“Ready?” Left Ned said. “Lift on three.”
I nodded.
“One, two, three.” Neds lifted and swung the top half of the stranger, while I did the same for his bottom half.
The springs creaked and moaned under the man’s weight, and the mattress sagged alarmingly. But the frame was hardwood and held up.
“Feet hang over pretty bad,” I noted. I got busy unlacing and unbuckling his boots—a good, sturdy pair that had seen years of wear and repair. I tugged those off and dropped them to the floor.
Right Ned wiped at his sweaty bangs, then tucked thumbs into the tool loops on the sides of his overalls. “You need anything else? Water and rags for the blood maybe?”
“Water’s a good idea. A bucket should do. Then maybe some help lifting him if I have to wrap the bandage all the way around his middle.”
“He shouldn’t be here,” Left Ned said. “House Gray. Probably a spy. Or worse.”
“Isn’t your say,” Right Ned replied. “This is Tilly’s house. Her decision.”
I turned away from setting the supplies on the nightstand to find Neds standing right behind me.
Left Ned was scowling and obviously working to keep his opinion to himself. Right Ned raised one eyebrow, and I grinned at the spark of humor in his soft blue eyes.
I didn’t know how that man could stand Left Ned’s attitude sometimes. But they were brothers. What else could he do?
“Do you think there’s something dangerous about our visitor?” I asked. Neds had more worldly experience than I, since he’d been in and out of the big cities and traveled for most of his life. “Seeing as how he’s unarmed and unconscious,” I added.
“Go ahead,” Left Ned said, “joke about it. But he’s trouble. Galvanized trouble.”
“It’s fine,” Right Ned said. “Nothing about him you can’t handle. We’ve seen you take down crocboars bare-handed.”
“You should have kicked him out on his heels, not dragged him in here and bedded him down like a lost puppy,” Left Ned muttered. “He’s a stranger.”
“I take in lots of strangers,” I said. “Plus, he’s wounded. A Case always tends to those who are hurt. Even if he was my sworn enemy, I’d patch him up before kicking him to the crocs.”
“We know that’s your way, Tilly,” Right Ned said. “And we respect it. Don’t we?” he said to Left Ned.
“No,wedon’t,” Left Ned said. “Too much kindness will just get you trouble. And that”—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the bed—“is already too much trouble.”
Right Ned rolled his eyes. “We’ll get the water. Be right back.”
I knew Left Ned was right. Sometimes it was better for all involved just to let a wounded thing lie. Sometimes kindness only reaped a bitter harvest.
But the man had come to warn my father. He’d come to help him, quite possibly at the risk of receiving that wound he now suffered. If for nothing more than his stated intentions, I felt he deserved to be mended.
And quickly, before he drew unwanted attention to my property.
Neds, probably Right Ned, had pushed the curtain back from the window, letting the daylight in to cheer the place.
From here I could see the row of oak trees stretched out on either side of it, all the way down the two miles before it ended at the old highway no one used anymore now that the cities were connected by freeways, sky, and tubes.
I pushed my hair out of my eyes. Grandma said my hair was the color of maple syrup and beautiful. I just thought it was bouncy and got in the way too much. I turned back to the supplies.
Thread, needles, scissors, clamps, plain cotton, and bandages. Regular disinfectants didn’t work on me, and I’d guessed they might not work on him either, which was why I’d brought a small jar of scale jelly. It looked like fruit jelly, a nice amber yellow of peach or tangerines boiled with sugar. But it was not eating jelly at all.
It was boiled-down lizard scales. When Neds had taken some of it down to the feed and seed just to see if they had ever seen the stuff, the owner had no idea what it was made of.
Dr. Smith, who’d been buying wormer for his goats that day, took an awfully strong interest in it, and said it didn’t look, smell, or feel like any medicine he’d ever used to patch up people or animals. He’d volunteered to run it through his lab to see what made it up.
Luckily, the Neds aren’t the sort who trust easily. They’d told the doctor no, laughed it off as just a single near-empty jar they’d found down by the old nuclear power plant at Clark’s River, and come on home.
