“Beats me,” Sheriff Gamit said. “You’ll have to ask him. If you can.”
CHAPTER 38
“We didn’t see anything,” Scrap said as he came inside the sheriff’s office. “Nothin’ up there but roof and some empty cartridges.”
Juan Carlos was lying on a cot in a cell, unconscious. Sheriff Gamit and the doctor were inside looking after him. Josiah had been standing at the door of the jail, anxiously awaiting Scrap’s return.
“How’s the Mexican doin’?” Scrap asked.
“Not good,” Josiah said.
“What’re we gonna do?”
Josiah shrugged. He didn’t have a clue at the moment. “Depends on what happens to Juan Carlos I ’spect.”
The deputy who had joined Scrap eased by him, then made his way into the cell where Juan Carlos was, to speak to the sheriff. The deputy was a young man, probably no more than twenty years old, skinny as a nail and tall as a pine tree. His gun hung low on his hip, and it looked like the weight of it could tip him over. He murmured something unintelligible in Gamit’s ear, then stood back from the cot respectfully, standing with his arms behind his back.
“That there is Luke. Sheriff Gamit is his granddaddy,” Scrap said.
Josiah nodded. That made sense.
The sheriff walked out of the cell, a grim look on his face. “You fellas can stay here tonight if you’d like. Doc says it’s touch and go for ole Juan Carlos. Might make it through the night, might not. He’s got to get those bullets out of him if he can. Not sure he can survive that. He ain’t goin’ to Laredo anytime soon, though, so you best be thinkin’ of a plan for yourself.”
“Damn,” Josiah said. “Thanks, Sheriff, I think staying here is a good idea. We don’t know our way around town, and hard telling who’s got a lookout for us. Seems to me we might end up worse off than our friend here if we leave now.”
“That’s what I was thinkin’,” the sheriff said. “I’ll send Luke out to get you some grub. There’s an empty cell in the back with a double bunk and a pump just outside the back door. Can’t offer you a place to take a bath, but you can clean up a little bit and rest assured you’re safe for the night.”
Josiah took his hat off. “We sure do appreciate that, Sheriff Gamit.”
“Bill.”
“All right, Bill,” Josiah said, allowing himself to smile for the first time since they’d arrived in Brackett.
The lights were out, and the doctor had long since gone, his task of taking the bullets out of Juan Carlos successfully completed. There was nothing to do but wait and see how things turned out for the Mexican. The doctor gave him a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the night. Not the best odds in the world, but not the worst either.
Josiah was lying on the top bunk, on his back, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, listening to every little sound inside the jail and beyond. His trigger finger lay inches away from the Colt Frontier.
It didn’t matter that they were in the jail, he didn’t feel a bit safe. Somebody knew they were in town. Somebody wanted Juan Carlos dead. And that somebody certainly knew they were still inside the jail. They’d gotten away without leaving a trace of who they were, or who had sent them.
“You awake up there, Wolfe?” Scrap asked, his voice low.
“Yeah, I’m awake. Can’t sleep a wink, I don’t think.”
“Me either. What do you think the Mexican was up to bringing us here?”
“Don’t know, really. The sheriff said Juan Carlos stopped in just as a courtesy, letting him know we were in town. Nothing more than that.”
“That don’t make a lot of sense to me,” Scrap said.
“Me, either, but you’ve been around Juan Carlos enough. He rarely tells you anything, and he never tells you everything.”
“Surprises me you trust him.”
“He saved my life once.”
“Guess you’re even, and I’m one up on him.”
“If he lives.”
Both men grew quiet then, the thought of losing Juan Carlos troubling—at least to Josiah.
“What are we gonna do now?” Scrap finally asked. It didn’t take a loud voice to carry inside the limestone cell, and it was cool, too. Just about right for a thin blanket.
“Juan Carlos told me to look up a man named Dixie Jim. He’s a scout at the fort. It’s the only reason I can think of why we’re here. Maybe this Dixie Jim fella knows the spots around Laredo better than Juan Carlos and can take us in so we can find O’Reilly and do what needs doing.”
“I ain’t real comfortable bein’ around half-breeds.”
“You can always stay here,” Josiah said, his voice firm as was befitting the sergeant he was. Scrap didn’t answer, so Josiah assumed the message had come across loud and clear. “Good, that’s the last I expect to hear about that subject.”
“I ain’t gonna trust him.”
“Nobody said you had to.”
The rising sun quickly warmed the jail cell. Harsh light beamed through the window across from the bunks and bounced off the nearly white walls, rousing Josiah awake long before he was ready.
He had been lost in a dream, one with dead people who could speak and living people who couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried to stay asleep so he could remember what the dead people said, he couldn’t hold on to their words. His mother was there. A soldier that had died next to him in Georgia during the war, a bullet hole squarely in the center of his forehead, the blood caked and old, dirt on his hands, like he had crawled through the earth, out of his grave, just to speak to Josiah in his dreams. Josiah couldn’t even remember the man’s name.
Pearl was there, too. And Juan Carlos was standing on a hill alone, with storm clouds gathering behind him.
It was futile trying to stay asleep, so Josiah sat up in the bunk, wiping the night away, taking a deep breath, trying as hard as he could to see his mother again in his mind’s eye. There was no use in that, either. He couldn’t hang on to the image of his mother, her eyes open, life in them, words coming out of her mouth. All he could remember about her now was seeing her lying in the coffin he’d built with his own hands.
He didn’t try to apply any meaning to dreams, and for a moment, now that he was awake, he had to get his bearings and remember where he was and why.
First thing he did after putting his feet on the ground and seeing Scrap still sleeping away in the other bunk, was go out and check on Juan Carlos.
It didn’t look like Juan Carlos had moved from the last time Josiah had seen him. The Mexican was asleep, or so Josiah assumed, a blanket up to his neck.
Luke was sitting behind a desk in the office section of the jail, and the smell of coffee permeated the room. A pot sat on top of a Franklin stove in the corner.
“There’s coffee there for you, Ranger Wolfe,” Luke said.
Josiah was standing at the cell door, looking in at his friend. “Thanks,” he said.
“Sheriff’ll be in in a little while.”
“I imagine we’ll be gone by then.”
“Headin’ out to the fort?”
