Walk by Faith (20 page)

July 18, 1863

“S
omething's wrong, Clarissa. I feel so faint, and I think—” Carolyn turned away and vomited.

Clarissa leaned against a large rock. She and Carolyn had both found an area behind some boulders where they could have privacy because of diarrhea that had set in just before making noon camp. Clarissa's stomach also felt queasy, and neither woman was able to make any lunch for the girls or Michael.

“Carolyn?” Michael's voice came from the other side of the rocks.

“She's awfully sick,” Clarissa called out. “So am I.”

“I'm afraid I don't feel so well myself,” Michael answered. “And both the girls are throwing up.”

Clarissa felt as though her heart had just been put in a vise. “No,” she groaned to herself. “It can't be.” Feeling faint, she walked around the rocks to see Michael looking too white. “Is anyone else sick?” she asked.

“I don't think so. Dawson is with the girls, and he told everyone else to move ahead about fifty yards and wait there away from us. He asked me if we drank any water that maybe the rest of those along didn't drink.”

Clarissa closed her eyes and fought panic. “Oh, no,” she moaned.

“I told him about that stream where we found those berries when we went exploring a couple of days ago. I don't think anyone else drank out of that stream, but we were so hot—”

Clarissa put up her hand. “I remember.” We drank from that stream, she thought. Just us. Just us. Afterward they came upon three graves and signs that wagons had been in the same area perhaps just days earlier. There were also signs of large campfires. Now it hit Clarissa with clarity. Those burn spots were large because a great deal of things had been burned, probably clothing and blankets. Who knew what else? Dawson had probably thought about it, too.

Cholera! She'd seen only one case of it at the hospital in St. Louis, and that person had been quarantined. Still, two nurses came down with it and were also quarantined. Everything anywhere in the area was scrubbed with lye, boiled or burned. Both the nurses and the patient had died.

She vomited, then went to her knees with weakness and deep fear for poor little Sophie and Lena. She knew enough from being a nurse that the average adult was lucky to survive the dreaded disease, but children…. It took a much larger toll on children.

“Please, God, please,” she begged aloud. “Don't take my Sophie! Don't take little Lena!”

Michael stepped closer. “Clare, what do you think it is?”

“I think it might be cholera,” she groaned.

“Oh, no!”

The word was ugly, matching the ravages of the disease, which could kill thousands in days. Everything fit—the water, no one else sick, the symptoms. Dawson knew it, too. That's why he'd told the rest of the travelers to move ahead—away from them.

“Oh, Michael.” Clarissa grasped the trunk of a pine tree to keep from passing out. “I need to be…healthy…to take care of Sophie…and Lena. Who will take care of them? What will we do?”

It came then—the stomach sickness. She could hear Carolyn behind the rocks, still vomiting.

“Jesus help us,” Michael said, sitting down on a stump and resting his elbows on his knees.

When Clarissa was through being sick, she glanced toward the wagon train in the distance to see Dawson walking toward them with a little girl in each arm. Sophie was crying.

“Oh, no, oh, no,” she moaned, embarrassed by her condition and devastated that little Sophie was suffering. Dawson came closer and set the girls down. He spread out a blanket and told them to lie down on it, then walked up to Clarissa. She saw such fear in his own eyes that he reminded her of a little boy.

“You know what this probably is, don't you?” he said to her. “I've seen it in the army—almost died from it myself. But I didn't, and that means I can take care of you. I've already had it.”

She covered her face. “I can't let you. It's too embarrassing. Just take care of my Sophie. Don't let her die.”

He grasped her arms. “
No
body is dying! Understand? And I'll take care of you
and
Sophie, and Lena and Michael and Carolyn, too. I've told the rest of the group to keep going for another day, and if none of them gets sick, they're probably all right. If that's the case, they'll keep going with Zeb. When we're through this, we'll simply follow them and maybe even catch up to them.”

Clarissa turned away, clinging again to the tree trunk. “I'm so sorry, Dawson. We're ruining things for everyone—and for you.”

“Don't be ridiculous. I'm going back to get blankets and towels and water and other things we'll need. With everyone so sick, it's better to stay out here away from the wagons so nothing back there gets contaminated. I'll build a good fire and get my tent and keep you warm and safe and even clean you up if I have to. When this is over we'll burn everything, blankets, towels, my tent, everything.” His arm came around her shoulders. “We'll get through this. And neither God nor anyone else is going to take you and Sophie from me now.”

She felt his anger in the words, and her first thought was who would take care of poor, lonely Dawson if something did happen to her? What would happen to his newfound faith in God? In her sickness and depression she even regretted that she'd not allowed him to consummate their marriage.

She went to Sophie, and the dark circles that had formed under the girl's eyes in perhaps an hour terrorized her. Children suffered worse with this horrible illness, and they often died from shock and dehydration.

“Mommy,” the girl whimpered, before getting to her knees and vomiting into pretty purple mountain flowers, the same kind of flowers her sweet child had picked for her just yesterday.

She wiped Sophie's mouth with the hemline of her dress and then laid down beside her, pulling her into her arms. “We're going to be all right,” she told Sophie. “And I want you to promise Mommy that no matter how bad you feel, you will drink water when Dawson tells you to, okay? It's very, very important to keep drinking water, Sophie, or you'll get even sicker. Dawson knows what to do, and sometimes he's the one who will have to take care of you because Mommy is sick, too, okay?”

“Okay,” Sophie answered in a weak voice. “I like him to take cawe of me.”

“Good. I'm glad.”

Carolyn came over to be with Lena, who lay so still it seemed she had no life in her.

July 20, 1863

T
ears ran down Dawson's cheeks as he dug like a madman. How in the world was he supposed to put a little girl in the ground? Two days! That's all it took for little Lena to die, and her mother shortly after! How could God do such a thing? How could He take away such good people?

Would he be burying Sophie next? Clare? If he had to bury them, too, he'd curse God for the rest of his life, even if he burned in hell for it!

Sweat poured off him in spite of the cool mountain air. He finished digging a hole big enough for mother and child to be buried together. He'd failed again. These people who'd been so good to him were in his care, and he'd lost them!

He threw the shovel out of the hole and climbed out, ripping off his shirt because of the sweat. Michael was kneeling beside the hole, so white, so sick from the vicious, emaciating cholera that had ravaged him and his family and Clare and Sophie over two days of vomiting and diarrhea until one would think there could not possibly be one ounce of liquid left to their bodies.

“Don't cover it completely,” Michael said weakly. “I want…to be buried with them, too.”

“You aren't
going
to be buried!” Dawson ordered.

Michael bent over. “Come closer, Dawson,” he groaned.

Dawson could hardly believe this nightmare. He knelt beside the man, putting an arm around him. “Michael, I still need you to talk to, to pray with. Right now what little faith I've learned to have is fast going out the window!”

Michael shook his head. “Listen…to me.” He sat back on his heels, grimacing, already looking dead. “What you've done…past couple of days…it shows me you are…good…compassionate…exactly the kind of man…Christ wants His followers…to be. Few men would…clean up these awful…messes…and take care of us…like you've done.”

“I've been in the army and fought wars, Michael. I've seen just about everything, and I've had this sickness. I know how horrid it is.”

“Nevertheless—” Michael hung his head again, grasping Dawson's arm with his hand. “You are…a good man…and now I know…I was just…God's instrument, Dawson…in showing you Christ's love and forgiveness. I've done my job…and now…He is taking me home.”

“I don't want to hear that kind of talk.”

“You have…no choice. I want you to know…in a little metal box…in my wagon…there is a piece of paper I wrote out…after you married Clare. It gives you…my land…and Carolyn's share…if we should die. It's all…adjacent to Clare's land…so you will end up with…lots of land for raising…fine horses and cattle. You can make a good life there…for you and Clare…and Sophie.”

“Michael—”

“They will live. I know it…in my heart, Dawson. This is all…happening…for a reason…so that you and Clare…can have a good life together. This is God's plan…for Clare…and for you. Some day you will be…important people in Montana. I know it…I feel it…and I can see it.”

Dawson wiped at his tears with a hand dirty from digging. “You're just so sick that you're seeing the worst of things for yourself. You'll be fine, Michael, and you and I will work that land together.”

Michael shook his head. “My place…is with my Lena, and with Carolyn…and with the Lord. Please…go get my wife…and my baby girl. Put them where they belong now…so they can wake up to God…with new bodies…and no more sickness.”

Dawson rose, kicking at rocks as he walked to where Lena and Carolyn lay under a lean-to. Clare and Sophie were in his tent sick—so sick. How would he tell Clare that Carolyn and Lena had died? Worse, what if Michael died, too? Fighting more tears that made it hard to see, he picked up the two bodies one by one and carried them to the grave, placing Carolyn in first, then Lena. He wanted to scream curses to God Himself, yet the things Michael had taught him over these past weeks and the things he'd just told him swirled in his mind in a myriad of confusion and sorrow.

“Please…pray over them,” Michael asked.

“Michael, I can't—”

“Pray over them,” the man pleaded again. “I'm…too weak.”

Feeling completely inadequate, Dawson dropped to his knees. “God, if You will—” His voice choked and he stopped to clear his throat and swallow so he could go on. “If You will accept these words from a man who denied You most of his life, and for the sake of these good, Christian people, I pray for their souls that they are already walking up to Your throne happy and well.”

He didn't know what else to say. Michael began reciting the Twenty-Third Psalm, and having gone over it with Michael many times, Dawson spoke it with him from memory.

“‘Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever,'” they finished.

Michael keeled over. Dawson got up and rushed around to his side, and when he touched Michael's shoulder, the man fell over sideways. Dawson did not have to feel for a pulse to know he was dead, but he did so anyway. Confirming his guess, he sat down beside Michael, thinking how a better man had never walked, and wondering why God took Michael instead of him. It just didn't make sense.

“Why? Why?” he muttered. “I needed his guidance, Lord.” How strange that although Michael was only a couple of years older than he, Dawson had looked to the man almost as a father figure. How strange that a grown man could sit and cry over another grown man. He hardly recognized himself as the same man who'd left St. Louis so wracked with hatred and anger and with so much prejudice against preachers in general.

Sorrow so consumed him that he ached all over as he got up and retrieved a blanket to wrap around Michael. He grimaced as he picked the man up in his arms and managed to stoop down and drop him as gently as possible into the grave. He jumped down inside, feeling mad with the horror of his task. He couldn't bear for Michael to be on top of Carolyn and Lena, so he struggled in the small enclosure to rearrange the bodies so that little Lena was on top.

“God, why are You doing this to me?” he repeated as he sobbed. What would it be like if he had to do this with Clare and Sophie? He'd have to shoot himself and fall into the grave with them. What use would there be in going on?

Taking a deep breath he climbed back out of the grave, gritty and sweaty, looking up then to see Clare standing there with horror on her face—a face already looking much thinner and more gaunt after just two days of this hideous sickness that no God should allow to exist. She met his eyes.

“Which one?” she asked in a pitifully small voice.

He walked over and pulled her into his arms. “All three,” he answered.

“No!” she sobbed, withering against him.