“Lay that whip on, girl!” I yelled up to Clemmie sitting in the driver’s seat of our wagon. I was in the back tending to Solomon, my hand on the spot where the knife had stabbed in, pressing hard to keep the life from flowing out of him.
“Camp’s not far,” I told Solomon. “You’re gon see Sheridan’s personal surgeon. Puny as that trashy rascal was, you’ll probably only need a stitch or two.”
I had nestled Matildy on Solomon’s chest so he’d have the comfort of her twining about him while I cooed gentle as a mourning dove for him to rest easy.
“We’ll get the General’s doc, I promise. You be fine. Trip out West’ll be a vacation for you now. Pretty sneaky of you to fix it so’s I’ll be the one holding the reins, working that jerk line the whole way.” I tried to make a joke, but it hung false in the air and only showed off the truth of how scared I was.
Solomon reached up, pulled me close, and in a strangled, raspy voice said, “Cathy, I got money inside my jacket. Take it. Go out West.”
“Solomon Yarnell,” I said, anger boiling up the way it always did when I wanted to snuff out fear or sadness or weakness. “I told you, I don’t want to hear that talk.”
“Cathy.” He held my eyes. “I’m dying. Let me do it in a bed. Then bury me. Proper.”
“No, Solomon. Not gon be that way. We’re going out West. You, me, Clemmie, Matildy. Things be different out West.”
“Cathy, we never lied to each other, did we?”
“No, Solomon, we didn’t.”
“Not the time to start now, is it?”
I refused to answer. Refused to let another good man pronounce a verdict I would never be ready to hear.
“Cathy, take the money.”
I looked about, frantic for some sign of camp ahead, for help, for a way to stop what was happening. Up ahead, in the darkness, I caught the glimmer of a lantern burning in the window of a cabin at the edge of a burned-out plantation. I hollered for Clemmie to make for it. Double-quick.
“You be in a bed fore you know it,” I said, clinging tight to Solomon’s hand. “Then we can get you doctored up proper.”
Solomon laid his hand on top of mine, stroked it as gentle as he always stroked Matildy, pulled it to his lips, kissed it, and said, “Mighty glad I got to know you, Cathy Williams. You are something else, Queenie. Something else entirely.”
Those were the last words of Solomon Yarnell.