She marched up from the river, through the brush between it and the place where they’d set up camp the night before. Her tiny hands were curled into fists, swinging at her sides.
Jed bit the side of his tongue to keep from falling into another argument with her. She loved to get his blood up and had been doing so all through Colorado. Pity the man who lived with her; no wonder her husband had let her go across the country on her own.
If Jed were in his shoes, he wouldn’t be in any hurry to get her back.
“You seem to have done a good enough job of it even so, and it isn’t like I was watching. I had my back to you the whole time,” he reminded her when they came to a stop, letting his eyes roam over her wet hair, her fresh-scrubbed cheeks. Cheeks which turned pink under the weight of gaze, just as he’d known they would.
She turned away. “I would like to use the privacy of the tent to comb and dress my hair, if you don’t mind.”
“Fine with me. Just don’t think you can stay in there all day. We’ll be headin’ out soon.” He got a tent flap thrown shut in his face, and he grinned.
Sometimes it was a struggle to know whether he wished to kiss her or spank her like a naughty child. He could just imagine her on a ranch, standing at the head of the table while the hands ate their midday meal, telling them to mind their manners and asking if they wanted seconds. As his mother had done so many times.
He could imagine her henpecking a man to death, too. Just as his mother had nearly done to his father.
He turned away from the tent, as though this would help him get away from the memory.
Travis was tending the horses while Zeke went to the river for a wash-up before they left. It would be another few days before they made it out of Colorado before heading into Utah Territory on the way to Nevada.
Such a long journey. Dangerous, too, with all sorts of unnamed challenges out there—not the least of which were Indians.
But he believed, somehow, that the Yankee in the tent could handle herself. He almost felt sorry for the brave who tried to take her for a squaw.
Though he would never allow that to happen. He might have taken her so he could profit, but she was his responsibility until the minute he handed her over.
They’d been lucky enough so far to avoid anything more dangerous than a few coyotes, snakes and the like. The sorts of things a man was accustomed to after riding the plains for years.
If anything, the woman was the most dangerous thing of all.
Travis and Zeke avoided her like the plague, and he didn’t think she took it too hard. In fact, she seemed to prefer not talking to them very much outside of the necessities. Not that she spoke very much to him, either, outside of pestering him.
If he made it out of this without the woman nagging him to death, it would be nothing short of a miracle.
“Daggum it!”
Jed’s head snapped up at the sound of Zeke’s shouts from the river. Melissa ducked out of the tent, one hand over her heart.
“You stay put or else risk getting lost out here,” he ordered, leaving her unguarded in favor of running through the waist-high brush to where Zeke sat, clutching his ankle at the water’s edge.
“I think… a snake…” Zeke’s face contorted in a grimace.
“Lemme see.” He eased his friend’s hand from the ankle, and sure enough, a pair of pinpoints sat in the center of an area that was quickly starting to swell.
The last thing any of them needed. The very last thing.
He pushed back the rush of dismay which rose in his chest, favoring action instead. He began working at his belt, sliding it through the loops in his trousers, wrapping it low down on Zeke’s leg and cinching it tightly above the wound.
“Yeah, looks like you attracted a friend there in the water,” he observed while he worked, chuckling in spite of the dryness in his mouth.
The attempt at humor fell flat. “I’m done for, ain’t I?”
Jed met his friend’s eyes, and he saw the blank terror in them. “Not if I have anything to say about it. Did you see anything? Do you know what kind it was?”
Zeke shook his head.
“I need you to calm down. Make yourself do it. Breathe slowly. In. Out.” The greater Zeke’s panic, the faster the poison would work its way into his system. Already, the swelling was beginning to worsen. Jake hoped to at least hold back the progression with the belt, but that wouldn’t last forever.
He helped Zeke to his feet and called out for Travis, who came on the run. “Snakebite,” he muttered, and that was all he had to say. Travis ran ahead to build a fire where they had only just put one out.
Melissa watched, wide-eyed, as Travis helped Zeke lie down on a blanket in front of the wood Travis stacked. Flames flickered there moments later.
Jed pulled out his knife, trying in vain to joke and keep the mood light as he held the blade over the fire. “You know what I have to do,” he murmured, meeting Zeke’s gaze from the corner of his eye.
“Yeah, I reckon I do.” Sweat poured from Zeke’s brow. “Damn it, it hurts.”
“I’m sorry for that. It’s gonna hurt worse before it gets better.” He caught Travis’s eye. “Mix me up some mud.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Melissa asked as Travis ran back to the river.
“You can sit down and stay out of the way and not bother me,” Jed replied, not bothering to look up. He cared little for what she thought just then, for whether his words landed too harshly. She was not his concern.
All of his attention needed to be on what he was about to do.
He pulled Zeke’s flask from his boot, still sitting where he’d left it before going down for a bath. It was half-full. “Here. Drink your fill but leave just a bit for your leg.”
Zeke tipped the thing back, his throat working as he swallowed as much whiskey as he could hold. When there was nothing but a splash left, he handed it to Jed who poured it over the wound to clean the skin.
“Ahh, damn it all!” Zeke grunted, squeezing his eyes shut.
“And to think, I haven’t touched blade to skin yet.” He waved the knife around a bit to cool it before use. “All right, now. You know what I’m gonna do.”
“Just do it fast,” Zeke implored.
“I would look away, Mrs. Furnish,” Jed announced before bringing the knife down, slicing a line down the length of the swollen flesh.
Zeke jumped, tendons standing out on the side of his thick neck. Travis returned with a bowl full of mud, just in time to help hold Zeke down while Jed squeezed out the blood and fluid which had already begun to build up.
It might have been too late. There was no way to tell until the sickness worked its way through him. Jed used all the pressure he could to squeeze the wound until there was no longer swelling or built-up fluid, then poured water from one of the canteens over it to wash away the mess.
“It’s hot,” Zeke panted.
“I know.” Jed wrapped a kerchief around the wound and tied it tight before smearing mud over the top to cool the hot, soon-to-be-burning patch of flesh. “You’d best empty this canteen into your belly now and be ready for me to force more of it down your throat, even when you don’t want to drink anymore.”
He would need all the water his body could hold once the sweating started, but he’d also more than likely vomit which would empty him out. It would be a fine line to walk, one which would stretch on for days.
Looking up from Zeke meant meeting Melissa’s troubled gaze. She saw this for what it was, as he did.
There was a chance she’d be watching a man die before long.
Jed splashed his face in the water Travis brought from the river. He didn’t dare leave Zeke long enough to go down for a bath—not that he didn’t trust Travis, but he preferred to manage such tasks on his own.
He did not think Travis minded a bit, that he was, in fact, more than happy to allow Jed the responsibility of cleaning up after their sick friend.
And Zeke was sick. Terribly
so. He’d gone through the teeth-chattering chills, the shouts of pain as his leg burned like it was on fire—his words. He’d wept, he’d even prayed. Prayed for salvation. Prayed for death.
Jed had sat through it all.
So had Melissa.
The first night, he’d pulled her aside. Zeke was asleep, shifting fretfully but asleep. “I need to know something,” Jed had muttered, turning his full attention to her for the first time since the snakebite.
“What is it? If you’re asking whether I know about snakebites, the answer is no.”
If she’d spoken with so much as a hint of that nasty, highfalutin attitude of hers, he might have broken his rule of never striking a woman. At that point, his nerves were far too frayed to bother himself with a code of conduct.
Instead, she’d answered with a hint of concern. She wished to help, he realized, but did not know how.
He’d softened somewhat, his shoulders falling back to their normal place. They had been up around his ears before then. “I need to know if I can trust you to help me if the time comes. I might need your help with him—he’s a big man, and he’s bound to get pretty ornery once the fever sets in and he doesn’t know where he is. I expect Travis, and I can hold him down, but you might have to be the one to help clean the wound while we do.”
She’d taken this in with no surprise at all. In fact, he had wondered at first if he should repeat his instructions, if she had understood him.
“You can trust me.” It was all she’d said, and all she’d needed to say.
And up to that point, he had trusted her. She’d gone to fetch water, she’d helped clean Zeke up when he got sick all over himself. She’d washed his clothes in the river and mopped the sweat off his forehead.
She’d even insisted he sleep in the tent while she spent her night either by his side or out in the open, as he needed shelter from the sun and any pests flying around.
For two days, she had worked just as hard as Jed had while Travis saw to fixing the food and tending the horses. Whether she did it to gain favor, or because she was a decent woman, Jed couldn’t say and did not possess the strength to work out.
He did not even have it in him to speak with her except about Zeke. How he appeared to be faring, whether he’d woken up while either Jed or Melissa were sleeping, whether he’d been able to hold down any food.
He had not, up to that point, on the morning of the third day after the bite.
The tent reeked of vomit, excrement, and sour sweat. Jed knew this, but the stench hardly registered on him any longer when he stepped inside.
Zeke was exactly where he’d spent three days—in the cot. Except now, his eyes were open and staring blankly up at the canvas overhead.
Jed’s heart seized. It was over. Zeke was dead.
Then, his friend’s chest rose as he drew a breath.
To his surprise and shame, Jed found himself torn between relief and disappointment. For Zeke had suffered terribly and would continue to do so until his fever broke—or he died. In the brief moment when Jed had thought him dead, the idea of his friend being out of pain had felt like a blessing.
Melissa had fallen asleep beside the cot, her head resting against the wooden frame near Zeke’s knee. In sleep, her face fell into peaceful lines. Her youth struck him for the first time—he’d thought her older, perhaps in her middle twenties, but just then she might have been eighteen, with strands of golden hair brushing her cheek.
The impulse to tuck them behind her ear, maybe letting his fingers trail over her cheekbone, the curve of her ear, the slope of her neck, was yet another surprise. Though he felt no shame this time.
Instead of touching her in that intimate way, he nudged her shoulder in passing while going to check on his friend. It was the most he trusted himself to touch her without taking liberties he ought not to take.
She stirred to wakefulness as he bent over Zeke. “Good morning,” he grinned. “You decided to spend a little time awake today.”
He looked terrible, his skin gray, sweat turning his reddish hair nearly brown. His eyes had a sunken look, with dark circles beneath. His lips were dry, cracked, for no matter how they tried to keep fluids in him they simply came back out.
As though she read his mind, Melissa dipped a cloth into a bucket of water and squeezed it over his mouth before mopping the sweat.
“Jed?” Zeke’s voice, normally so loud, so strident, reminded Jed of a frightened child.
“I’m here.” He patted Zeke’s shoulder.
“I… saw…” He drew a shallow breath. “My… mama was here…”
Jed clenched his teeth at this, his brow furrowing. Melissa looked up at him with a question in her wide, blue eyes. He shook his head only once, which sent the message—Zeke’s mother had passed away when he was no older than thirteen.
A frown touched her full mouth, and when she looked down at Zeke, there was nothing but pity in her gaze.
She drew a deep breath, stroking his brow all the while with the cool cloth. “Did she speak to you?”
“No, I don’t think so,” he whispered. “She just smiled at me so… like she used to. When I was a boy.”
“I bet that was real nice, seeing her.” Melissa’s voice was low, calm, soothing. She might as well have been talking to a baby, easing it into sleep.
“It was… Made me feel good…”
“After being so sick, I’m glad you felt good.” She lowered the sheet covering him from the shoulders down, wiping his neck and chest in smooth, slow strokes, humming softly as she did.
Jed could only stand back and watch. It seemed as though she ought not to be disturbed.
“Hurts. Hurts everywhere…”
“I know, I know,” she crooned. “I know it hurts. It won’t hurt much longer.”
“Promise?” He looked at her for the first time, his eyes no longer glassy with fever. Instead, they were wet with unshed tears.
“I promise.” She placed his hands on his chest, patting them.
“Jed?” Zeke looked about himself until he landed on Jed’s face.
“I’m here.” He patted Zeke’s shoulder again.
“What happens… everything I done…”
Jed winced. “I don’t know. I suspect if you’re real sorry for hurting anybody you might’ve hurt, there’s forgiveness.”
“What about the other things?”
Jed chuckled. “Things we ought not talk about in front of a lady?” Was he truly chuckling while at his partner’s deathbed? Unthinkable.
And more than that, she chuckled, too. “You might be surprised what I’ve heard in my day. Things that might make even you blush.”
Zeke’s soft laugh was familiar, carefree, the one Jed remembered.
Then, it faded. And he was gone.
11
Melissa sat back on her calves, the air suddenly still.
As a grave.
In all her years, with everything she’d seen and done and suffered, she had never eased a man into death.
This was not a good man. She’d worked to save him for the better part of three days knowing all the while that he was not good. He robbed people, used force, threatened and shot them.
And yet she’d done it, even though he had never been kind to her.
She hadn’t had the time or strength to ask herself why at the time, as she wiped up his mess and checked for fever and did everything she could to ease his pain.
Now that he was gone and there was nothing more to do for him, she could not understand why she’d gone to the trouble. Maybe because there was nothing else to do? Or because she was never one to sit idly by when others struggled?
Perhaps because he was a human being, like herself. One who’d seen visions of his dead mother, who wept when he considered the evil he’d done in his life and questioned whether he’d be punished for it.
He ought to have done a bit more thinking on the matter before then, she thought.
Jed, meanwhile, let out a long breath. H
e had not moved from the head of the cot, though there was nothing left in it but a shell that was once a person.
She chewed her lip, wondering what to say now. Condolences seemed appropriate. “I am sorry,” she whispered, looking down at the hands she’d folded in her lap. “You did everything you could. You worked very hard to save his life.”
“Why did you?”
The response surprised her. It seemed out of place considering what they’d just been through. In fact, up until that very moment, before he took such a harsh tone, she had started to warm to him. There had to be a depth of good in a man willing to work night and day to save another man’s life.
In comparison, their friend Travis might just as well have been a stranger.
She looked up to find him studying her, one eyebrow raised.
“Well? Why did you do work so hard?”
Could he know she had only just been asking the same of herself? Impossible, though it was an odd coincidence, him bringing it up when it did. “I don’t know.”
He snorted. “Are you always so honest?”
“Not always.” Sometimes not at all. “He was a person, same as you or me or anybody. He was in pain. And…”
She turned away, back to Zeke’s body. And she’d felt sorry for Jed, knowing he would have to take the entire burden of caring for an injured man on himself. Was that truly why she’d done it? To help him? Him?
He was either too heartsick or too tired to press her for more. “We’ll have to bury him soon,” Jed observed, drawing the back of his arm over his forehead. “It’ll be a hot one today.”
Yes, there was already sweat running down her back.
She left the tent with a heavy heart but was glad for a bit of fresh air after breathing in so much staleness and sickness.
The click of a cocked pistol froze her heart. She looked straight ahead to find the muzzle pointed directly between her eyes.
“You’re bad luck,” Travis whispered. “This is your fault.”
Her mouth went dry. Words ceased to form in her head.
“Travis,” Jed spoke up, behind her. She thanked God he’d come out when he did. He might be able to talk sense to the fool.
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