An Outlaw in Wonderland (22 page)

Annabeth cast him a confused, concerned glance and continued walking. “I don’t think
we’ll make it to Freedom before dark.” She pointed at the horizon. “Even if we manage
to catch that horse.”

As expected, the animal appeared farther away now than when they’d started out. Was
it a mirage? The silhouette
had
started to waver. “I have to get back. Tonight.”

“I suppose Cora will worry.”

He stopped walking, rubbed his aching eyes, then scratched at the invisible ants crawling
up his arm. “About Cora,” he began.

The sun flickered, as if a great hand had waved before it—over and back, over and
back. Sweat dripped to the end of Ethan’s nose; his shivering caused it to fly right
off.

“Ethan?” Annabeth’s frowning face appeared in front of him an instant before the great
hand closed around the sun, squeezing until his whole world went black.

E
than’s eyes rolled back. Annabeth caught him in her arms.

They were nearly the same height, and he was so thin, he couldn’t weigh much more
than she did. However, dead weight was a helluva lot heavier than live weight. Her
legs gave out. They landed atop the muddy grass in a tangle.

Someone was keening, “No, no, no,” and it was her. Annabeth hunched over Ethan, protecting
him from . . .

She wasn’t sure. At first she thought he’d been shot again. But there’d been no report;
there wasn’t any blood. Had a lethal infection crept into his brain? What would she
do? Out here, she had no way to help him.

A watery, slightly hysterical laugh erupted. She had no way to help a brain infection
anywhere. No one did.

Annabeth lifted her head, let her gaze wander the horizon. The only living thing in
any direction was the two of them and the horse. If anyone were out there shooting,
they’d be dead. The sniper wouldn’t need a quarter of Fedya’s skill with a gun to
put an end to them sitting in the middle of a great big nothing just waiting to die.

Annabeth laid Ethan on the ground. His breath came far too fast, too shallow, and
he was pale, sweating, yet he shuddered as if a blue norther had followed the storm.
Gently, she slapped his cheeks, received no response. Even if he woke, she doubted
he’d be able to walk very far. She needed that horse.

She glanced again toward the horizon, hoping the animal might have begun to wander
in their direction. But luck had never been on her side.

Annabeth set her lips to Ethan’s ear. “I’ll be back as fast as I can.” Her only response
was another shudder that racked him from head to toe.

She left Ethan alone in the mud and the wet grass, the sun blazing on his damp face.
It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done.

Annabeth was tempted to run. But in this heat, without water, she’d be exhausted before
she got there. Besides, a fast approach might frighten the animal. She wished for
a grove of trees, not just for the shade but for the cover. However, if wishes were
horses, then—

“I wouldn’t need that horse,” Annabeth muttered, and fought another hysterical bubble
of laughter.

The sun had moved past the apex before she came close enough to see that the horse
wore a saddle—at least it wasn’t wild—though she couldn’t tell if it was the horse
they’d rode in on.

Didn’t matter. She just hoped the animal was past spooked and moving toward thirsty,
hungry, lonely, or anything else that might make it stand still and not run away.

She approached slowly, murmuring nonsense. Perhaps her luck had changed, because it
walked toward her with a lowered, docile head and allowed her to scratch between its
ears, then swing into what appeared to be Ethan’s saddle.

She couldn’t believe their mount hadn’t been whirled away with the wind. But twisters
were strange. She’d seen them take a house and leave a barn, uproot this tree and
leave that one untouched—no rhyme or reason to the destruction at all. Was there ever
a rhyme or reason to destruction?

Her gaze went to where she’d left Ethan, and her heart thudded once before lodging
at the base of her throat. He no longer lay on the grass. Instead he stumbled, nearly
falling, before dragging himself up to zigzag some more.

Annabeth urged the exhausted horse into a gallop. The animal shied as they approached,
and Ethan veered into their path, then out again.

“Whoa,” she said. The animal listened; Ethan did not. He muttered unintelligible words
as he continued to make his awkward way toward Lord knew what.

Annabeth leaped to the ground, keeping a firm hand on the reins. Ethan swung toward
her. His eyes were wild; he smelled the same. Sweat glistened on his face, his neck,
and dampened his shirt.

“Find,” he muttered. “Find!”

“Hush.” She wasn’t certain if she was talking to man or beast, or if Ethan, at this
moment, was a little of both.

The horse snorted, spraying snot across Annabeth’s shoulder. Ethan tilted his head
like a dog that had heard a voice it just might recognize.

“You want to ride, Ethan?”

His head tilted the other way when she said his name. But he didn’t answer, and her
concern deepened.

“You’re sick,” she continued. “We need to get out of the sun.”

“Find,” he said, and stumbled on. Was he talking about Annabeth? Cora? The baby? Freedom?

Who knew? Did it matter?

“It’ll be easier to search on the horse.”

He didn’t answer, didn’t even glance her way. Annabeth tugged on his arm, but he yanked
himself free and continued. She couldn’t
make
him take the saddle. But if he fell, she doubted she could lift him into it either.

Annabeth chewed her lip and followed her husband across the prairie.

•   •   •

Ethan was hot; he was cold. Sweat ran down his back, even as he shivered and shook.
His teeth chattered. But up ahead was something he had to find. He couldn’t stop.
He needed . . .

He wasn’t quite sure.

His mouth was dry. His skin itched. His stomach rumbled, though not with hunger. He
hoped he didn’t disgrace himself. But who would know?

The woman who trailed behind him along with the horse might look and sound like Annabeth;
however, he knew a hallucination when he saw one. He’d been seeing them for a long
time. He should climb on that horse and leave her behind. Although perhaps the animal
was as much a delusion as the wife.

There’d be no getting rid of her. Not when he slept, not when he woke, not when he
drank another bottle dry. She was there—always—unto the end of his life.

And that was all right. That was what he had craved all along. If he hadn’t wanted
to see his missing, possibly dead wife, he wouldn’t have bothered with the cursed
blue bottles. Not only did they take away the pain, but they brought back her.

“Ethan?”

He glanced over his shoulder, and the agony in his head faded a bit at the sight of
her.

“Let’s ride the horse,” she said, as if he were an imbecile.

He was tired; he was hot; he was dizzy and nauseated. He was an imbecile. Why not
ride the horse? Even if he rode only in his mind.

Ethan swung into the saddle. Before he could direct the animal forward, Annabeth climbed
on behind. Her breasts pressed into his back; her thighs slid along his; her hair
brushed his neck; her arms circled his waist. He waited for his body to respond as
it always did to her touch, be she real or imagined. When it didn’t, he began to suspect
that he was sicker than he’d ever been before. Maybe this time, at last, he would
die.

“Where are we go—?”

Ethan urged the horse into a gallop, and the rest of her words flew away with the
wind. He ignored every question she asked after that. Even when they slowed to a brisk
walk, making conversation a possibility, he did not speak. He didn’t have the strength.

He skirted the gully that had saved their lives. Eventually, the crack in the earth
widened to a stream, then a river.

“I’m thirsty,” Annabeth said, her voice vibrating against his back, causing the shivers
he’d thought gone to return. “Aren’t you?”

He clucked to the horse, which began to trot. The black dots that had been dancing
across the bright blue sky increased in number until they nearly obscured his vision.
He gritted his teeth; he would not allow them to collide. If that happened, he might
not wake for days.

At last they rounded a bend, and Ethan reined in. Annabeth’s fingers clenched on his
hips. Memory shimmered—of another place, another time, another life.

“We should go,” she whispered.

Instead, Ethan slid to the ground and strode inside the tepee.

•   •   •

Annabeth held her breath, waiting for Ethan to come back out. She only hoped he did
so alone.

She had seen such structures before, though less and less in the past few years since
the Kansa Indians had been relegated to the reservation at Council Grove. Before that,
they had lived in villages of round, earthen lodges. The men used tepees for hunting—back
when they’d been allowed to hunt.

Whenever she’d seen the tepees, Annabeth had given them a wide berth. Still, for hours
afterward she would be nervous, twitchy, expecting the Indians to appear as if from
the earth in front of her, or perhaps sneak up behind. Annabeth had the same feeling
now. She even looked over her shoulder, but nothing was there.

As no Kansa brave had burst free of the lodge carrying her husband’s head, or even
his scalp, she breathed a little easier. Of course, they could have killed him and
left him where he fell.

The horse had lowered its head and begun to drink from the river. Annabeth ground
tied the animal and followed Ethan.

Approaching the tepee, she drew her gun. “Hello?”

When nothing answered but the wind, she drew back the flap. No outcry was raised,
no weapon discharged. She peeked inside. The tepee appeared empty.

“Ethan!”

What did she expect? What did she fear? That he’d found a bottle that said,
DRINK ME
, shrunk like Alice, then slid down the rabbit hole into Wonderland?

Another hysterical burble of laughter escaped her dry, brittle lips. If she wasn’t
careful, she’d be chattering in the corner like a lunatic.

The tepee was shaded by the riverbank, and the air inside was cooler than she would
have thought. She cast a glance at the rear of the enclosure, wondering if Ethan had
slipped in this side and out the other, but the only openings in the conical structure
were the one behind her and another high above to release smoke.

The mats and blankets on the ground began to move. Annabeth pointed her gun at the
shivering, shaking mass. Ethan’s dark head emerged.

She went to her knees, set aside the weapon. At first she thought he’d fainted again,
until the violent movements, the rigid set of his neck and jaw brought a different
diagnosis.

“Paroxysms.” She hadn’t seen those since the war. She hadn’t liked them much then,
either.

Quickly, she turned her husband on his side so he wouldn’t choke. She made sure there
was nothing anywhere near him on which he might hit his head. His head had been hit
enough.

She considered running to the river and retrieving cool water to bathe his fiery skin,
but until the paroxysms ceased, she could not leave his side. What if he stopped breathing?
She’d seen it happen before. Often the result of a high fever, or a head injury, there
was little to be done for the condition but treat the symptoms.

Cool water. Rest. If those didn’t work . . . an early grave.

“No,” Annabeth murmured. “Please, no.”

Whom she was talking to, she wasn’t sure. God hadn’t listened to her in . . .

“Forever.” Then again, she hadn’t spoken to him in nearly that long.

Ethan’s violent movements slowed, although his legs continued to twitch as if he were
running. He was drenched in sweat. She removed his clothes so he wouldn’t be chilled
when night fell. After tossing the soaked clothing outside, she settled him on the
woven mats. He still shuddered, but the movements became more natural, the result
of cooler air brushing his damp skin.

Annabeth stroked his brow. “Hush your cries,” she whispered. “Close your eyes.” Her
mother had sung those words whenever Annabeth was ill. There was more, but she couldn’t
remember it. “Something about ponies.”

He quieted, pulling in on himself. Curling his legs toward his chest, his chest toward
his knees, cradling his belly as if it hurt. The position was the one she’d taken
the night their child died—first protecting what lived within and later mourning what
lived there no longer.

Annabeth’s eyes burned; she got to her feet. Snatching an earthen bowl that hung from
the center pole, she stepped into the blazing Kansas sun.

Except the sun wasn’t blazing, at least not on her. Instead, the glare was blocked
by the shadows of four men.

A
nnabeth stumbled back, reaching for her gun, but it was gone. She���d dropped the
Colt to help Ethan and then forgotten it completely.

The Indians stared at her with no expression in their dark, endless eyes. One had
hair standing straight up along the center of his head, while the rest of his scalp
had been shaved. The other three bore only a single long lock that fell past their
shoulders. Every one of them had been tattooed.

They made no move to touch her. Their weapons—bows, arrows, a rifle or two that resembled
those carried by the army—remained slung over their bare shoulders. One of them held
the reins of Ethan’s horse.

“That’s mine.” She pointed to the animal.

No one moved; no one spoke. Hell, no one blinked. They seemed to be staring at her
hair. Even chopped at the shoulders, no longer hanging to her waist, it was hard to
miss.

Annabeth stepped toward the horse, and the largest Indian—still not as tall as her,
but taller than any other she’d ever seen—shifted. Just a tilt of his hips, his shoulders,
and he blocked her way.

“That’s mine,” he repeated, but he pointed to the tepee.

“Oh. Yes. I apologize, but we . . . he . . . Ethan, he’s—”

“E-tan?” The tall man, the only one who’d spoken thus far, strode toward her so fast,
she stepped out of the way lest she be plowed over. He stuck his head into the opening
and then pulled it back out. “
Nika
,” he said.

Annabeth stared at him blankly and spread her hands.

“E-tan.” His thick, dark arm shot into the tepee. “Doc.”

“Yes. He’s a doctor.”

“
Ni
.” He pointed to the river with his other arm, then to his head. “
Wexli
.”

From that she assumed he wanted her to put water on Ethan’s head. What
nika
meant, she had no idea.

Nodding, she sidled toward the river. The three braves who’d barred her path separated.
They continued to stare at her hair; she thought one even reached out as she passed
and touched it, murmuring something that sounded like
zhu’je,
but when she turned, their hands remained at their sides, their lips compressed into
identical flat lines.

Annabeth hurried to the water’s edge, dunked the bowl beneath the surface, and hurried
back. Only three people and five horses remained outside the tepee. Terrified at what
the Kansa leader might do—even though he had appeared to know “E-tan,” it didn’t mean
he liked him—she rushed inside.

The man sat on the ground next to her husband, blowing sweet-smelling smoke from his
pipe into Ethan’s face. Ethan remained unconscious, but he seemed less ill. He’d straightened
from his curled-in, defensive position and lay on his back, his breathing almost normal.

She caught the glint of her gun half buried beneath a woven mat and dropped down in
easy reach of both Ethan and the weapon. She didn’t think the Kansa were going to
turn violent, but one never could tell.

“Wak’o.”
The Indian pointed at Annabeth.
“Ni.”
The bowl
. “Wexli.”
He tapped Ethan’s head.

Annabeth tore off the least muddy, sweaty portion of her shirttail, dipped it into
the water, and bathed Ethan’s face. She didn’t care for the puckered look of his stitches.
If she didn’t cut them free soon, Ethan’s body would begin to reject the foreign matter
with an infection.

She wished for some alcohol to clean them. While she was at it, she wished for scissors
and Freedom, a world where her child wasn’t dead and Ethan didn’t blame himself for
it. She also wished she’d never seen Lassiter Morant or Moses Farquhar, for that matter.

“If wishes were horses,” she murmured.

Then it wouldn’t matter that the Kansa had taken theirs.

•   •   •

Ethan swam toward the surface. The water was thick and dark and hot, like nothing
he’d ever experienced.

His thirst, the aches were familiar. But his pulse raced, fast enough to concern him,
and his belly cramped, hard enough to embarrass him.

He came awake retching. A bowl beneath his mouth caught the tiny amount of liquid
that spouted free. His bowels loosened, but there was little left to lose. He couldn’t
recall the last time he’d eaten, or when he’d drunk anything but—

His hand went to his pocket, except he had no pocket. His clothes were gone.

“Better?” Annabeth asked.

He opened his eyes; however, the face that filled his vision was not his wife’s but—“Joe?”

The Indian’s lips twitched, his version of a smile.

A curse drew Ethan’s attention to Annabeth as she placed her palm on his forehead.
Her
lips frowned. “What year is it?” she asked.

“I’m not out of my head.” Though he wished that he was. If he was delirious, he wouldn’t
be so mortified.

“You called him Joe.”

Joe grunted at the mention of his name and muttered, “
Wak’o,”
with the manner of every man who’d been exasperated with a
woman
in his life.

“I think his name is
Wak’o,”
she said.

“
Wak’o
means woman.”

Annabeth’s frown deepened. “Then I don’t much care for his tone.”

Ethan laughed, but the movement jarred his belly and bowels, so he stopped. “His name
is long and unpronounceable, except for
Wasabe,
which means bear. I assume he’s called Big Man Who Kills Bears, or Black Bear, Brown
Bear, Crazy Bear Who Kills Anything. I just call him Joe. Saves time, and he doesn’t
seem to mind.”

“How can you tell?” Annabeth asked, eyeing the Indian, who couldn’t stop eyeing her
hair.

“He hasn’t scalped me yet.”

“He seems more interested in scalping me.”

“Hair like yours is unusual in his world.”

“In any world unless you’re a Phelan,” she said.

Ethan had never seen anyone with hair quite like it, and no doubt Joe felt the same.
Ethan couldn’t resist teasing her. “I’m sure a scalp in Phelan red would be an incredible
prize.”

Instead of inching closer for protection, her hand crept beneath the mat she knelt
upon. Ethan caught the flash of a gun barrel.

“No,” he snapped, and she froze. “He wouldn’t hurt you even if he weren’t my friend.
The Kaw, which means People of the South Wind, is what the Kansa call themselves,
and they’re peaceful. Most of them are on the reservation.”

“And that isn’t anywhere close.” She kept her hand on the gun and her gaze on Joe.

“Every so often, Joe and his friends go off to hunt.”

“The army must love that.”

“Which is why Joe comes here. This isn’t—
wasn’t
—their territory. It belonged to the Wichita.”

At least as much as land could “belong” to an Indian. They believed the earth belonged
to everyone—a conviction the white man had made good use of.

“The Wichita have been confined in Indian Territory since the war,” she said.

“How do you know so much about Indians?” Had Moze told her? Perhaps Lassiter Morant?
Or some other man she’d spied on and lied to in the past five years?

“When riding about, it’s best to know who you might encounter and how friendly they’re
apt to be. I’ve seen Kans—” She paused. “I mean Kaw tepees before but not Wichita.”

Joe growled at the final word.

“I don’t think he cares for them,” Annabeth said.

“His people usually fought with the Cheyenne,” Ethan began.

Joe snarled. Ethan ignored him. The Cheyenne had been sent to a reservation in Indian
Territory, but they hadn’t stayed on it any better than Joe stayed on his.

“The Kaw also skirmished with any other band that got in their way,” he said.

“Like the Wichita.”

Ethan nodded, then wished that he hadn’t when the sudden pain in his head made his
stomach roil. He breathed in and out as he had a stern talk with his belly. If there’d
been anything in it, he might have lost the argument, but for now he managed not to
dissolve into another pathetic bout of retching. Though he couldn’t say how long that
would last.

“With the Wichita on the reservation,” he continued, “and actually staying on it,
unlike most other bands, their territory is open.”

“And their territory was here.”

“When Joe and his friends leave the reservation, the army looks for them in Kaw territory.”
The army wasn’t exactly known for its ingenuity. To be fair, they weren’t expected
to be.

“How do you know all this?” she asked.

“Joe told me.”

“You speak Kaw?”

“Enough.”

“Enough for what? You’ve obviously been here before. You know each other. How? Why?”

“I treated one of his men.”

“You just happened across a band of Indians as you were strolling across the prairie?”

“Something like that.”

He wasn’t going to tell his wife the whole story. Which involved his getting on a
horse half conscious, planning to . . . he couldn’t quite remember what. Die, most
likely—back then that had always been his plan. He’d just never been very good at
it.

He’d fallen off his horse. Only his sorry state had kept him from breaking his neck.
As his father always said: God watched over fools and lunatics. Most days Ethan was
both.

Joe had found him, brought him to this tepee. Joe and his men had sat around the fire
staring at Ethan; Ethan had stared back. He’d figured they would kill him eventually,
and since he’d been trying to die anyway, he didn’t care.

“One of the braves had a cut on his hand that had putrefied,” he said. “I drained,
cleaned, and stitched it. After that, I returned every month around the full moon.”

“Why?”

“Because a few weeks later, Joe walked into Freedom. The only reason he left alive
was that he was holding a feverish Kaw child. From then on, we met here.”

“Androcles,” his wife murmured.

Joe snorted. Both Ethan and Annabeth glanced at the Indian as if a dog had sat up
and spoken.

“Do you think he—?” Annabeth began.

“No,” Ethan said, but he wondered. Sometimes he thought Joe understood a lot more
English than Ethan understood Kaw.

“Do you know the fable?” she asked.

“I do.”

“My mother used to tell us stories at night.” Her face went soft at the memory. “Sometimes
it was the only way to get so many of us to sleep.”

Ethan had not had a mother to read to him. Instead he’d read to Mikey.
Aesop’s Fables
had been one of his brother’s favorites.

“Joe followed you like the lion in the story,” Annabeth continued.

There
were
times Ethan felt like a slave. And other times he wished to be devoured by wild animals.

“Joe isn’t tame.”

“Most lions aren’t, even when they pretend to be.”

Ethan wasn’t sure whom they were talking about anymore. He didn’t think it was Joe.

“Why the full moon?”

“It’s a time he understands.” Days, weeks, months, hours meant nothing to the Kaw.

“If he meets you every full moon, then why is here now?”

“Just because he meets me under the full moon doesn’t mean he doesn’t come here at
other times. It’s
his
tepee.”

“There’s no doctor at the reservation?” she asked.

“Joe prefers me.”

“Mmm,” Annabeth murmured, gaze on the half-naked man. “Just don’t stick your head
between his jaws.”

“I don’t plan to.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“I don’t care.” Ethan liked Joe. The man was quiet and still—the perfect companion.
They’d shared many friendly fires. Joe smoking, Ethan sipping.

“Could I have some water?” Ethan asked.

“Can you keep it down?”

“Doubtful.”

“Then no.”

“I might get paroxysms.”

“You already did.”

Ethan frowned. He was a lot worse off than he’d thought. “We should get back to Freedom.”

“After you rest.”

“No.” He struggled upright. “I have to go.”

She pushed him down. Ethan was so weak, she didn’t even need Joe’s help, though he
gave it. “Deliriums,” she muttered.

“I am not delirious.” But he would be.

“It’s nearly night.” Annabeth stood and went through the opening in the tepee. Her
words drifted back. “We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”

•   •   •

When darkness descended, the Kaw built two fires—one in front of the tepee and one
within. They hunkered around the flames of outdoor fire and cooked a few rabbits.

Except during the time he retrieved a bit of meat for himself and Annabeth, Joe remained
nearby. He pointed a greasy finger at a fitfully sleeping Ethan, lifted the meat,
and shook his head.

“No food for him,” Annabeth agreed.

Concerned with how sunken Ethan’s eyes appeared, she’d relented and had given him
the requested water. He’d thrown up almost immediately, and her concern had deepened
to fear. A man could live a long time without food. Water was another matter.

She bathed his face, his neck, and his chest, his entire body. Perhaps some of the
liquid would seep through his skin. She knew better—even if it did, he was emitting
more through sweat and vomit than she could ever rub in. Still she kept trying. She
had no idea what was wrong with him, and therefore no idea what to do. But she had
to do something. If he died . . .

Her mind faltered; her heart stuttered; her hands began to shake. A world without
Ethan Walsh was not a world she could even bear thinking about.

Joe continued to sit and smoke and stare. She wanted to ask what it was that he smoked
and if it would help Ethan. But even if he understood her question, she would not
understand his answer.

In the darkest part of the night, Ethan spasmed and jerked. His harsh, rasping breaths
frightened her. Until they stopped. Then terror paralyzed her.

“Iha!”
Joe pointed to his lips, to hers, to Ethan’s. When Annabeth didn’t respond, he banged
his fist against Ethan’s chest—once, twice, again.

“Stop.” Annabeth reached for his hand. Joe pulled it back and pointed once more to
his mouth. “
Iha
,” he said, then blew out. When she continued to stare, he leaned over as if he might
kiss Ethan, and suddenly she understood. If Ethan could not breathe, then she would
breathe for him.