“Closest telegraph is in Fort Worth.”
He spun a coin across the counter and left the saloon. Outside, he pulled down the brim of his hat and gazed at the rain. He knew how to stop Lola. The telegram he’d send would aim a bullet right at her head. If he was lucky, Emile Julie and his men would head north immediately, and Julie would take care of Lola before something happened to Freddy or Alex. His only regret was that Julie wouldn’t arrive in time to save Les’s share of the inheritance.
Writing the telegram in his mind, angry that he had to wait until he reached Fort Worth to send it, he stepped into a stew of mud, horse droppings, tobacco juice, and refuse, crossed the street, and entered a penny-candy store. “Licorice,” he growled at the man standing behind a high glass case.
Christ, he wanted a drink.
When Alex moved out in front of the herd, it was like driving into an ocean of green, tipped by waves flecked with blues and golds and the delicate pink petals of sturdy prairie wildflowers. Up ahead, she glimpsed strung-out herds grazing northward. To the east lay rolling pastures and neat fields of cotton plants. The Edwards Plateau rose on her left, tinted green by twisted mesquite trees, live oak, and cedar.
Since Les was riding with her, she refused to travel at her usual breakneck speed. This frustrated her pilot, but the slower pace was easier on the leg she braced against the seat fender. Actually, her leg had strengthened to the point that her knee no longer quivered and trembled and threatened to collapse when she climbed down from the driver’s seat, and she could have used her crutch all day without feeling undue strain. That realization disturbed her. The mobility and convenience of the crutch were insidious seductions too depressing to think about.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, glancing at the rope Grady had used to tie Les to the seat.
Les’s eyelids fluttered, and she fixed fever-glazed eyes on the pilot riding out ahead of them. “So hot. Thirsty.” The damp cloth on her forehead had dried in the warm breeze.
“Don’t rub your leg,” Alex cautioned, frowning. According to the book of home remedies she’d brought on this journey, yeast paste helped against the inflammation drawing a red line along Les’s wound, and she’d tried white vitriol, too. After she set up camp, she’d give Les some quinine, try that against the fever making her incoherent at times.
Fixing her gaze on the mule’s ears, Alex pressed her lips together and swallowed a scream of helplessness. She wasn’t skilled in medical matters, hadn’t dreamed that doctoring would form such a regular part of her responsibilities. Already she had splinted broken fingers, cleaned cuts, dosed rumbling stomachs, dispensed liniments for strains and sprains. The challenge of unexpected emergencies kept her in a constant state of anxiety and dread. And she’d been praying that nothing as serious as Les’s injury would come her way.
The only good thing about Les’s worrisome fever was having company during the ride ahead of the herd and while she set up camp. She detested the terrible forty minutes alone, absolutely alone, after the pilot turned back and before Grady swept in with the remuda.
Sometimes the vast open spaces made her feel so insignificant as to experience utter hopelessness. Other times she felt paralyzed with fear, clinging to the wheels or her worktable, terrified that she would be drawn up, up, up and swallowed by the seamless sky. Always she worried that the pilot would forget where he left her and take the herd somewhere else.
When the pilot waved her off and cantered away, she glanced at Les, then reached for her crutch and leaned over the side to poke the crutch tip at the ground. Her routine began by checking every inch of the campsite for rattlesnakes. The first week out, she had rolled her chair over a snake and the experience had stopped her heart and aged her ten years. It hadn’t been a rattler, thank God, but it could have been. The lesson stayed with her.
Climbing down, she adjusted the crutch beneath her armpit, and found her pistol behind the driver’s seat before she grimly set off on the twice-daily snake hunt. As always, she silently thanked Dal Frisco for insisting that they learn to shoot.
“Were you firing a gun?” Les asked drowsily when Alex returned to the wagon.
“I got two of them,” Alex said crisply. She was leaving a satisfying trail of dead snakes behind her. “I’ll get you some water.”