The Devil's Paintbox (16 page)

“Where's their horses?” Jackson asked.

“I secured them with our own,” Gryffud said. The day was warm, but he wore his uniform coat fully buttoned, so his pink face was turning bright crimson.

“Well, I'd appreciate it if you unsecured them now,” Jackson said firmly. “I need all my hands.”

The lieutenant looked for a moment like he might question things further, but then ordered two soldiers to retrieve the Indians’ horses.

“I'll ride back over and start things moving,” Jackson said by way of ending the conversation. He pulled one foot out of his stirrup and held out his hand to Aiden so he could mount. “Get on behind, boy. You're no use to me idling here.” Aiden climbed on the back and Jackson wheeled the horse around. “Don't dawdle,” he called to the Indians.

“Aiden, I thought you were drowned!” Maddy threw her arms around Aiden's neck as soon as he slid off Jackson's horse. Aiden, glad to see her but embarrassed, pried her off.

“You saw I was fine,” he said. “You know I can swim.” He took her hand and pulled her close. “Now I need you to do something for me quick. Help me tell as many as you can that these Indians are our guides and have been with us one month. Will you do that? Quick as you can? Otherwise, they may get killed, and they did save my life.”

“Killed? Why?”

“Don't ask me now; please just trust me.”

“Shouldn't I know their names, then?”

Will she always be one step smarter than me? Aiden thought. He told her the three Indians’ names, and Maddy darted off. Aiden saw Mr. Hollingford and some of the other men in a tense discussion with Jackson, but somehow Jackson convinced them all to go along with the ruse.

“We'd still be sitting around waiting for the river to drop if not for them,” he pointed out.

By the time all the wagons and cattle were across, it was late afternoon, and there was no sense in trying to move another few miles when they could camp near the water. The settlers and soldiers alike, tired of their own company, were glad to mingle with new people. The men joined the army officers to sit in the shade of some wagons, smoke their pipes and talk. The Thompson boys and some of the other young men got up a game of baseball with the soldiers, who had a real bat and ball. The soldiers even knew the latest scores of the club games, which came over the telegraph to Fort Laramie.

Some of the women did washing, but there was no privacy for bathing with forty soldiers camped nearby. Babies and the smallest of the children did get a scrubbing, and the prairie afternoon erupted with howls of protest. Older children were sent scrambling back and forth to the riverbank with armloads of driftwood, and the women began to prepare the special meals that could only be made when there were generous fires and plenty of cooking time.

Meanwhile, Aiden was on a quest for peppermint candy. He knew Marguerite had lemon drops, and there was horehound
and rock candy to be had from the Thompsons, but it was peppermint that Tupic had learned to spell for, and Aiden suspected the Hollingfords would have that.

Despite his having saved Polly from the wolves, Aiden had never received more than grudging thanks from Mr. Hollingford. But Mrs. Hollingford was eternally grateful, so sometimes she slipped Maddy a jar of jam, a tin of sardines or some other treat from their abundant supplies. Once she even snuck out a pair of new socks for Aiden. They came from a store, had been knitted by a machine and were amazingly smooth. So when Aiden came asking her for peppermint, she was so glad to be able to do something for him that he was afraid she might cry. She looked around to be sure her husband wasn't watching, then climbed into the back of their stores wagon and carefully pried the lid off a tin box. A wave of sweet peppermint smell smacked Aiden in the face so hard he thought he would fall over.

“For the Indian boy,” she said as she quickly wrapped two sticks in paper. “And for you too!” She added two more.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hollingford.”

“Break them up!” she whispered. “Don't take out a whole stick! Tell him that so he understands! Just little pieces, all right? So no one sees!” She pinched her fingers quickly to show him; then her hands fluttered back into a fretful clench. “Those are from a nice shop, you see. If anyone saw, they would guess where they came from!”

“We'll be careful,” he reassured her. He felt sad and a little angry to see her so frightened. They were clearly the richest family in the group, and she should have been able to give away candy without worrying what her husband
would do. What would he do, anyway? In the coal town lots of men had hit their wives, but Mr. Hollingford was no coal miner. Even Aiden's own father, who would beat his sons at a hint of sass, had never laid a hand on his wife or the girls.

“Aiden?” Mrs. Hollingford whispered urgently as he turned to leave.

“Yes?”

“Those Indians—they won't hurt my girls, will they?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Well, if they get—you know, if they get the way Indians get—promise me you'll keep them away from Polly and Annie. Will you?”

Aiden felt a sourness rising in his throat but just nodded. “Yes, ma'am.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.” He started to leave but stopped. “You know, Mrs. Hollingford, they have families too,” he said. “With daughters and all. You don't have to worry, ma'am.”

He tucked the peppermint sticks in his pocket. The thought of tasting one himself made his mouth water, and he considered saving one for Maddy, but Tupic would certainly go much longer than either of them without another chance at such a treat. Once Aiden started work in the logging camp, he could buy candy for Maddy. Even with a year of debt to work off, he would have to get a little pocket money, wouldn't he?

He saw Maddy sitting next to Doc Carlos in the small rectangle of shade from his cart, a heavy medical book opened on a blanket on the ground between them. Aiden had
been surprised when Maddy told him that Carlos was only twenty-one, but lately the doctor had begun to look more like his age. He had put on some weight and, while still terribly thin, did not look like a corpse anymore. He still startled easily and mostly kept to himself, but he was not nearly so twitchy and nervous. Since Maddy had nursed him through the night of his strange sickness, he had been generous with lending her his books, and now Maddy spent every free minute studying.

Aiden fingered the candy sticks in his pocket. He could break off a little piece for her. She had done a good job of convincing people to back up his story. Tupic would want her to have a bit of his treat. As Aiden veered over, stealthily cracking off a piece of candy, Jefferson J. Jackson appeared from behind the cart.

“Doc Carlos? Sorry to interrupt your study there,” Jackson said. “I'm coming to ask would you check on a couple of the soldiers. They've got some flat-out sick and another few doing poorly. Would you mind looking them over?”

Carlos stared hard at his book. He had not mingled with the soldiers so far and seemed reluctant to have anything to do with them now.

“I haven't any medicines,” he replied quietly. “Whatever they have, there isn't anything I can do for them.”

“Yeah.” Jackson scratched the back of his neck. “I figured as much, but see, the lieutenant would be obliged, though. And sometimes, with soldiers, it's a good idea to oblige. If we got a doctor with us and they got sick men, well, it'd be kinda unfriendly if you wouldn't take a look, you know?”

“Yes, of course.” Carlos got to his feet. Maddy shut the book and jumped up as well.

“You stay here,” he said.

“Why?”

“It might be contagious.”

“How do I learn, then?”

“I'll tell you all about it later.”

Carlos started walking toward the army encampment.

“Wait!” Maddy said. “Don't you want your bag?”

“There's nothing in there for sickness,” Carlos said, almost rudely. “There's precious little in the world for sickness, and what there is I don't have.”

“Well, you look more like a doctor with it,” Maddy said gently. She pulled the leather bag out of the cart. “And that might be comforting to sick people, don't you think?”

Carlos stared at her as if she were speaking a foreign language but took the bag.

“Aiden,” he said, still looking hard at Maddy, “would you mind bringing me a bucket of water? Just bring it close; you needn't come near the sick.” He turned and strode away.

Four soldiers lay on blankets on the ground in the scant shade from the supply wagon. Three of them were very still, with glassy eyes and the sweaty pallor of fever. The fourth was curled on his side, agitated and moving restlessly, clutching a coat to his face and moaning.

“The light hurts his eyes,” a young, blond-haired soldier explained listlessly. He sat nearby with another six men. These seven were also ill, but not so bad as the four on the ground.

“When did you start feeling sick?” Carlos asked the blond soldier.

“Two days ago,” he replied. “Those others a couple days before that. Are we gonna get that bad?”

“I don't know.” Carlos knelt beside one of the sick men and felt around his neck. “You have a fever—what else hurts?”

“I hurt all over: my head, my back, my belly. My eyes hurt—and just all over.”

Carlos helped the man off with his jacket. Aiden arrived with the bucket of water and stood awkwardly nearby, waiting for direction.

“It feels worse than just regular sick somehow,” the soldier groaned. “I had the influenza bad last winter; ague too— twice in my life. This is different.” The soldier was trembling. “It's like bugs are inside me and scratching up on the bottom of my skin.”

“Lie still, let me examine you.” Carlos felt under his arms, lifted his shirt and pressed on his groin. The man groaned.

“Sit up now. Turn your face to the sun, there, so I can examine your throat.”

Carlos put a flat metal stick in the man's mouth and pressed his tongue down. Aiden saw Carlos tense, but his hands remained steady.

“All right, you can lie back down.”

Aiden didn't need to know anything about sickness or medicine; the air just felt heavy with doom. He watched Carlos move along the line of men, looking in their mouths and up their noses, examining their hands and the soles of their feet. Then he went back to the moaning man and pulled the jacket away from his head. This time he did not look in the man's mouth, just quickly draped the jacket back over his face and stood up. He wiped the sweat off his
forehead with his sleeve, walked over and sat down beside Aiden.

“I need you to stay quiet,” he whispered. “It isn't good.”

“All right.”

“The soldiers have smallpox.”

ave you been vaccinated?” Carlos asked Aiden. “Do you know?”

“Yes,” Aiden said.

“Maddy too?”

“Yes, when we were small in Virginia, we worked on a plantation. Everyone was vaccinated.”

“Good,” Carlos said. He opened his bag and took out a piece of soap wrapped in cloth.

“So we won't get it, right?” Aiden asked.

“The vaccine is never a hundred percent reliable,” Carlos said as he washed his hands in the bucket. “But it's usually pretty good in the East.”

Aiden didn't find that answer particularly comforting.

“I've been around those soldiers since yesterday. What if I did catch it?”

“Even if you did, which you probably didn't, it takes at least a week from the time of infection until you can pass it on to someone else.” Carlos offered no other words of reassurance, though Aiden dearly would have liked to hear some. He knew about smallpox; it was the worst disease there was. Epidemics killed hundreds of people—and many said you were lucky to die. Carlos stood up, rubbing his damp hands against the sides of his legs. Once again he looked like an old man. He poured out the bucket and watched the foamy water
sink into the ground. A few small, shimmering bubbles clung to blades of grass.

“What've we got, Doc?” the blond soldier called. “Is it something bad?”

Another of the sick soldiers got unsteadily to his feet. “It is bad! You know it is! When it ain't bad, they say so directly!”

“Just sit down there, Private,” Carlos said calmly. “I'm going to give you all something for the fever.