Free Fool's Gold by Glen Davies

but little chance of fighting the dread killer.
    ‘I must go in,’ she said with a calm which she did not feel. ‘My husband may be in there.’
    He raised his hands, palms upwards in a gesture of resignation. ‘Then first you tie this round you neck, missie.’
    ‘This’ was a pungent resinous lump of asafoetida on a string.
    ‘Then you rub this round you face and hands.’ He produced a phial of equally pungent liquid and she did his bidding without a murmur.
    Even the pungency could not overcome the stench of the tent into which the Chinaman showed her. A primitive oil lamp in the centre of the tent, no more than a rag dipped in a dish of perfumed oil, illumined the pallets around the canvas walls. One of the occupants was tossing and turning feverishly and the Chinaman hurried across to his side and bathed his face, then held him while he writhed, screaming, racked by terrible spasms.
    ‘Here, missie!’ He summoned her urgently to his side. ‘You give him drink. I hold him still.’
    It took their combined efforts to get the water past his cracked lips, then he fell back on the hard boards in an exhausted sleep — or was it stupor?
    ‘What hope for him?’ she whispered to the Chinaman.
    He shook his head slowly.
    Slowly she looked around the tent until she found Robert. She took the few steps to his side and the Chinaman followed her.
    One glance at Robert and she knew the worst. He lay in the same stupor as the first man, but already the flesh had wasted away from his face, and he did not look as though he would emerge again from that deep sleep. She had come too late.
    She knelt by his pallet all that evening, bathing his face, trying to squeeze a few drops of water from a sponge against those black, cracked lips. Towards midnight, he stirred and opened his eyes. She leaned forward, brushing the lank hair from his eyes.
    With a great effort he raised his head.
    She felt, rather than saw, the Chinaman, Chen, come up behind her with a cup of some herbal mixture, and tensed. Robert might be pleased to see her, but it was just as likely that he would insult her. He had never hesitated to humiliate her in public: he frequently came into the cook house in Sonora roaring drunk and if she was not quick enough to set food before him and hand over what he deemed to be sufficient money, often struck her in front of the terrified women. Only Angelina was not frightened of him and his reputation: once when he had laid Alicia’s forehead open with his fists, the cook had come in upon the scene of mayhem and gone for him with the carving knife.
    ‘Well,’ he breathed in a hoarse whisper, ‘if it isn’t my saintly Alicia.’ Her heart plummeted. ‘Ministering angel, eh? Left the wifely concern a little late, haven’t you? But then, you never did quite fit into that role, did you?’
    She flinched away. Even now he could still hurt her. She glanced back over her shoulder, but Chen had moved away and was busying himself on the far side of the tent — or pretending to do so. She did not much care which.
    ‘Drink some of this, Robert,’ she murmured, holding the cup to his lips.
    With the last ounce of energy he would ever summon, he knocked it out of her hand to spill half on him, half on her.
    ‘Poison me now, would you?’ he snarled. ‘Bury me and marry one of the other curs who’re always sniffing round your heels? Be in for a shock, wouldn’t they? Don’t know what a frigid bitch you really are, do they?’ He paused for a painful, panting breath and a cunning look came over his face. ‘Anyway, Fisher staked for you, didn’t he? When I go — you’ll be his. He’ll have it all then. You and Valley Hall.’
    She began to shake as she always had done under his tongue-lashings. Even when he fell back and lay panting for breath, grey-lipped, she could not speak.
    Gentle hands drew her up from her knees.
    ‘Missie go out for a moment, breathe some fresh air,’ said Chen softly. ‘I take over