Part 82 (1/2)

Of course they'd seen his mouth moving. And they couldn't make out a blasted word.

He gave Flora a push on the shoulder, urging her to stay still as he poked his head out quickly to a.s.sess. The horses were still sidling and stamping, but there was no more gunfire, and they had stopped rearing against the reins. Miss Lil, Missus Shutt, and Missus Jorgensen stood shoulder to shoulder in the center of the chamber, each one eyeing a different tunnel mouth. Of the moon man, there was no sign.

Doc yawned to pop his ears, hoping. He could fool himself that the ringing eased a little.

”s.h.i.+t!” Flora snarled, then covered her lips in horror when he looked at her mildly, feeling his eyebrows rise.

”My momma would be scandalized,” Doc said, and kissed her quick, sideways across that unladylike mouth. Beside them, Bill rocked back against the wall, looking away quickly.

Doc, he thought, setting Flora back into the alcove, did you just kiss a Negress? Well, that wasn't like him at all.

Of course she didn't stay where he set her. When he stepped out, mincing, his pistol in his hand, she was there too, that shotgun she'd somehow hung on to at low ready. He scuffed his own over with his boot and crouched to scoop it up, hoping he wouldn't have to fire it before he had a chance to check the barrel.

When he started to stand again, Doc coughed hard, and kept coughing. When his lungs spasmed to a stop, before he could make himself look up, he wiped the froth of blood off his mouth with the back of his hand. He had seen it often enough to know it was crimson, a fresh, juicy red like poppy petals and cherry jam-but in the dim blue light of the derelict it was just a dark smear like any blood by moonlight. John Keats, physician and poet, had said upon coughing that red, ”I cannot be deceived in that colour. That drop of blood is my death warrant.”

John Henry Holliday, dentist and son of a consumptive, was no more likely to be misled. But he had already outlived poor Keats by half a decade, and the bullet that was supposed to shorten his suffering hadn't yet arrived.

No doubt delayed in the mail.

A gentle hand brushed his shoulder. Warmth and ease followed the contact. Miss Lil. He pressed the b.l.o.o.d.y hand to his lips so he wouldn't cough in her face and looked up.

”I'm a healer,” she said. ”Can I help?”

He'd heard of such hexes. Never met one. Even the strongest couldn't heal consumption, or potter's rot, or cancer. But she could probably ease his pain. He imagined the clean pleasure of drawing a breath that would fill him all the way to the bottom instead of one that choked and suffocated like a lungful of stones.

He couldn't speak. He nodded.

She laid one hand on his back between the shoulders and murmured some indistinct words. When she pulled away, he stood up straight and s.h.i.+vered.

”Thank you kindly, ma'am,” he said.

She patted his shoulder. ”Don't mention it.”

They went looking for the moon man, and also for the man with the gun. Miss Lil found the scuffed place in the trash below the tunnel where the moon man had fallen. She followed it to a series of freshly broken flakes of rust across the wall that showed where he'd run, sticky as a lizard, along the vertical surface.

”Well I'll be,” Doc said, edging between two mares to get a better look at the wall. ”And here's a mark from a ricochet.”

He pushed a fingertip against it, judging the angle, and glanced back over his shoulder to confirm. ”The shooter was down that pa.s.sage behind the moon man. I don't know how he could have missed. He had a clear shot at the critter's back.”

”And the ... moon man ... he ran through us to lose the shooter.” Miss Lil hesitated over the term, but once she'd chewed on it for a minute she seemed to accept it. Missus Jorgensen, coming up on their right, paused at the edge of the conversation. Her hair was coming loose around her face in pale wisps. Her holster was still unb.u.t.toned.

Doc shrugged. ”In his boots, wouldn't you?”

”He wasn't wearing boots,” said Missus Jorgensen, provoking Miss Lil to giggle shockingly, for a woman with Flora's shotgun balanced over one shoulder.

”He wasn't wearing much of anything,” Flora said, coming up along the other side of one of the mares.

Doc bit down on his own laugh. He was breathing easier, sure, but he didn't want to push his luck. ”You think that was the only one?”

”I think it wasn't threatening,” said Missus Jorgensen. ”I think it was trying to make friends.”

Doc met her gaze and nodded. ”Shooter was after a trophy, like as not,” he said. ”You could get a good price from a side show for a dead moon man.”

Missus Jorgensen recoiled, chin tucking as if she'd taken a blow. ”But they're ... ”

”Obviously intelligent,” Flora finished for her. Hard creases pinched along the sides of her mouth. ”That never stopped a lot of folks.”

”No,” Doc said, thinking about the brief resilience of her mouth against his. He hadn't kissed a woman since Kate had left. ”It never did.”

She jerked her gaze off his after a moment too long. ”I say we follow the shooter back along that corridor. He's the threat.”

Miss Jorgensen said, ”And he might be after the same thing we are.”

A glance that Doc couldn't read pa.s.sed between her and Flora.

Flora said, ”Our objectives have changed. It's a rescue mission now. Anything that could be learned from doc.u.mentation-anything that could help us reproduce the technology-” She shook her head. ”If we promise to do whatever we can to help get it home again, it might just be willing to help us understand its science.”

”Indeed,” said Miss Lil. ”The president will want to interview survivors.”

Doc felt his jaw drop. ”Call me a daisy,” he said, when he got a little bit of air back. ”You aren't from back East at all.”

The three women looked at him, stricken. For a moment, Doc felt a creeping vulnerability between his shoulder blades. He fought the urge to check his back and make sure Bill and Missus Shutt weren't flanking him.

”I'm from Boston, actually,” Flora said.

Doc shook his head, as their funny way of talking, the funny way Flora had said 1881 like it was ancient Rome, the funny way they reverenced him all came together in his head. ”That ain't what I mean. You're not just from back East. You're from sometime else. You're from the future.”

However they reacted, he missed it, because his chest tightened around the excitement with the pain of an incipient cough, and he doubled over with his hands on his knees. Slow breaths. Shallow. Easy. That was the way. His hands shook and his vision narrowed as he fished in his pocket for the stick of candy.

You'd shoot a horse with a broken wind. Why couldn't he get anybody to put a bullet into him?

The h.o.r.ehound eased his throat. Nothing would ease the tightness in his chest except the solution that had already been so long in coming. Or the touch of Miss Lil's hand, he realized, as she took his elbow and helped him stand upright.

”b.a.s.t.a.r.d thing,” he said, when he could say anything. ”Consumption killed my mother. Likely kill me too.”

”I know,” said Flora.

He caught her looking, got caught on her gaze. Nodded. ”I've got a legend where you come from?”

”Oh,” said Missus Shutt. ”Yes, Mr. Holliday. You do.”

”That's something, then. They got a cure for this, in the future?”

”We do,” Missus Shutt answered.

”Good,” he said. He felt for his pistol. Took it out, spun the cylinder. Made sure there was a bullet under the hammer.