The Devil's Paintbox (20 page)

“They're brilliant,” Aiden said. “They could be from a book.”

“Thank you.” Gryffud relaxed and turned a lighter shade of pink. Jackson rode up.

“Lieutenant.” He tipped his hat. “We're moving out.”

“There's a small fort, an outpost really, about three days’
ride from here, on the Laramie River, just between the two ranges,” Gryffud said. “It doesn't even have a name, though most call it Fort Nowhere.”

“I reckon I know the place,” Jackson said. “Used to be a fur depot.”

“If you want to avoid Fort Laramie, I believe you'll pass by there instead. I'd be grateful if you would carry some letters.”

Jackson nodded and took the packet, eager to be off.

“I trust you will personally convey the urgency of our situation,” Gryffud added. “I have provisions for four or five days at best. I can't enforce a quarantine with starving men.”

“I will convey.” Jackson tucked the letters into the leather pouch. “I'm sure they'll send back supplies, and there seems to be game about, so you'll be just fine.”

“I believe so,” Gryffud said stoically. “Good luck to you, then.” He turned and walked back to his camp, his short legs working hard to climb the slight bluff.

“We kept some coffee hot,” Jackson said to Aiden and Carlos. “If you hurry.”

“I need to talk to Maddy,” Aiden said. “Tell her myself what happened before she hears it elsewhere.”

Maddy didn't say much when he told her, but she went so pale that Aiden thought she was going to faint. He took hold of her hand and told it all as plainly as he could.

“I think I had to shoot him,” he said. “I think he was a crazy man, and desperate.”

Maddy stared beyond him to where Carlos was helping Joby hitch up the mules. Her eyes shone with tears. She
brushed them away and took her brother's hand gently in her own.

“Come let me put some salve on your burns.” She took him back to the Reverend True's wagon and found a jar of salve and a bit of cotton rag for a bandage.

“Do you feel bad for the killing?”

She studied his face, and Aiden found himself unnerved. He had lots of practice keeping himself unreadable to her. All through the terrible starving winter he had fooled her childish eyes with feigned confidence. But now that little girl seemed to have vanished entirely and in her place was— who?

“I don't know,” he said.

“You could do the Act of Contrition,” she said. “I remember how it goes.”

“What for?”

“Getting forgiven, I guess.”

“By who?”

“Well—by God.”

“God could have stepped in any time and he didn't, so I don't need him forgiving me anything now.” He felt as if he might start crying himself and turned the feeling into anger. “Are you sorry Carlos isn't dead instead?”

“No. You know that.”

“Then shut up about God.” Aiden pulled his bandaged hand away. “God could have done a lot of things a whole lot better in this world. He could've left out smallpox, for one! So I ain't looking to him now for any damn Act of Contrition.”

Aiden turned away.

“Stop—” Maddy grabbed his arm. Her blue eyes searched his face. “We're all right now,” she said quietly. “We're going to be all right.”

Aiden bit his lip and just nodded, not trusting his voice or words. Maddy ran her hand gently down his arm and patted the bandaged hand.

“Don't itch at it.”

Once the wagon train was on the move, Aiden walked even farther out than he usually did. As the news of his killing Todd trickled through the group, people kept glancing at him and whispering. He didn't care. He just wished the sergeant's death would get out of his head. He kept seeing it over and over in his mind like a bad dream.

When the army camp was finally out of sight, people began to relax. In the bright light of day, reason prevailed again. Almost everyone in the wagon train had been vaccinated after all, and no one had really been in close contact with the sick men. At any rate, there was nothing anyone could do about it now one way or another. The usual work of a day on the trail was occupation enough for most people. No one had come on this journey expecting it to be easy. The Oregon Trail had some hard facts and figures.

“It's said there's a grave a mile,” Jackson had told them bluntly at the start. “I've known some wagon trains to lose half their people to the cholera. But even without disease, there's starvation or thirst, storms, Indians, stampedes, rock slides, drowning—or pure awful accident. Any way you can think up to die is out there waiting. One out of ten is the average.”

The reality was dire, but those committed to the journey were unmoved. Epidemics of measles or influenza regularly swept through cities, killing hundreds at a time. Mines caved in and farm animals trampled children. Childbirth killed one out of ten women. The only thing you could really count on anywhere was death, so the wagons rumbled on.

iden landed flat on his back and gave an exaggerated groan of pain. “Enough—I give up!” He looked up at the triumphant face of his opponent standing over him, shaggy blond hair bright against the blue sky. He was a ferocious wrestler—all thirty pounds of him. Aiden jumped to his feet, then swung the child up over his shoulder. “You beat me!” Cheers and laughter filled the air. The little boy howled and grabbed at Aiden's neck. Matthew Thompson was four years old, still young enough (and indulged enough by his older brothers) to believe he had really beaten Aiden in wrestling. A dozen other small boys jumped and shouted, tackled each other and rolled in the grass like puppies. It was late June, and the long summer evenings gave plenty of time to play. Only two days had passed since they'd left the soldiers behind in their plague camp, but there was a light-hearted air that evening.

“I think everyone is just tired of fretting,” Jackson said as he sat on the back of his wagon watching the wrestling with the Reverend True. Since Aiden had shown the other boys the techniques Tupic had taught him, Indian wrestling had become the center of activity for the boys in the wagon train.

“I'll have a go now!” Peter Thompson jumped up to face Aiden. While the little boys were content with play, the older boys were actually interested in learning the technique. Peter
was a good two inches taller than Aiden and had a long reach, but every time he lunged, Aiden stepped nimbly away “Watch here.” Aiden tapped his chest. “Not my face. The face will lie.” He darted his head to the right and Peter instinctively followed, but Aiden moved the other way. “Movement comes from the center.” He could almost hear Tupic's voice in his ear telling him the same thing. There was so much more he wished he could have learned from the Indians. Aiden's moment of distraction was all Peter needed to lunge for his feet and take him down. Once they were on the ground, the larger boy had no trouble pinning Aiden. Like Matthew, Peter was good-natured, but he didn't share his little brother's need to crow. He gave Aiden a hand up, at which time John and Joe, the next-down brothers, promptly jumped on the both of them. The rough play went on until all were tired and dusty and parents came to herd their children home.

They were in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains now, and travel was more demanding. The next day they came to a place so steep they had to hitch two teams to each wagon to pull them up and slip blocks under the wheels as they went to prevent them from rolling backward. Despite the new challenges, they made good time and arrived at Fort Nowhere that afternoon.

The fort was a small collection of rough log buildings behind a wall of narrow tree trunks set upright in the ground. Aiden suspected the average Indian could get over this wall in a minute or so, and even the oldest and feeblest could breach it with a leg up. It was a lonely little outpost with only
about thirty soldiers. Few wagon trains ever came here— most stopped at Fort Laramie, which was on the main part of the Oregon Trail about seventy miles north—so the soldiers were always eager for visitors.

“I'm going to ride up ahead,” Jackson said to Aiden. “Explain our situation.” But he hadn't gone even a hundred yards up the trail when a corporal came riding out to meet him. The soldiers in the fort had seen the dust cloud of the approaching wagon train.

“We're glad to see you,” the corporal said, “but you can't enter. There's smallpox in Fort Laramie.” He halted his horse some twenty feet from Jackson. “None of our soldiers are sick, but some have been up there lately, so we're under quarantine for the time being. You're welcome to camp in the clearing nearby, but the orders are to have no physical association.” His eyes landed briefly on Polly and Annie, and his shoulders slumped with disappointment.

Jackson explained about Lieutenant Gryffud's detachment being in similar circumstances.

“We have a doctor with us, says we ain't catching,” Jackson added. “But I do agree, might be a good thing for us to socialize from a distance.”

The wagon train camped at the edge of the clearing, and it was agreed that the two groups would maintain a distance of twenty feet. Boundary lines were scratched out in the dirt. Jackson placed Lieutenant Gryffud's papers on a stump between the two camps, then walked back while the corporal came up to retrieve them. There was some debate over whether smallpox could be passed on through objects. Carlos said not likely, but some feared anyway. Desire finally won out, however. The soldiers had newspapers
and magazines and even some books to pass along. People were bored and hungry for new things. Therese Thompson wanted a birthday present for her brother John, who was turning fourteen. She pleaded with Aiden to take him hunting to get him away from camp. Aiden knew that with so many soldiers around there would be little chance of finding game, but he figured they could at least shoot for practice. He went off with John and Peter and even let little Matthew tag along. Once they were gone, Therese, assisted by all the girls in the wagon train, carried on negotiations with the soldiers all afternoon.

“First she had to trade with our folks to get anything the soldiers might want,” Maddy explained to Aiden later. “Then we had to negotiate across the stump for something John would actually like.”

The girls had said no thanks to a belt, a pipe and a badly stuffed squirrel in a miniature Indian war bonnet. They weren't sure what “French postcards” were, but Marguerite had advised against them. “I'm sure she was right,” Maddy said. “Those Thompson boys never have been much interested in the
Atlas of the World.”
Aiden said nothing. He didn't know what “French postcards” were either, but somehow didn't think the pictures would be of the French countryside. Aiden was glad to see Maddy engaged in some foolery. She had become so serious with her studies and spent far too much time lately with Doc Carlos and his books.

“So finally, Therese made the deal!” Maddy told him with some triumph. “She traded one jar of strawberry jam, which she got from her own mother for a promise to do all the baby's washing for the next week; six pencils, a gift from Marguerite; a peppermint stick—from Polly, but she made
her give three hair ribbons! Also a perfumed handkerchief. That was my idea! Rose offered the handkerchief and Marguerite put some of her perfume on it,” Maddy explained excitedly

“So what did Therese trade all that for?” Aiden was already lost in the intricacies of the girlish dealings.

“Oh, a beautiful folding pocketknife with a polished bone handle. It was easily worth twice the jam and all the pencils at the very least.”

“Shoot,” Jackson laughed when Aiden told him later. “I reckon those soldiers would have swapped out their own teeth just to watch those girls scamper back and forth to the stump all afternoon.”

Everyone cheered when John opened his present and was truly amazed at the splendid knife. There was little left in any wagon to make even the poorest sort of cake, but Mrs. Thompson opened another whole jar of jam and gave every child in the camp a half teaspoonful. They lined up, spoons in hand, then scampered off with their glistening treats, some to lick it slowly, others to pop in the whole sweet gob at once. As evening fell, one soldier played the fiddle and the emigrants and soldiers all danced. It was a queer way of dancing, with a twenty-foot gap between the two groups to keep the plague at bay, but out here it did not seem so odd. This was a new time in a new land, and so there had to be new dances.