“I have a lot of experience with these fingers,” I tell him. “The mayor of New York once gave me a whole silver dollar for playing ‘The Peddler’s Waltz’ on my fiddle. Said my fingers were as nimble as spider legs.” I smile and hope the story improves his confidence in me.
He bites down on his trembling lip, and looks at Badge. Badge nods at him.
The boy buries his head in his arm and bobs his head up and down.
I pour the spirits on my hands and rub them together. Then I pour some on a rag. “This will sting, but that’s a good sign. It means things are getting clean.”
When I touch my rag to the wound, the boy gasps.
Badge takes his hand. “Squeeze my hand, Jeremiah.”
The boy squeezes, but when he sees me wiping my pinkie, he shrinks back into Badge.
“God bless us, a falcon!” Badge exclaims, lifting his head. Jeremiah lifts his own eyes, falling for the distraction, and Badge nods at me. “Falcons are a special bird, Jer. Ain’t no one can catch ’em. Not even you with your bow and arrow.”
My trembling pinkie probes the hole. I bear down on my own tattered nerves.
“Jeremiah made friends with a couple of Cheyenne and they gave him a bow and arrow,” Badge tells me. “Made it special for him.”
“Special, eh?” I push farther and Jeremiah hisses. Keeping my voice light, I ask, “Can you shoot a dandelion from thirty feet away?” Warm tissues close around my finger and blood runs along my arm. I force down the bile rising to my throat and soldier on.
Jeremiah nods, lip trembling.
“What about a dandelion seed?” I ask.
“Ain’t tried,” he rasps.
“Well then, I guess you’ll have some work ahead of you.”
As gently as I can, I probe the walls of the bullet’s tunnel, past ridges and slick bumps, praying I’m not causing more damage. Jeremiah begins to whimper again, and Badge starts a hymn about Moses and the Promised Land. He has a bass voice with an even keel and a rich vibrato. It’s meant for the boy, but it steadies my own jangled nerves.
Finally, just past my second knuckle, I brush the end of the bullet. I don’t talk so my concentration does not break.
The boy’s eyes roll. I don’t have much finger space left, but I do my best to pull the bullet down by stroking it with my fingernail. There. It moves. Gently, I coax it backward.
Soon, we see the end glinting in the daylight. I pinch it between my thumb and index finger, and pull out the crushed piece of metal. Quickly, I finish cleaning the wound.
“You done good, Jeremiah, you done real good,” says Badge.
Jeremiah stops crying and looks down at his leg as I clean it off. I roll the bandages around his thigh. Soon I’ve rolled enough so the blood no longer soaks through. Badge fetches him a fresh pair of trousers that smell like herbs. As Badge helps him into them, I ladle fish stew into two cups.
Badge bows his head over his cup. “Bless this food, dear God, and this boy, who helped your poor servants in their time of need.”
Jeremiah eats with his left hand. Badge waits until the boy finishes half his bowl before starting on his own. I don’t ask questions, since doing so would require answers in kind. Obviously, they’re outrunning the law up here. The less I know, the better. Still, it seems odd not to converse.
“How long you played the fiddle?” asks Badge, saving me from having to think up a neutral topic. Now that the crisis has cooled, his face looks almost friendly with the high and protruding forehead that Chinese people believe indicates good fortune. His mouth still remembers how to smile, despite his hardship.
“Since I was four,” I answer, not wanting to give out my age.
“You got one now?” asks the boy weakly.
“No, it drowned at the Platte River Crossing.”
“We lost one of our own there, too,” says Badge, staring into his stew.
I sit up, remembering the dead man we found at the base of the cottonwood. He was one of theirs after all?
Badge puts down his cup. “We needs to be going.”
He gets to his feet. Gingerly, he lifts Jeremiah into their mule’s saddle. One half of Jeremiah’s face bunches into a grimace, while the other half tries to remain strong.
“Stew’s fine,” says Badge, shaking my hand, and putting his other hand on my shoulder. “Almost worth killing over.”
A voice behind him suddenly yells, “Get your hands off him, before I blow your head off. I swear I’ll do it.”
Jeremiah’s mule skitters out of West and Franny’s way, knocking Badge into me. We fall into a heap on the ground. Badge mutters a curse, then scrambles to a crouch. He eyes his gun, lying on a blanket by the campfire, five paces away.
“No, West!” I scream. His horrified eyes fix on me and my blood-soaked shirt.
“Sammy,” he cries as he slides off Franny. Then, to Badge, “You son of a bitch.” With the butt of his rifle, he whacks Badge in the temple. But at the last second, Badge dodges, and the weapon does not deal a fatal blow, only glances off his cheek. I lunge at West, trying to grab the rifle from him.
As West and I struggle, Badge clambers toward our fire.
“It’s not my blood!” I pant. “I’m fine, he doesn’t mean to hurt us.”
West doesn’t hear me. He throws me off and aims his rifle at Badge, just as Badge raises his. Unlike when he pointed the gun at me, I know by his expression that this time, Badge will use it.
Hastily, I jump to my feet and stand between them. “No, no, don’t shoot!” I babble as I look from one to the other, nearly crying in my panic. West’s chest heaves as he stares through the sight line of his piece.
“Please, listen to me,” I beg him.
“Move away, boy!” Badge orders, his voice now tight and angry.
West tries to move to the side of me, but I get in front of him again. “I swear, out of my way!” he growls.
The chicken threat. West won’t back down as long as Badge doesn’t. I cannot move them to common areas of interest for they won’t even listen to me. Father, are you listening? Tell me what to do.
I once begged Father to rescue a cat stuck up a spruce. We dragged our ladder at least a mile and propped it against the tree. Once Father reached the cat, it ran up another ten feet. So Father climbed back down.
“We’ll come back for the ladder tomorrow,” he told my teary self. “Cat just needs a way down.”
By the next day, the cat was gone.
“Badge,” I say. His head bleeds where West hit him. “Think of Jeremiah.”
“I said, move aside, if you value you’s life!” yells Badge, causing spit to fly. I wilt under the heat of his fury.
“Jeremiah,” I repeat, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “What we did today.” I hold out my hands to him, still stained with blood. Please take the ladder and climb down.
Badge’s eyes flick to Jeremiah, still huddled over his mule, then back to my hands. His body is so rigid, his muscles tremble.
At last, he looks up from his sight line. “A life for a life, eh?” he says.
“Yes, a life for a life.” Behind me, West’s breath escapes as a short gasp.
“Do I have his word?” Badge asks.
West doesn’t say anything.
“West?” I call in a low voice, praying he will see reason.
Again, he doesn’t answer. I count up my remaining options and realize I don’t have any. Badge’s pupils constrict, signaling the imminent squeeze of a trigger.
“Fine,” he says coldly.
Badge puts down his gun. “But if I ever see your face again”—he stabs his finger toward West—“do not think I will be so merciful.”
“Nor I,” comes West’s surly reply.
The two glower at each other for three more counts of white-knuckled panic, until Badge finally tucks his gun back into his coat. In a few strides, he’s with Jeremiah and their mule.
West and I watch them depart until the mule’s footfalls grow too soft to hear. Trees whisper silently to themselves, and shed tears of leaves.