Free The Loner: Seven Days to Die by J.A. Johnstone Page B

voice prompted The Kid to ask, “What do you mean, any more than she already is?”
    The doctor’s fingers rasped on the white stubble on his chin. “That’s right, you’d passed out by then,” he said. “I guess Jillian found out somehow what was going on. She came running out, screaming at her father, and tried to take the whip away from him. He raised holy hell right back at her and told her she was forbidden to leave their house.” Thurber shook his head. “That won’t sit well with her. That young lady has a mind of her own, and she doesn’t mind expressing it.”
    The Kid had seen evidence of it with his own eyes. He still thought Jillian Fletcher would be a good ally to have, along with the doctor. But he supposed the effort to enlist her help could wait. Given the shape he was in, he wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. He would have to heal up some first.
    “What happens now?” he asked.
    “You lay there and let that medicine I spread on your back do its work, that’s what happens now,” Thurber said. “I cleaned the wound in your side, took some stitches in it, and bandaged it again. Maybe it’ll stay closed better this time. I hope so.”
    The Kid shifted his legs. They wouldn’t move very far.
    “I’m chained to the bed, aren’t I?”
    “Yes, but you don’t need to go anywhere. You need to rest.”
    “For how long?”
    “You’ll be here for a few days, anyway. Maybe a week or more.” Thurber got to his feet. “Just don’t get any fancy ideas about taking advantage and trying to get away. There are two guards right outside the door, and will be that many around the clock as long as you’re here.”
    The Kid glanced at the window. It was too small for him to get his head through, let alone his body. It let a little air and light into the room, and that was all.
    “I still wish you’d say something to Fletcher about my ear,” he said.
    “I’ll think about it,” Thurber replied with another shrug, “but I can’t guarantee anything.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t want to get on the warden’s bad side any more than anybody else around here does.”
    “He’s a lunatic. A cruel, ruthless lunatic. You know that, don’t you?”
    “I don’t know anything,” Thurber said, “except that I want to draw my pay and not bring any trouble down on my head. That’s what I know…Bledsoe.” He left the room.
    As the door closed and Thurber’s footsteps faded away, The Kid fought once more against the feelings of helplessness and despair welling up inside him and painfully tightening his chest. That one brief moment of hope had faded, but he couldn’t forget what he had seen and heard while he was chained to the whipping post. Rebel had come to him to offer hope and encouragement and extract a promise from him.
    A promise that someday he would shoot Jonas Fletcher right between the eyes.
    The Kid had to live in order to keep that promise. He couldn’t give up, no matter how hopeless things looked. “Stay with me, Rebel,” he whispered to the empty room. “Stay with me.”
    Though there was no sound, he seemed to hear her speaking soft words of comfort to him.

Chapter 14

    Kid Morgan was in the infirmary at Hell Gate Prison for ten days. Part of that time, he suffered from a fever brought on by infection from his numerous wounds. Dr. Thurber said the fever had to run its course, and eventually it did, breaking during the night. When The Kid woke in the morning, his bedding was drenched from the cold sweat that had leached the sickness out of him.
    By the time the guards came to take him back to Hades, he was weaker than a mountain lion cub, but his head was clear. The wounds on his back had scabbed over, and after examining them that morning, Thurber had declared they were healing nicely. So was the bullet gash in his side. The cut on his head from Haggarty’s gun was all right now, leaving only a small scar.
    “Try not to get in any more trouble,” Thurber advised