Wanted

Chapter 38

The next time John woke was when Jeremiah, armed with a spoon and a bowl of porridge gently woke him up.

"Hey there buddy. You think you could keep awake for just a little longer than five minutes this time? Long enough for me to feed you this, so that Sally stops giving out to me for neglecting you?" Jeremiah asked with a friendly smirk.

John nodded and tried to get up but failed. The cuts crisscrossing his upper body and arms, although healing, were still very painful, so was his right shoulder and his head still hurt too. Jeremiah helped him sit up, propping him up with cushions against the headboard of the bed and then sat down beside him on the right side of the mattress.

Eating the porridge was a slow affair. Jeremiah put some food onto the spoon and then leaving it on the side of the bowl held the bowl out in front of John, so that John could pick up the spoon with his left hand to put the food into his mouth. He took only tiny amounts of food from each spoon. Just opening and closing his mouth, chewing and swallowing somehow seemed to hurt his head. Neither of them spoke, even though both had plenty they wanted to say and even more questions to ask.

"How's the patient today?" Walls wanted to know, as he marched into the room, with a broad smile, having obviously answered his own question, by just watching John sitting up and being fed his breakfast.

"He's good, Joseph," Jeremiah said looking up at the man, who stood slightly bend forward, with both his hands holding onto the top of the wooden board at the foot of John's bed. "He'll be alright," Jeremiah said with a cheerful voice. 

Walls nodded and smiled contently, but his demeanour changed in an instant when Carl, who had cautiously snuck into the room through the door that Walls had left open, squeezed himself in between his father's strong arms to see for himself how his friend was doing.

"Is he better, Pa?" Carl asked cautiously, first looking at his friend, then at Jeremiah, and lastly up at his father. Walls looked at John now with a frown and intimidatingly stern expression, having straightened his body so that he stood at the end of the bed with his arms crossed in front of his broad chest like a dangerous giant.

The drastic change in his stance did not go unnoticed, neither by John nor Jeremiah, so that John anxiously glanced at Jeremiah who raised his brows and faintly shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, 'don't look at me Pal, I'm with him,' the same expression he had for him when Numees gave him an earful for walking muck all over the cabin.

"Yes Carl," Walls said with a firm voice. "Your friend is doing a lot better today. He will be alright now," Walls said as he placed his strong hands on the small shoulders of his son in front of him.

"I hope you know how lucky you were," Walls' addressed John, in a reprimanding tone, and booming voice, which made John bashfully look down onto the blanket, studying the patchwork pattern in front of him with his fingertips. He didn't feel particularly lucky at this point of time. In fact, he thought he had been particularly unlucky that the lioness had cubs, and that she had also found him out. Lucky would have been if he had either been able to come home a hero for having killed a mountain lion, or being able to sneak back to the ranch undetected by the adults and the lioness alike, but he decided against sharing those thoughts with Walls.

John glanced up first at Carl, who looked at him pityingly then Jeremiah who went back to casually putting food onto John's spoon and then holding the bowl out to him. John didn't dare to look at Walls. He knew it would only encourage the unreasonable man to go on and into full lecture mode, and the man's voice hurt his head. Instead, he obediently picked up the spoon from the side of the bowl and bravely tried to finish his meal, which caused him enough pain that it showed a little on his face.