Wanted

Chapter 45

They arrived in Helena in the late afternoon the next day. It had been a cruelling journey. John felt rotten. He had kept himself awake all night on purpose and now his head hurt almost as bad as on the day after he got injured and his shoulder hurt from the awkward position he had been forced to lie in all night.

It hadn't been until they arrived in Salesville that their plan to give him to some carpenter in Helena was revealed to him. He had a fair idea where Helena was. Jeremiah had shown it to him on his map. He had wanted to show him where his father died and told him he would bring him there some day, but John wasn't all that keen on the idea. And now he definitely didn't want to go there. How was Jeremiah going to find him there? How was he going to find out that that's where they were going to bring him?

John had assumed they would give him back to Edwards. All the way back, the doctor kept talking about it as if this was a given. He kept talking about Mrs Edwards, his patient, who was going to be so pleased to see him back in her home. In hindsight John should have noticed that neither the marshal nor the agent from the orphan aid, Mr Harris made a single comment confirming this notion, neither to the doctor nor to him. In fact, they actively ignored him when he tried to engage them in a conversation which John thought was rather rude but understandable. John felt the doctor was just as crazy as Mrs Edwards and would have been much better suited to her than her actual husband. Although he thought, Edwards was fairly strange too.

He didn't like the idea of having to stay with Edwards and his missus again, but he would have been okay with it. He imagined that if Jeremiah wasn't able to get him back right away, he would just come and take him back, as soon as the marshal and the agent were gone back to wherever they had come from. He had been sure he wouldn't have to stay with them for long and had rolled his eyes at Jeremiah when he had made him promise to be good. He did promise though and had no intention to break that promise, 'don't give them any reason to move you about John, and don't run away. I can't get you if I don't know where you are,' Jeremiah had told him.

The placement with the Edwards wasn't legal Mr Harris explained to the doctor who tried to advocate for the woman who came running out onto the already dark streets in hysterics when they passed her house instead of bringing him to her. The placement with the carpenter however was, he said. It was signed by the judge who was also the local chairperson of the aid society.

His patient needed the boy returned to her, the doctor tried to argue against it. Motherhood was the only thing that was going to cure her of her nervous disposition, he claimed. He was very angry with Mr Harris and the marshal who refused to see sense and were indifferent to both the doctor's frustration and the woman's plight. John of course was never even asked what he wanted to happen and was firmly told to be quite when he tried to voice his opinion.

In Salesville, they stayed the night in the sheriff's home, whose wife kept two guest rooms for the few visitors that passed through the valley on their way to the Yellowstone Park but this time of year those rooms were almost always empty. It was late when they arrived. She gave them a small supper and then they went straight to bed. Mr Harris was given a room on his own, while the marshal and John were given the other to share. They had tossed a coin to decide who had to keep the boy with them for the night.

John kept himself awake all night, listening out for any noise that could reveal Jeremiah's arrival and couldn't understand what kept him. The posse had more or less dispersed as soon as they left Walls' ranch. Only a handful was needed to escort them back to Salesville, they claimed when the marshal wanted some more men to accompany them back. A harmless Quaker, they called Jeremiah, but the marshal was not convinced. He lost one of the soldiers he had hired for protection to that harmless Quaker. The other two soldiers rode off with the posse, so that the marshal had to hire two more men to stay with them and escort them all the way to Helena. A rough looking drifter who had nothing better to do, and a local ranch hand who had family in Helena, he'd been meaning to visit. They too did not take the marshal's worries seriously and spent the night in the only saloon in town.