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  Since liquid was what Lucy needed to stay alive, Emma carried the steaming mug into the bedroom with a smile of confidence. Unfortunately, the smile would soothe only Matt, since Lucy rarely opened her eyes anymore.

  He sat in a rocking chair beside the window holding Lucy. His arms looked part strength, part tenderness drawing her close to his heart. The color of his shirt had deepened to a dark blue plaid where it had become soaked from the warm wet sheet tucked about her.

  The chair rocked against the floor with a creak. Matt sang the song about Utah Carl saving the life of little Lenore. Emma remembered the song from that not so long ago night that Matt had driven her out to her homestead. Emma understood now that the song had been about Lucy’s father.

  Did Matt sing it to Lucy because he believed that father and daughter would be together soon? Emma choked back a groan. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Lucy in such a way.

  Waving goodbye from the station platform would have been sorrow enough. To lose Lucy to the grave would be unbearable.

  Matt hummed for a moment, then looked up.

  “I can’t tell if she hears me or not.”

  Emma sat on the bed, shoving aside Princess to make room. The dog stood up, followed its tail in a circle, then settled beside Fluffy.

  “I hear you, Papa.”

  Lucy’s voice sounded thin and dry. Matt dipped his ear close to her tiny cracked lips. When she said no more he thumped his head against the back of the rocker with a long slow sigh.

  Emma slipped to the floor in front of the rocker.

  “Its Mama, baby. You’ve got to try and drink some of this tea.” She stroked the damp curls off Lucy’s forehead and wished that the moisture had not come from the sheet, but from sweet healthy sweat. “Please, take just a sip.”

  Lucy shook her head once, weakly.

  Emma took a small square of clean cotton from the pocket of her apron. She dipped it in the tea.

  “Open her mouth and see if she’ll suck on this. Maybe enough will trickle down her throat to do her some good.” She sat back on her heels and watched Matt press the dripping cloth to Lucy’s lips. He dabbed her mouth to moisten it then slipped the peppermint rag into her mouth

  “She’s taking it.” The first smile she’d seen in more hours than she wanted to count tipped the corners of Matt’s lips.

  “Let’s try it again,” she said.

  She dipped the rag into the tea three more times and Lucy sucked like a baby with her bottle.

  “We’d better make that enough for now.”

  “Pray God it stays down,” Matt said.

  She touched his knee and nodded. “It will. This time it will.”

  There was no way of knowing that, but sounding sure made her spine a little stiffer and her voice a bit firmer.

  “Rachael wonders if it’s water that makes the children come down with this infantile cholera.” She stood up, moved Princess’s tail out of the way and sat once more upon the bed.

  Thunder clapped in the distance. The sudden bang rattled the shutters at the window.

  “The water looks clean enough. I wonder what would cause it to make folks sick.” Matt resettled Lucy in his arms, then drew her limp little body closer in the sodden sheet. A shiver caught his shoulders. He would be cold with his own clothing getting wet. Maybe in his concern for Lucy he didn’t notice it, or maybe he didn’t feel it worth the mention.

  “I can’t figure it, but Rachael says the Chinese don’t get cholera and they don’t drink water, only tea,” she said.

  Rain pelted the window, driven by sidelong wind.

  Princess laid her warm black head on Emma’s lap and whined. The dogs had grown as listless as their young mistress. Emma traced a line with her finger from the tip of the pup’s nose to the gentle slope of her head. “Good pup.”

  “Rachael has lived all over the place.” Lightning blanched the inside of the room in stark light for an instant before thunder crashed over the house. Emma felt the dog tense and whine until the room once again glowed with the soft light of the oil lamp. “She says whenever her husband gets the call to move on, they pack up the family and go.”

  “They’ve been in Dodge for some years now.” Matt slowed his rocking to a creakless tilt. “I expect there’s plenty of souls need saving right here without having to move on.”

  “That must be a relief to her.” Emma listened to heavy rain pulse and ripple across the roof. “Getting to put down roots someplace.”

  “I reckon she’d tell you her roots aren’t in any kind of soil, but in her family’s heart.”

  There was a good chance that was the very thing Rachael would say.

  What good did those kinds of roots do Emma, now? As soon as Lucy was well, and she would be, heartache in one form or another would shatter her.

  Buggy wheels crunched outside, passing the window.

  Emma shooed the dogs away from the bed. “That must be Doc Brown.”

  Matt laid Lucy down in the center of the mattress and trailed his finger over her sunken cheek before he straightened.

  “I’ll go see to his horse.”

  “He’ll want to dry off and have a bite to eat.” Emma took a step toward the door, but Matt caught her arm.

  “Whatever happens…” Emma’s shoulder grazed his chest. She felt his damp shirt brush against her arm with his breathing. “I’m not sorry you caught me in the livery that day.”

  “I’m not sorry, either.”

  He kissed her.

  One and a half heartbeats later he dashed out to meet the doctor.

  * * *

  Piano music, jangling out of the open door of the Long Branch, wasn’t a whit muffled by the rain pounding Front Street to mud.

  Red pressed his back against the wall of the store on the opposite side of the street. Anyone gazing out of the saloon would not notice him standing under the porch overhang with rain sluicing off the roof and pelting the toes of his boots.

  Blamed if the rectangle of light coming out of the saloon’s door did anything but let fresh air in and smoke rings out. For observing what went on inside, it wasn’t much. How was he to get a glimpse of Hawker if he didn’t get any closer than this?

  Matt had forbidden him to go inside any of the saloons in town. He’d forbidden him to come to town at all. Next thing, Matt would forbid him to even think a wicked thought.

  There would be hell to pay if he got caught standing here, so why not move a little closer, as long as he might have to pay for the crime, anyway?

  Since he was near the size of a grown man, he could stand outside the door with his hat pulled low, as if he was a gambler taking a break from his winning streak. That way, he’d be able to see most of what went on inside.

  Odds were against anyone in there recognizing him. Since respectable folk were cozied up in their homes at this hour, he wasn’t likely to get caught.

  With the chances of being found out slim, Red took long bold steps through the muck and up the steps to the Long Branch.

  Sure was a party going on inside there. It would be a fine thing to be able to join in if he was of a mood, but celebrating wasn’t much in his heart. With Lucy sick near to death and Matt and Emma near lovesick to death, a frolicking time didn’t seem fitting.

  With a deep tug on the brim of his hat he took up his bored-gambler stance beside the door. A steady drip of water from his Stetson ticked against his vest. He took off his gloves and shoved them into his rear pocket. That made his fingers cold, but a gambler wouldn’t likely be standing about wearing homestead gloves.

  He’d heard enough descriptions of Hawker to know that the killer was of medium height and bald as a doorknob. He might be the man sitting face toward the door no more than twenty feet in.

  The fellow was thick around the middle, just as Emma had described him, and shifted the cards in his hands as quickly as Red’s eyes could follow.

  He’d be a match for Matt if it ever came to it.

  Red blew on his chilly fin
gers. A man of cards would do that so as not to let his luck run cold. Someday, if he lived through the thing he had to do, he’d try his luck at a game or two.

  He didn’t hear the footsteps coming up the steps, but he heard the voice whispering in his ear clearly enough.

  “You young saphead, what are you doing hanging outside the saloon in the rain?”

  “You’re out here, too, Jesse, so I guess I’m no more of a saphead than you are.”

  “I’ve got a legitimate reason to be out.” Jesse tugged on his elbow, pulling him out of eyesight of the saloon door. “You’re here looking for trouble.”

  “That’s not exactly so. I’m looking to end trouble, is all.” How would he do that now, with Jesse showing up to make sure he didn’t?

  “Any fool can see that you’re peeking in at Hawker. No wonder Matt worries about you so.”

  “No one needs to worry about me. I’m near grown and fast as any man.”

  “You’re too dumb to know just how dumb you sound.” Jesse took three steps down the boardwalk, then turned back. “You going to come to the livery and spend the night with me or just stand there and let the rain turn you into a drowned pup?”

  “Ain’t no pup.” But the wetter he got, the colder he got. The stove in the livery sounded inviting. Besides, if he called out Hawker tonight, as he wanted to, his trigger finger would be too stiff to do the job.

  He fell in step beside Jesse, eager for the warmth of the stove and maybe even some dry clothes.

  “How’s Lucy faring?”

  “Not good. Doc Brown is doing what he can, but I can’t hardly stand to see her looking so weak and pitiful.”

  That was half the reason he had sneaked off. To see Lucy looking like a ghost broke his heart. Nothing was the same without her making things lively.

  “Matt must be in a state,” Jesse said.

  “He tries to act like he isn’t, but he was in a state before Lucy ever got sick.”

  “All this business with Hawker’s got to be a strain.”

  Jesse glanced over his shoulder at the saloon a block back.

  “That’s part of it, for sure. The rest is that he wants Emma to go with us to California, but she won’t leave her house… . Jesse, you got anything to eat in the livery—for folks, I mean?”

  “I can keep you fed and warm, just so long as you agree to stay put. I won’t have you hunting down Hawker during the night.”

  A block away, a yellow light shone from Jesse’s room inside the livery. A full belly and a warm pile of straw to bed down on seemed more fitting at the moment than icy rain and justice.

  “I’ll stay put for now, but Jess, I’m the one who ought to be facing Hawker.” He could do it, too. With just a little practice he would be a faster draw than even Matt, and that was saying something. “Matt’s only in this scrape because of me. If it hadn’t been for me, he wouldn’t have to go to California. He could stay here with Emma and be happy.”

  Rain pelted his face so hard that it stung. He bent his head and lengthened his strides toward the livery.

  “You were even more of a child then than you are now. Matt made his choice, Red. He never regretted it and doesn’t now.”

  That didn’t change a thing. This was his fight. Once he took care of Hawker, Matt would be able to live the life he wanted with the woman he loved. He owed his stand-in father at least that much, likely a great deal more.

  Besides, being young didn’t mean being slow. Lots of boys made a name with their gun. Billy the Kid, for one.

  Red ignored Matt’s voice in his mind reminding him that The Kid was dead.

  He would not end up dead. He would be the one to make everything come out right.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Decline.

  Seven ordinary letters—one word that he would rather die than hear.

  Matt didn’t die, though, even with the doctor standing beside Lucy’s bed making the pronouncement.

  Morning sun broke through the storm and scattered it toward the east, but there was no cheer in it. He felt numb. Fear surrounded his heart and squeezed. Only by locking his knees did he remain standing so that he could ask what was the worst that could happen now.

  Emma slipped in under his arm. Her fingers trembled against his vest, so he hugged her close. Her dress felt as wet as his shirt from the many hours of wrapping Lucy in warm damp sheets.

  “It doesn’t always mean there’s no hope.” Doc Brown lifted his glasses away from his face and wiped his hand across his face. Two days’ worth of beard stubble scraped beneath his palm with a hiss. “From here on out her little body has less to fight back with. The disease has the upper hand and it’s harder for her to…but I’ve seen some make it that were even further into decline than Lucy is. Children are tough, for all they seem so small.”

  “Lucy is.” Emma’s voice barely whispered out of her lips, yet it sounded certain. She turned in the crook of his elbow and reached out, touching his cheek with her fingertips. “Mercy, that child surprises us day in and day out.”

  Lucy’s mother had been strong, and so had her father, but they had long since been in the grave.

  Emma’s confidence rallied his sagging spirits only enough that they floated ankle-high in the gloomy room, which was a sight higher than they had been a second ago.

  He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her forehead before he bent next to the bed.

  “Lucy, darlin’. Did you hear the doc?” She lay so pale and silent on the bed that if it hadn’t been for the shallow rise and fall of her thin ribs he would have thought the worst. “You don’t have to go. You’re a strong little girl, just like Mama says. Everyone’s out in the parlor praying that you’ll soon be stomping around in the creek looking for frogs.”

  Princess whined and laid her head over Lucy’s arm. Fluffy gave a quiet yip and a half wag of her tail.

  “Did you hear that, baby? I believe Fluffy and Princess just said a prayer in their own puppy way.”

  It may have been his imagination, but he thought he saw her head nod a fraction of an inch.

  The fighter inside her hadn’t given up, but her little body seemed to be fading by the moment. Unless something changed, unless something…

  It was clear that there was nothing more he could do for her. Maybe only ease her way out of this world with a song. He thought she might hear it, so he began a low croon even though it ripped from his heart and tasted bitter on his tongue.

  The tone sounded shaky, as if his voice had grown too fearful to hold a common note. It stretched as thin as a tight string.

  From behind he heard Emma choke on a single sob. All of a sudden he couldn’t breathe. The walls darkened and closed in like a smothering, living thing.

  “I’ve got to go out for a minute, darlin’, but I’ll be back. Don’t you go anywhere, do you hear, baby? Don’t go.”

  Matt dashed out of the sickroom and crossed the parlor without greeting Rachael or Joseph Sizeloff, who sat on the couch speaking in quiet tones with Jesse.

  It was a surprise to see Jesse here at this time of morning, since no one had yet sent word of Lucy’s decline.

  Out on the porch Billy sat on the stoop whittling a six-inch piece of wood. Red, leaning against the house, gave him a quick glance then stared at his boots.

  Greeting them would be polite, but the only thing he wanted was to get to the barn. There, in the privacy of shadows and the silence of shifting straw, he would give way to the fear that turned his courage to dust. If he didn’t he might just burst open from the grief of it.

  He’d let it go, then find the fortitude to go back inside. If his child needed him to hold her back from the grave with all his strength, that’s what he’d do. If she needed him to let her go, to help ease her to the other side, he’d do that, too.

  * * *

  “Mrs. Suede…Emma, wake up.”

  The doctor’s voice sounded far away, but the urgent pressure of his fingers on her shoulder roused her. Had she truly falle
n asleep sitting on the floor beside the bed? If the tingling in her legs was any indication she’d been at it for some time.

  “I must have dozed off for a moment,” she mumbled, but didn’t want to open her eyes, it seemed as if years had passed since she’d last had a solid night’s sleep.

  She cracked her eyelids open and glanced around the room. Matt hadn’t returned yet, so not much time would have passed.

  “There’s someone asking for you.”

  Emma wiggled her toes to chase away the fuzzy feeling in them. If neighbors were calling to offer comfort they’d want something to eat, or maybe some tea, if she could stand to brew another cup.

  She glanced up at the doctor’s face to see him smiling.

  “Mama.” Lucy’s voice sounded weak, but she spoke!

  Emma spun about on her knee.

  “Lucy!” She touched the small ashen cheek and smoothed back a tangle of curls from Lucy’s forehead.

  A quick glance up at the doctor told her what she wanted to know. His smile, stretching from one side of his face clear to the other, had to mean that Lucy would recover.

  “You’re going to be just fine, baby. Are you thirsty?” Lucy nodded, then glanced beside her on the mattress. “Mama, Fluffy and Princess are in the house…right on my bed.”

  Emma had to bend her ear low to hear. Lucy’s voice was no more than a whisper, but, praise be, she had despaired of ever hearing it again!

  “They’ve been so worried. I suppose they can stay for a while.” She wanted to cry and laugh all at once. Judging by the taste of wet salt on her tongue, she was doing both.

  Lucy reached for her pups and was rewarded by a pair of wagging tails. Luckily the dogs recognized that their companion was still weak and didn’t yip and trounce upon her.

  “I’ll go get you some tea.”

  “I’ll take care of that, Mrs. Suede.” The doctor looped his thumbs into the suspenders sagging from his shoulders and rocked back on his heels. His grin puffed his cheeks into pink circles of happiness. “You go on along and spread the good word to your husband.”