The Grand Central Hotel was shrouded in snow by the time that Herne had got the semi-conscious girl back there. The cabs were nearly all off the mean streets, and it was a stroke of luck that he saw one wending its way home through the bitter weather. The driver refused to take them, and Jed was forced to draw his Colt to convince the man that it was urgent.
Their rooms were on the seventh floor of the new hotel, overlooking Broadway, with side views of the junctions of Bleecker and Amity Streets. Jed had booked in there simply because he had heard it was the biggest place in New York. The decorations alone were said to cost better than a half million dollars. A dining-room so vast that six hundred people could sit down and eat in great comfort and luxury.
Since there was still money left over from the last job he had done there seemed no reason to Jed not to spend it on the best. For Becky.
There was even a doctor kept on the premises, just for the benefit of the guests. At a price, of course. He was a young man. Very brash, very confident.
Becky was sleeping when he arrived, brandishing a small black bag, more interested in what Jed’s relationship was to the girl than in what was wrong.
“I expect it’s just tiredness. Or a touch of trouble with heavy menstruation,” he said.
“I heard of a lot of things, but never monthly bleedin’ from the mouth,” said Jed, feeling the red anger beginning to rise. Fighting to control himself.
“From the mouth, you said, Mr. Herne?”
“Right.”
“A lot?”
“Enough.”
“You do know ... pardon me for asking this, but you do know a little about blood? Only I believe you are a cowhand or something.”
Herne clasped his fingers tightly together to stop himself busting the young man in the mouth.
“I seen a lot of dead, and a lot of dyin’. I know about blood.”
There was such venom in the voice that it finally penetrated the thick skin of the doctor and he took a step backwards as if he had been physically threatened.
“Now, now, Mr. Herne. You and Miss Herne are ...”
“Miss Yates! She is my adopted ward.”
“Please. Keep your voice down. It is better for her to sleep and you call me as soon as she wakes. It is now nearly ten o’clock, but I shall be on call through the night if you require me.”
After he had gone, Jed walked silently into the girl’s bedroom, looking down at her sleeping face. Seeing how young and vulnerable she was. The skin stretched tight over the cheeks, the eyes closed, though he could see the lids moving as if she was having a bad dream.
Acting on an impulse that he didn’t even try and think about, Jed bent over the bed and touched his lips to Becky’s face, kissing her as softly as a butterfly alighting on a leaf. She stirred in her sleep and moaned quietly, her fingers moving as if she was trying to touch something that lay just beyond her reach.
Herne sent down for a bottle of liquor and settled in a deep chair at the side of the room, leaving on the solitary light set in the wall alongside the door. Dozing in the pool of yellow that it cast on the floor, just touching the corner of a framed print of a sailing-ship beating around Cape Horn in the teeth of a gale.
When she cried out, he woke up immediately, his hand dropping from force of habit to where his gun would have been, if he hadn’t taken it off and left it on the small table by the side of the untouched bed in the other room.
“Jed. My throat! Oh, Jed … Jed!!”
The cry became a scream, even before he had powered himself from the chair to stand by the bed. He reached out and turned up the gas-light over the bed, looking down at the frightened face.
“What is it?” he asked anxiously.
She struggled to sit up. He reached down to help her, with an arm under the shoulders, bringing her to a more upright position.
“Drink. I have to ...”
The suite of rooms had a private bathroom, and it took him only a moment, after shaking his head to clear away the mist of sleep, to reach a glass and fill it with water. Walking quickly back with it, ignoring the drops that he spilled on the carpet.
For a nightmare moment he thought that Becky was being attacked by an invisible creature. Her hands were at her throat, and she was fighting for breath, her face red with the effort, eyes starting from her head.
“Jed!” she managed, as he brought the glass to her, then the eyes rolled up in the sockets, and she fell backwards, banging herself on the headboard.
Herne put down the glass and tried to help her up again, but as he did so a torrent of blood vomited from her open mouth, splattering all over the white sheets and the thick blankets. Pouring out like a river of crimson, soaking through her cambric nightdress, running over her fingers, and dripping to the floor.
“My God! Becky!”
For the first time that he could remember, Jed was helpless. If it had been a bullet wound, then he’d have known what to do. Bandage it up. But what could a man do when there was no wound, and the blood came from inside the throat?
The pendant around her neck swung loose, clotted with gouts of blood.
It was obviously a question of sitting and holding her, watching her die, or trying to get help.
The doctor was in the room within eight minutes. Eight of the longest minutes that Jedediah Herne had ever known.
By the time that he appeared, still rubbing at his eyes, the bleeding had slowed, and Becky was lying more quietly, half-moaning and half-crying. Jed had wiped most of the blood away from her face and mouth, trying to swab it clean with heavy towels from the bathroom, throwing the crimson rags into the bath.
“It has been what we of the medical profession call a massive hemorrhage from the pulmonary region,” pronounced the young doctor, after he’d examined Becky and given her a potion to help her to sleep.
“What the Hell do the medical profession intend to do about it?” snarled Herne angrily. “We have to be moving west in a couple of days.”
The doctor turned to look at him, and there was genuine concern and sadness on his face.
“I am truly sorry, Mr. Herne. I thought all along that you were aware of what the situation was and that you were keeping it concealed from the girl to save her from unnecessary distress.”
It was as though a great hand of icy steel had reached out and gripped Jed by the heart.
“What do you mean?”
“Come. Outside the room in case she can still hear us, Mr. Herne.”
Gently, the doctor took the older man by the arm and led him from the room that smelled heavy with the sickly odor of spilled blood.
“Sit down.”
“I guess that I’d maybe rather stand, if n you don’t mind.”
The young man nodded. “Very well. I will put it as best I can, Mr. Herne. The girl is suffering, and has been suffering for some years, from a disease of the lungs. A form of wasting illness where the tissue of the body is destroyed. Often wetness and exposure to wind and cold can make this worse.”
“What? What are you saying?”
“A great German man of medicine named Robert Koch has very recently discovered a bacillus — that is what causes such an illness — and it is called tuberculosis.”
“Tuberculosis?”
“That’s right, Mr. Herne.”
“Come on, Doc. You’re not goin’ to keep puttin’ it off. I’m her ... her only relative. I have a right to know how long it’ll be before she’s better.”
The doctor didn’t reply immediately, walking to the window, and pulling back the drapes, looking out over the sleeping, white-shrouded city. Replying without looking at Herne.
“That is precisely it, in a nutshell, Mr. Herne. Rebecca Yates is not going to get better. The condition is too far advanced.”
“What are you ...?”
“Rebecca is going to die.”
“Die!”
“Quietly. She will die, in my estimation, within the next twenty-four hours. Another hemorrhage like that last one will undoubtedly kill her, and I believe that it will not be long.”
Jed Herne took a deep breath, forcing air into his chest until it hurt. Saying nothing.
“Mr. Herne. I can get you a skilled nurse, or I can stay. It will all be billed to you on ...”
“Get out of here.”
“I think that it would be better if I were...”
“I’m grateful to you, and I believe what you say. So if there’s nothing that can be done, then I’ll stay with her. If I need you, then I’ll call.”
“Very well.”
“Doctor?”
“Yes, Mr. Herne?”
“She won’t … you know ... won’t suffer when it comes, will she?”
The young doctor shook his head. “The worst of the pain is already over for her. Rebecca will be very weak when she wakes.” He paused. “If she wakes.” He spoke with an air of finality.
“And there’s nothing you can do?”
“I’m truly sorry. There’s not a thing that I or anyone else can do. I’ll be ready if you need me.”
As he went out Jed said quietly: “She’s very young. Very young.”
But the doctor didn’t hear, closing the door silently behind him. Leaving Jedediah Herne alone with Rebecca.
Somehow, cramped in the chair, Jed Herne slept. Fitfully, his rest disturbed by any change in the girl’s breathing, his mind ravaged by dreams of the past.
A young girl, with Becky’s face, running screaming from the blazing ruins of Lawrence, her back streaming fire like a bridal veil of red and yellow and orange.
Wandering through a great brothel, with a high vaulted roof, peopled by men and women from his past. All of them dead.
Just before dawn he woke, but Becky still slept. She was quieter now, her breathing less harsh, though Herne saw the traces of new blood about her lips.
He drew the drapes again, shutting out the glaring whiteness of the snow over New York. Great flakes still blew lumpily past the windows, torn apart by the rising wind.
A whiteness that was reflected in the clean sheets that the manager had sent up. Jed had changed the bed himself, rejecting any offer of help, tenderly moving the frail body of the girl.
A little of the old blood smeared the sheets, mixed with the startling brightness of the fresh blood.
Images that Herne took with him again as he slipped into a restless sleep, tangling with the memories of the way he had found his wife.
“Louise.” he said, unaware that his lips had even moved at all.
In his dream he relived that cold morning near Tucson. It had been bitterly raw, his breath frosting the air as he woke. Snow outside their cabin. Deadly white.
White sheets cold and empty at his side.
Like a new land viewed from the highest peak of a range of mountains.
Unsullied.
Except for where his wife had lain that lonely night, far on her side of the bed.
There the white was dappled and clotted with brown.
Dark brown that was still red in places where the blood hadn’t dried.
In his dream, just as he had two years back, Jed found himself walking towards the barn, where the door stood open, a light wind tugging at it, making its hinges creak.
Knowing what he would find inside.
The green dress.
The overturned box.
The ray of pale light gleaming off the golden wedding ring.
Louise.
Louise.
“Louise!”
“Jed.”
Half-waking, he staggered to his feet, peering round the room to see who had spoken.
Becky was watching him.
“Hello, Jed.”
“Becky. Did I waken you?”
“No. I was kind of dozing. I feel awful tired, Jed. I recall a lot of blood.”
“Surely. Coughin’ like you were doing. It strained something in your throat, the doctor said.”
“I’ll be all right?”
“Sure. Right as rain. We’ll be off out of New York in a couple of days. Get you on your feet and smarter’n a lick of paint.”
But she was asleep again.
The doctor came up shortly after six, and took her pulse, checking her breathing, and feeling the heat of her brow.
“How is she?”
He shook his head. Looking at the girl, making sure that she couldn’t hear.
“She is sinking, Mr. Herne. All the parts of her body are, as it were, packing up their tents ready to depart.”
“When?”
“I think that she will probably live through the day. It is odd how the human body can cope when there is light in the world. But in the dark watches of the night, it becomes harder. If there is no further major hemorrhage, then I will be surprised if she lives through to see another dawn rise over this city.”
So he left them, urging Jed to try and snatch a little rest, putting a small brown bottle of the quietening medicine on the table.
After he had gone, Jed sat wearily in the chair by the bed, burying his head in his hands, suddenly feeling all of his thirty-nine years. And then some. Trying hard to recall the words of any prayers he might have heard. Finding that his mind had gone blank on him.
There was a rustling from the bed, and he looked quickly up to see that Becky was staring at him, her face pale as chalk.
“I wasn’t asleep, Jed.”
“What?”
“I heard what the doctor said.”
“Now you mustn’t think that he ...”
“I know I’m going to pass on to the realms eternal, Jed. And I shall see Mama again. And dearest Louise.”
“It may not be ...”
She shook her head. “Don’t fret for me, dearest Jed. I beg you. I have been unhappy for so much of my life that it is a relief to know that it will so soon be ended and I shall find peace.”
“If you rest up, Becky, then maybe we can get you well enough for a trip out west again. Like we said.”
She reached out for him, and he took her hand, feeling it lighter than a fistful of thin, dry twigs.
“I have loved you so much, Jed. You know …”
She stopped, and looked away from him, towards the window.
“What?”
“I thought for a time, in a silly, girlish way, that one day you and I might...”
“Might what, my dear?”
“That I might take the place of Louise in your heart and that we might marry.”
Jed felt as though his heart would break with the pain of her words, blinking away the tears that had gathered at the corners of his eyes.
“Don’t talk. You’ll make yourself cough.”
“No. I have been thinking while I lay here. I believe I knew that I would soon be gathered into Heaven, Jed. I must speak of what I would so like.”
“Anything.”
“I would so like to be laid to rest with Mama and sweet Louise.”
Rachel Yates and Louise Herne were buried together, in a plot of land that lay where their spreads had joined, near to a small stream, with a view far out over the plains to the distant hills beyond Tucson.
“If that …”
“I don’t think that there will be any "ifs" about what is to come, Jed. Please promise me.”
Her fingers of her free hand played with the pendant around her neck, now cleaned of the blood.
Jed nodded. “I’ll do everything I can, Becky. You can be sure of that.”
The grip of her fingers on his broad, calloused hand relaxed, and for a moment he thought that she had gone, but her chest still rose and fell. She had once again drifted back into sleep.
Throughout that long day, Jed Herne sat and watched as life ebbed from the young girl. The only person on the face of the earth for whom he felt any shred of affection, and now an uncaring God was taking her from him. To leave him to walk alone.
Twice she recovered a little, and sipped some water to ease the dryness of her lips, but the effort made her cough, bringing flecks of blood. Each time, she seemed that much weaker.
The doctor looked in on them several times, each time shaking his head helplessly. Hardly talking. Seeing that the tall silent man needed no words.
Night came again, bringing an end to the snow. A flaming crimson sunset bathed the stone jungle in a warm light, flooding through into the hotel room where the girl lay dying.
At full dark, Becky woke again, and even seemed to be rallying briefly.
The doctor came, and examined her, walking out into the other room, followed by the unshaven figure of Herne.
“It is nearly done, Mr. Herne. I have seen this false spark of vitality before. It is always followed by the end. You must prepare yourself for the worst.”
“Doctor,” replied Herne gruffly, “I’ve been prepared for the worst every damned day of my life.”
“It’s very dark here, Jed. Gould you turn up the light for me?”
He reached up and twisted the little brass tap, letting the gas hiss through, brightening up the large room. Becky seemed very small in the big bed.
“How do you feel?”
“I’m weak, Jed. Very tired, as if all I want to do is close my eyes and rest.”
He was unable to hide his feeling that this was the end, and she saw him.
“Dear Jed. Don’t weep for me. I should weep for you, leaving you here all alone. I shall be well enough with Mama and with Louise. She’ll be pleased to see that I am still wearing this pendant. You won’t take it from me, will you, Jed?”
“No.”
“Come sit with me, and hold me. I’ve always wanted you to hold me, and never dared ask you. I do love you, Jedediah Travis Herne. You know that, don’t you?”
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, afraid that he would break down at a time when she most needed reassurance and strength.
“I’m truly not frightened. Well,” she hesitated. “Perhaps I am a little bit. But I mustn’t complain. I have seen much of the world. Had a deal of happiness not to mention the fine adventures we had.” She stopped as a thought struck her. “Jed?”
“What is it, Becky?”
“Whitey?”
“What about that old son of … what about him?”
"Will I meet him again, beyond?”
“I always reckoned that Whitey Coburn was the surest bet a man could make to go down and not up. But, things are mighty strange. Maybe you’ll see him somewheres around.”
“I’d like that.” She laughed, the smile turning into a coughing fit that left her weak and panting.
“Try and rest, Becky.”
“No. It is getting most awful dark, Jed. I used to be powerful scared of the dark when I was little. Shall we sing?”
“Maybe it’s better not.”
“Perhaps. I’d have greatly been pleased to have a verse or two of ‘We’ll Gather At The River’. It was one of my favorites, and one of Louise’s also.”
Almost without her noticing, Jed saw that her breathing was slowing down, like an engine that has been worked that little while too long.
“I wish that I could have been loved. By a man. I’d have liked that, you know. That sounds rather wicked of me, but I hope that Jesus understands.”
“I guess he will, Becky.”
He held her hand tighter, trying to prevent the frail spirit from leaving him, but her voice was becoming quieter.
“I know that Mama would have been shocked, Jed, but I surely wish that you would have laid with me. You don’t think Louise would have minded?”
“I guess not. If it had been anyone, then I figure she’d have been pleased that I chose you. I’d have liked it too, Becky, but things ...”
He couldn’t go on.
“Things didn’t turn out that way. She’ll be sorry that you go on with the killing, Jed, but I understand.”
“It’s all I can do. All I’m good at. All I truly understand.”
“I know. Honest I do. Jed, I’m turning cold. Hold me tight against the chill.”
He reached round her, folding her thin body close to him, feeling the tears coursing down his cheeks, knowing that it was nearly over.
“Remember to lay me in Tucson, Jed. With the others. Promise.”
“I promise, Becky.”
“I’m going to think of the good times, Jed. Think of being young and free and running through the pastures in summer, with the sun on my shoulders and the earth warm beneath my bare feet. That’s a good thing to carry with you. Best there is.”
The mist was rising off the rivers of New York, closing round the hotel.
Her left hand was tight in his, the other hand holding the small pendant.
“I thought it didn’t seem fair, but now I don’t mind. It’s being young, and leaving so much undone, Jed. But ... I guess there’s no value in grieving. Jed?”
“Yes, dear Becky?”
“Will you say the Lord’s Prayer with me?”
“Of course. You lead me. Seems a long time since I set my tongue to it.”
With him saying the words behind her, Becky lay back in his arms and closed her eyes, her voice now so quiet that it scarcely disturbed the air in the room.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven. Hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
Louise used to say the prayer each night before joining Jed in bed, and the rich words flowed back into his mind, his voice rising above Becky’s.
“As we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
Her head was pressed against his shoulder.
“For Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory. Forever and ever. Amen.”
They had started the prayer together, but he finished it alone.
Jed Herne was quite alone.