Read Online Powder River by S.K. Salzer - Free Book Online Page B

were they going? Back to your village?”
    Billy hesitated, looking at his feet. He wore tall moccasins, like his gloves, made of wolf skin with the fur on the inside. Dixon, whose own feet felt like blocks of blue ice inside his square-toed leather boots, would have given one hundred dollars for a pair like them. “Yes, they were going to the village,” Billy said.
    â€œThe surgeon at Fort McKinney told me there is sickness there. Is it true?”
    â€œYes. Many of the people have died and many more are sick. Biwi fell ill.”
    â€œDo the children know of Biwi’s illness? Could that be why they were going there, to see her?”
    Billy shook his head. “I don’t know. They will have to tell you their reasons. I’m going for more firewood.”
    Dixon almost stopped him; he would have liked to have Billy with him when he reunited with his children, but the half-breed had already vanished into the darkness. Dixon went on alone, the dry, ankle-deep snow squeaking beneath his feet. It was bitterly cold; if Billy hadn’t found them, Cal and Lorna would have frozen to death. If Rose was watching from above—and sometimes he felt she was—she would have been angry with Dixon for letting that happen.
    The bakery door had burned away, but the charred frame was still in place. He stooped to enter and found the twins, huddled in their blankets, like a pair of towheaded Indians, before the fire. They raised their pale eyes to their father, but neither spoke.
    â€œWell?” Dixon said. “What do you have to say for yourselves?”
    They looked at each other, a pair of defeated conspirators. When Lorna finally spoke, her first words were for the pony. “Jesse kept going slower and slower. I could tell he was tired, so we got off to walk, but he fell over and couldn’t get up.” Tears ran from her eyes, and she brushed them away with the back of her hand. “Jesse made awful noises when he was dying, Pa. I’ve never heard anything like that before.”
    Dixon said, “I’m sorry. Jesse was a sweet pony.” You knew how old he was, how his wind had gone, he thought . You shouldn’t have used him so hard.
    Lorna nodded miserably, the firelight gleaming red on her hair. Cal kept his eyes on the flames and said nothing.
    â€œThe two of you could have died with him,” Dixon said. “Why did you do this foolish thing? I expect an answer.”
    Again, it was Lorna who spoke. “It was my idea. I needed to go to the Crow village and Cal wanted to come with me.”
    â€œWhy did you need to go there?”
    â€œI just did,” she said.
    Dixon shook his head in disbelief. “You didn’t think about telling me, or Mrs. MacGill? You didn’t think about the storm?”
    â€œYou wouldn’t let us go,” she said sullenly. “I didn’t know about the storm.”
    â€œThere’s sickness in the village; many people have died. You could have gotten sick, too.”
    Lorna gestured toward a canvas bag lying on the ground. “I had medicine.”
    Dixon picked up the bag and loosened the drawstring. Inside, a number of glass vials glistened green and blue in the firelight. He examined them: quinine and laudanum. Somehow, she had taken them from the medicine cabinet in his surgery without him noticing.
    â€œI watch you,” she said. “From that little upstairs room with the bed in it. Those two bottles were the ones you used on that old lady last fall, Mrs. Dillard, and she got better.”
    Dixon had never noticed Lorna hanging around the surgery. Why would she do that, and secretly? If she was interested in his work, as Harry was, he would be happy to instruct her. He looked at her and shook his head. Lorna was his child, but he saw nothing of himself in her and certainly nothing of her mother. He did not know his only daughter at all. Sometimes, her strangeness almost frightened him.
    â€œMrs.