The Devil's Paintbox (17 page)

“Go get me Jackson,” he whispered to Aiden. “Get me the lieutenant and—and Reverend True. I don't want a panic. Then get your Indians together. Don't let them ride off.”

Aiden, too shocked by the news to talk, just nodded.

“Smallpox is worse for Indians. Much worse. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Can you explain to them? Are you on terms for that?”

What kind of terms would that be, Aiden thought, to tell someone they had just been exposed to the most horrible disease on the planet.

“Yes, I guess.”

“It can't be the pox,” Gryffud insisted. “They don't have spots!”

“The first sores appear in the mouth and throat,” Carlos explained. “Seven of these men have those, and one is just starting to break out on his face. He'll be covered by evening. When was your last contact with other people?”

“Ah—we—ah, we saw a wagon train four days ago,” the lieutenant stammered. “And some scouts two days before that, but just in passing.”

“No—no, it wouldn't be that recent,” Carlos told him. “It takes at least a week after exposure for you to show any symptoms.”

“We left Fort Laramie just two weeks ago.”

“Was there sickness there?”

Lieutenant Gryffud's round face turned even pinker with anxiety. “Well—of course, there are always soldiers sick, but no one said anything about smallpox! You must believe me! I wouldn't have gone in! This isn't my fault!”

More soldiers were gathering around now, suspicious at the furtive conversation.

“I'm not blaming you,” Carlos whispered sharply, glancing at the uneasy soldiers. “I'm trying to stop an epidemic.”

“Of course.” Gryffud's face turned even redder. “Yes, of course.”

“All we can do right now is prevent it from spreading any further, and that means a quarantine on all your men.”

Jefferson J. Jackson walked up just then, with the Reverend True beside him.

“The soldiers have smallpox,” Carlos told them simply.

“Are you sure?” Jackson asked. “Could it be measles?”

“No. We need to separate our people from the soldiers immediately,” he said to Jackson, then turned back to Gryf-fud. “Your soldiers will need to be quarantined; even those with no symptoms. They can't have contact with anyone else for three weeks.”

“I can't sit this wagon train out for three weeks!” Jackson protested.

“You don't have to. …” Carlos hesitated, grasping for a way to explain the complicated business of disease. “The soldiers were exposed two weeks ago. They already have pustules, so
they're contagious. But if any of our group has been infected today they won't feel sick, and won't be contagious for at least a week, more like two.”

“So at least one week before we could pass it on to anyone else?” Jackson rubbed his sleeve across his sweating forehead. “You're sure?”

“We don't know everything about smallpox,” Carlos admitted. “But we do know that.”

“It's just—I can't have any epidemics on my page,” Jackson said, almost whispering. “I got enough marks in the bad column already.” Aiden hadn't thought of Jefferson J. Jackson as one to be keeping a spiritual tally sheet and found it touching. “We won't join the main trail until the South Pass in Wyoming territory,” Jackson went on. “That's nearly three weeks. Will you know for sure by then if we're clear?”

“Yes.” Carlos nodded.

“All right, then.” Jackson put his hat back on. “Reverend True, can I press upon you the job to help me tell our people? How you preachers do—for bad-news telling. Doc will explain the particulars.”

“And my men—will you explain to them, too?” Gryffud asked Carlos, almost pleading.

“I've nothing to do with soldiers,” Carlos said tersely. “You're their commanding officer.”

“I'm
a painter,”
Gryffud said desperately.

“What?”

“I only came out here to paint! I've never commanded anyone to do anything but sit still so I could
draw
them!”

“Paint? Like pictures?” Jackson said.

“Yes, pictures—landscapes, Indians.”

“But you been in the war?” Jackson persisted.

“As an artist! I drew pictures of soldiers and camps and battles and such, for the newspapers. I never did any fighting!” His sausage fingers made nervous sketches in the air. “Then I asked for a western posting so I could see the mountains and draw the Indians.”

For a moment everyone was silent. Even Jackson didn't know what to say. It would have been funny except that the stakes were so high.

“Well, you've
seen
officers before, haven't you?” Jackson asked in a sharp tone.

“Yes. Of course.”

“For painting them, you observed how they acted and so on?”

“Well, yes.”

“So, goddammit! Just act like you observed! However you wound up with those stripes, you're still in charge!”

Carlos closed his bag. “Some of the men will want to run,” he said. His voice was flat. “You need to be prepared to stop them.”

“Stop them?” The little lieutenant was completely flustered. “Yes, of course, I'll tell them.”

“No,” Carlos said. “Some will want to get away. You can't let them. You need to get your mind ready for that.”

Carlos picked up his bag and strode off toward the wagon train.

“What did he mean, Mr. Jackson? Do you know what he meant?”

“I guess he meant shoot ‘em,” Jackson spat. “They try to run, you shoot ‘em.”

h!” Tupic sucked noisily on a piece of peppermint, pursed his lips and drew a breath in. “If a man could eat the stars and breathe the snow, they would taste like this!”

Aiden smiled. “You're very poetic.”

“You will come to one of our festivals someday,” Tupic said. “You will hear poetries that will put your heart in the sky. Silent Wolf is a very beautiful poet.”

“Silent Wolf?” Aiden looked over at the tough, scarred man wading in the river nearby. His disbelief must have shown on his face, for Tupic laughed.

“A man can be a great warrior and still make poetry.”

They sat by the river's edge. The three Indians had passed the afternoon by building a fish trap. It was not as elaborate as a real fish weir, Tupic explained, but an easy effort for an easy afternoon. They had cut willow branches and staked them out in a line into the river so they formed a little fence that directed any passing fish toward the shore, where they would wind up trapped in the shallows. Silent Wolf swept a basket through the shallow water, plucked out a fish and flung it up onto the bank, where it flopped at Tupic's feet. It was so peaceful here now that Aiden could almost forget what was going on in the camp just a short distance away.

“Tupic,” Aiden said, trying to find a way into the difficult subject. “When you were at the missionary school, did they
ever give you a vaccination? Do you know what that is? A scratch on your arm, so you don't get sick?”

Tupic looked at him long and hard.

“For the smallpox?”

“Yes.”

“I have the scratch.”

Tupic stabbed his knife through the fish's spine to kill it, then slit the silver belly and scooped the guts out. “Is that what your powwow is about?” He tipped his chin toward the soldiers’ camp, obviously aware of the tense consultations that had been going on.

“Yes. Some of the soldiers have smallpox. They didn't know,” he added quickly. “They didn't have spots until today.” Aiden looked away, embarrassed to remember how the soldiers had taunted the Indians. “We weren't really near the sick men,” he went on. “Doc Carlos says it isn't very likely any of you have caught it. But if you have, about a week from now, you will be contagious.” Tupic began to scrape scales from the fish. Aiden wished he would say something. “Doc asked for you not to ride off, because you could give it to others.”

“I know about the smallpox. All Indians do.”

“He says it's worse for Indians.”

“Yes.” Tupic tossed the cleaned fish into a basket. “You people.” He spat out the last bit of peppermint candy. “All you bring with you are bad things.”

As evening fell, driftwood campfires began to flicker throughout the camps, but there was no music or laughter. The mood was somber. Even the cattle and horses were still,
as if they could sense the dread in the air. Aiden sat with Tupic, Silent Wolf and Clever Crow around their own little fire apart from the others. Many people just wouldn't believe that Aiden and the Indians were not immediately contagious.

“You absolutely can't catch it from any of them right now,” Carlos explained over and over. “It takes at least a week. …”

But what if?
What if?
Smallpox was just too big a risk. Mothers gathered their children up and dosed them with castor oil and ipecac to make them purge, rubbed them with ointments to ward off the poisonous vapors. There were arguments and prayers, accusations and threats. The Holling-fords, though they had all been vaccinated, separated their wagons entirely from the rest of the group. They would not even let their hired girl draw water from the river until no one else had been near it for at least ten minutes.

Aiden was glad to be banished. Even from a hundred yards away he could feel the tension in the camp like the front edge of a storm, a dense wall of pressure promising worse on the way. But the Indian camp was like a little island of peace.

“It is gone out from our hands,” Clever Crow said simply. “Eat fish.”

They baked the fish on stones heated in the fire, seasoning them with sorrel, sage and wild onion. With part of his mind, Aiden knew the fish was delicious, but at the same time, he could have been eating old socks.

“Even when you can't change a thing,” he asked, “don't you worry? Or pray?”

The three Indians had a prolonged conversation before Tupic translated for Aiden. “Your missionaries teach that suffering on earth means a better place in heaven. We believe
that suffering on earth tells us that we should make better things on earth. The white man who made the vaccination did not worry or pray, he worked and used his mind.”

Clever Crow tapped a finger to his head. “Mind”—he tapped his chest—”and strong spirit—make no more—” He said a Nimipu word.

“Suffering,” Tupic translated. “No more suffering for all people.”

The first spots appeared on the sickest soldier by sundown, tiny red pustules blooming across his face like a thousand ant bites. The plague had started. It would take a full month to finish. A month of pain and pus and burning, rotting skin that stuck to blankets and ripped off in great bloody strips. The soldiers with no symptoms kept far away from those already diagnosed. The battalion had no medic. The best Lieutenant Gryffud could come up with was an apprentice carpenter who had built coffins for an undertaker and so was not uncomfortable with death.

“Surviving is mostly about food, water and keeping clean,” Doc Carlos explained. “And luck.” He showed the carpenter how to roll a patient and prop bolsters under him so the sores didn't stick at any one place. He showed him how to drip water into the side of a sick man's mouth so he didn't choke.

“With healthy young men like this,” Carlos said, “you might have two out of three live if you take good care of them.”

It was dark when Aiden saw Carlos appear like a specter at the edge of their campfire, carrying a kettle, waiting silently to be invited in.

“I've brought some kind of tea,” he said. “Your sister collects all sorts of flowers and plants,” he said to Aiden. “I thought it better to bring it myself. Might as well keep her away from your little quarantine here—even though it's ridiculous.” He sighed. “People will come to their senses soon.”

“Please come sit,” Tupic invited politely, getting to his feet and waving Carlos to a place on the upwind side of the fire. Carlos folded himself cross-legged on the ground.

“Oh—do you have cups? Sorry, I didn't think about that.” His voice was hoarse and he looked very tired. Aiden realized he had probably talked more that day than he had during the whole trip so far.

“Yes,” Tupic said. He took out three enamel mugs and Carlos filled them. Tupic then handed one to Aiden and one to Carlos. “We will share,” he explained as he passed the last mug to his uncle.

“It's supposed to strengthen the blood,” Carlos said. “I don't know much of plant medicine.” The Indians passed the mug around, sniffing the brew and discussing what might be in it. Whatever it was, they seemed to approve of its medicinal value, though Tupic didn't know any of the English names for the plants they identified.