D
ANNY PUT A DAMP cloth on his mother’s forehead to cool her fever. It didn’t do much good. “You can’t stay with your step-daddy.” She struggled for air between her words. “Not when I’m gone.” She finished with a cough that took most of her strength. “Fever puts those ideas in your head,” Danny told her. “You’ll feel better when it breaks.” There were natural remedies to help with that—Indian remedies. Everybody in the Territory knew them. Danny burned sage, but it made her coughing worse. He brewed a tea of Cottonwood bark and yarrow, but she couldn’t swallow it. He drew the curtains and tried to talk her into sleep. When all else failed he gave prayer a try. “Lord please help Lucille Tinnin,” He kept it formal. Otherwise it sounded like he was whining, and he guessed the Lord wouldn’t care for that. “She’s suffered most of her life and ain’t done nothing wrong.” There ought to be more he could say, but all he could think of was, “Amen.” Lucille’s fever stayed the same, her cough got a
little worse, and she made a wheezing sound when she breathed. “The Captain’s gone for help.” Danny hoped that was true. He rode off early that morning before he even had a cup of coffee. Didn’t say where he was going, but it stood to reason. The nearest doctor was a half day’s ride away, but a Creek healing woman lived just south of Jack Fork Mountain. People said she had ways. “The Captain. . . .” Lucille’s eyes glazed over and for a moment it looked like her time had come, but she managed to fill her lungs with air again. “All I did was smile at him. That was my mistake.” Another gasp, followed by a short coughing fit, “Hugh Tinnin has needed killin’ for a long while now.” That was the first time Danny heard his mother call her husband by his name. First time since Captain Hugh Tinnin rescued her by killing the Black Seminole farmer she’d jumped the broom with at sixteen years of age. The Captain rescued Danny too, but only because he couldn’t scare Lucille into abandoning her half-breed boy. “The war ain’t never ended,” Lucille said. “Not for him.”
