No one would care if I did, anyway.
After the soup is gone, with the stove chasing the chill from the room, I turn to Redfern. “Why’d you give us over to Gideon like that?”
“Every time I got within a day of Gideon he’d spook and take off. So I figured it would be better to approach him as a friend than an adversary,” Redfern says. “I offered to bring you to him for a price.”
“Were you planning on killing me?”
“No,” Redfern says. “Everything I told you at the campsite was true. I just left out that you were my ticket to winning his trust. It turned out okay in the end, but if you’re upset, I understand.”
I shrug. I ain’t quite sure what I feel. I’m about to say I would’ve done the same, but that ain’t true. Not anymore. I look over at Katherine and think about how close I came to being someone like that and feel a little ill.
Of course, that could be the soup.
“Daniel, I’ve always appreciated you saving my neck back in Baltimore,” I say, “but I promise you, if Kate dies, I will put one of the two bullets I have left in your brain.”
He doesn’t move, doesn’t react in any kind of way. And then, after a while he gives me a slow nod. “That’s fair, Jane, that’s fair. I suppose I should get to hoping that Katherine doesn’t die.”
I give him a toothy grin, but he doesn’t return it.
And so our vigil begins.
California might be everything that folks say about it—hot, dusty, treacherous—but I quite find that I love it, from its murderous mountains to its desolate deserts. California is just one more place on the globe, and ain’t naught but what folks make of it.
—Harold Payne, 1879
—KATHERINE—
Chapter 48
Notes on a Happily Ever After
Despite feeling like the handmaiden to death I do not die.
I wake to Jane puttering at a stove, singing some bawdy tune under her breath, the scent of onions and meat filling the room. As I cough and sit up she spins around, and a sly smile blooms across her face.
“Daniel is going to be so relieved,” she says, filling a glass of water and bringing it over to me.
“Why is that?” I scrape out, once I have managed to drink a bit. I feel like a hollowed-out shell of a person, weak and listless. I lie on a cot in a room I do not recognize, but after a few long moments I realize I am in a cabin. Gideon Carr’s, who I shot over Jane’s shoulder while lying on my back.
Still the best shot at Miss Preston’s.
I am never going to forget that moment.
“Because I told him if you died I was going to kill him.”
I blink, Jane’s declaration dragging me away from the memory. “You cannot go around threatening murder whenever someone annoys you.” I begin coughing again, and she refills the water, offering me a fresh glass.
“I don’t see why not, it’s been working for me thus far,” she says, but there is mirth in her eyes. The shadowed look is not completely gone, but it has been beaten back enough that something of the old Jane shines through.
While I drink a delicious chicken broth, and marvel at the fact that Jane McKeene is a fabulous cook, she updates me on what has happened. It seems that I was indeed laid low by Gideon Carr’s serum, and that I have lost nigh on three days’ worth of time. We have been gone from the wagon train longer than planned, and if they have managed to complete their travel unmolested they should be in Haven by now.
“Where is Mr. Redfern?”
“He’s been scavenging around the camp for whatever might be useful. So far we found a wagon, no oxen or horses, though, and eight chickens. Well, seven now,” she says, looking meaningfully at the pot. “I found some of Gideon’s notebooks, although most of them burned in the fire. There’s some useful stuff in there, things like diagrams for that water-heating contraption we saw back in Summerland.” Her expression shutters for a moment, turning back to whatever horror she discovered in her digging. “He was busy,” she says, finally, and I can only imagine the magnitude of the savagery he wrought.
“Well, then, I guess this chapter is finished. That means we should think about making our way to Haven.” I start to stand, and Jane pushes me back onto the cot.
“We, me and Redfern, have been doing just that for the past three days. You need to spend another day getting back to good. It’s at least three days’ walk over rough terrain, and you’ve had a shock.”
“I am fine,” I say, but Jane is correct. Just trying to stand has left me feeling shaky and woozy.
Jane grabs the bowl and refills it. “You’re lucky Redfern and I found bowls the other day, otherwise you’d have to eat out of the pot like a farmhand.” At my look of horror Jane laughs and hands me more soup.
I drink the salty broth, it really is the most delicious thing I have ever had, and Jane sits on the floor next to the cot, sprawled in a way that makes her seem larger than she is. When I have almost finished the soup she clears her throat.
“Kate, I want to thank you,” she says finally, and I raise an eyebrow in her direction.
“For nearly dying?”
“No,” she says, laughing. “For trying to save me from myself. I’ve never had a friend as loyal and as true-blue as you, and that means a lot to me.”
I grin at her, but before I can say anything she continues.
“Of course, you’re also vexing as hell, bossy, and a know-it-all to boot.”
“Jane! Language,” I say on impulse, and we look at each other and laugh until Mr. Redfern walks in, his expression full of questions.
“Miss Deveraux, I see you are awake. Welcome back to the world of the living.”
“Yes, Mr. Redfern, thank you. I suppose you must be relieved.”
He looks at Jane and smiles, and it seems to me a seedling of friendship must have been planted between them during my recovery.
“Yes, verily. Now, let’s talk about our plans for getting away from this cursed place.”
We stay in the encampment for two more days before we leave. Even after two whole days of lying abed and drinking a gallon of chicken soup, I am still weak when we begin our trek into the mountains.
Mr. Redfern found a map in and amongst a trunk of Gideon’s effects, as well as a daguerreotype of Gideon and his parents that Jane immediately threw into the wood stove—the girl is ever so superstitious—and by locating the approximate area where we expected Haven to be we mapped out a route along trails.
Like our trip to the encampment, the way is mostly deer track, and we can only travel for a couple of hours before I have to rest. Jane carries four chickens in a cobbled-together cage, their clucking and peeping making clear their feelings on the matter, while Mr. Redfern leads the way, breaking trail in some areas so that we can negotiate the way. It is tough going, and the nights are much cooler than the days. I had thought our trek with the wagon train on the Siskiyou Trail had been difficult, but it pales in comparison to our mountain trek.
But our persistence pays off, and on the sixth day of our trip, just as Jane is beginning to make hints about eating another chicken, we hear the sounds of hammering. The deer track we are on deposits us onto a small road, and there, carved out of the trees and located upon a wide, swift moving creek, is Haven.