“I can’t go.”
She stared at him. She knew what the words meant, but they made no sense, any more than if he had said, “I can’t fly” or “I can’t leap over the barn.” He reached for her hands. “The bootleggers. They won’t let me go. They said they’re afraid the police will question me about have I seen ’em.” He looked out the window. “I guess maybe they’re afraid I’m chickening out.”
She pulled her hands from his. “That’s ridiculous. You’re not going to the police. You’re going for the doctor. Why on earth would we turn them in? We’ve made more money from sheltering them over the past twelvemonth than this farm’s earned in the last five years.” She looked up at him. “Oh, for heaven’s sakes. Are the horses hitched to the buggy?”
He nodded.
“I’ll go talk to them. You stay with Jack and make sure he doesn’t burn himself on the hot water. There’s more on the stove when his pan cools down.” She whipped off her apron, tossed it on the back of a chair, and strode out the door before Jon could answer.
Bright sunshine dazzled the whitewash on the barns and chicken coop but gave off no warmth. When she plunged through the door of the hay barn, the contrast between the light and the dark blinded her. She couldn’t hear anyone, although she could smell tobacco smoke and briefly wondered if any of the rumrunners was countryman enough to know that you don’t let sparks among the hay. “Who’s in charge here?” she said.
A man appeared at the edge of the loft above. She couldn’t make out his features, but he wore a fancy city hat that was as out of place as she would have been in a Broadway speakeasy. “You must be the missus,” he said.
“My husband’s harnessed up our team to go to town and fetch the doctor. He’s going to leave now. He’ll be back as soon as he reaches Dr. Stillman. He’s not going anywhere but Dr. Stillman’s and he’s certainly not about to go yapping to the police.”
“No one’s going anywhere.”
She looked up through the gloom. “I’m not going to get a crick in my neck arguing with you. Come down here and talk to me.”
The man laughed, but descended the ladder, taking care not to brush his suit against the rungs. She was surprised when he faced her. He was younger than she was, and looked as sober and respectable as Dr. Fillmore, the Presbyterian minister. His voice was the only thing that gave him away. “Here I am, lady. You can get me to move, but your husband ain’t going anywhere.”
“One of my children is very sick. He needs a doctor’s care. There’s no more or less to it than that.”
“The roads are swarming with cops on patrol. No one leaves this hay rack until I say so.”
“My son needs a doctor!”
“So does he.” He glanced toward the back of the barn. “Hey, Ted, bring Etienne out here.” Two more men walked from behind an ancient phaeton, dragging a third between them. The young man-scarcely more than a boy-was open-shirted, and his chest and shoulder were bound in a bloodstained bandage. The men holding him wore shoulder holsters stuffed with wicked-looking black-barreled handguns.
“Good Lord.” She covered her mouth.
“We’re not getting any help for Etienne, and you’re not getting help for your kid.” He grinned at her, the choirboy smile of someone whose worst sin was skipping school to catch frogs. “Don’t worry. Kids get sick all the time. And we’ll be gone tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow!” His words jerked her attention from the wounded boy. “We can’t wait that long.” She tugged on her dress, pulling herself together. They were, after all, in business together. After a fashion. And she could conduct business. “Even if my husband ran into the police on the road, there’s no reason for them to suspect him of anything more than what he is-a farmer going to town for the doctor. We’d be crazy to turn any of you in. We’re outside of the law ourselves, giving your people shelter all these months. Do you think we’d risk putting ourselves in jail?”
“Lady, maybe you’re not aware that Judge Jacob DeWeese is the fellow we’d come before if we was caught up here in Podunk County. DeWeese doesn’t like us gentlemen bandits, don’tcha know. Just last month he gave three guys from Avenue B ten years hard labor in Clinton.” He grinned at her again. This time, she saw the edge of his teeth. “My boys and me ain’t planning on sweating out the next ten years of our lives building roads and shoveling snow. We’re staying put. And you’re staying put.” He grasped her upper arm, a light and unthreatening touch that sent her skin crawling. “You been good hosts for our guys. I’d hate to have to hurt you or your husband.” He steered her toward the door. “Now, you run along. And as soon as we’re out of your hair, you can get the doc for your little fellow.”
He released her, and she stumbled out the door into the cold sunshine. She blinked. She swung around, but the door shut in her face. She didn’t know what to do. She took a few steps toward the cow barn. Gig and Haley waited in harness near the wide front doors. Could she snatch them and ride off? No, that was ridiculous. Those two couldn’t outrun a bullet. Maybe Jon could hike up the back forty to the woods? There were trails there that led through the mountains toward Millers Kill. Of course, Jon was no woodsman. She looked past the open fields and fences to the distant tree line. He’d be spotted long before he reached the shelter of the forest. She circled slowly where she stood. Everything was familiar to her, the house, the coop, the barns. The chickens pecking in their run, the horses waiting in their harness. It was as if she had never seen any of it before. She was a stranger here herself.
Chapter 40
Friday, March 14, 1924
Mary fell sick around midnight. Jane was asleep, but wakened to the baby’s faint whimpering sound as if a gunshot had gone off in her ear. She sat up, disoriented for a moment by the darkness and the lack of Jon in the bed. No, that was all right. He was sitting up with Jack. So she could sleep. She paused, halfway down to the bed again, but the sound came again. Not Mary’s usual squawk-then-resettle. Jane swung out of bed and padded to the nursery.
Pale. Feverish. Dusky blue. Jane clamped her teeth together to keep from crying out. She lifted the baby from her crib and settled her on her shoulder. Mary’s breath rasped and rattled in her ear all the way downstairs.
Jon was sitting in one of the parlor chairs, Jack asleep on his chest. A lantern burned beside them, casting shadows over the cups and liniment bottles and rags littering the table. “What are you-” He broke off when he saw Mary.
“The baby’s got it.” Jane crouched down next to the chair. “We have to do something.”
“What?” Jon’s voice was as hoarse and choked as Peter’s. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Tell me how to get past those men without getting a gunshot to the back. Tell me.”
She drew another chair near and picked up the glass of salt and goldenseal gargle she had prepared earlier. She poured some one-handed into a child’s cup and, seating Mary on her lap, forced some of the liquid into her mouth. The baby spluttered and gagged. Jane clamped a rag over her mouth and let her cough it out. Then she looked at Jon.
“You’ll have to go through the woods.”
“They’ll hear me if I take one of the horses out of the barn.”
“On foot. Go through the woods on foot until you reach the telegraph line. You can follow that down to town.”
“That’ll take all night!”
“And you could have Dr. Stillman here by the morning. Once he’s here, there won’t be anything they can do about it.”
“What if they try to hurt the doctor? What if they try to hurt you or the children after he’s gone?”
“They’re not going to show themselves to the doctor. And… and…” She cast about for a way to ensure the
