Tom turned sideways now, standing between Gideon and Elston. “He wasn’t,” he said, a hard edge to his voice that relieved Gideon greatly and restored his faith in the man. More quietly Tom said, “No need in wasting good rope or good time,” and maybe he was glad of any excuse to avoid a hanging.
Tom glanced back at Gideon. “Get him out of town.” His words weren’t hate-filled, but his tone left no room for argument—either from Gideon or from the other men around them. He was the man in charge here, and when he turned around and walked back into the livery, Gideon felt the tension ease.
He took another step back toward the Indian, glancing over his shoulder to find the man leaning heavily against the wall of the stable. He was trying to put weight on the leg that was injured, and Gideon saw the sheen of sweat on his skin and the lines of pain cut deep into his strong features.
“Hey,” he said, pitching his voice low and slowly turning to where he could see the other man. “Let me give you a hand.” He reached out, intending to catch the Indian by the upper arm. But the man jerked back and away, stumbling and almost falling before he caught his balance.
“No, thank you,” the Indian said stiffly, even though it was clear that he needed the help. Fever, Gideon could tell from the sweat and the brightness of his eyes.
“What happened?” he asked, waving toward the man’s leg even as he glanced back to find Elston and Jacob staring at them, waiting. Elston’s friend had already faded away, probably to the sheriff’s office to find some legal backing for his hate.
But the Indian either didn’t hear him or ignored him, his attention on trying to stand up well enough to walk away. He was still using the barn for balance but moving slowly toward the road. He had bandaged the wound, but Gideon could see blood and pus staining the cloth.
“Hey,” he said, moving closer without trying to touch him this time, “I’m trying to help you.”
It was about then that the Indian ran out of barn wall to lean on and started hobbling. On the third step, his bad leg gave way, and it was only Gideon’s quick save that kept him from landing in the dirt again.
“Come on,” he said, catching the man by the waist and taking his weight. It wasn’t much, compared to many; he was slimmer than he looked, the buckskin clothes disguising his slightness, and Gideon had no trouble pulling the man upright and hauling him out of the livery yard and away.
Definitely a fever, the Indian’s body was hot where it touched Gideon’s, and this close, Gideon could smell the infection. He led him down the road, ignoring the looks that strangers threw in their direction. The Indian didn’t put up a fight, and Gideon could feel the man’s will giving way. When they reached the alley between the general store and the hardware store, he guided the Indian into it, looking back to make sure they weren’t being followed.
“You came to town for the doctor?” he asked, pushing the guy back toward a bunch of empty wooden crates that were stacked against the hardware store’s wall.
“It does not matter,” the Indian panted. “It was a mistake—”
“You need to see one,” Gideon said, putting a hand on a thin shoulder and pressing. “Sit down—dammit, sit down.”
The Indian sat with a grunt of pain, and Gideon dropped down onto one knee beside him, trying to get a better look at the wound. “What happened?” he asked again, carefully touching the bandaging on the man’s leg. It was clearly swollen, and heat fairly radiated off it.
The man jerked and hissed, but he didn’t pull free of Gideon’s touch. When he spoke, his voice was low and flat. “Wild pigs,” he said. “They came in the night, a family of them. I woke to find them near my camp, and when I tried to leave, the boar attacked.”
Gideon winced, recalling tales he’d heard about the dangers of wild pigs. If you came upon one without a gun, the best you could do was get out of the way or get stuck like this man had. “Lucky to be alive,” he said. “But you won’t be much longer if you don’t get a doctor to look at it, maybe drain it.”
“I must leave,” the Indian said, “or those men will kill me faster than the wound will.” He pushed up, trying to stand. “Thank you for your help.”
Gideon just stood and waited for him to fall back down, which didn’t take but a second. “Just hold on a minute,” he urged and settled the man back on the crate. “Let me think about this.”
The Indian bent over, his hands around his waist and his hair hanging forward to cover his face. He was sick, truly sick, and he knew it.
“Did you know what kind of welcome you were likely to get here?” he asked.
That got the man’s head up, and a faint, faint smile touched his mouth. “You did not?”
Gideon scowled. So the guy wouldn’t have come into this city if he thought he had any other choice. Plenty didn’t mind the natives anymore, but plenty more did. Gideon hadn’t never been to Montana before this trip, but he knew there were reservations out here. Maybe the natives were just too close.
Gideon had more than a passing acquaintance with Doctor Holt MacCray. He was a fine doctor, a good businessman, and a lousy gambler. Gideon knew that for the right price, the man would treat anyone.
“You got any money?” he asked the Indian.
The man raised his head, and for the first time, he looked Gideon square in the face. His eyes were blue all right, not dark as the night at the witching hour, but the deep blue of a clear mountain lake on a cloudy day. He had white blood in him, near.
“If you plan to steal from me, then just kill me now.” The words were flat, but there was weariness in them that made Gideon’s belly knot up.
He shook his head, protective of this defeated stranger and amused by his own soft heart. “It ain’t for me,” he said kindly. “There’s a doctor in town who will see you, long as you can pay.”
The Indian held his gaze for several long seconds, and Gideon had the sense that he was being measured. Then, with a sigh, the man reached into his shirt and drew out a small leather bag held by a braided leather cord. He pulled it over his head and opened it with shaking hands, emptying the contents into one palm.
Four dollars or more in mixed coins, Gideon saw. Not much, but plenty to get Doctor MacCray’s attention.
The Indian stared at the coins as if they were treasure—and maybe they were. But he said nothing as he held them out to Gideon. “I will repay you for your help,” he said softly. “But if you plan to take this and leave me, please, kill me. Do not leave me to suffer here.”
Gideon took his hand, fine-boned and strong, holding it even after he had taken the coins. “I’m taking you with me,” he said. “You can see where the money’s going.”
The Indian stared at him, frowning. “They said I must leave town,” he said, and Gideon realized that the man was only now beginning to accept that Gideon had no plans to rob him. “They said—”
“Folks say a lotta things I don’t pay any mind. You let me worry about them,” he said with more confidence than he felt. “Right now, we need to get you to a doctor, get that leg taken care of.” He waited until the dark blue eyes met his again, then, when the Indian gave a slight nod, he used the hand he was still holding to help the man back to his feet. “That way,” he said, pointing with this chin to the back of the alleyway. No use inviting trouble. “We can cut across to Second Street with no one the wiser.”
The Indian had grit, Gideon had to give him that; even though he was weak and couldn’t put much weight on his hurt leg at all, he kept his mouth shut and his head down, and held on tight round Gideon’s shoulder. Maybe they’d just look like a couple of drunks to the people they passed. “What’s your name, anyway?” he asked as they crossed Callendar Street.
“Jedediah….” The Indian took a harsh breath. “Jedediah.”
“Well, Jedediah Jedediah,” he smiled, “we’re almost there. Doctor MacCray is a good friend of mine, and I’m sure he’s gonna fix you up, right as rain.”
The Indian—Jedediah, now that he had a name, an
d one Gideon found he liked—let out a harsh, if quiet laugh. “You are… very optimistic.”
Gideon felt his smile broaden, as much at the compliment as at the words the man was using. “Well, yes, you might say I am.”
As they neared MacCray’s office on Main Street, Gideon stayed to the shadows, sheltering the Indian as much as he could. MacCray kept his clinic rooms on the street level of a two-story building, and he lived in the rooms above. The clinic held regular hours, but that didn’t always mean that the doctor was in. He had an assistant who stayed most days, handling the things he could, fetching and carrying and learning the trade, and allowing MacCray to come and go as he pleased.
Gideon looked around as they drew near. A narrow stretch of dirt sat between Doctor MacCray’s building and the next closest one on the right, and in that space, someone had a garden growing—mostly wildflowers and an apple tree, things that could grow untended. There were also some benches in the shade, near a water stand that the birds liked to play in, and it was to one of these that he led Jedediah.
“Best let me see if the Doc’s alone—no sense causing us trouble if he’s got a room full of people waiting.”
Jedediah didn’t argue, settling with a low hiss onto one of the benches. Gideon had picked it intentionally. It was against the building and sheltered by a range of plants and tall flowers, so that the Indian would be mostly hidden from view.
But before he turned to go inside, Gideon took Jed’s hand and pressed the bag of coins into it. “You hold on to this until I get back,” he said, pleased when Jedediah blinked in surprise.
As it happened there was only one woman in the receiving room when Gideon walked in, and she was leaving. He took off his hat and waited patiently as she finished up with Elmer, MacCray’s young apprentice, and he even smiled and nodded to her, opening the door for her to pass through so that he was alone with Elmer.
“Gideon,” Elmer said with the friendly smile he used on everybody who passed through that door. “I thought you were leaving town.”
“Well, I ran into someone who needs some help,” he said, smiling at the man. “Doc MacCray around?”
Before Elmer could answer, a door from the back of the building opened, and the man in question appeared, pulling on his coat, his hat already on his head. “Gideon!” he called out as he drew near. Doctor Holt MacCray couldn’t be a day under sixty, but he still had a spring in his step and plenty of strength in that thick body. “Thought you’d be on your way west by now, son.”
“Not just yet,” Gideon answered. “I ran into a friend who needs a little help—can I bother you for a minute or two?”
MacCray frowned, his gray eyes sweeping around the receiving room. “Your friend invisible?”
Gideon chuckled, more to show his good nature and humor the man. “Nah, he’s just waiting outside.”
Gideon chatted idly about a poker game they’d been involved in three nights ago as they left the building. MacCray was jovial enough, but he looked at his watch enough times in their short walk to tell Gideon he was distracted. That might be good.
As they rounded the corner of the building and moved into the garden area, MacCray slowed and frowned. When he saw Jedediah, he stopped. “This is your friend?” he asked, interrupting Gideon in mid-sentence.
Gideon glanced to Jedediah who was hunched over but had his head tilted sideways, looking up at them with his hair pulled to one side to show his face. In the shade of the plants, his eyes were dark, still not the color you’d expect to see on an Indian, but closer. He watched the doctor, but he didn’t move, and Gideon guessed that it was taking a lot of courage on his part to stay still and exposed this way. Or a lot of desperation.
“Wild boar got him,” he said over his shoulder to MacCray. “In the leg.”
MacCray didn’t move, but Gideon looked back to see his eyes looking down to the bandage around Jed’s left leg.
“I think it’s pretty bad,” Gideon went on, keeping his voice even. “He can’t hardly put weight on it, and I don’t reckon he’d have come into town if it weren’t. Bart Elston tried to run him off, and him with only one good leg to run with.”
MacCray looked back up at Jed’s face and his frown grew. He glanced around them and took a step back, as if expecting trouble.
Gideon straightened and turned to face the man. He pitched his words low, just for MacCray. “We’ll pay you, whatever it takes. It’s bad, and it ain’t gonna get better without help.”
MacCray’s face tightened, but Gideon saw the flicker of uncertainty. He was, at heart, a good man. Gideon had seen the little signs: the way he went into the poorer parts of town from time to time, to visit the homes of people who wouldn’t come to see him and couldn’t afford him, the way he visited the working girls during the day—not to sample their wares, even though some would have let him, but to help them with the kinds of problems they couldn’t very well come to see him about.
“Just take a look, Doc,” Gideon said, reaching into the pocket of his work pants. He pulled out a Liberty half-eagle that he’d had every intention of saving in case of emergency, and held it out. “You can tell people he paid you in gold.”
MacCray took the coin, shaking his head but the corners of his lips turned up. “This looks familiar—didn’t I see this just the other night?” He tossed it up in the air and caught it before slipping it into the pocket of his vest, where it had been three nights past before he’d lost a big pot to Gideon. This had been the first real money Gideon had won here in Livingston, as he played more for company than for the sport of it. Accordingly, he was no more than passing decent at the cards.
Gideon flashed a smile, as amused as he was relieved.
MacCray was still wary, though. Before he’d look at Jed, he moved them further into the garden, toward the back of the building. “More private,” he said, and it was.
They seated Jed on another bench, this one lower so that it was easier for him to stretch out his leg. He’d already carefully cut the stitching up the leg of his pants all the way to the knee, so MacCray had easy access to the bandage. As he unwound it, the smell of infection grew stronger and Jedediah’s fingers tightened their grip on the edge of the bench, making the tendons in his hands stand out.
The inner layers of the bandage were stuck together and to the leg itself, the cloth discolored and thick with blood and yellow pus. Gideon had seen enough injuries on horses and men to know what it meant. Even if MacCray could treat it, it was still going to be rough. It was a damned wonder the Indian had been able to stand, much less walk.
“Gideon, go and tell Elmer I need a pan of clean water. And have him unlock the back door.”
“Yessir.” Gideon took off at a jog, and waited impatiently as Elmer took down an enamel bowl and filled it from a cistern in the corner.
“What’s it for, Gideon?” Elmer asked, genial enough, but Gideon could almost see his ears swiveling, looking for gossip.
“Reckon the Doc’ll tell you as soon as he’s ready for you to know,” Gideon replied, took the pan, and eased back outside. He held it while the doctor used a cleaner piece of the bandage to soak those parts stuck to Jedediah, who hissed as MacCray carefully worked the last layers of bandage away from the flesh.
“Pretty bad,” MacCray said, more to himself than to them. He turned Jedediah’s leg so he could see the wound from different angles, then he used the balled-up bandage to swipe at places. Jedediah caught his breath, and his eyes closed tightly. Gideon saw the beads of sweat pop out on his forehead and upper lip as MacCray continued to probe the wounds. “Bad infection,” he said, more loudly. “Best thing to do is stop if before it spreads—cut it off. Could do it today—”
But as he drew the tip of one finger across Jed’s leg, above the wound but below the knee, Jed jerked back and twisted away, practically throwing himself to the ground and away from MacCray. “No,” he said as he scrabbled away from them, “no cutting. No cutting!”
“Hey, now,” Gideon
called, moving around MacCray without drawing too close to Jedediah, “hold on now, let’s talk about this for a—”
“No cutting,” the Indian repeated firmly. “It would be better to die quickly, less pain—”
“Calm down,” Gideon said, holding out both hands as he dropped into a crouch close to the Indian. “Nobody’s talking about dying. Nothing’s been decided. Take a breath.” He nodded, trying to be reassuring. “It’ll be all right.”
“No, it won’t,” MacCray said, his voice grim. He had risen to his feet, shaking his legs as if his knees were hurting him. “It’s a serious situation you’ve got there, and there are only so many ways for it to go. An infection that bad, well, it’s rare to live through it if it spreads through your whole body.”
Jedediah shook his head and pulled further away, getting his good leg up under him. “I’ll die for sure if I lose it,” he said, glaring at MacCray. “It’s hard enough to survive with two good legs around your kind.”
“Slow down,” Gideon said, annoyed now, but with MacCray more than with the Indian. He’d thought the man had some sympathy in him. “Let’s talk about this—”
“You speak pretty well,” MacCray said, talking over Gideon. “You grow up living with ‘our kind’?” He was standing still now, his head tilted to one side as he watched Jedediah. The brim of his hat cast a shadow over his eyes, but Gideon knew his expressions well enough to see that he wasn’t hostile or angry—if anything, he was curious.
Jedediah looked at him, his eyes flashing. He was shaking, holding himself up but just barely, and Gideon had to stop himself from reaching out to help. But the Indian’s voice was ice cold as he replied, “Not by my choice or the choice of my people.”
MacCray stared for another few seconds, watching as Jedediah finally rolled to one side, breathing heavily as he rested on his hip and arms, half-sitting, his bad leg resting on his good one. When Jedediah drew a deep breath, as if to get up, MacCray said, “There’s another way. With infection like that, I can’t promise it’ll work at all, but if gangrene hasn’t set in….” He sighed. “It’ll take time and a lot more work, too.” He turned to Gideon. “He’ll have to stay somewhere where I can see him two or three times a day—but not here, not at my place.”
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