Sentence:  By early summer , he wrote from Laramie that he was suffering from the wound inflicted in the ambush and <WSD>was</WSD> in a bad way financially , so Pels sent him a draft for $ 100 , warning that it was still not wise for him to return . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)