Worlds That Weren't

She gasped in surprise as he drank the chloral right from the bottle, knowing from experience the amount necessary to cause unconsciousness. “Thank you,” he said. “I will be all right now. You can go.”

“Let me help you with your boots.”

Freddie gave a weary laugh. “Oh, yes, by all means. I should not die with my boots on.”

The drug was already shimmering through his veins. Josie drew off his boots. His head was ringing like a great bell. Then the sound of the bell grew less and less, as if the clapper were being progressively swathed in wool, until it thudded no louder than a heartbeat.

Freddie woke after dark to discover that Josie had not left. He wiped away the gum that glued his eyelids shut and saw her curled in his only chair with her skirts tucked under her, reading by the light of his lamp.

“My God,” he said. “What hour is it?”

She brushed away an insect that circled the lamp. “I don’t know,” she said. “Past midnight, anyway.”

“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with Sheriff Behan?”

“He doesn’t own me.” Spoken tartly enough, though Freddie suspected that Behan might disagree.

“And besides,” Josie said, “I wanted to make sure you didn’t die of that medicine of yours.”

Freddie raised a hand to his forehead. The migraine was gone, but the drug still enfolded his nerves in its smothering arms. He felt stupid, and stupidly ridiculous. “Well, I did not die,” he said. “And I thank you-I will walk you home if you like.”

She glanced at the book in her hands. “I would like to finish the chapter.”

He could not see the title clearly in the dim light. “What are you reading?”

“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

Freddie gave a little laugh. “I borrowed that book from John Ringo. I think Twain is your finest American writer.”

“Ringo reads?” Josie looked surprised. “I thought you were the only person in the whole Territory who ever cracked a book, Herr Professor.”

“You would be surprised-there are many educated men here. John Holliday is of course a college graduate. John Ringo is a true autodidact-born poor but completely self-educated, a lover of books.”

“And a lover of other men’s cattle.”

Freddie smiled. “That is a small flaw in this country, miss. His virtues surely outweigh it.”

The drug had left his mouth dry. He rose from the bed and poured a glass of water from his pitcher. There was a strange singing in his head, the beginnings of the wild euphoria that often took him after a migraine. Usually he would write in his journals for hours during these fits, write until his hand was clawed with cramp.

He drank another glass of water and turned to Josie. “May I take you home?”

She regarded him, oval face gold in the glow of the lamp. “Johnny won’t be home for hours yet,” she said. “Are you often ill?”

“That depends on what you mean by often.” He shuffled in his stocking feet to his bed-it was the only other place to sit. He saw his winnings gleaming on the blanket-little rivers of silver had spilled from his pockets. He bent to pick them up, stack them on his shelf.

“How often is often?” Patiently.

“Once or twice a month. It used to be worse, much worse.”

“Before you came West.”

“Yes. Before I-before I ‘lit out for the Territory,’ as Mr. Mark Twain would say. And I was very ill the first years in America.”

“Were you different then?” she asked. “Johnny tells me you have this wild reputation-but here you’ve never been in trouble, and-” Looking at the room stacked high with books and papers. “-you live like a monk.”

“When I came to America, I was in very bad health,” he said. “I thought I would die.” He turned to Josie. “I believed that I would die at the age of thirty-five.”

She looked at him curiously. “Why that number?”

“My father died at that age. They called it ‘softening of the brain.’ He died mad.” He turned, sat on the bed, touched his temples with his fingers. “Sometimes I could feel the madness there, pressing upon my mind. Waiting for the right moment to strike. I thought that anything was better than dying as my father had died.” He laughed as memories swam through the euphoria that was flooding his brain. “So I lived a mad life!” he said. “A wild life, in hopes that it would kill me before the madness did! And then one day, I awoke-” He looked up at Josie, his face a mirror of the remembered surprise. “And I realized that I was no longer thirty-five, and that I was still alive.”

“That must have been a kind of liberation.”

“Oh, yes! But in any case that life was at an end. The Texas Rangers came to drive the wild men from the state, and-to my great shame-we allowed ourselves to be driven. And now we are here-” He looked at her. “Wiser, I hope.”

“You write to a lady,” she said.

Freddie looked at her in surprise. “I beg your pardon?” he said.

“I’m sorry. You were working on a letter-I saw it when I sat down. Perhaps I shouldn’t have looked, but-”

Mirth burst from Freddie. “My sister!” he laughed. “My sister Elisabeth!”

She seemed a little surprised. “You addressed her in such passionate terms-I thought she was perhaps-” She hesitated.