“Jason,” said Mr. Harper finally, “look at me.”
Jason looked at him.
“Dr. Bergstrom thinks that Piotr Nowak will live. So you have not killed a man today, although you might well have. For that, you can be grateful.”
“I am grateful for that.”
“And I must tell you that I am grateful you had the presence of mind to use my daughter’s ill-gotten toy to protect her life and honour.”
Jason nodded.
“Now I am going to send you home. You and Mrs. Frost both.”
“Father,” said Ruth, standing up, “Mr. Thistledown should not go back to the same hospital as that brute!”
“I am not speaking of the hospital,” said Mr. Harper. “I mean to say, it is time that both you and your aunt left Eliada. The steamboat is downriver just now. It returns late tomorrow. On Tuesday, you shall both be on it.”
Aunt Germaine leaned forward. “I beg your pardon,” she said in a tone that suggested anything but begging.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Frost. You may convey my apologies to New York, if indeed that is your next stop.”
“You are suggesting that we leave,” she said. “Now.”
“I am insisting.”
Aunt Germaine stood, and walked over to Jason. She put a hand on his arm.
“He rescued your daughter, sir. From, if I may say, a difficulty that is of your making—not his.”
“Is that so?”
“The Klan. They were here before us, sir. They injured your Negro days before we arrived.”
“My Negro.”
Mr. Harper drew a breath and paused, as if collecting himself.
“Madame,” he finally continued, “I will not be swayed. Do you not see what danger you are in now? Both of you? Are you not afraid that this fellow’s friends will try to take vengeance?”
Aunt Germaine took Jason’s arm. “We shall see,” she said. “Come Jason—we are returning to the hospital.”
Jason stood up, but Mr. Harper shook his head. “I would not recommend that. Ruth is right—the hospital is not safe.”
“Then what would you recommend?”
Mr. Harper sighed. “Mrs. Frost, I don’t bear you ill will. You or young Mr. Thistledown. I’d ask that the two of you remain here as our guests for the next two nights. We have spare rooms aplenty, and I think you will find that Harper hospitality exceeds that at the hospital. I do not think that anyone would dare strike here.”
“We shall send for your things,” said Mrs. Harper in a kindly tone.
Aunt Germaine was having none of it. “Do not think this makes things right!” she said, so fiercely that Mrs. Harper gasped, Mr. Harper looked away, and Jason felt the blood in his face as he briefly met eyes with Ruth. He recalled as they arrived that Aunt Germaine had not wished to be embarrassed. He wondered now, somewhat nastily, if she even had the wit to be.
The picnic carried on long into the evening but Jason stayed clear of it. He had a good view from the bedroom the servants had put him up in. It was an attic room, but pretty fine for that: the bed was wider than the hospital bed that Jason slept in, and softer too. And there was a little window that cut out from the eaves, and a place where a fellow could sit and look out. It was also advantageous, in that the room was a floor up and a wing away from the quarters where they’d placed Aunt Germaine.
He had only two visitors during the day.
Sam Green stopped in about four in the afternoon. Outside, some fellows had gotten with their instruments—one with a guitar, another with a fiddle, and another fellow with a harmonica—and started to play a tune together. Sam Green knocked twice on the door before letting himself in. Jason nodded welcome.
“You ever learn to dance, Mr. Thistledown?” said Sam, bending his head to look out the window over Jason’s shoulder.
“Not much call for it,” said Jason.
“Are you sure about that? Nothing a young lady likes better’n a fellow who’s quick on a two-step.”
“Mayhap I should learn that then.”
Sam tilted his head. “Mayhap,” he said.
Jason slid out of the window. “How is he?” he asked.
“He?”
“Fellow I shot,” said Jason.
“Oh,” said Sam, “you’re interested. That’s something. Wouldn’t have thought that of a Thistledown boy. Particularly one as you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Sam smiled and set down in the window where Jason had been. “You shot a man today. You shot him right, just where you needed, to take him down but not kill him. And then you held him—kept that gun on him steady until my men could show up.”
“Wasn’t much else to do.”
“Well you did the right thing—exactly the right thing—and that is something most fellows would not have been able to. I know because I’ve seen how most fellows get when they start to shooting. Some of them keep shooting, doing all sorts of harm and you got to calm them down or shoot ’em to make ’em stop. Others—well, they shoot the once and miss, and then start shaking so bad they can’t do it again and they get themselves shot often as not as well.
“And then there’s another sort. Like you.”
“Like me.”
“Ice in your veins, boy. I could tell the minute I showed up, and looked you in the eye.”
“What did you see?”
“What I’ve seen in your pa’s eyes.” Sam was nodding slowly as he looked at Jason, and things got quiet. Jason did not take the bait.
“You going to tell me how that fellow’s doing?” he said. “The one I shot so well?”
Sam smiled and chuckled deep in his chest. “He’ll be fine soon as the doctor sobers up enough to work on him. Then I will talk to him. We found some other sheets in the orchard—dropped, like their owners heard the gunshots, dropped the costumes and bolted—not far off. Did you happen to hear or see anyone else?”
“No. Just him.”
Sam nodded. “Figured you’d say if you had. That wasn’t what I came here for, though.”
“What did you come for?”
“Tell you thanks,” said Sam. “Thanks for keeping that matter between us. And thanks for taking care of Ruth. That was a near thing.”
“Well, you are welcome sir,” said Jason.
“And son,” he said as he pushed himself off the windowsill and headed for the door, “you might want to take my advice and learn that two-step. More reliable way to impress a young lady than shooting folks with a borrowed six-gun, you want my opinion.”
The second visitor was a mystery—just a knock at the door, and a wax-sealed envelope slipped beneath it. By the time Jason opened the door, the footsteps were going down the stairs.
So Jason opened the seal and pulled out two folded sheets of paper and an empty, unaddressed envelope. One sheet was blank, one was full of fine handwriting. He did not have to look to the signature at the bottom to know who it was from.
Jason read the letter from Ruth Harper twice before he could put pen to paper and make up a reply. Lord, but the girl was verbose. She used up not one but four sentences describing how much she liked being kissed by him and kissing him back. She felt less kindly toward her father, and she took three more sentences to say how awful he was for making Jason leave town so fast. She was also cross with Miss Louise Butler (although on this she did not elaborate), which was why she had imposed upon Harris, one of the servants, to deliver her letter instead. He would be by later in the evening, to collect any reply that Jason might wish to write, which was what the blank sheet of paper and empty envelope were for. She apologized for not sending along a stick of wax, but it would not have fit under the door.