comfort from the words, though, and nodded soberly. He fell back to the mattress and extended his hand. When Gideon made to take it, Jedediah slipped his own hand past Gideon’s, grasping his wrist. It wasn’t a surprise. The Indians he knew did the same thing when they were serious about something.

“We have an agreement,” Jedediah said.

“Yeah,” Gideon said softly, wondering at how quickly this man would have died if the townsfolk had run him off. Wondering how quick he might die anyway, as sick as he was. “You rest now. I’ve got belongings at the depot, clothes and such. Reckon my jacket’ll make a soft enough pillow until we find something better.”

“I do not need a pillow,” Jedediah said. His eyes were closed, and while his face glowed with fever, the tension in it had eased some. “As you said, I just….” He yawned, proving his point. “Need sleep.”

“Best thing for ya,” Gideon agreed, though in fact he had no idea at all if it was. “I’ll duck out and collect my things.” Maybe trade in his train ticket for a future date, or cash it out until he knew when he’d be traveling. He had more than two weeks of sightseeing built into his schedule. Surely Jedediah would be better or dead by then.

“Don’t—” Jedediah started, then stopped with a sigh. “Please come back. It is not safe for Lakota to be alone in houses of prostitution.”

Gideon knew he was being foolish, making promises, but it didn’t keep him from doing it. “You’ll be all right here. And I’ll be looking after you. My guess is, you’ll still be asleep when I get back.”

He waited a few minutes more, watching as Jedediah’s breathing evened out. His lips parted enough to show the glint of white teeth as he fell into the restless sleep of the sick.

Gideon watched him for a time, watched the firm chest rise and fall gently under his linen shirt, watched how dark eyebrows twitched with dreams. He let himself out the door, to find Miz Howard and pay her, maybe give her a little extra for her silence.

 

Gideon used the full hour he’d promised and then some, because he’d decided not to put his horse up at Tom’s livery. He’d taken Star and her tack to a stable west of the depot. No sense inviting gossip about why he was still hanging around, and while Tom would hear about it eventually, Gideon didn’t want to hurry the news along. Tom himself might not do anything rough, but Gideon was suspicious of Jacob now and didn’t want that boy anywhere near his horse.

Loaded with his suitcase and saddlebags, Gideon let himself in through the front door of Miz Howard’s house and bumped straight into Lila, who was sitting wait in the parlor. “Gideon!” she said with some surprise. “I thought you’d done said your goodbyes, darlin’.”

“Well, I did, Miss Lila, but plans changed on me.”

“Well,” she said, eying him up and down in a way that warmed his belly, “I’m free at the moment….”

He grinned. “And I’d love the opportunity to take advantage of that, but I’m kind of stuck on sick duty. Met a feller who got himself gored by a wild boar and needs looking after. Miz Howard let me rent the back room that used to be Jose’s, and I reckon my time’s gonna be et up looking after the man.”

Lila’s frown cleared as fast as it came. “Josephine’ll be glad for the rent, no two ways about that.” She rose gracefully and sidled up against him, resting her hand on his hip just above his gun belt. “So, how long will you be staying?”

Lila had been a powerful temptation these past months, but Gideon found his mind drifting toward Jed already, and resisted a grimace. “Can’t rightly say. The man’s bad off. Doc MacCray don’t even know if he’s gonna live to tell the tale.” The thought saddened him, but he was glad, too, that Jedediah wouldn’t be dying alone in the woods somewhere. “So, could just be a short while.”

“Aww, ain’t that sad?” Lila said, and he could tell she meant it. Part of the reason he’d chosen her was because when they weren’t fucking, she liked to chat about the world and asked him often for stories of his travels. She genuinely cared about people, at least when she wasn’t actively doing her job, and Gideon understood that well enough. In smaller towns his mother did trick shooting, but she was no Annie Oakley. In the cities big enough to tolerate one, his mama worked the peep show, and she was much the same—distant when working, professional—but when the clothes went back on, she could be as friendly and warm with the men who’d watched her as she was with her own family. Gideon reckoned a woman had to do that, separate herself a little from all that false intimacy and lust. But the good ones, like his ma and Lila, they could spot the difference in folks who wanted nothing more of them, and folks who did.

“Yes’m, it is.” He hefted his suitcase a little higher. “I’d best get back there, see how he’s doing.”

“You come out and visit, if you’re of a mind, Gideon.”

“I’ll do that, Lila. Thank you kindly.”

He tiptoed through the house and knocked quietly at the door, not wanting to wake Jedediah if he was asleep, but not wanting to startle him if he wasn’t.

He was, his face as flushed as a dark-skinned man’s could get, and he’d caught another fever, looked like. Gideon set his suitcase down and reached in the side pocket for a book, thinking to while away the time a little, but Jedediah twisted on the bed and woke with a start when the movement jostled his leg. “Ahh!” he groaned, before setting his teeth against any further sound.

“I’m back,” Gideon called from the chair.

Jedediah’s gaze flew right to him. “I wasn’t sure you would be,” he said, panting.

Gideon frowned at him. “I’ve done proved myself to you, Jedediah. I don’t like thinkin’ I’ll need to do it over and over again.”

Jedediah looked flustered, but he dropped his head back down to the mattress, his sweat-sheened face turned Gideon’s way. “I’ve slept,” he said simply.

“How do you feel?”

“Close to death,” Jedediah mumbled, “and very cold. But grateful for your efforts, and your doctor’s.”

“Leg hurt bad?”

Jedediah nodded.

“I’ve got some of that saly—sallyci—”

“Willow bark,” Jedediah corrected. “Please. My stomach has never minded the tea.”

“Well, that’s good to hear,” Gideon said just to fill the silence with cheerfulness, and bustled around, poking for a spoon until he found one in a drawer, along with a single knife and fork and tin cup. “Be right back, I’m gonna get some warm water.”

The kitchen sat just across the hall from this room, and its two-burner Franklin stove had a little fire banked in it, not enough to boil water but plenty to heat the enamel kettle, so Gideon sat to wait for it. When the kettle was hot to the touch, he half-filled the cup and made his quiet way back to Jedediah’s room.

He guessed the measurement of the powder, used the spoon to stir it in, and pressed the cup into Jedediah’s hands. “Here you go. This’ll fix you right up.”

Again, that ghost of a smile that Gideon had figured out already was the man’s way of laughing at him, but Gideon didn’t mind. It warmed him that this Indian thought he could.

He sat on the bedside and reached under Jedediah’s shoulders, helping him into a half-sit to make sipping the water tincture easier, watching his face pucker up in distaste. “My people make this taste better than your people do,” Jedediah said.

Gideon had found that the Indians traveling with Bill Tourney’s show could make quite a few things taste better than their chuckwagon cook could, so he just nodded agreement. Holt MacCray, on the other hand, could burn water; Gideon had seen him boil a pan dry when he got distracted with some medical task or other.

When the cup was empty, Gideon helped settle Jedediah back on the mattress and laid the back of his hand to the sweaty forehead. Hot. Very hot. And the dark blue eyes looked glassy. “Feel like I ought to have the Doc check on you again.”

“For what?” Jedediah asked. “I am wounded. Sickness is in the wound. I will probably die.”

Gideon pursed his lips, but he couldn’t argue, not just yet. Still, “Less talk of dying, huh? You’re gonna depress me after I’ve gone to all this trouble to help you stay alive.”

“You have gone to this trouble because you have a brave heart,” Jedediah said, his words melodic, measured like the quiet, steady beat of a drum. “And you said, after I slept, we could speak of death.”

Tarnation. “How about, after Doc MacCray comes by tonight? Let him tell us what your chances are before you start planning your burial.”

It seemed like just the wrong thing to say, because Jedediah stiffened and carefully used his hands to push himself up, leaning against the bed’s headboard. “No burial,” he said, anxious. “We do not bury our dead.”

Gideon frowned. “Well what the hell do you do with ’em? Leave ’em for the coyotes?”

Jedediah grimaced, and his whole demeanor changed. “I do not want to die. I have things left undone, family left who should know….” His eyes got glassier, and Gideon realized it was tears now, not fever, in them.

“Hey, now,” he said gently, and moved to sit on the edge of the bed again. “Doc MacCray wouldn’t have made the effort if he thought there was no hope.”

“Hope is not belief,” Jedediah said tiredly, as clearly taken by the fever as he was by his feelings. “Hope is what you have when there is no belief.”

Gideon reached and took one of the over-warm hands in his, holding it gently. “All right then,” he said, feeling a little choked up himself, “where’s your family? Who ought to know, if you don’t…?”

Jedediah sighed, and the tears spilled down across his expressionless face. “If my brothers or sisters still live… they’re likely surviving on the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota. Under the watchful eye of your United States military.” He blinked and a shudder went through him. “I do not wish to die alone.”

“You’re not alone,” Gideon said firmly. “If this takes you, I can promise you that. You ain’t gonna die alone.”

Jedediah’s eyes seemed to pierce him, and Gideon withstood the scrutiny. The Indians in Bill Tourney’s show had a way of doing that, of making him feel like they were staring at his soul instead of his face, so it wasn’t so foreign to him.

“I still have no one to carry my hair.”

Gideon had learned something about Indian ritual from the Indians in the show, and he knew the men let their hair grow longer than plenty of women did, but he’d never heard nothing about the why of it. “What?”

“When one of my people dies, we honor him or her. We cut their hair, and braid it, and tie the ends with leather. We carry it on our bodies for a year, to give them a life to follow, if need be, before they finish their journey.”

The words sounded so serious, so important, Gideon couldn’t help but feel them to his soul. The practice sounded a bit like carrying a picture in a locket, and he knew how important that kind of thing was to his mama. She had a picture of her daddy, a man who’d died when she was just a baby, and she treasured it more than the gold locket that held it.

Gideon swallowed. “I—would it be all right, having a white man do it?”

Jed studied him, his features crinkled in pain or worry. “To follow a white man’s spirit?” He frowned slightly. “I would ask you to try to find some of my family. I know the reservation is far from you, but perhaps, if you know of someone near to it….”

Gideon nodded, even though he wasn’t sure. The show’s route was similar from year to year, but not always the same. No use worrying on that now, though. “I’ll look for someone of your blood to give it to—but if that don’t work, I’ll ask my Indian friends to do what’s right by you. I promise, Jed.”

Jedediah blinked then frowned. “Jed?”

“Short for your whole name, like—”

Jed tugged his hand from Gideon’s and waved the words away. “I know what it is. I have not been called that since….” He turned his head away. “In many years.”

“You mind me callin’ you that?”

No words, but Jed shook his head, and Gideon nodded, glad. “Can we stop talkin’ about dying now?”

“No,” Jed said stubbornly. Already, in just this short time, Gideon had a sense of how stubborn the man could be. “If I die,” he went on, and Gideon took secret pleasure in the fact that Jed was saying ‘if’ now, even as he listened intently to the burial customs Jed was trying to teach him. He’d never burned a body, and the thought sounded gruesome to him, but Jed’s people seemed to think that the spirit got lifted out of the body in the smoke, and carried up to heaven. After listening to the whole ritual, Gideon had to admit that it didn’t seem so much worse than planting a corpse in the ground for the worms to eat.

“All right now, we’ve done covered it all, right? I take your body into the woods, find me a clearing, and build the pyre out of pine boughs. Put your body in the middle, set the wood afire, and—it all right if I say some words?”

Jed nodded, somber, and Gideon nodded back. “So I say some words, and then I wait for the fire to burn out good. Scatter the ashes and the remains. If I haven’t found one of your kin, I’ll talk to my other Indian friends, or I’ll keep your hair in my coat pocket for a year, then set it loose in the wind someplace wild. That about it?”

“Yes.”

“Then no more talk of dying, Jed,” Gideon ordered, determined. “Talking about it’s as like to bring it on as that infection in your leg.”

“That is….” Jed frowned. “Your people believe that? I never learned that from the nuns.”

Gideon didn’t know nothing about nuns, but then, he didn’t have much in the way of religious practice, himself, other than what he’d heard from the tent preacher who’d traveled a while with Bill Tourney’s show. Jed clearly knew more about the Christian Bible than Gideon did. “Don’t know what regular church folk believe,” he admitted. “I just know my pa says that talking about trouble is like to bring it home. So no more talk of dying.”

“What do you talk about?”

“My family, my friends, the animals we work with in the traveling show….”

Jed frowned. “Traveling show?”

Gideon nodded. “That’s right. My folks both work in Bill Tourney’s Traveling Wild West Show,” he said proudly. “Bill, the owner, says his was the biggest and the best, before Buffalo Bill came along, and me, I was born into it. My daddy works with horses, trick riding and roping, and he did some bronc riding back when I was a kid. More circus-type stuff now. My ma works a—” he cleared his throat, “a ladies’ show, when she ain’t trick shooting.” His mother wasn’t ashamed of her job, and neither was Gideon or his daddy, but you never knew how some men might take it.

Jed nodded, interested. “I know of these shows. Many of my people have traveled with them. Talk of that, Gideon,” he said, his eyes still fever-bright. “Tell me of your life.”

That was as easy as breathing for Gideon Makepeace. He smiled and started in, telling tales of when he was knee-high to a grasshopper, scrambling underneath horses’ bellies to, as his pa had said, cause as much consternation as he could, watching the performances and learning to ride before he could even climb up on a horse without a boost from his pa. Jed’s eyelids started drooping just a few minutes into the tale, but Gideon kept talking until he was sure the man was asleep, glad he could offer him a little peace.

Gideon returned to his book, but kept an eye on the rise and fall of Jed’s chest, anxious that he’d slip away if Gideon didn’t keep watch and annoyed at his own fancy. As if staring at the man would keep him breathing. His pa would have all sorts of things to say about that, when he told him this tale.

A quiet rap on the door drew him away, but it was just Miz Howard. “We’ll be sitting to supper soon, Gideon,” she said with barely a glance past him to the sleeping Indian. “Ten cents each if you want to partake here.”

“Much obliged, ma’am.” It was cheap, less than half the price of a restaurant meal, and he was proud of her for only covering her expenses on it. He glanced back over his shoulder. “Don’t reckon he’ll be eating, but I might try and get some broth down him later.”

She nodded. “Dining room, few minutes from now. You’re welcome to sit down with us, but he’d best eat in here.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Gideon agreed, meaning it even. Eight women worked this house. There was no way at least a couple of them wouldn’t hate to see an Indian in their home, and Gideon didn’t want to start trouble any sooner than he had to. “Doc MacCray said he’d be stopping by tonight to check on Jedediah.”

Miz Howard frowned. “Jedediah? That’s an awfully white name.”

Gideon thought about the nuns. “Guess he was brought up in a boarding school, like most these days,” he offered. “Jedediah’s Biblical. Don’t know what it means, but it ain’t Indian.”

“‘Blessed of the Lord’,” she quoted, not quite scoffing at the idea, but Gideon smiled.

“I don’t know. I kind of like it.”

 

 

HE RETURNED from dinner with the broth of a stew Miz Howard had made, and he managed to get Jed awake enough to take some of it. His fever was down a little, but after a few swallows, Gideon was afraid Jed might lose what he had in his stomach. He set the rest of it aside.

MacCray came by as promised, peeled off the bandages and poked at the leg, and Gideon kept his face turned away until the doctor was done.

“What are his chances?” Gideon asked MacCray as the man was finishing up his visit. Jed was almost but not quite unconscious, his arm once more over his eyes and his breathing fast and shallow. When called to assist, Gideon had helped MacCray wash out the wound again, and it looked to be about as bad as it had been that afternoon. The towel they’d put down during the procedure, as MacCray called it, was wadded up on the floor, ruined with blood and pus, and Gideon had already started thinking about the cost of replacing the linens, too.

MacCray shrugged. “Depends on how the night goes. Reckon you’re in the worst of it now—fever’s climbing and the infection’s deep, but I don’t see that it’s spread any more than it was this afternoon. That’s good news,” he said, but he was frowning. “Every couple of hours, you need to soak that bandage with carbolic and wash it out, just like we did. Keep him dosed up with laudanum if he’ll let you, otherwise keep him on the salicylic. And get as many fluids into him as you can. I’ll stop by first thing in the morning, before I open up my office.” He grinned then and added, “If I don’t spend the night here, anyway.”

It was the first time he’d hinted at the relationship he carried on with Miz Howard, which was common-enough knowledge but not something said to either of their faces. Gideon wondered if it was because he was asking for MacCray that she had given in about this room.

It was a long night, one of the longest Gideon had had in years. He spent part of it, when he was trying to stay awake so he could change the bandage and doctor the leg, thinking on the last time he’d had a night like this. Maybe the time his ma had been so sick. She’d taken a fever one winter, when they were in Abilene, and he and his pa had tended to her three long days and nights, taking turns staying at her bedside and minding his younger siblings. By the time her fever had broken, he wasn’t sure who had been in worse shape, her from the illness or them from the tending.

It was like that now, with Jed. He changed the bandage regularly, washing it out in a bowl of carbolic and then suffering through Jed’s pained hisses as he gently wiped out the wound before putting the bandage back on. Each time, the wound looked a little better—or little less bad—or maybe Gideon was just getting used to seeing it. Each time Jed’s pain seemed to be worse.

Around two in the morning, Jed’s fever rose, and he sweated so heavily that the sheets were soaked with it. Gideon turned him to his side and pushed a blanket beneath him to help absorb some of it up and keep him from lying in it, and put his hand to Jed’s head a time or two, just checking: he was burning up. Jed mumbled things, words that Gideon couldn’t make sense of, most of them in a language that must be his native tongue. Jed didn’t get loud, but that was almost worse, and Gideon thought about having to perform those burial rituals. He knew the Indians in Bill Tourney’s show real good. They took their rites seriously, and all Gideon could think now was how he might fuck it up and fail this fragile, lonesome stranger. If he couldn’t find Jed’s kin, he’d do as he’d promised, but it seemed a big thing now, too close. What would a Sioux god think of a white man doing Jed this favor? What would He do if Gideon did something wrong?

He slept in fits and starts, curled up on the floor, waking up fast whenever Jed called out, but the man seemed in the thick of his delirium, and never asked for anything. So Gideon would just hold his head and try to get him to drink water or broth, and sometimes sit on the edge of the mattress with a hand on Jed’s arm. That seemed to soothe him as much as the salicylic or the laudanum—maybe more than.

Toward dawn, Gideon was tending to the wound when he heard a soft knock on the door. He turned in time to see MacCray slip in, looking tired and rumpled. “Fever’s up,” he said without preamble.

Gideon could’ve told him that. “It’s been up for a couple of hours,” he said. “Doc, he’s burning up.”

MacCray nodded and tugged the sheet away. “Need to cool him down.” He wasn’t wearing his coat or vest and his shirtsleeves were already rolled up. “Get me some clean water—the cooler, the better. Use the well outside, there should be a bucket near the door.”

By the time Gideon got back, MacCray had managed to get Jed out of most of his clothes. The sight of him—all that brown flesh, dark against the white linens—gave Gideon pause. Slender and long-limbed, all lean muscle and sharp bone, Jed was a pretty thing.

“Get over here with that water,” the doctor said, bringing Gideon out of his distraction. “Need to get this fever down—when did you give him the salicylic last?”

“It’s been a while,” he answered, setting the bucket down beside MacCray. “Want me to make up another tea?”

“I want you to start washing him down,” MacCray shot back. “Try to cool him off—and keep him that way. I’ll make up the tea.”

“Me?” Gideon asked, hoping that his voice didn’t squeak quite as much as it sounded like from inside his own head.

MacCray frowned at him as he made his way to the door, picking up the vial of salicylic from the dresser along the way. “Just cool him off, Gideon.”

Cool him off, Gideon told himself and tried to stay focused on that. But he was tired, and his mind wandered as he wiped a wet cloth over the hot, smooth skin. Jed startled easily, but he was barely aware. His body would arch toward Gideon’s hand, but it had to be the coolness of the cloth. Sick folk just wanted to stop hurting, and this Indian couldn’t be no different. He still mumbled in his own language, but every now and then his eyes would focus on Gideon, and he’d stammer out things in a mixture of English and the unknown tongue, things that sounded like “thank you,” and “don’t cut off my leg,” and “no women, not here.”

MacCray walked back into the room carrying a cup, and already talking before he’d closed the door. “Let’s try this. It’s stronger, but I don’t think it’s going to matter at this point.”

Gideon ended up sitting behind Jed, resting the heavy head against his shoulder while MacCray forced him to drink. Jed resisted at first, but Gideon whispered calmly to him, promising that it was all right, that nothing was going to happen to his leg, that he was going to feel better. All the while, he rubbed the wet cloth over Jed’s chest and belly, trying not to pay any attention to the firm body under his hands.

“Hopefully, that will do the trick,” MacCray said, drawing the tea cup away empty and wiping at Jed’s chin with a rag. “Try to keep him cool and quiet. He seems to trust you.”

Gideon wondered about that as he eased out from behind Jed and settled him back into the bed. Jed tried to catch his hand, holding on to it until Gideon had him still and quiet. MacCray nodded. “See? Says something good about you, Gideon, that you gain the trust of wounded animals and people alike.”

Gideon grinned over his shoulder at MacCray’s fancy. “That’s me, Doc, animal tamer.” MacCray let himself out the door, and Gideon just sat there on the edge of the bed. After a time, the tea did its job; the flush of fever faded a little, Jed’s breathing evened out, and the grip on Gideon’s hand relaxed.