A Claim of Her Own (31 page)

He was going to live after all, and he was glad. He’d wished to die more than once during the first few days of the disease. Now, as Jonas lay in the pest tent with the other victims all around him, he began to think that maybe everything would be all right. The fever, which had raged for days, was finally gone, and the interminable severe backache was nearly gone, too. Good things. And yet he was weak. So weak that just holding up his head to take a drink was a challenge. As for eating, chewing was too much work.

He despised being weak like this. Being at the mercy of others was the worst part about being sick now. He lifted one arm and inspected the rash. It wasn’t all that bad. Maybe he would be spared the worst.

Dropping his arm, he lay still, wishing he could get out of there. Now that he felt better, he found the noises in the pest tent annoying. Groans. Retching. Pleas for help. Ramblings from a delirious patient on the opposite side of the tent. The longer he lay there the more he hated it. The more he wanted to get away.

The famous Calamity Jane was helping in the pest tent. Jonas had heard stories about her back in Abilene, about her tender streak for children, how she surprised folks by giving away money or nursing the sick. None of that made him inclined to see her as anything but a revolting excuse for a woman. She had rough hands and a weathered face framed by snarled hair. She was making her way toward him now. He could feel her stinking breath on his face as she leaned down to help him lift his head and take a drink.

He pulled away. “I can get my own water,” he said, and managed to sit up. The effort made him break out in a sweat, but still he held on lest she think him feeble.

Calamity was not impressed. “You listen up,” she said. “You’d best be taking any help you can get and saving your energy, because you’re just at the start of this here thing. The fever’s down and you’re feeling a little better, but it ain’t gonna last. You need to save your strength because you’re still facing a couple of weeks of hell. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll lay back down and take this.” She shoved the water back at him.

Jonas drank. It was lukewarm and tasted like the bottom of someone’s washbasin. Maybe it was, for all he knew. He lay back down. The patient next to him had died yesterday after two days of moaning and groaning that nearly drove Jonas crazy. All he cared about now was getting out of there. Surviving and going home to Abilene, where beautiful women fawned over him and his clientele respected him.

The truth of what Calamity Jane had said began to reveal itself the very next day. The rash was only the beginning of sorrows. Over the next couple of weeks it spread. The lesions became tiny pits filled with vile liquid. They tore open and leaked, and at one point Jonas nearly suffocated when ulcerating lesions in his throat began to leak, and he couldn’t make himself either swallow or bring it up for the pain. As he sank into an abyss of incomprehensible agony, he cursed God. He even tried a kind of prayer, intoning whatever powers might answer,
Let me die.
Let me die. Let me die.

Mattie expected the people of Deadwood to be angry at God over the smallpox. She even wished that Aron would forgo a Sunday sermon for a week or two until things had settled down. What with the upheaval over Wild Bill’s death and the subsequent trial—the killer was set free because he claimed Bill had killed his brother— what with the creeping threat of disease, Mattie imagined more heckling than ever. In fact, she and Aunt Lou worried that someone might take their anger out on the preacher in ways stronger than words. But none of those fears were realized. The people of Deadwood not only flocked to hear Aron preach, they
listened.
And so did Mattie.

“Why smallpox? Why here? Why now? Why does this one die and that one live?
Why
?” Aron paused and looked out over the crowd before saying, “I’ve had the same questions. I’ve had the sleepless nights and the anger at God. I’ve had the bitterness and the rage. I’ve held someone I loved in my arms and tried to hold back death only to hear that one I loved breathe their last.” He broke off for a moment before continuing. “I know more about this disease and the pain our town is feeling than most. I know, because smallpox took my brother and sister and parents and then played a trick on me and left me whole. And I will go to my grave wondering why.”

Aron’s revelation fell on Mattie like a cold rain. She shivered and rubbed her arms to dispel the prickles. As she looked around, she could tell that more than one listener had been impacted the same way. To have a preacher sermonize about how folks should react to the fear of smallpox and the threat of death was one thing. To know that preacher had lived through it was entirely another. There were no hecklers now. There was only a common yearning to be comforted and a new willingness to hear what the preacher had to say.

“But even though I still don’t have the answer to that question ‘Why?’ in time I came to understand that the God who did not abandon Adam when he sinned in the garden, who did not abandon Peter when he denied Jesus, had not abandoned me. For all my anger and all the horrible things I did after my family died, God never once let go of me. And when I was finally ready to listen, He opened my heart and my mind and helped me understand how much He loved me.” Aron smiled. “And He’ll do that very same thing for every single person in Deadwood who turns to Him for help.”

Aron glanced Mattie’s way. She nodded.
We want to hear more.

“This world is full of trouble,” Aron continued, “but we can have hope through our Lord Jesus Christ, who promises that
nothing
can separate us from Him; not smallpox or death or life or gambling debts or drunken binges or desertions or any other earthly thing. Jesus loves us. This we can know because the Bible tells us so.” He paused. “Just Jesus, folks. That’s the only answer I have for all the questions. But I stand here this morning to tell you, both because the Bible says it and because I’ve experienced it: He is enough. Always and forever, He is enough.”

Mattie folded her arms and studied the ground, no longer willing to meet Aron’s gaze as she tried to reconcile her own questions with Aron’s experiences and the idea that Jesus was enough. She wasn’t certain about that part of the message, and yet she could feel herself being drawn toward it. One thing
was
certain: Aunt Lou had been right when she said that Aron Gallagher wasn’t anything like the preachers Mattie had known before. He was sincere. He didn’t quote the Bible on Sunday and then forget everything he’d said on Monday. He didn’t just spout easy answers, either. He shared things he knew because he’d lived them.

Someone called out, “Pray for us, Reverend.” The crowd murmured their agreement. And for one miraculous moment, Deadwood turned its collective face toward heaven.

C
HAPTER 17

Jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire,
which hath a most vehement flame.

Song of Solomon 8:6

D
ust on the horizon.
Swede’s heart leaped. She tried to calm herself. It could be anything. Another freight train ahead of them.
But ve were first to leave Sidney headed to Deadvood.
A company of soldiers.
But they have all gone yet further north past Deadvood.
A string of settlers’ wagons.
Except most are waiting until vord comes
that the Indians are defeated.

Swede clutched her bullwhip and gave it an extra crack. Leif bellowed in protest. Eva whimpered. Up ahead, Red Tallent was moving into a familiar pattern. Circle the wagons. Which meant that he had seen the dust on the horizon and was worried, too.

Dear God . . . are ve to be massacred?

Her heart pounding, Swede guided her own team into position. Finally, when everyone had moved into position, accomplishing the only defensive move possible, Tallent dismounted and hurried over to Swede. She stood beside Eva’s cradle, aiming Bessie at where, sooner or later, human forms would emerge from the approaching cloud of dust.

“If anything happens to me—” Red began, but Swede would not listen.

“Noting vill happen. Ve have freighted together dese three years and noting vill happen. It must not.”

“But if it does, I’ve got a sister back in Virginia.” Red pressed a piece of paper into Swede’s hand. “Would you write and tell her I—”

Even as she tucked the piece of paper into her apron pocket, Swede shook her head. “I vill not have to do dis. But someday ven I meet your sister I vill tell her how her brother is my good friend.” She blinked tears away.

Foolish old man, giving her such a task to do. A task she could not accomplish, because there was a pistol inside her supply box, and if that cloud of dust was Indians, she would see to it that neither she nor her precious Eva became entertainment for savages. She trembled as she prayed.
Please, God. A miracle. Let there be no killing
. Even so, as Red walked away to check on the other drivers, she leveled Bessie at the oncoming . . .
white
men! Thanks be to God. Not enemies, for they had no guns drawn.

“Don’t shoot!” Swede called out to Red. “Do you see dem? Don’t shoot!”

“I see!” Tallent hollered back. He hurried to her side, a broad smile barely visible beneath his thick moustache and beard. “Looks like you won’t be needing that address after all,” he said, and held out his hand.

Swede reached into her apron pocket and handed it back. And just at that moment Eva began to jump up and down, clapping and calling out, “Ta-ta! Free! Ta-ta! Free!” and there were Tom English and Freddie riding toward her at the head of an entire company of armed men. Tom. Come to rescue her.

Swede’s heart swelled with love—and then—then she looked at her hands, calloused and gnarled from hard work. She swiped at her tears and felt leathery skin tanned from all her time in the wind and the sun. She looked down at her apron, stained with mud from the trail and tattered at the hem. She greeted Tom and Freddie with tears, and no one knew that it was not for joy that she was crying, but for a broken heart. For no man as handsome and refined and kind as Tom English would ever love such a woman as her.

“Doc says the worst is over now,” Calamity said as she walked past Jonas’s cot. “Thought you might like to hear that.”

What did she expect? A
thank you
? A
praise the Lord
? Jonas nodded and turned his face to the canvas wall of the pest tent. He was too exhausted to speak. Wrung out with fighting through pain and tired of seeing what was happening to his body. God help him—if his hand and arms looked like this, what had happened to his
face
?
God.
Purely a turn of phrase. Anyone who believed someone in someplace called heaven cared for humanity was a blind fool.

By afternoon Jonas had thought of something he did want to know, and it seemed to take hours for anyone to get close enough for him to ask. Swallowing, he croaked when Calamity Jane came near, “What day of the week is it? What date? How long have I been here?”

“It’s Tuesday. August. The twenty-ninth, I think.” Calamity held out a glass of water. “I don’t know as I can say how long you’ve been here. There’s been too many to keep track of things like that.”

Jonas drank the water and handed the glass back. “I’m hungry,” he said.

“That’s a good sign.” Calamity nodded. “I’ll see what I can do for ya.”

The hunger grew until it was a pain deep in his gut. And still, no one brought food. His bedroll. His money. Where were they? Probably gone. He was too sick to have noticed or cared. But no, they were both still tucked beneath his cot. He sat up and looked around.
Empty cots.
So Calamity Jane had told the truth. Things were getting better. But where was she? How long was he going to have to wait for something to eat?

They said everyone should stay put until every pustule dried up. Until the scabs were completely gone. That was the only certain way to prevent giving it to someone else. His stomach growled. Grabbing his bedroll, he crept outside. He’d find something to eat if he had to challenge a boar for its slops. He’d have to stay out of sight, though. Anyone who saw him would force him back to the pest tent. So be it. He would stay out of sight, but he was finished with depending on others. Finished with thirst and hunger.