The Book of Lost Friends(106)

“Don’t expect overmuch,” the doctor warns again from his desk by the fireplace at one end of the room.

The wagon driver told us the tale on the ride upriver. He takes the route regular, to the fort and to Scabtown that’s across water from the fort. Old Mister was brought here from the jail in Mason to plead his case and tell the post commander what he knew about the man who sold him the horse that was the army’s, but he didn’t make it that far. Somebody bushwhacked them on the way, shot one soldier before they could get to some cover to fight it out. The soldier died right off, and Old Mister was nicked in the head. He was in pretty poor shape by the time he got carried on into the fort. The post doctor worked on Old Mister in the hopes to revive him and learn if he knew who had set on them and why. They supposed it might be somebody Mister knew and maybe even the horse thief who’d sold the stole army horses. They wanted to catch him pretty bad. Even more if he’d killed a soldier.

I can tell them about the Irishman, but what will it help? He was already in the army’s hands in Fort Worth town, so he ain’t the one who done the bushwhacking. If Old Mister knows the man to blame for it, he won’t tell. The only person Mr. William Gossett might know down here is the one he come all this way seeking. A son who don’t want to be found.

I hold my peace about it, keep quiet all day and the next day and the next, though I’d like to tell them of Lyle, and how Old Mister sent him from Louisiana two years back, a boy only sixteen, running from a charge of murder. And how Lyle had care of the land in Texas, the land that was meant for Juneau Jane’s inheritance someday, and Lyle sold it when it didn’t belong to him. A boy who’d do that might shoot his own papa.

I don’t tell a soul. I’m afraid it won’t go good for us here if I do. I keep my secrets while our days pass at the fort, Old Mister trapped twixt living or dying. The doctor’s wife looks after us and gets us into proper clothes, collected up from the other wives at the fort. We look after Old Mister and each other.

Juneau Jane and me spend time with The Book of Lost Friends. Regiments of colored cavalrymen live here at the fort. Buffalo soldiers, they’re called. They’re men that hail from far and wide, and men who travel far and wide, too. Way out into the wild lands. We ask after the names in our book, and we listen to the soldiers’ stories, and we write the names of their people in the book and where they were carried away from.

“Stay clear of Scabtown,” they tell us. “It’s too rough a place for ladies.”

Feels strange to be womenfolk again, after all this time as boys. It’s harder, in a way, but I wouldn’t go out from the fort or to that town anyhow. A knowing’s been brewing in me again. I feel something coming, but I can’t say what.

It’s a bad thing, though.

The knowing keeps me close to soldiers and never out farther than the hospital building, which sits away from the others so’s not to spread sickness if there is some. I watch the officers’ wives move round, and their children play. I watch the soldiers drill, form up their companies, play bugles, and leave to the West in long lines, side by side on their tall bay horses.

I wait for Old Mister to breathe his last.

And I watch the horizons.

We’re two weeks at the fort on the day I look out from the room the doctor’s wife has us three girls sleeping in, and I see one man alone, riding in off the prairie at the break of day, no more than a shadow in the bare light. The doctor has said Old Mister’s body won’t last through today, tomorrow at longest, so I think maybe that rider is the death angel, finally come to bring us peace from this trial. Old Mister’s been troubling my dreams. A restless spirit that won’t leave me be. He wants to tell something before he goes. He’s holding a secret, but his time’s run out.

I hope he can let go of it and won’t haunt me after he’s departed his earthly shell. That thought troubles my mind as I study the death angel on his horse gliding through the early fog. I’m up and dressed in a blue calico like the one we bought for Juneau Jane back in Jefferson. The hem hangs a little short on me, but it ain’t unseemly. I don’t need to pad out the bodice like we did with Juneau Jane.

I’m pulled from the window when Missy wakes and goes to gagging and holding her mouth. I’m almost too slow with the washbasin to stop her from messing the floor.

Juneau Jane staggers out of bed and dips a cloth in the pitcher and hands it to me after. Her eyes are red and hollowed out. The child’s heart is weary from all this waiting. “Nos devons en parler,” she says, and nods at Missy. We need to talk about it.

“Not today,” I tell her, because I understand enough of her Frenchy talk, now. We use it round the fort when we don’t want others to know what we say. This place is crowded with folks who wonder at the secrets we might hold. “We ain’t talking about Missy today. Be time enough for it tomorrow. Her trouble ain’t going nowhere.”

“Elle est enceinte.” No need for Juneau Jane to explain that last big word to me. We both know Missy is carrying. Her monthly hasn’t come in all this time we been traveling. She’s sick most mornings, and so tender in the breasts, no way she’d let me bind her up, even if we were still wearing boys’ clothes. She fusses and squirms just over a corset tied loose, which she’s got to have to be decent here.

Juneau Jane and me have left it unsaid till now, ignoring it separate and hoping that’d make it not true. I don’t want to think about how it happened, or who the baby’s father might be. One thing’s certain, it won’t be long before the doctor or his wife figures us out. We can’t stay here much longer.