I was aware of a beeping noise that was always in the background. I couldn’t feel anything, I couldn’t move. I had no memories of what had happened to me, or where I was. I heard the soft rustlings of legs in nylons, of cloth rubbing against skin. I smelled perfume masking the scent of illness. Voices asking about someone who was in a coma, had not moved or spoken in days. I swallowed a lump of spit but couldn’t taste anything. I tried to open my eyes but the moment that I even thought about it, I was back in that place where the light was so bright that I could not see. The golden warmth wrapped me in its embrace, and I slid gratefully back into it, knowing that if and when I was ready to leave, it would be to an entirely new existence.
“Kid wake up.” The water hit my face, cold and smelly as if it had spent too much time lying stagnant. I cried out as the pain in my head blinded me. My hands wouldn’t move. Dirt was under me and I was covered with some smelly horse blanket. I was cold yet felt as if I were on fire.
Faces loomed into my view. Men, with whiskers and greasy unkempt hair. They smelled as if they hadn’t a passing acquaintance with bathing; were dressed in homespun and linen, dirty trousers, and down-at-heel boots. One wore a mangy buffalo hide coat and smelled worse than a rank bear.
“What did your Pa do with the gold, boy?” The nearest man asked. He had blue eyes, mahogany brown hair under a smashed derby. He held a tin cup that was empty, but he had been the one who’d tossed the water in my face.
“Who are you?” I asked shaking in terror. My eyes widened as I looked around the clearing and the old log hut that was solid on three sides and barely roofed. A fire sparked under it and I had been thrown near that. “Who am I?” My question made them back up and mutter among themselves.
“Your Pa, Captain Lacey,” the blue-eyed man spoke roughly and pushed me up. “Left Washington with a wagon load of gold for Fort Merrick, St. Louis. It ain’t there now. Where did he drop it?”
“My Pa?” I asked, looking at his group. “Are you my Pa?”
“Johannsen, how hard did you hit him?” The lean one asked, tilting my head. He touched the back and I cried out as his fingers set off an explosion of pain that made me puke. He cursed and dropped me. I fell face forward into the fire and the blue-eyed man snatched me before I burned. My feet dangled from his arms. The sky and the trees were dancing in circles and when I closed my eyes, it was worse.
“You hit him too hard, Johannsen,” the lean man complained. “How are we going to find the gold now that his Pa and slave escaped?”
“We’ll take him to St. Louis, send word to the Captain. If he wants his boy back alive, he’ll bring us the gold.”
It felt like I wasn’t there, it felt as if this was all a dream. I could hear what they said but not see through the growing clouds of dark.
“I didn’t plan on beating up no little boy,” one of the others muttered. “He ain’t no more than eight years-old.”
“Don’t worry, Dahlgren. We’ll turn him loose once we get what we come for. He ain't any danger to us, even if he’s seen our faces. Besides, accidents happen to young’uns out here all the time.”
I remember hitting the back of the wall, feeling the rough bark of the logs and the cold creeping into my limbs.
*****
Somebody carried me in front of them on the saddle, tucked against their ribs. Buttons rubbed on my face, my neck and the back of my head was stiff and sore. Someone tried to pour something hot down my throat, but I couldn’t swallow it. Once, I heard him curse when I tried to tell him I had to go and let loose wetting my pants while I sat in his lap.
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my lips split, bleeding. He cursed, complaining that my sweat and shivering annoyed him. Days passed. Riding, rarely stopping as if we were in a race toward the setting sun.
He threw me in a creek and held me down with just my face above the water. I screamed and fought feebly but my strength was quickly gone. That night, they camped in a cave and made a huge fire as they took off all my sodden clothes. They near cooked me to well done. Forced a thin gruel down my throat and plastered mustard on my chest.
My next awareness was lying in a pile of furs in a tent with a small fire going in the center and the smoke rising through a hole overhead. A woman with red skin and black hair was pouring something terrible tasting down my throat, one hand supporting my neck.
I felt horrible. Achy, cold, and yet hot as if I was burning my hide off. I coughed and felt and tasted blood in my mouth. I cried, and she said something to me in broad gutturals, but I didn’t understand her.