Chapter Twenty-Four
Clay rode into Genoa with dried mud up the gelding’s legs and dust ground into every seam of his clothes.
The settlement sat low beneath the eastern slope, a scatter of wood buildings and false fronts, with the old courthouse rising above them in pale brick.
Smoke lay close over the roofs. There were hitching rails, two freight wagons, a blacksmith’s shed with its doors open wide, and a saloon with a crooked sign that read ORMSBY HOUSE.
He had not seen a proper town in weeks.
A woman in an apron swept a boardwalk outside a dry goods store. Two boys stopped their game of marbles to watch him pass. Clay did not slow. His horse needed water. So did he. But there were sick people back among the wagons, some too weak to lift their heads.
At the livery beside the saloon, a broad man with a gray beard came out wiping his hands on his trousers.
“Need a stall?” he asked.
“Water first. Feed too, if you’ve got it.” Clay swung down, and his knees nearly buckled. He caught himself on the saddle horn before the man could see much of it.
“You been riding hard.”
“From the trail west of here.”
The man took one look at Clay’s face and quit asking questions. “I’ll see to him.”
Clay pulled the reins free. “Don’t let anybody take him.”
“Ain’t likely.”
Clay gave him what money he had loose in his pocket. It was not enough for the oats, but it was what he could spare. The liveryman glanced at the coins, then at the sweat-dark neck of the horse.
“You bring the rest later.”
“I will.”
Clay crossed to the saloon.
The batwing doors stood open. Heat and tobacco smoke met him first, then the smell of spilled beer. A few men sat at tables near the windows. One slept with his cheek on his folded arms. At the far wall, a card game had stopped in the middle of a hand.
Clay walked toward the bar.
The barkeep was polishing a glass with a rag that had once been white. “What’ll it be?”
“A doctor.”
The barkeep looked him over. “You look to be in need of one.”
“Not for me.”
“Town physician’s Dr. Marley. His office is two streets north, next door to the printer.”
“Is he there?”
“Likely.” The man set the glass down. “What happened?”
“Poisoned meat. Near thirty sick. Maybe more.”
The barkeep’s mouth tightened. “How long?”
“Since last night. Some of ’em were sick before dawn. One boy’s dead.”
For a moment, the room went still around them. Clay saw the barkeep’s eyes shift toward the door, as if the sick might already be coming through it.
“You say poisoned?”
“The men who ate it started cramping and vomiting. Fever too. The ones who didn’t eat are well.”
“Could be bad meat.”
“Could be.” Clay kept his voice even because he had no strength left for anger. “I need the doctor.”
A chair scraped behind him.
“Clay?”
He knew the voice before he turned.
The man by the card table had risen so fast he knocked over his chair.
He was taller than Clay remembered, though perhaps that was only because Clay had last seen him as a boy.
He wore a dark blue cavalry coat gone soft at the elbows, the lieutenant’s bars still fixed at the collar.
His hair was darker than Clay’s, cut short now, and a pale mark ran from his left temple into his hairline.
But his smile was the same.
Jesse Donovan crossed the room in three long steps.
Clay could only stare.
Jesse stopped before him. “Lord above.”
Clay’s throat closed. He had imagined this moment too many times, and none of those imaginings had prepared him for Jesse’s hand closing hard around the back of his neck.
“You’re alive,” Clay said.
Jesse let out a breath that sounded close to a laugh. His eyes were wet, though he blinked the tears away at once. “That’s what I ought to be saying to you. Look at you.”
Clay grabbed him back, throwing both arms around him, not caring who looked. Jesse smelled of leather, smoke, and cold air.
For years Clay had kept the photograph in his hidden place near the orphanage. Jesse standing at the back with one hand on Clay’s shoulder. Younger boys crowded around them. Franklin beside the doorway, smiling in a way Clay had forgotten men could smile.
Clay had looked at Jesse’s face so often that he had begun to believe it belonged only to paper.
Jesse stepped back and held Clay at arm’s length.
“You got taller.”
“So did you.”
“That’s time for you.”
“I thought you were dead.”
Jesse’s expression changed. The saloon dimmed around them. “I know.”
Clay looked at the scar. “I haven’t heard from you in ages.”
“I wrote once from Nashville. Never knew if it got through. After that…” Jesse glanced down at his own hand.
The knuckles were scarred. “After that, things got tangled. Army moved us west. I was laid up awhile. When the war ended, I stayed on. There was work to do, men getting home, posts being shut down. Then I had no wish to go back east.”
Clay swallowed. “We waited.”
“I should’ve come.”
“You should have.”
Jesse nodded once. He did not defend himself.
A cough came from the end of the bar. The barkeep was watching them without trying to hide it.
Clay pulled away first. “I need a doctor.”
Jesse’s face sharpened. “You said poisoned meat.”
“My people are camped out on the trail. Got people caring for them. There’s children. Sarah’s with them but she can’t do much.”
Jesse put a hand on Clay’s shoulder. “How far?”
“Half a day if we take a wagon. Less with fresh horses.”
“Who’s Sarah?”
Clay looked at him.
“I’ve been gone a while. I’m allowed one question.”
“You’re allowed to find me a doctor.”
“That I can do.” Jesse reached across the bar, caught the barkeep’s attention. “Miller, get my horse saddled. And hitch the army wagon if it’s still got wheels under it.”
“It’s got wheels.”
“Then put two good horses on it. And load water barrels. Blankets. Whatever food Mrs. Vale has ready.”
The barkeep frowned. “You paying for all that?”
Jesse took a purse from inside his coat and dropped it on the counter. It landed with a hard clink.
“If there’s anything left, send it to Mrs. Vale anyway.”
Miller looked into the purse. His face altered. “You ain’t got to—”
“Move.”
The barkeep moved.
Jesse turned back to Clay. “Dr. Marley’s capable, but he’s old and his hands shake when he’s tired. We need Dr. Vale.”
“Where is he?”
“At his house, if God’s being decent today.” Jesse was already heading for the doors.
Clay followed.
Outside, the light struck his eyes white. Jesse walked beside him at an easy pace, though Clay knew he was hurrying. Jesse had always moved like that. Even as a boy, he could make running look untroubled.
“You’re a lieutenant now,” Clay said.
“Was. Honorably discharged last winter.” Jesse tapped his collar. “Haven’t got around to taking these off.”
“You stayed all this time?”
“Somebody had to see men through. Soldiers who didn’t know where to go. Freed families looking for kin. Boys with half a leg and no money for the train.” He looked toward the mountains. “I figured I’d done enough taking orders. I wanted to do something useful.”
Clay looked at him.
Jesse glanced over. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You look like you’re judging me.”
“I am.”
“Fair enough.”
They passed the blacksmith shop. Clay’s stomach turned at the smell of hot iron. He had not eaten since the day before.
Jesse caught it. “When did you last eat?”
“Yesterday.”
“Yesterday when?”
Clay did not answer.
Jesse swore under his breath, reached into his coat, and took out a piece of wrapped bread. It was dark rye, a little stale. He held it out.
Clay shook his head.
“Eat it.”
“There are people dying.”
“And you’ll be no help if you drop in the road.”
Clay took the bread. He did not thank him. He bit into it as they walked. The crust scraped his dry mouth. He forced himself to chew.
They found Dr. Vale’s house at the end of a street lined with cottonwoods. It was a narrow building with green shutters and a tidy vegetable patch behind a fence. A woman was kneeling in the dirt, pulling onions. She looked up when Jesse came through the gate.
“Jesse Donovan,” she said. “If you’ve come to borrow—”
“Where’s your husband?”
Her hands stilled.
“In the surgery. Why?”
“Need him on the trail. Bad food, maybe contaminated. Thirty people sick.”
The woman stood at once. “How sick?”
“Fever, vomiting, cramps. Started overnight.”
She looked past Jesse to Clay. He knew what she saw. His hollow face. His shirt stiff with road dust.
“Come in,” she said.
Jesse opened the door.
The house smelled of camphor, soap, and boiled linen. A small bell rang somewhere inside. Clay stood in a narrow hall while Jesse pushed through a door at the back.
“Vale.”
A man answered. “If that is another fellow with a cough he’s had since Christmas, tell him—”
“Not a cough.”
Dr. Vale came out.
He was perhaps forty, lean and brown-haired, wearing a stained apron. His forearms were bare to the elbow. He looked first at Jesse, then at Clay.
“Tell me plain,” he said.
Clay told him.
He did not speak of Everett. There was no use in it yet.
He spoke of the hunters bringing back the meat.
Of the smell Clay had caught before it went in the pot.
Of telling Sarah not to eat. Of the men laughing at him for being cautious.
Then the sickness. The sweat. The foul water in the basins. The fever.
He spoke faster near the end.
Dr. Vale asked questions and did not interrupt.
“How many children?”
“Five that ate. One died.”
“Old people?”
“Charlotte Granger. She didn’t eat anything, but she’s starving.. Samuel Ross is thirty-five but his’s bad. Got a couple with us, they have a newborn.”
“A newborn.” Dr. Vale’s jaw set. “How far is this camp?”
“About twenty miles. East.”
“Can the wagons move?”
“Not with most of them.”
Dr. Vale went back into the surgery. Clay heard drawers opening, bottles clinking, the rustle of paper. Jesse went after him.
“Elias,” Jesse said, “take what you need. I’ll drive.”
“You’ll do no such thing. You drive like you learned it from cavalrymen.”
“I did.”
“And that is precisely the trouble.”
Mrs. Vale entered behind them, carrying a clean canvas sack. “You’ll need more supplies than you think,” she said. “And soap. I’ll send Lydia from the laundry house and Nora Jennings. They have strong hands and sense enough to use them.”
Dr. Vale did not look up from his case. “Nora’s expecting.”
“Nora can decide for herself.”
“She’ll decide wrong.”
“She always does where sick people are concerned.”
Clay stood by the door, bread clenched in one hand. The room tilted slightly. He set the rest of it on the table before he dropped it.
Dr. Vale looked up. “Sit down, son.”
“I can ride.”
“You can sit while I pack.”
Clay did not move.
Jesse came to him and guided him by the elbow toward a chair. There was no force in it, but Clay sat.
“You don’t have to hold it all by yourself anymore,” Jesse said quietly.
Clay stared at the floorboards.
The words made him angry before he knew why. Maybe because they were true. Maybe because all morning he had been holding the picture of Sarah in his mind: her hair falling loose, kneeling beside a sick woman with a cloth in her hand. Sarah refusing rest because there was work to do.
“I left them,” he said.
“To get help.”
“What if—”
“Clay.”
He looked up.
Jesse crouched in front of him, the way he had when Clay was small and bloodied from some fight behind the orphanage shed.
“You got help,” Jesse said. “Now we go.”
Dr. Vale snapped his case shut.
“Mr. McCall,” he said, “I cannot promise you all of them. You understand that.”
Clay nodded.
“But I can promise I’ll do my best.”
Outside, harness chains rattled. A wagon rolled up before the gate. Mrs. Vale came in with two crates of jars and bundles of cloth. Behind her were two women in plain dresses, one carrying a basket of bread, the other a pail with a tight lid.
“You can tell me about Sarah on the road,” Jesse said.
Clay let go. “You’re still a fool.”
“That’s the first decent thing you’ve said to me.”
Clay felt something loosen in his chest. It was too soon for relief. But the road ahead no longer looked empty.
He followed Jesse out to the wagon.