'What if they don't pay us here?' the pessimistic Needle asked one night. 'We signed on for Montana, we might not get no wages in Nebraska.'
'Oh, the Captain will pay us,' Dish said. Despite his attachment to Lorena he was becoming as excited as the rest about going to town.
'Why would he?' Lippy asked. 'He don't care whether you have a whore or not, Dish.'
That sentiment struck everyone as almost undoubtedly true, and established a general worry. By the time they crossed the Stinking Water the worry had become so oppressive that many hands could think of nothing else. Finally a delegation, headed by Jasper, approached Augustus on the subject. They surrounded him one morning when he came for breakfast and expressed their fear.
Augustus had a big laugh when he figured out what was bothering them. 'Why, you girls,' he said. 'All you want is orgies.'
'No, it's whores we want,' Jasper said, a little irritated. 'It's fine for you to laugh, you got Lorie.'
'Yes, but what's good for me ain't necessarily good for the weakminded,' Augustus said.
However, the next day he passed the word that everyone would be paid half wages in Ogallala. Call was not enthusiastic but the men bad worked well and he couldn't oppose giving them a day in town.
As soon as they heard the ruling, spirits improved, all except Po Campo's. He continued to insist that it would be dry.
80.
WHEN ELMIRA'S FEVER finally broke she was so weak she could barely turn her head on the pillow. The first thing she saw was Zwey, looking in the window of the doctor's little house. It was raining, but Zwey stood there in his buffalo coat, looking in at her.
The next day he was still there, and the next. She wanted to call out to him to see if he had news of Dee, but she was too weak. Her voice was just a whisper. The doctor who tended her, a short man with a red beard, seemed not much healthier than she was. He Coughed so hard that sometimes he would have to set her medicine down to keep from spilling it. His name was Patrick Arandel, and his hands shook after each coughing fit. But he had taken her in and tended her almost constantly for the first week, expecting all the time that she would die.
'He's as loyal as any dog,' he whispered to her, when she was well enough to understand conversation. For a while she had just stared back at him without comprehension when he spoke to her. He meant Zwey, of course.
'I couldn't even get the man to go away and eat,' the doctor told her. 'I live on tea, myself, but he's a big man. Tea won't keep him going. I guess he asked me a thousand times if you were going to live.'
The doctor sat in a little thin frame chair by her bed and gave her medicine by the spoonful. 'It's to build you up,' he said. 'You didn't hardly have no blood in you when you got here.'
Elmira wished there was a window shade so she couldn't see Zwey staring at her. He stared for hours. She could feel his eyes on her, but she was too weak to turn her head away. Luke seemed to be gone-at least he never showed up.
'Where's Dee?' she whispered, when her voice came back a little. The doctor didn't hear her, she said it so faint, but he happened to notice her lips move. She had to say it again.
'Dee Boot?' she whispered.
'Oh, did you follow that story?' the doctor said. 'Hung him right on schedule about a week after they brought you in. Buried him in Boot Hill. It's a good joke on him, since his name was Boot. He killed a nine-year-old boy, he won't be missed around here.'
Elmira shut her eyes, hoping she could be dead. From then on she spat out her medicine, letting it dribble onto the gown the doctor had given her. He didn't understand at first.
'Sick to your stomach?' he said. 'That's natural. We'll try soup.'
He tried soup and she spat that out too for a day, but she was too weak to fight the doctor, who was almost as patient as Zwey. They kept her jailed with their patience, when all she wanted to do was die. Dee was gone, after she had come such a way and found him. She hated Zwey and Luke for bringing her to the doctor-surely she would have died right on the street if they hadn't. The last thing she wanted to do was get well and have to live-but days passed, and the doctor sat in the little chair, feeding her soup, and Zwey stared in the window, even though she wouldn't look.
Even not looking, she could smell Zwey. It was hot summer, and the doctor left the window open all day. She could hear horses going by on the street and smell Zwey standing there only a few feet from her. Flies bothered her-the doctor asked if she wanted Zwey to come in, for he would be only too happy to sit and shoo the flies, but Elmira didn't answer. If Dee was dead, she was through with talk.
It occurred to her one night that she could ask Zwey to shoot her. He would give her a gun, of course, but she didn't think she had the strength to pull the trigger. Better to ask him to shoot her. That would solve it, and they wouldn't do much to Zwey if he told them he killed her at her own request.
Just thinking of such a simple solution seemed to ease her mind a bit-she could have Zwey shoot her. And yet, days passed and she got so she could sit up in bed, and she didn't do it. Her mind kept going back to the spot of sunlight where Dee's face had vanished. His face had just faded into the sunlight. She couldn't stop thinking of it-in dreams she would see it so clearly that she would wake up, to the sound of Zwey's snoring. He slept outside her window, with his back to the wall of the house-his snores were so loud a person might have thought a bull was sleeping there.
'What went with Luke?' she asked him one day.
'Went to Santa Fe,' Zwey said. It had been a month since she had spoken to him. He thought probably she never would again.
'Hired on with some traders,' he said. 'Come all this way and then headed back.'
'I guess your child didn't live,' the doctor said one day. 'I wouldn't have expected it to, out on the prairie, with you having such a close call.'
Elmira didn't answer. She remembered her breasts hurting, that was all. She had forgotten the child, the woman with the two daughters, the big house. Maybe the baby was dead. Then she remembered July, and Arkansas, and a lot that she had forgotten. It was just as well forgotten: none of it mattered compared to Dee. It was all past, well past. Some day she would have Zwey shoot her and she wouldn't have to think about things anymore.
But she put it off, and in time got well enough to walk. She didn't go far, just to the door, to get a chamber pot or put one out of the room-the heat made the smells worse. Even Zwey had finally taken off his buffalo coat-he stood at the window in an old shirt, with holes worn in it so that the thick hairs of his chest poked through.
The doctor never asked her about money. Though she had gotten better, he hadn't. She could hear him coughing through the wall, and sometimes saw him spit into a handkerchief. His hands trembled badly, and he always smelled of whiskey. It troubled her that he didn't ask her for money. She had always been one to pay her way. Finally she mentioned it. She knew Zwey would go to work and get money for her if she asked him to.
'You'll have to let me know what I owe,' she said, but Patrick Arandel just shook his head.
'I came here to get away from money,' he said. 'Did it, too. I got away from it, and it ain't easy to get away from money.'
Elmira didn't mention it again. If he wanted to be paid, he could mention it-she had tried.
Then one day, with no warning from anyone, the door to her room opened and July walked in. Zwey was standing at the window when it happened. July's face seemed thinner.
'I found you, Ellie,' he said, and there were tears in his eyes. Zwey was watching, but because of the shadows she didn't know if he could see that July was crying.
Elmira looked away. She didn't know what to do. Mainly she regretted that she had not had Zwey shoot her. Now July had found her. He had not come all the way in the room, but he was standing there, with the door half open, waiting for her to ask him in.
She didn't ask him in, didn't speak. It seemed she would always have bad luck, if he could come all that way across the plains and still find her.
