Well Traveled

by Margaret Mills

  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….”
<
br />   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 sound
ed 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.