to scare him and he jumped the wrong way.”
Ellie felt confused. She had never even heard of Dee Boot shooting a gun. He carried one, like all men did, but he never ever practiced with it that she knew. Why would he try to scare a boy?
“Was he aggravating you, or what?” she asked.
Dee shrugged again. “It was a settler’s boy,” he said. “Some cowmen hired me to run the settlers out. Most of them will run if you shoot over their heads a time or two. This one just moved the wrong way.”
“We’ll get you out,” Elmira said. “Zwey and Luke will help me.”
Dee looked at the big man holding Ellie. He did look big enough to pull the little jail apart—but of course he couldn’t do it while he was holding a sick woman.
“I’m due to hang next Friday, but they may come lynch me first,” Dee said.
Zwey felt something wet on his arms. Ellie was so light he didn’t mind holding her. The sun was up and they could see into the cell a little better. Zwey didn’t know why he felt so wet. He shifted Ellie a little and saw to his shock that the wetness was blood.
“She’s bleeding,” he said.
Dee looked out and saw that blood was dripping off Ellie’s nightdress.
“Get her to the Doc,” Dee said. “Leon knows where he lives.”
Dee began to yell for the deputy and soon Leon came running around the jail. Elmira didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay and talk to Dee, assure him that it would be all right, they would get him out. She would never let them hang Dee Boot. She looked in at him, but she couldn’t talk anymore. She couldn’t say the things she wanted to say. She tried, but no words came out. Her eyes wanted to close, and no matter how hard she tried to keep them open and look at Dee, they kept trying to close. She tried to see Dee again, as Zwey was carrying her away, but Dee’s face was lost in a patch of sunlight. The sun shone brightly against the wall of the jail and Dee’s face was lost in the light. Then, despite herself, her head fell back against Zwey’s arm and all she could see was the sky.
77
IT SEEMED TO JULY that he was nearly as cursed as Job when it came to catching Elmira. Despite his caution, he kept having accidents and setbacks of a kind that had never happened at home in Fort Smith. Three days out of Dodge, the new horse he had bought, which turned out not to be well-broken, fell and crippled himself trying to throw a hobble. July waited a day, hoping it wasn’t as bad as he thought it was—but the next day he saw it was even worse. It hardly seemed possible to lose two horses on one trip, when he had never lost a horse before in his life, but it was a fact he had to face.
With that fact went another: he wasn’t likely to get another horse unless he went back to Dodge. North of him there was only the plains, until he came to the Platte River—a long walk. July hated to double back on himself, but he had no choice. It was as if Dodge City was some kind of magnet, letting him go and then sucking him back. He shot the second horse, just as he had shot the first one, hid his saddle and went back. He walked grimly, trying to keep his mind off the fact that Ellie was getting farther and farther away all the time.
He swam the Arkansas River when he came to it, walked into town in wet clothes, bought another horse, and left again within the hour. The old horse trader was half drunk and eager to bargain, but July cut him short.
“You ain’t getting anywhere very fast, are you, young feller?” the old man said, chuckling. July thought it an unnecessary remark. He went right back across the river.
All during the trip he had been haunted by the memory of something that had happened in Fort Smith several years before. One of the nicest men in town, a cotton merchant, had gone to Memphis on a business trip, only to have his wife take sick while he was gone. They tried to send a telegram to notify the man, but he was on his way back and the telegram never got delivered. The