The deep ache in his left shoulder has spread down his arm and into his chest, so that he feels it in his elbow and wrist as much as his neck and across his back. It's a dead heaviness more than piercing burning, for which he's grateful but still. It's all a little extraneous, considering that he doesn't remember what's happened. He tries, but draws a blank on everything after leaving Way's ranch.
He's in his own bed, anyway. He knows that much. The familiarity helps, but it doesn't tell him how he got back to the house. Clearly he didn't make it to Canton's place, so what happened in the interim to send him back here?
In truth, he's too tired to try and figure it out, content to lie in the bed in the darkness of the room. And if he doesn't move then the pain has no reason to get any worse.
That thought isn't quite as comforting as it should be, though it is a little.
He opens his eyes a crack, wary of hurting them, and is met with the sight of Mycroft stretched in his chair asleep. It's so incongruous with how his brother normally behaves that it makes him smile in spite of the pain.
John is slumped in his own chair, his hand resting beside Sherlock's. In the low light from the almost-burned out lamp, Sherlock can see the lines of tension etched in his face even in sleep, and the tightness between his eyes. He's too tired to try and puzzle it out, though it stirs a memory in the back of his mind, blisters, gunshots and a sense that what has happened feels profoundly wrong. It unsettles him, even now when it's all vague in the late night.
"Go back to sleep." Irene's voice in his ear is hoarse with tiredness, reminding him of late nights gambling in Denver, when his mind was too busy swirling to let him rest. Sherlock turns his head, careful so as not to jar his neck or shoulder, and sees her head resting on the pillow next to his, eyes drowsy, hair askew. She'd never go to work in the Comique looking like that. The idea makes his lips twitch in the midst of his tiredness.
"Denver," he murmurs, throat dry enough that he coughs with the effort of speaking, jarring his shoulder and tearing a whimper from his throat. Irene remedies that with a glass of water off the bedside cabinet which she presses to his lips. He recognises the sting of the laudanum, but doesn't protest, grateful to her for thinking of it.
She smiles, and it takes some of the tiredness out of her face. "I remember. That was probably the highlight of those two years. It surely beat an awful lot of what came before and after."
"Mhmm." He sighs, and she cards her fingers through his hair as his eyes slip closed. Sleep creeps in on him almost before he knows it, sweeping him beyond the stiffening pain in his shoulder.
The next time he wakes, he's greeted by the worried look on John's face, tight jaw and tighter forehead, eyes darkened. Before Sherlock can even open his mouth to say anything, John shushes him, finger to chapped lips.
"You were shot," he murmurs. "The bullet ripped through your shoulder and you lost quite a lot of blood. Don't stress yourself by talking yet, just rest."
The information swirls in the fog of Sherlock's mind, explaining the pain but not much else. His thoughts come sluggishly, like thick soup or blood through collapsing veins (and why does that seem like something important, something essential which requires further examination?) Before he can question John's words, John is already answering, faintest trace of a waver to his voice, eyes darker than before.
"We don't know the who, or the why, or any of those other things that you want to know. It's driving Mycroft mad. All we know is that about three nights ago you were riding back from Henry Way's, when you were shot."
Way's place? What could have brought him out that far? Must have been at least an eight for him to go that distance.
He swallows, throat raw as his eyes slip closed. It'll have to wait for now anyway. He's far too tired to focus on it.
John watches as Sherlock slips back into unconsciousness, and breathes a sigh of relief. For a moment, the recognition that glimmered in the detective's eyes at the mention of Henry Way worried him, but he's selfishly eased by Sherlock being too weak to put the rest of the pieces together. He knows it's wrong of him, knows he should be eager to see Sherlock improve and put this case to rest, but the fear of the torment it would wreak in his best friend's mind tempers that eagerness, softening it to a nice possibility, just not so in the immediate future. Better to let him forget about it for a few days, than to distract him with a disaster which he can't do anything to prevent now anyway.
Blood staining his hands. Hollow emptiness inside. Crackling flames stretching towards the sky. Acrid smell of hide and hair as the flames eat their way through carcasses piled high.
He wakes in a sweat, shoulder aching, heart pounding, feeling as if he's been through this before. In a rush, it all comes back to him, the cattle, the plague, the pyres. The newly infected out at Way's place, and surely that must have been days ago. What about Canton's? Are they down yet? Has it spread any further? Have they found a cause yet? What new cases has there been? The questions come in a torrent, a flood, forcing him to sit up too sharply and pull at the healing wound in his shoulder.
Only now, with the pain clearing his head, can Sherlock realise that the room is empty except for him, curtains pulled, lamp lit, grey light of late evening seeping in and bathing the walls. Leaning back against the head board he takes a deep breath, and then another, waiting until his heart rate settles, before carefully, cradling his left arm to his chest so as to limit movement, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, the hardwood floor cool on his bare feet. With infinite care, he stands, then has to sit down promptly when his head goes into a spin, jolting his muscles again.
The curse that comes to his lips he stifles behind gritted teeth. John would not be happy to think that he might have hurt himself more, and would likely keep him from the work even longer should the mere idea come to mind. He settles back against the head board, and slips one hand inside his shirt, feeling out the topography of the bandages and how much of his chest they cover. (Answer: Quite a bit. Presumably the injury was to an awkward part of his shoulder and took a lot of stabilising.) He lets his hand fall away and closes his eyes, meaning to only rest a few minutes before trying to stand again.
Instead, Sherlock dozes for an indeterminate period of time, woken only by John's hand on his good shoulder.
"How are you feeling now?" It's a strange sort of relief simply to hear John's voice, and for a moment Sherlock worries that tears might spring to his eyes.
"Tired. Sore. Nothing unexpected." His voice, on the other hand, is hoarser than expected, gravelly to his ears, and John passes him a glass of cold water, laudanum-less this time. It soothes Sherlock's throat, and he drains it all in a moment. "Tell me about the range."
John pales, almost unnoticeable, and if Sherlock were any weaker he wouldn't notice it. "The range? It's fine. Perfectly fine. Nothing wrong at all."
"Tell me the truth, John. How's Canton's place?"
John busies himself with the oil lamp, turning it up and then down again, so he doesn't have to look at Sherlock. "They started culling them out yesterday. Mycroft says at least two hundred had some symptoms of it."
"And Way?"
"There's a cavalry unit finishing him today."
A heavy silence falls in the room, and Sherlock doesn't know what to say. He knew it was bound to happen, knew Canton would go down in time, but knowing it in his gut and hearing it confirmed are two very different things, as is the wave of nausea that washes over him. There's nothing for him to bring up except water, so he just retches painfully over the edge of the bed, John rubbing circles on his back.
"Probably shouldn't have finished that glass so fast," he murmurs, helping Sherlock to lie back against the pillows when the retching stops and filling him another glass of water from the jug. "Sleep for a while. Do you want any morphine?"
Sherlock shakes his head, sighing. "No. Save what's left until I really need it."
Sherlock manages to sleep through that night, undoubtedly helped by the stream of morphine that John administers around midnight when his pained whimpers threaten to become cries. As with the last two nights, Irene stays by his side. Where she disappeared to during the day, John doesn't ask, though he is relieved to see that she doesn't look as tired as she had. Probably she just needed a break from all of the worry, like he does and refuses to take.
Either ways, both of them are still awake at dawn when Mycroft stumbles in and flops into the one remaining free chair in the bedroom, falling asleep without even taking off his hat. If the situation weren't so damn worrisome, John would laugh at the eyebrow Irene raises before she fetches a blanket to cover the elder Holmes brother.
"Must have been an exciting day," she remarks in that dry way she sometimes has.
"Hopefully not too exciting," John adds. "Don't know how much more of it I can take."
"Maybe he's reached some sort of conclusion." Neither deign to comment on just how unlikely that is.
Morning finds Sherlock waking to hushed voices in the hall outside his door, and words that he can't make out though he knows that it's John and Mycroft. He doesn't open his eyes, instead lies there with the comforting feel of Irene running her fingers through his curls and savouring the comforting almost-numbness in his shoulder.
As he struggles to hear what's being said, Irene starts talking, seeming to ramble on about any sort of nonsense, and successfully foiling any attempt of his to hear what's being said outside. She tells him about Molly and Mike, about the latest news from the saloon, most of it agonisingly dull and irrelevant, idle talk which simply doesn't matter to him and surely she must know that.
It's a throwaway remark that catches his attention, about one of Canton's cowhands having disappeared the same night he was shot. He files it away for further examination. Perhaps it isn't all nonsense that she's talking after all. That certainly seems at least somewhat promising.
She stops talking when the door creaks open, instead addressing her next question to John.
"Where's Mycroft off to now?"
The hesitation is clear in how long it takes John to answer. "Over around Henry Way's place. He think there might be something out there to help him, though what he expects to find I'm not sure. The smoke will probably hide most of the evidence anyway, and that's if the smell doesn't put him off. Wind seems to be blowing a lot of it that way."