Chương 2
“Small pieces,” he told her. “Not too much at once. Give your brother some. Don’t give any to your mother until the doctor says.”
“You know her?”
He closed the purse inside his fist.
“Yes.”
“What is she to you?”
He looked at Nora’s sleeping face.
“I don’t know anymore.”
Doctor Amos Vale occupied two rooms over the apothecary and spent the first minute of Silas’s arrival explaining that he was not a public charity. He was a narrow man with white cuffs, a pointed beard, and one cloudy eye. A half-eaten peach sat on the desk beside an open medical journal.
Silas placed three silver dollars over the printed page.
Vale stopped speaking.
“There’s a woman in Pike’s barn,” Silas said. “Fever. Weak pulse. Two children with her.”
“Which woman?”
“Nora Kincaid.”
The doctor’s fingers stayed on the coins. “Caleb Kincaid’s widow?”
“You know her?”
“I know most people who owe me money.”
Silas put down two more dollars.
Vale looked at the pile and then at Silas. “You her kin?”
“Does that change how fast you walk?”
“No. But it may change who I send the bill to.”
“Send it to me.”
The doctor took his black bag and his hat.
They crossed the street at a pace Silas found insulting. Vale complained about the dust, the heat, the town council’s refusal to fund a proper sick ward, and the frequency with which poor people waited until death was near enough to bargain before seeking him. Silas said nothing because if he began, he might throw the man into a horse trough, and Mercy Crossing did not have a second doctor.
Nora had not moved. Mae sat beside her, tearing bread into careful pieces for Jonah. The boy chewed without taking his eyes from Vale’s bag.
The doctor knelt, listened to Nora’s chest, lifted her eyelids, smelled her breath, pressed her stomach, and asked questions the children could answer only partly.
“How long since she ate?”
“Yesterday,” Mae said.
“What?”
“Beans.”
“How long has she been feverish?”
“Since we came off the freight wagon.”
“When was that?”
Mae looked toward the barn doors, as if the date might be written in the light.
“Three mornings.”
Vale muttered under his breath.
Silas said, “What is it?”
“Exhaustion, hunger, dehydration. Fever may be from exposure. Her lungs are rough but not bad enough to explain this. Has she been vomiting?”
Mae nodded.
“Blood?”
“No.”
“Any injury?”
“No.”
“Did she take medicine?”
Mae’s gaze dropped to the straw.
Vale noticed. “What did she take?”
“A bottle Mr. Voss gave her.”
The doctor’s face changed.
Silas saw it. “What bottle?”
“Probably laudanum,” Vale said too casually. “Half the territory treats pain with it, and the other half treats boredom.”
“Would it make her like this?”
“Too much could.”
“How much did she take?”
Mae shook her head. “Mama said it would help her sleep. Then she was hard to wake.”
Vale opened his bag. “Get me clean water. Not from the horse trough.”
Silas went.
By the time he returned, Nora’s blanket had been folded down. Vale had unfastened the collar of her dress and placed a wet cloth on her forehead. Mae knelt near the wall with Jonah. The children watched every movement.
“Can she be moved?” Silas asked.
“She must be. The barn will be cold after sundown.”
“Hotel?”
Vale gave him a look. “Mrs. Greer won’t rent a room to a woman with fever unless you buy the entire building.”
“I’ll speak to her.”
“You can speak until your tongue falls out. Take Mrs. Pike’s back room. She sometimes keeps women after difficult births.”
“She agreed?”
“I haven’t asked.”
Silas lifted Nora before anyone could argue. She weighed less than the saddle he had carried from the livery. Her head rolled against his shoulder, and a sound escaped her—not a word, only the soft protest of someone pulled from deep water.
He had carried her once across a flooded creek after she lost a boot in the mud. She had laughed against his neck and ordered him not to drop her because the preacher was watching.
There was no laughter now.
Outside the barn, three men had stopped near the fence. One was the livery owner, Pike, a broad fellow with a tobacco-stained mustache. Another wore a deputy’s badge. The third man stood in a black coat too fine for the dust.
Mae moved closer to Silas.
The man in the coat removed his hat. He had iron-gray hair and a face arranged in an expression of patient concern.
“Mrs. Kincaid,” he said. “There you are.”
Silas kept walking.
The man stepped into his path. “I’m Gideon Voss.”
“I didn’t ask.”
Voss’s eyes moved from Nora to the children and then to the open canvas sack in the straw. “This woman stole from me.”
Mae said, “She did not.”
Voss did not look at her. “She disappeared from my ranch three nights ago with money belonging to my employees. I have men searching the roads.”
Doctor Vale closed his bag. “She needs a bed, Gideon.”
“She needs a sheriff.”
The deputy shifted, not quite agreeing and not quite refusing.
Silas adjusted Nora’s weight. “She can answer you when she’s awake.”
“She may be pretending.”
“Then she is the finest actress west of St. Louis.”
Voss smiled faintly. “And you are?”
“Busy.”
The deputy touched Silas’s arm. “Sir, I need a name.”
“Silas Rourke.”
Pike spat into the dust.
The deputy’s hand dropped away.
Voss’s smile vanished.
That frightened Silas more than recognition would have.
“You know me?” he asked.
Voss placed his hat back on his head. “I know a great many names.”
Nora stirred in Silas’s arms.
Her eyes opened only a fraction. They found his face with terrible accuracy.
“No,” she whispered.
Silas bent closer. “Nora.”
Her body tightened.
“Don’t let him,” she said.
Then her eyes closed again.
No one spoke.
May you like
Voss watched Silas with renewed interest. “You should put her down.”
Silas walked around him.
