.
At first, Jonah told himself the stiffness came from dust.
Then he told himself it came from sweat.
Then the fever rolled through him hard enough to make the whole horizon blur, and lying to himself started to feel like a habit he no longer had the strength to keep.
Three weeks back, the bullet had only grazed him.
That was the word everyone used when they wanted to pretend luck had done its part.
A graze.
A scrape.
A narrow thing.
Something a man should be able to wrap, ignore, and ride through.
Jonah had ridden through worse.
He had crossed winter country with cracked lips and fingers too cold to feel the reins.
He had eaten hard bread in rain that turned the ground to black paste.
He had slept sitting upright because if he lay down, the pain in his ribs made him curse loud enough to wake every man near him.
Pain was not new.
Pain was almost ordinary.
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