Deserter by Paul Bagdon Page A

to hurry. He took everything in stride, made decisions calmly, acted decisively after sufficient thought. But he all but ran from the great room where they’d been talking, calling to a servant to fetch a rider. Jake had never heard a tremor in his father’s voice before.
    A day later Jake was in his bed, his nightgown and sheets soaked in sweat. The stink of the infection, even through the thick poultice that wrapped his lower leg, made the servants who looked after him gag. “Same damn thing up an’ killed my ma,” Cicero, an elderly houseman, told the boy. “Wasn’t no Doctor Turner for slaves, Massa Jake. You’s lucky.”
    Jake swam back from his memories. It suddenly seemed very important to him that he get moving, although he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to saddle Mare—and even if he did, to keep her headed in the right direction. Still, the almost frantic urgency was there. His clothing, still soggy from rain, dew, and fever-sweat, stuck to his body like a loose, diseased second skin.
    He muscled his saddle to his shoulder, stood weaving for long moments, and then lumbered through the brush to where Mare was cropping grass. He tripped once and went to his knees. When he looked back he saw that nothing beyond low weeds had been in his path.
I fell like a goddamn rummy in a saloon. I can’t ride today,
he thought.
I’ll topple off Mare, knock myself silly, and lose my horse and saddle. Goddamn that Ferris’s mouth—it must have been as foul as shit house runoff. I should have gunned him instead of punching him.
    Mare watched without much interest as Jake stood precariously, tottering in the sun, and stripped off his shirt. When he sat to take off his boots and pants, she went back to grazing. Jake spread his shirt and pants over a bush where the sun would hit them and found a piece of shade to rest in, gun belt buckled and draped over his shoulder.
    The shivers started again the moment he sat down. He considered moving out into the direct sun, but before he could act on the thought, his face was running with sweat and jagged black spots were floating in front of his eyes. He fell back, prone, dirt and grit sticking hotly to his back. He brought his right hand to his face, held his knuckles under his nose, and took in a long draft of air. The stench—the thick stink of rotting meat—caused him to gag, bile spilling from between his lips. “Damn,” he mumbled. “Damn.”
    Jake saw himself in his bed at his home, Dr. Turner and his father hovering over him, the physician holding a length of cloth a couple of feet long wrapped around a damp claylike substance that smelled strongly of mustard and salt and lamp oil.
    â€œThis is a poultice, Jake,” Turner told him. “I’m going to wrap your leg with it. You’ll feel some heat but it shouldn’t hurt too much. See, what the poultice’ll do is draw the poison—the infection—out of you.” The doctor drew back the sheet and nodded to Jake’s father, who elevated the boy’s leg a foot or so above the surface of the bed. Doc Turner worked quickly, dexterously, taking three quick wraps around Jake’s lower leg and then securing the poultice with strips of white cloth. The heat—the one he was told wouldn’t hurt much—began almost immediately, escalating from mild discomfort to a screaming pain that brought tears to Jake’s eyes. He looked away from the doctor and his father and pawed the tears from his face with the back of his hand, ashamed.
    â€œIs it bad, Son?” his father asked.
    Jake had to swallow a couple of times before he could trust his voice. “Not so bad, Pa.”
    Leighton Sinclair nodded, his eyes showing he shared his son’s pain. “Sometimes a man has to put up with hurt, Jake. No way around it. Just hold on.”
    The phrase “Just hold on” twisted its way through Jake’s