Matt Dillon woke to pain and heat and darkness. He remembered fevered dreams. He was thirsty beyond bearing. Hands touched his head and face and a cup was held to his mouth. He gulped the water and tried to ask for more, but his voice didn't seem to be working and no more was offered. He tried to raise a hand to his eyes and the blazing pain in his head, but his hands were tied. He seemed to by lying on a hard but moving surface, and after a bit he realized he was in a wagon and that it was moving. He was about to try again to speak when a particularly violent jolt sent him back into unconsciousness.
That was the beginning of a timeless period of waking and sleeping, hot, dry air, and never enough water. He couldn't see at all, but realized eventually that it was because of a bandage over his eyes. Sometimes it was lighter, and sometimes darker. Someone sat beside him, and from time to time he felt hands rubbing something on his face, a woman's hands. He didn't think, and he didn't remember, he just lay in pain waiting, hoping, for more water.
At some point, at one of the dark times, a spoon was held to his mouth and he opened it to receive some sort of soft, tasteless stuff. It hurt his dry throat but he managed to swallow it without choking, and the first spoonful was followed by another, and another. After that there was cold coffee, not as satisfying as the water, but wet nonetheless. He slept again.
The ride seemed to go on forever. No one spoke to him. No one spoke around him. He heard horses and the creaking of the wagon. Sometimes he woke in deeper darkness, and the hard surface beneath him was still. There were coyotes then and frightened nickers from the horses, but when he woke again the wagon was moving, the heat was back, and his thirst was overwhelming.
Eventually he began to remember things. It was the smell of the woman that first triggered his memory. Smoke and leather and sweat and the pungent tang of buffalo fat. He spent that day remembering every word he knew in Pawnee or Kiowa and trying to say them, but they all seemed to sound the same coming from his dry lips and throat. And the Indian woman responded to nothing.
He woke one morning, the wagon still unmoving beneath him, and a warm body curled at his side. "Kitty," he said, getting the word firmly past his lips, and then smothering in the cascade of memories that flooded in from that one word. He stayed awake all that day, counting rest stops, counting the times he was given water, listening for anything that would tell him where he was other than in a wagon on a rough road in the dry heat. There was nothing.
At some point, men began to join the wagon. He heard their horses, and he heard their talk. Some of the names were familiar. He remembered sitting a horse, bound and gagged. He remembered children screaming. He remembered his name, and lifted his tied hands to his chest to feel for a badge, but it wasn't there.
That night, when the wagon stopped, the men hauled him out and tried to make him stand, but his legs crumpled under him and his aching head sent him off into blackness again. He woke back in the wagon, the woman feeding him again, and more water, plenty of water, to follow. The water caused him another problem, and he tried to let her know what he needed. She must have been expecting that because she turned him on his side and unfastened his pants, holding some sort of container for him to piss into.
There were more men now, and Dillon listened to them as he rode, sometimes laying down, sometimes sitting up against the side of the covered wagon. He knew it was covered because despite the heat, he didn't feel the sting of the sun. His head still ached, and the side of his face burned like he'd been branded, but the woman fed him every night and gave him water, enough water, several times during the day. He felt stronger, and the next time the men pulled him out of the wagon, he stood.
"Walk him around, boys," said a voice whose memory chilled Matt's soul, "The wolves won't take him if he isn't fit."
It must have been a week later, after he'd walked every night, that they first put him on a horse. He didn't last very long, and found himself back in the wagon. But the next day they did it again, and the next, and the next. Gradually he found himself, still blindfolded, riding part of each day, his head burning in the sun until one morning the woman put a hat on his head. It shaded him, and helped the pain, but sent the men around him into whoops of laughter.
The air was humid now, and he ended each day soaked in sweat. One morning he heard the men riding away, but the wagon didn't start up to follow. He lay still all day, dozing in the wet heat. At dark he heard men and horses returning, but no one came to get him. The woman fed him, and gave him cold coffee, but it tasted even more foul than usual. His head began to spin, and he was fighting off the blackness when he heard Tonneman again, "You ready for the wolves, Dillon? You just wait and see how you like it. And your woman? You just think about what I'm going to do to her." It was the last thing he heard.
OoOoO
Matt awoke wrapped in some rough fabric and swinging back and forth. He was cold. But for the first time since he'd been shot his eyes were uncovered. He opened them to the dimness of a small wooden room that seemed to be moving, not roughly like the wagon but in giant swells. He was naked, and his hands were untied. He moved them up to feel his face. His fingers tangled in a beard. He moved them higher to where the blazing pain had crossed his face and found a tender scar, nearly as wide as his finger, that ran from his right cheekbone, across his jaw, and down below his ear.
A door opened, and a boy walked into the room and came towards him, stopping beside the canvas hammock in which he swung. "Meu nome é Luiz. Luiz," the boy said, pointing to himself, "Venha." It took the two of them a while to get him untangled from the hammock, and when they did, Dillon found he couldn't stand upright in the low-ceilinged room. The rocking continued, and it was difficult to keep his footing as the boy took his hand and let him through the low door. "Venha," he repeated, pulling Dillon towards a tilted ladder that led up into brighter light.
Matt climbed the ladder and stepped out onto the deck of a ship. He had never seen the sea before, but now it was all around him. Sails creaked above him, and the deck rose and fell. Far across the ocean to his left, the sun rose brightly above the horizon. He wanted to fall to his knees, lay down on the deck, close his eyes and wrap himself in his own arms. He wanted to cry more than he could ever remember in his life, even as a child. But he didn't do any of those things. He stood looking forward through the waves and he said, out loud, "I will go home. I swear I will."