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neck. But just as suddenly as he’d prepared to end the bird’s life, he righted the pigeon and returned it to Elias.
    â€œThank you!” Elias gathered the bird to his chest. “Thank you!”
    He backed away quickly and ran to his own hut. He was too relieved to have saved the bird a second time to take note of Stephen’s and Lillian’s looks of concern. And he was far too happy to pay much mind to the uneasy feeling he got when he glimpsed Pennyrile still watching as he pulled the curtain across his own door.

Chapter Three
HALTER HITCH
    Y our lungs sound slightly improved, I believe,” Dr. Croghan said as he tucked the tube he used to listen to Elias’s chest back into his leather bag. He glanced at the pigeon. “Though your new friend’s chatter makes it somewhat difficult to hear.”
    â€œHis name’s Bedivere.” Elias rapped a knuckle on the tabletop. The pigeon strutted closer, twisting his head this way and that. Bedivere was a good name. The name of King Arthur’s best friend, the one who he trusted to throw Excalibur back into the lake.
    Croghan started to pet the bird, but Bedivere threw up his good wing and squawked.
    â€œI think I’d prefer that he be caged like the rest of Pennyrile’s birds,” Croghan said, eying a brass watch as he held Elias’s wrist to count out the heartbeats. In the silence, Elias studied the doctor. He wasn’t so old that he’d begun to go gray, but his hair needed a trim and he hadn’t shaved. He wore a gentleman’s clothes, but he’d missed a button on his waistcoat, and his trousers sported a patch poorly stitched.
    â€œOh no, Doctor,” Elias said. “He can’t fly. We’re pals, see?” Elias rapped his knuckle once more on the tabletop, and Bedivere hopped into his palm.
    â€œFine,” Croghan agreed. “But if you begin to decline, I’m afraid the bird will have to go.”
    â€œI been drinking your tea and eating all the eggs,” Elias protested as he drew the bird closer. “Bedivere won’t make me sicker.”
    â€œWe aren’t just after your not wasting away further. Our objective is to make you well .” He paused. “Are you feeling better?”
    Elias considered. Maybe? He was at least pleased about last night’s adventure and rescuing Bedivere. So yes, he felt better in that way, even if not in the way the doctor meant. “Some,” he said. “A little. I promise if I feel worse I’ll tell you.”
    â€œWe’ll see,” the doctor mused. “But, at any rate, it’s time we added something to your regimen.”
    â€œI thought the cave air was meant to be enough,” Elias said, worried.
    â€œThe vapors in the cave are powerful,” Croghan began, “but they primarily arrest the march of the wasting disease.”
    Elias recalled the mining operation that sat up near the entrance to the cave. The timbers from the Revolutionary War were still in perfect condition, owing to those magical cave vapors, which was how Croghan landed on bringing sick folks down there to heal. “So while the vapors do their work, we must do ours, pioneering the very latest in curatives.”
    Elias wasn’t sure about curatives, but he liked the bit about pioneers. “I read a book about Lewis and Clark and their push to the Pacific,” he offered.
    Dr. Croghan brightened. “Did you know that I have for an uncle Mr. William Clark? And that I trained for surgery under the same physician as Meriwether Lewis?”
    â€œNo foolin’?”
    â€œIndeed. The new frontier is here.” He gestured around the hut, to the cave beyond. “This place holds secrets and discoveries to rival those of the great expedition.”
    The doctor had a way about him, all hope and optimism, that Elias liked. Still, new treatments worried him.
    Croghan tapped his lip in contemplation, staring at Elias.