Jason tossed and turned in his bed.
Dr. Morelli had given him enough sleeping powder to quiet a grizzly, but Jason was too torn up emotionally to be quieted by anything short of a .44 to the brain.
Fearing to give him any more powders, Morelli watched helplessly. Helpless should be his middle name, Morelli thought. Jason was getting a sleepless sleep, the Reverend Milcher was loose and spouting God-knows-what rhetoric among his patients, and if anyone should be taking a dose of his sleeping powder, it should be Morelli himself.
Night would be falling soon. He hoped his patients would sleep through till dawn, for then perhaps he could do the same. That’s what he wanted at this stage, wanted it more than anything. He wanted it for Olympia, too. She’d been awake nearly as long as he, and she’d been hard at work making the food to fuel them.
Yet he wished the same for the town’s sheriff and his deputy. Jason—and to a lesser extent Ward—had been going at it day and night, and Ward was twice wounded. Jason had only taken a flesh wound, but it had knocked him down completely. A man needed to sleep, didn’t he?
It was an impossible circumstance, any way you looked at it.
He heard the Reverend Milcher’s voice droning in the background: “And yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me….”
As much as he disliked Milcher, Morelli hoped, for once, that he was right.
Hoped it with all his heart.
Lone Wolf stopped when the shadows grew long, and made camp within a small stand of palo verde trees. He would sleep well tonight, for he wished to be well rested for the coming battle with the chief of the whites.
After he ate his supper—a hare he had killed along the ride north—he whetted his knife on the sharpening stone he carried, polishing it to a fine, surgical edge. He would be victorious tomorrow, there could be no question of it.
But to be on the safe side, he offered up prayers, of fered them in chanting and in smoke.
He was asleep by ten thirty, and dreamed of slicing the white leader’s throat, dreamed of the blood gushing out, and dreamed of his people at their fires, proud.
Saul Cohen made his pallet on the floor, alongside his boys. Rachael had fallen asleep hours ago, and he had played cards—Go Fish and Old Maid mainly—with the boys until one by one they had fallen asleep.
A fine thing this is, he’d thought while he made them comfortable and tucked them in. That a boy’s last memory of his papa should be a game of Old Maid.
Now, Jason had said that the Apache had folded their blankets and gone home, but then, he’d said that before. And he’d been wrong before. Why should this time be any different?
Of course, Jason had been right many more times than he had been wrong, but this little statistic slipped Saul’s mind for the moment. All he wanted was his Rachael and his boys and a safe place to live.
A nice place to live.
This had been the nicest place he had lived in a very long time. Maybe ever. Only a few people in town despised them—Reverend Milcher and a few of his cronies—but no one had tried to set fire to their house—except the Apache, who hated everybody, it seemed—and no one had tried to run them out of town. Or burn their house. Or kill their livestock. Or poison their well.
If those blasted Indians would leave them alone, Saul was convinced that he and Rachael could live here forever and watch the town grow up around them. And he believed that had Rachael been awake, she would have agreed with him. Hadn’t she already begun sorting out the dishes and silver to make a second kitchen in the house? Hadn’t she already purchased a new boiler and baking sheets and set them aside? Was this something that a woman who was thinking of moving on would do?
Yes, his Rachael wanted to stay, too. He sighed and smiled before his thoughts returned to his friend Jason and those blasted Apache.
He hoped Jason was right. He hoped the Apache were gone for good and all.
Curly, Carlos, and Wilmer had stopped about an hour back. They were only a little over a mile out of town, but Curly didn’t believe he was up to looking at what was left of it this evening.
It could wait until tomorrow.
He stretched out on his blanket. The whole bloody mess could wait until tomorrow, so far as he was concerned. He’d seen what horrible things an Apache could do to a white man, and he was not looking forward to seeing what had happened to the people in town.
Next to him, Wilmer stood, ringing what would be his sleeping place with a rope.
“What are you doin’, Wilmer?” Curly asked, although he already knew.
Wilmer explained that he was keeping rattlesnakes from climbing into his bedroll with him. Now, Curly had heard this old wives’tale more times than he could count—about how the rattler thought it was another snake that he was trying to climb over, and took off for fear of being bitten. Curly had to admit he’d seen it work. Once. And that rattler must have been dumber than a post if he thought that prickly old chunk of dead hemp was another snake.
Besides, they climbed over each other all the time, didn’t they?
But he didn’t want to get started with Wilmer—or with Carlos, who’d already ringed his pallet and was fast asleep.
“Ain’t you afeared of snakes?” Wilmer asked, startling him.
“What?”
“I said, ain’t you afeared of snakes,” Wilmer replied a little testily. “I got enough rope to do us both.”
Curly started to launch into his reasons not to do it, but decided he didn’t have the strength, particularly in the case of a stubborn pudding-head like Wilmer.
“Fine, Wilmer,” he sighed, and rolled over so at least he didn’t have to see the skinny idiot spread the stupid loop around him. Through clenched teeth, he added, “That’d be right nice of you.”
Wilmer spread the loop.
Jason did indeed sleep through the night, and when he woke with the dawn he actually felt…good! He checked on a still-sleeping Megan and found her doing well—or at least Jenny and Doc Morelli said so. She looked to be of better color than the day before, though, and he was encouraged.
When he walked out of the livery and onto the town square, Saul Cohen, already awake and on the wall, informed him that there were no Apache in sight.
Next he went back in the livery to check on Ward, who was sawing logs like mad. Rather than disturb him, Jason hied himself over to the house.
He didn’t enter, but went directly to the stable, where he grained his mare and Jenny’s and their father’s old roan horse and fed the chickens, then turned the horses out into the corral with the Mortons’ draft stock and mucked out the stalls.
The garden needed a good watering, but he put that off until later. Next, he had to go turn his prisoner loose.
When he got to the jail, he found Matt MacDonald up and awake, and talking to one of his hands, Curly Lohan, through the bars of his cell.
“Everything?” Matt was asking when Jason walked in.
“Morning, gents,” Jason said. “And congratulations to you,” he said to Curly.
“What?” said Curly.
“For making it back to town! When we saw your smoke, we figured you were as good as dead. Other boys make it out okay, too?”
Curly seemed a little surprised, but he said, “Yeah, they did. We was pretty surprised to find the town still here, too. Seen the smoke. Thought you was goners. Glad to see we was wrong,” he added, grinning, and stuck out his hand.
Jason shook it. “Thanks, Curly. We’re pretty happy about it, too.”
Curly just kept shaking his hand, and Jason finally had to pull away. He covered by immediately fetching the key and unlocking Matt’s cell. “Time to let this monkey out,” he said.
Matt grumbled, “I’ll monkey you, Mr. Tin Badge….”
“Best hold those comments for folks with lesser hearing, MacDonald,” Jason said. He put the key away. He’d be glad to get rid of Matt and have his office all to himself again. “How’d you get out of being burned, Curly?”
“We stayed down in those hidey-holes Mr. MacDonald—I mean, that Gil Whatshisname feller—had dug under the bunkhouse when he was workin’for the spread and they was puttin’up the buildings. The house, too.”
“Gil Collins, you mean?” Jason asked, but he slid Matt an accusing look.
Curly said, “Yessir, that’s him.”
“Fella keeps getting himself almost killed,” said Jason.
“Huh?”
“Ask your boss,” Jason said. It had been because of Matt that Gil had got himself stove up the first time two years back. Even Morelli had taken a look at him and pronounced him dead. That is, until he sat up in his coffin the next afternoon and asked for water, beefsteak, and the doctor, in that order.
This time it had been because he hadn’t seen the Indian on the gate.
But he was getting better, too. Jason had checked. He was beginning to think of him as Gil O’Collins, seeing as how he seemed to have the luck of the Irish.
“Will you move your damn feet?” Matt barked. His hands were pushing at the cell door.
Curly jumped back, and the cell door hit him in the face. “Ouch,” he said, rubbing his wounded eyebrow.
“You best go over to the livery and see Doc Morelli,” Jason said.
“Stop telling my man what to do!” shouted Matt. “Now, where’s your sister, Fury?”
“Believe she’s across the way, at the livery. Seeing to your sister.”
“What’s wrong with Megan?”
“Took an arrow in the neck.” When Matt looked stricken, Jason added, “Don’t worry, she’s all right. She’s got the best care in the world. Jenny was with her when it happened and got her to Morelli right away.”
Matt’s face visibly relaxed, and suddenly Jason wished he’d strung out the information a little more. Damn Matt anyway!
Jason sat down across the room, behind his desk. “Go on, Matt. Get the hell out of here.”
Matt slammed the door behind him, leaving Curly in the office, blinking.
Jason smiled. “You can go, too, Curly.”
“Th-thanks.” Curly left the office, too, although Jason noted that he headed for Rollie Biggston’s place. “Atta boy, Curly,” Jason muttered.
Ward Wanamaker was awake and ambulatory, and had joined Saul Cohen up on the stockade. “Gettin’ used to the place?” he asked as he sat down next to Saul. “Reckon you could bring some chintz up and make the place real homey, if you was of a mind to.”
Saul chuckled. “Did Dr. Morelli kick you out?”
Ward shook his head. “Naw, it was the reverend. Couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“Milcher?”
“Only got but the one, last I heard.”
Saul shook his head. “Sad but true, my friend. How is Miss Megan doing?”
“Pretty fair, I think. Jenny’s still sittin’ with her.”
“She has a good heart, that one.”
“Yeah, she sure enough does. You take a look out there lately?” Ward indicated the world beyond the stockade.
“No,” said Saul halfheartedly.
Ward levered himself up carefully, watching both the stockade wall and the lip of the boards he was standing on. When he rose up to his full height, he looked out through the spikes at the top. He stared for a very long time, not moving.
“Ward?” asked Saul.
Nothing.
“Ward, what is it?”
“Come up here, Saul.”
Saul gingerly stood up, too. When he peeked through the spikes, down to the land outside and below, he knew why Ward had frozen.
There, down below them and about forty feet out from the stockade wall, was a lone Apache warrior in full war paint, singing his death song: a thing that Saul, now that he had no more stockade logs blocking it, could hear clearly. And he was frightened.
“I’d best go get Jason,” Ward said, and he was gone.