The Frontiersman’s Daughter (38 page)

63

At dawn Lael saddled Pandora and rode to the fort. She knocked directly on Ian’s door, but there was no answer. Dismayed, she crossed the common to Ma Horn’s and let herself in. Things here were the same as they’d ever been. Ma Horn sat by the fire, finishing her breakfast, and smiled when Lael entered.

Lael’s own smile, in return, was hollow. “I’ve come to see the doctor,” she said, sitting down on the hearth and removing her wet bonnet. “I behaved badly. I refused to go to the McClarys’ with him.”

“And now you’re lookin’ to tell him you’re sorry,” Ma Horn surmised. “Well, the doctor’s made of good dirt. He’ll forgive you, once he comes back.”

“He’s still away?”

“Aye, for nigh on two days now. One of them widows is mighty sick. But he should ride in directly.”

But Lael knew she couldn’t wait. As she rode out of the fort’s gates and headed west a great dread nearly turned her back. In her befuddlement, she’d forgotten her gun. Suppose one of the McClary clan shot at her? The mere sight of her would surely raise a ruckus, gun or no gun, though perhaps the lack of a weapon was best. Years before she’d been to the McClary homestead with Ma Horn. Just a child then, she recollected someone having a fever and their breaking it with boneset. Ian had spoken of a fever as well. But this was no ordinary fever, he’d said.

When she reached the north fork of the river, the rain had eased and she paused to let the mare drink. The water was brown and churlish, the current swift. Should she cross? Nay, she thought, but she was wet to the skin anyway so it hardly mattered. Steeling herself, she urged Pandora forward into the water.

She ended up far downriver, and the mare had a hard time getting her footing on the slippery bank. Above the roar of the water she thought she heard hoofbeats. There, coming through the trees, was Colonel Barr on a big chestnut mare. At the sight of her he reined in his horse, no welcome warming his face.

“You’re too late,” he said tersely. “One of the widows is dead.”

She stared at him, speechless. Dead? Of a fever?

“I didn’t go into the McClary cabin, understand, and neither will you. We’ll return to the fort together and sound the alarm.” His face showed his revulsion. “’Tis the pox, Miss Click. The smallpox.”

There was nothing to do but wait. While Colonel Barr gathered men to ride and warn the settlement, Lael sat in Ma Horn’s cabin. When Ian didn’t return by nightfall, she rode out in the heavy twilight toward home and Ransom. Once there, she scoured her medical texts but found little to allay her fears. She rode back to the fort the next morning, increasingly anxious to see Ian.

All around her, birds sang in the still dawn and she marveled that such sweetness could exist alongside the horror of the pox. She was weary, oh so weary, but how much more so must Ian be, working alone as she’d left him to do, facing the dreaded disease. His own parents had died of the same. What memories of that terrible time were being resurrected by all this? Her refusal to accompany him was unforgivable, and guilt dogged her every step, haranguing her till she could make things right between them—if they could ever be right again.

By day’s end he’d returned to the fort to find both blacksmith and sutler in his quarters. Lael was soon at his door, saddlebags in hand, prepared to do what she should have done from the first.

He met her at the door but wouldn’t let her enter. “Go away, Lael. I’ll no’ have you exposed tae the sickness. I have tae shut myself away for a time, tae be sure of the inoculation.”

Inoculation?
The strange word might have been spoken in Gaelic.

She returned to Ma Horn, heartsore and bone weary, but her idleness was not to last. By week’s end, five more of the fort’s inhabitants lay ill, and the gates of the fort were closed in quarantine, imprisoning all within.

Those who still stood hale and hearty eyed each other with grim sympathy and wondered who would be the next to fall. It was a tense, desperate time, made all the worse by waiting. Unable to stand it any longer, Lael positioned herself by the shutter, her eye on the far blockhouse.

“Pray that the Indians make no trouble,” Ma Horn told her. “Can ye imagine it? Any unrest would drive the settlement to our gates and what would be the worst—slaughtered by Indians without or the pox within?”

Lael looked up, unable to eat her soup. “Didn’t you hear? Colonel Barr says the Shawnee are sick with the same. Some traders gave them infected blankets upriver.”

The news had only deepened her grief. Her thoughts were suspended between Ian and Captain Jack. She prayed as she watched and waited but felt her petitions were small and hypocritical, yet she continued feebly.

On the eighth day of their confinement, when darkness enfolded the fort like a shroud, the door to the quarantined blockhouse cracked open, casting a triangle of light onto the muddy, empty common beyond. Amazed, she watched as Ian himself slipped out, silent as a shadow, and crossed over to the cabin of Colonel Barr.

With a quick kiss on Ma Horn’s wrinkled cheek, she let herself out and nearly ran to the blockhouse. She cast a quick look behind her but found herself alone in the gloom. She pushed at the heavy door, and the wave of sickness—and death—was suffocating. Nauseous, she wondered if she could even enter without a handkerchief to cover her face.

Before her, in the flickering candlelight, lay four men and one woman. Bland Ballinger. Flowner Beel. Jemima Tate. Nathaniel Hart. Galen Wood. She willed herself forward, hand pressed to her nose and mouth. All were lying on pallets, with enough room to walk between them, and all eyes were closed in the fever’s grip or, she guessed, a drug-induced slumber. A fifth man lay apart from the rest, against one wall, and his eyes were open. She stood over him for just a moment before she realized that he—the fort sutler—was dead. And so covered with the great oozing boils she hardly recognized him.

“Lael!”

She spun around at the sound of Ian’s voice. He stood in the doorway, Colonel Barr behind him. The anguish in his face was so plain she felt stricken. But it was too late to turn back, and they both knew it.

“You shouldn’t be here, Miss Click,” the colonel said at once.

“I should have been here from the first,” she replied quietly.

Even Philo Barr was loath to enter. Though he shut the door he stood against it, his eyes roaming the room in apparent horror. But Ian was beside her, looking down at her, his hands on her shoulders.

Oh, those eyes! They seemed to look right through her, past all the turmoil and meanness, and regard her with affection anyway. But then their welcome light faded and a harshness crept in. “You canna be here, Lael. I’ll walk you back tae Ma Horn’s cabin.”

Her own eyes were pleading. “I won’t leave you. Not now. Not ever. You do need me. I—I can see that you do.” Oh, but she wanted to go! Could he sense that? Yet her love for him made her stay. Did he know that too?

He released her and turned back to Colonel Barr who barked, “Where is the dead man?”

Ian moved to the body of the sutler and began wrapping him in a sheet. “You’ll have tae help me move him tae the travois tae bury him.”

Still, Colonel Barr did not move. A bit gruffly, Ian said over his shoulder, “Have you no’ had the pox, mon? Your scars tell me you have.”

“Well, I—as a lad—many years ago.”

“Then you canna take the pox again, Colonel. Once a mon has had it, and lives tae tell the tale, he is safe.”

Truly? Lael stared at the door and then at Philo Barr. The relief on his face was almost laughable. He came forward then, and the two men lifted the body off the pallet and carried it to the horse and travois waiting outside.

Ian turned to her and said, “I’ll soon be back. Tend tae the sick as best you can.”

Near midnight he returned, having buried the body well beyond the fort’s gates. Lael had built up the fire and made some broth and cornbread, and in the small circle of firelight they sat and ate together in silence.

When they had finished, he took one of her hands in both his own. The gesture startled her so much she looked down at her hand, slender and pale and nearly lost in his. At his touch a delightful warmth spread through her. Had he forgiven her, after all?

“Lael, I need tae speak tae you plain.”

She looked up at him, suddenly wary. A sudden groan from Nathaniel Hart took their eyes off each other. But Ian turned back, face firm. “I’ll speak plain—and fast. Tae be here is tae put your very life in jeopardy. There is but one hope. You must take the pox by inoculation.”

“What?”

“’Tis a simple procedure, one that I have already done on myself. I pass a needle and thread through an infected pock and then underneath your own skin. Here.” He touched her upper arm. “You will still get the pox, tae be sure, but it will likely be a mild case.”

“Likely,” she repeated, though she heard the warning in his voice.

“Likely but not certain. It could kill you,” he confessed.

He had done this very thing, and because he had, she would also.

“So be it,” she said, a growing dread in her heart.

“You are sure?”

She nodded and he took up a needle and thread and talked quietly to her. The inoculation for pox had begun in Boston. A clergyman had vaccinated himself and his own children during an epidemic there. Though it was still opposed, several Boston doctors had become convinced of the soundness of the practice, including the physician Ian had once worked with.

She nearly balked when he ran the needle through a pox on Bland Ballinger’s arm. Ballinger looked about to die, so grotesque were his sores. When the incision was made on her own arm, she shut her eyes tight, then opened them when the prick was over.

For a moment he sat staring at the needle, and she wondered what he was thinking. Or was he praying? She looked past him to the human misery that lay about them in the flickering light, and her heart was so heavy she burst out, “Oh Ian—how do you stand this?”

He said simply, “I pray and think of Scotlain. And you.”

64

That same night Colonel Barr joined them, and Jane McFee was soon to follow. “I saw you come over,” she told Lael. “And I said, ‘What’s good enough for Lael Click is good enough for me.’ Now that my Matthew has passed on, I don’t have nobody to tend but myself.”

Ian’s smile was warm if weary. “Well, Jane, if you’re as good a nurse as you are a crack shot, we’re in good hands, tae be sure.”

And so Jane took the pox by inoculation, but Colonel Barr had not fared so well with the others. “I’ve informed everyone of the practice and find all opposed but one.”

“Ma Horn?” Lael asked hopefully.

“Nay. Hamish Todd. And there’s word the sickness is spreading beyond our walls. The McClarys’ neighbors—the Simmons, I believe—have two children ill. And the oldest Tucker boy, the one who was helping out at the McClarys’ since Hugh and Hero died, he’s sick as well.”

Ian looked up from where he sat examining Jemima Tate. “Any word on the rest of the McClarys? They took the inoculation before I left, every one of them.”

“All sick,” the colonel reported. “But mildly so.”

“Any word on my brother or the Blisses?” Lael asked.

“They’re keeping to their cabins, as instructed. I know little else.”

The four of them decided that the women would go upstairs and rest while the men remained below, then later they would trade places. The medication Ian had used to ease the suffering began to wear thin, and the patients grew fitful, tossing on their pallets and murmuring or crying aloud outright.

“’Tis the nature of the illness,” he explained. “The fever brings aboot delirium and an aching of the joints. Next a rash develops and gives way tae the pox themselves. There’s little tae be done tae ease their suffering except opium, and I’ve precious little left.”

“Perhaps I can ride to Lexington on the morrow,” Colonel Barr volunteered.

Slowly, Lael and Jane climbed the stairs, holding a single candle aloft. They were to share the doctor’s bed, but would sleep ever come? The simple pallet had been made grand by a lovely blue-and-tan coverlet, the likes of which she’d never seen.

And there on the nightstand, momentarily forgotten by him, perhaps, lay the exquisite pink pearls and her own sunny braid. She sank down onto the bed, the shucks rustling beneath her weight, and blew out the candle. As she lay down, the soft weight of the blankets that enveloped her, warm as a man’s arms, was the essence of Ian himself.

•• Was there ever, Lael wondered, more tender care? The sick lay unresponsive, beyond all hope or reason, and yet Ian’s thorough administrations never ceased. As she and Jane worked alongside him, she watched him at work, marveling at his composure. The days seemed endless, blending into one everlasting series of chores. There were feverish bodies to wash with cold rags, soiled bedding and clothes to change and boil in lye water, meals to cook, and water to draw and force past parched lips.

The thought that she herself would soon fall ill was dreadful. But at least he would be there to care for her. And gentle Jane. Jane, who could stand up to a gun hole as well as any man. Lael developed a new fondness for the older woman overnight, impressed by her self-sacrifice and the tireless way she took up any task.

Lael’s own motives were tainted—she was here out of guilt and duty and a desperate love—but Jane and Ian shared the same spirit of self-sacrifice. Several times she caught Jane’s lips moving in silent prayer as she worked, and Lael found herself praying as well, asking for mercy so that when Jane fell ill it would be only mildly so, and that she would not bear the hideous marks.

Two children were soon brought to their door, then Colonel Barr returned carrying Sophie Lambert in his arms. Flushed with fever, the young widow still managed to look lovely, and Lael prepared a pallet for her against one wall. She was beginning to see why Ian had moved into the big blockhouse after all, as the smaller cabins could not possibly hold such a number. As it was, they were now hard pressed for room, leaving little space to walk between the pallets.

All her ill will for Sophie dissolved as she ministered to the widow, holding a pan for her when she was sick and sponging her hot face with a cold cloth. The sight of her once flawless complexion now dotted with the red rash filled her with compassion. But it was the children—Sophie’s own niece and nephew—that made her heart nearly break. So sick and so small they were.

Lael found Ian gently undressing them. She moved to help him, and the youngest, a boy of about two, began crying for his mother.

“’Tis always hardest on children,” Ian told her. “The pox weakens them so, and withoot a maither’s care it seems tae break their spirit.”

He took out a small tin, which she saw was nearly empty. “I’m loath tae use opium, but ’tis the only way tae ease their pain. Only a small amount is needed, ye ken, but you’ll need tae hold their heads up.”

Afterwards, she took the crying boy, still a baby really, and wrapped him in a blanket and sat rocking him before the fire. The room was cold for Ian had opened the shutters to let in the morning air, but the sun shone in with beguiling light. Lael kept rocking, long after the baby had cried himself to sleep and the opium had done its work.

Behind her she heard the exasperated if hushed voice of Philo Barr. “For God’s sake, Doctor, when will this misery come to an end?”

“Only God knows, Colonel.”

“Don’t you have any idea?”

“What I can tell you, you dinna want tae hear. The last epidemic in Boston lasted a year and killed half the populace.”

“Were you there?”

“Aye. But I dinna take the pox.”

“A miracle, wouldn’t you say?”

“I consider it so.”

“And to what do you contribute your remarkable health?”

“The Almighty, ye ken.”

“Oh yes, of course.” The colonel wiped his brow with a rag. “Do you recall today is the day we had planned to go to Lexington?”

Lexington?
Lael slowed her rocking, her arms aching from the weight of the child. As she recollected their planned trip, a great tide of disappointment swept over her. The revival. This was the day they were to travel to the revival to hear Duncan Leith. Was his disappointment as great as hers? When she had a spare moment she said to him, “Ian, I’m sorry about the revival.”

He paused from mixing a powder. “It doesna truly matter, Lael.”

Surprised, she stared at him.

He said simply, “It only matters that you cared tae go.”

Later, lying on the upstairs bed beside a sleeping Jane, she pondered his words. What had he meant?
It only matters that you cared tae go.
And what of his other words, ones that left little room for doubt?
How can you stand this?
she had asked.

I pray and think of Scotlain. And you.

She turned on her side and reached for the pearls on the bedside table. Their unusual beauty solaced her as did the memory that he’d meant her to have them. Their color still stole her breath. Pink, like a dogwood, she mused, somewhat solaced by the thought of spring. But where, she wondered, were the other pearls, the pale ivory ones . . . and the miniature of Olivia?