A Hard Ride Home (17 page)

Ira Durn was up there now, standing watch to make sure none of the ranch hands came up to the house looking to raise hell.

Evelyn thought about everything she could. She thought about Emmett's coffee mug from the city, thought about her mother's plump red lips and painted-on beauty mark. She thought of Elsie's best pear cobbler, and whether they'd put Delia to bed. She thought of everything but the way Jesse moaned wretchedly, his throat too swollen to make a proper cry as Sara sewed his flesh up with thin twine and a sharp needle.

It only took a quarter of an hour, but even that was too long. Sara's lower lip went white as she bit it and squinted, stitching him up the way she mended delicate lace and torn garters.

Every few moments, she whispered, "I'm sorry. Oh, Jesse. Hush now, I'm almost done."

They'd propped Jesse on his side after peeling his filthy shirt away. Milton hovered at Jesse's back, cleaning the raw, torn flesh. Warren's boys had whipped him good. Evelyn didn't know how he'd lived through it outside of willing himself to. It didn't surprise her, but it didn't make it any easier to see.

She'd kissed that back. She'd stroked along Jesse's knobby spine as he slept and rubbed his shoulders when he cried and he'd never be the same now. Warren had put marks on him that would never fade away.

If he lived.

*~*~*

In the middle of the night, when the candles had burned low and the lamps cast a faint glow across the room, Josephine didn't sleep. She sat on a tiny stool next to Roscoe's cot and held his hand.

Roscoe was a damn fool. He wore his hair long like a dandy and drank before noon and cheated at cards. And when Warren Grady had walked into the Weeping Willow with his scoundrels in tow, Roscoe had stood there, gun in hand. He'd stood up for every one of the girls, and they'd shot him down.

So Josephine held his hand, and she didn't go to sleep, in case he woke up and wondered why he was over at Doc Milton's and not in his room. She'd never been into Roscoe's room behind the bar, because she'd never been inclined to visit with Roscoe in that way. Not when he mooned after her like a love-struck puppy. She couldn't have some jealous-type scaring her good, paying customers away.

If Roscoe woke up, he'd need her there to tell him where he was, and that he'd be just fine if he lay still and got the rest Doc said he needed.

Old Doc Milton slept, propped up in a chair in the corner, his head tilted back against the wall. Sara had gone off, likely to find her farmer, Durn, and wash the blood out of her dress. The sheriff didn't sleep, but he didn't look at Josephine either, which was for the best. She didn't feel much like chatting.

It was Jesse she aimed to talk to. Jesse was damn near as big a fool as Roscoe, if not a bigger one. When he woke—really woke, not the state he was in now—she'd thank him for killing the mayor. It had been Warren Grady who'd said he'd take her and Rose in when their father had dropped dead of a weak heart. It had been Warren who'd walked them to the back of the Weeping Willow and swatted her on the ass and said, "Good thing your daddy's already dead, ladies." It had been Warren who'd set them to whoring, and whoring was all she'd done since.

Josephine held Roscoe's hand and watched the sheriff bow his head over Jesse, whispering things she couldn't hear. She hoped whatever it was soothed Jesse, because she wasn't sure how long she could bear to listen to the sounds he made. Doc had said Jesse had to keep still and rest or his heart wouldn't hold up through the night, but all he did was fight, tossing his head and noising like a hurt animal.

She'd seen an animal like that once, a foal who'd gotten snake-bit.

They'd shot it.

*~*~*

Evelyn shook Delia awake before sunrise. It took Delia a moment to get her wits about her. Her eyes felt sandy from crying herself to sleep. As soon as she remembered why, she thought Evelyn must be here to tell her something awful.

"Stop it," Evelyn said, wrapping her in a dressing gown twice her size. She cinched the waist with a big bow. "I won't let you see him if you're carrying on like that."

"He's alive, Miss Devaux?" Delia asked, hiccupping.

Evelyn wasn't quick to answer, but she said, "Yes," and led Delia out of the Weeping Willow and over to Doc's place. "He's hurt bad, Delia. I want you to stay with him, do… do the things you do when he's feeling sad, all right? I think he could stand to hear your voice."

When they got to the door at Doc's, Evelyn took Delia's shoulders and held them so tight it hurt. "Don't you scream or cry now, you hear?"

Delia wasn't a baby. She sniffled once and pressed her lips together tightly and gave Evelyn a firm nod. She wanted to help. No one had let her help before, and most of the time all she could do was wait for more bad things to happen. Now, if she could help, she would.

They walked in, and Sheriff glanced up at her with tired eyes. He looked half dead himself, blood crusted in his hair and his face bruised up and stubbly. He had a strip of wet cloth in his hands. Delia took it from him carefully, meaning to help him do whatever he was doing.

Then she looked down and saw Jesse, and it was all she could do to be brave and do as Evelyn had said. She understood why Evelyn had waited so long to say that Jesse was alive.

"Why don't you hustle over to Miss Elsie and eat something right quick?" Delia said, making her voice come out slow and even so she didn't sound as scared as she felt. She took the wet, cold cloth and placed it across Jesse's throat, where his skin was bruised up as purple as a plum.

Jesse didn't stir.

"He was awake," the sheriff said. His voice sounded like it was coming out of an empty jug. "Then he wasn't."

"He's always been like that, Sheriff." She stared at him until he looked back, and that way she knew he was paying attention. "Miss Devaux says it's cause he's like a firecracker. He… She said he goes off loud and hot and then smokes a while."

Behind her, Evelyn laughed, strangled-like. "She's right, Emmett. Go eat. You're no good to him if you can't stay on your feet."

"He's just asleep," the sheriff said. He touched Jesse's forehead with his thumb, stroking it a long while before he cleared his throat and mumbled, "Ladies," before shuffling out the door.

Evelyn put a pot for coffee on Milton's small stove and made herself busy, bustling around the room and tidying a bit. She didn't get too close to where Roscoe and Josephine slept—Josephine reclined alongside him with her fingers tangled with his.

Delia didn't pay any of them much attention. She took the clean sleeve of her dressing gown and dipped it in the bowl of water on the table beside Jesse and used it to wipe his face with slow strokes, clearing away dirt and blood. She didn't get too close to his swelled-up eyebrow, but the rest of his face seemed all right. He looked better when she was finished. He looked more like a sleeping man than a dead one.

"They ought to let you come home," Delia said, touching the edge of the pink-stained sheet beneath Jesse. "Come rest in Miss Devaux's bed, and I'll rub your stinky feet and feed you watermelon."

It was just like the sheriff had said. Jesse didn't answer her at all.

*~*~*

"Sheriff ain't doing much sheriffin'," Rose said, standing barefoot in the hall outside the door to Evelyn's bedroom.

"Can't you tell he's busy?" Delia came just tit-high on her and hadn't left her side much in the past day.

Rose didn't mind. Delia was like having a sweet, good-natured lapdog around. And less yappy at that. "Of course I can, you goose. But what if we're set on by robbers? They'd be off just like that, with Sheriff here mooning and crying."

"He ain't crying. You take it back."

"Mooning, at any rate," Rose said. They kept their voices down because the sheriff was right there sleeping on one side of Evelyn's bed while Jesse lay on the other side, propped up by pillows to keep his back clear of the mattress. It was the first time any of them had seen Emmett sleep since he'd come back into town with Jesse bleeding in his arms. Rose would wager it was only because Elsie had dropped one of Doc's sleeping tinctures in his stew.

Rose wasn't worried about Jesse, even if Doc said he had a fever now and that fevers could do awful things like blind a man or make him sleep so long he'd die of thirst. When she'd run away from Silver Creek once and rode out across the plains on her own, she'd gotten thorn-pricked and ended up with a fever for four days. All the fire had done was burn the poison out. Jesse's fever would burn the poison out. It would scour him clean of all the bad things the mayor had done, and he'd wake up.

She loved him, even if he only had eyes for Emmett Grady.

"What are you two doing out here?" Evelyn asked, appearing behind them like a ghost and damn near scaring Rose out of her skin.

Even with her hair curled and her cheeks stained with rouge, Evelyn looked tired and sick. Rose hadn't seen her look so poorly since all the girls had come down with the grippe at the same time and the Weeping Willow had shut down for a week.

"Visiting Jesse," Rose said, because that sounded better than just plain gossiping.

"He's sleeping, and if you wake him, I'll wallop you both."

It was true. Evelyn had dragged her fair share of misbehaving girls out to the chicken coop for a fearsome spanking.

"Yes ma'am," Delia said, all sweet and timid-like. She got a gentle pat to the head and Rose rolled her eyes.

Evelyn closed the door to her room and gave them both the evil eye until Delia scurried away and Rose wandered off to her own room, where she didn't much want to be because Beatrice was dead. There was a great big bloodstain to show for it on the floorboards in the saloon.

Rose liked whorin' well enough, but damned if she wanted to amount to nothing but a bloodstain in a whorehouse.

All of Beatrice's things were still on her corner of the dresser. Her perfume bottle from the city, and her postcards with pictures of the ocean, and the little whittled lamb a sweet old customer had given her once.

She wasn't exactly crying when Josephine walked in, but it was close enough.

"Oh, girl," Josephine said. She looked awful tired.

They sat on the bed together, holding hands.

Jesse woke to white sails fluttering above him in the wind. It was just like the only picture book he'd ever had as a child. He was on the high seas, drifting. Delicate wings beat around him fretfully, tickling his face.

"Birds," he said, startling himself with the sound of his voice. Why were there birds inside?

"Jesse! Don't try to talk."

That was strange. Birds couldn't speak. And he couldn't move. He felt heavy all over, sunburned and sore.

"Don't—don't move. Jesse, please. It's me. You'll tear your back up, now. Don't move!"

It wasn't birds. He wasn't at sea at all.

"Emmett," Jesse said.

Then he remembered.

*~*~*

Shame tightened Emmett's chest and curdled his insides when he called for Evelyn in a panic.

He wasn't a quitter. He'd never been bested by anything, except maybe Jesse—maybe the first goddamned day he'd seen Jesse walking down the street like he wasn't made like anyone else on Earth.

Jesse bled and fought him, crazed with fever, and the way he hurt—the way he cried—tore Emmett to bits. It was fitting, Emmett tried to reason, that Jesse bested him again now. It was too much. Jesse was too much for him to take on by himself.

Evelyn damn near threw the door off its hinges when she came in, a passel of girls on her heels.

"Rose, fetch Elsie and Doc," she said.

Delia weaseled under Evelyn's arm and ran to the foot of the bed. Before Emmett could say a thing, his throat damn near closed with panic, she hitched up her nightgown and climbed onto the mattress to kneel next to Jesse's thrashing body. She hummed, making low sounds like she'd forgotten the words to a lullaby.

Emmett had his hands on Jesse's wrists and one leg trapped under his weight. He hated himself for holding him down like that, but it was the only way to keep him still and keep him from tearing open all the places that had finally been healing while he'd slept and slept.

Beside the bed, Evelyn didn't move. Glancing at her, Emmett was certain she felt the same way he did. Jesse's grief, the wordless pain pouring out of him like lifeblood, was crippling.

"Jesse Taggart," Delia said, voice soft but stern. She cupped Jesse's face and tried to still his thrashing head, her hands small and white against the splotchy flush of fever and dark stubble at his jaw. "You quit that right now, or Miss Elsie's gonna make you sleep and you been sleeping too much already."

"Has the fever addled him?" Evelyn asked, looking at Emmett. The way she asked, she sounded young and scared. Even when they'd both been children, Evelyn had never sounded like a girl to him. Not like this.

"I don't know, no," Emmett said. Jesse had recognized him, even if it had only been for a second, before he'd looked like something had chased all the reason right out of him and he'd started fighting. It wasn't even like he was trying to get away, or make Emmett leave. It was like he was trying to fold himself up to nothing.

"Course he ain't addled." Delia elbowed Emmett in the ribs. Jesse ran out of steam and caught his fingers up in Delia's nightgown. He buried his face against her stomach and held onto her weakly, like a drowning man. At least he wasn't fighting no more.

Emmett retreated, his empty hands aching. He grabbed a rag off the bed stand and twisted it in his fingers. He looked at his sister across the bed while Delia gathered Jesse up and let him bleed and cry while she stroked his hair over and over.

That was when Emmett realized what he had to do.

*~*~*

Ever since the sheriff had brought Jesse home from the big house, the Weeping Willow had been closed to customers. Sara kept busy anyway. There was laundry, and Elsie needed help at the stove, her poor hands still shaking, always shaking. There was Delia to tend to in the night when the terrors came. There was Josephine to feed because the fool girl couldn't remember to eat, she was so busy watching over Roscoe like she could will him to heal faster. There was Ira to meet at dawn, when his hands were already warm from riding and he smelled like soil and kissed her tenderly.