The Devil's Paintbox (21 page)

week later, as the fateful days of quarantine passed, people eyed each other suspiciously. They were afraid to cough, even when it was clearly from the dust. Carlos checked throats but saw no sores and felt no fevers. After the next week passed without symptoms, people grew more hopeful. Finally, three weeks after leaving the infected soldiers, with not a single person showing any trace of spot or sore, Doc Carlos declared the danger officially past. It felt like Christmas and Fourth of July rolled into one.

That evening Matthew Thompson was bitten by a rattlesnake while gathering wood. He died before morning and was buried at dawn. The grave was small but deep, for there were lots of brothers to dig him safely down where animals would never disturb his little body. He was the first of their group to die, but not the last.

Jackson led them deeper into the Rocky Mountains. With ropes and sweat and strain, they made their miles. Sometimes they traveled precariously along a trail so narrow that the wagon beds scraped the sides of cliffs. In the high passes, cold winds cut through their clothes. Down in the valleys, they lived in shadow with no horizons, the sun only dappled light through the trees. No one but Jackson had ever experienced anything like it. In the settled world of the East, trees had been cleared for hundreds of years, and even the thickest
old stands were broken by farms and fields. Many felt claustrophobic and uneasy but Aiden liked the dark forests. Out here the earth felt new and untouched. Even the rain felt different, sweeter and more nourishing. Above the tree line, the landscape was even more beautiful, so jagged and fierce it did not even seem to be the same world. It was late July, but some of the peaks were still covered with snow. For all the savageness of the place, there were also touches of gentle beauty. Tiny wildflowers covered the high meadows and sprang from between the rocks. Hawks and eagles soared overhead with harsh, lonely cries. Blue jays were unusually bold and curious up here. They would perch on the toe of your boot and take food from your hand.

Every morning Aiden woke feeling new. Even on days of backbreaking work, with double-teaming up steep trails, he felt a happiness he had never known before. He was excited, he was strong, he was walking into a brand-new world where anything seemed possible.

“I think I want to see more of the world for myself,” he said to Maddy one night. “After I work off our passage, I'll work some more and save. Then we'll go off on a ship and see every country in the atlas. Maybe we can write a new atlas. This one is twelve years old now; I think a lot has changed.”

“All right.”

He looked at her, puzzled by the lack of enthusiasm.

“Do you not want to see the world now?”

“Yes.” She looked away. “But maybe I have other things to do first.”

“Other things? Like what?”

“I could go to school.”

“Of course you'll go to school. I'll see to that.”

“Not just regular school. I want to go to medical college.”

“You can't. Girls can't do that.”

“Maybe they can now. Marguerite says women can flourish in the West.”

“Well, that's a ways off still. You're barely fourteen.”

“There's a medical college in San Francisco.”

“Fine, but we're going to Seattle. Don't worry; I won't let you be a housemaid. I'll find something better for you. Maybe a shopgirl—you're so good with numbers.”

She twisted a stem of grass between her fingers and looked up at the distant peaks.

“Maybe I can work with Doc Carlos when he sets up his clinic. I can be his assistant. I can learn a lot from him, and we'll save money, and in a couple of years we'll both go to San Francisco for medical school. He needs a school degree too. Though he knows plenty more than the college people already, I think.”

Aiden felt blindsided. “What are you talking about? You're not going to marry Carlos.”

“I didn't say I was. I only said I could work with him.”

There were a thousand arguments to be made against this. Aiden chose the simplest.

“No.”

“Don't say no right now—”

“I will say. You're my charge.”

“I am not your charge!”

“Carlos is not right in his own head, and I won't have him putting ideas into yours.” He jumped to his feet.

“Stop, Aiden, don't go fight now!” Maddy grabbed his
arm. “It wasn't his idea! I haven't even talked to him, and if I did he would probably start a fight with you himself to keep me from it. It's just my own thoughts. I don't want to marry him or anybody. I just want my own chance. We aren't coming all this way to have ordinary lives! Let me work on my chance.”

he wagon train crossed into Idaho Territory, and by the middle of August, as they neared Fort Boise, they were forced to join the main portion of the Oregon Trail. At first it was exciting to see so many other people. During the last three and a half months they had seen only six other wagon trains; now there were that many in a day. Sometimes the trail was so crowded that they moved in a cloud of dust from morning to night. Often there was no room to pass, and they were stuck behind another group for days. Thousands of wagon wheels had carved ruts two or three feet deep in places, and the numerous animals fouled the streams. They still had at least six weeks of travel ahead of them.

Food was still adequate but dull and tasteless. There were no wild greens to be found, and even dried vegetables were mostly gone by now. There was no game, not even a bird or rabbit anywhere near the trail.

“You'd have to go miles off to find anything wild alive,” Jackson said. Lard was going rancid in the summer heat, so the corn bread tasted foul, and most people switched to corn-meal mush. But it was nothing they couldn't bear. Nothing ten thousand others weren't bearing with them in this long march west. So the thousands of them simply walked on.

In the Salmon River Mountains it rained for three days straight, a steady, determined rain, neither heavy nor dramatic but relentless and unchanging as multiplication tables.
Everything was damp and smelly, and even if they found wood for a fire (again, no easy task with so many people on the same trail), nothing ever really dried out. The trail turned to mud, sloggy and slippery, sucking at wagon wheels. One day Mr. Handeveld slipped and fell, startling his mule, which kicked him in the head. He was dead before word even got back to fetch Carlos. Two more died when their wagon overturned on a slippery pass and plummeted a hundred feet down the mountainside. The dead oxen provided welcome meat, though hauling the bloody chunks up the ravine was a tiresome business. The mood in the wagon train was silent and grim.

But finally one morning the rain stopped. By noon the sky was cloudless blue and the sun pounded a welcome warmth. Jackson called for an early camp so everyone could dry out. Soon clotheslines were strung wagon to wagon with sheets and shirts flapping in the breeze. Sodden canvas wagon covers actually steamed in the heat of the sun. Soaked shoes were set out on branches stuck in the ground until the camp looked like a bewitched village of stick-legged people buried upside down.

Aiden, having few possessions to dry out, took some fishing lines and the old tablecloth net down to the river to try his luck. The warm grass felt good on his bare feet, which were white and puckered after days in wet boots. He had only managed to catch a few small fish when he suddenly heard a noise in the bushes.

“Who's there?” He turned, expecting to see one of the children playing some game. But there was no reply. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. “Go on, say something
or I'll shoot!” he called. Was it a bear? A mountain lion? He kept his eyes on the bushes where the noise had come from and edged up the bank to where he had left his bow. Then he heard a crack and a thump behind him, followed by a shriek loud enough to wake the dead. Something leaped on Aiden and knocked him to the ground, then nimbly rolled away before he had a chance to swing.

“Tupic!”

“My friend!” Tupic held out his hand and Aiden grasped it. But instead of shaking, Aiden pulled Tupic toward him and stuck out his leg to trip him. Tupic fell to the ground.

“Nice Indian trick!” Tupic laughed. Aiden pulled him up and the two embraced.

“You're well!” Aiden exclaimed.

“I am.”

“And the others? Clever Crow and Silent Wolf?”

“My uncle was spared.” Tupic frowned. “But Silent Wolf was very sick. We hear now he is getting better. He stays in a camp of the sick Indians. There are some missionaries and old women that care for them.”

“Are there many sick?”

“No—maybe twenty in that camp.”

“Tell me what happened.” They sat down on the river-bank.

“After we left you, as we rode to make council, we hear the smallpox is already in many places,” Tupic said. “Indian camps far away already have sickness.”

“How many?”

“No one knows.” Tupic threw a pebble into the water.

“How did you find us here?”

“My people are nearby now.” Tupic seemed relieved to change the subject. “One day walk from here is our summer camp to fish for the salmon. It is a good season, and we come here to the trail every few days with fish to trade. I think this will be the right time for you to pass, so I ask for news of your wagon train. I ask about the group with the pretty cows and the leader called Jackson and the two blue wagons with all the yellow-haired children. And now I have found you.” He looked at the two small fish on Aiden's string. “And I see you are a very bad fisherman.”

“No, I am a good fisherman. These are very bad fish!”

“Clearly!” Tupic got up. “Come on, I will show you how to catch the bad fish.”

They spent a quiet afternoon fishing, talking of small things. Tupic looked different, Aiden thought. He was not the rangy traveler Aiden had first met. His face could not be called plump, but the flesh now had a certain generous glow that only came from abundant food and a mother's solicitous care. But the light in his eyes had dulled and the playful energy was more subdued.

Tupic knew how to find dry branches in the wet woods, and he built a small fire to cook some of the salmon. Aiden had never tasted anything like it. The flesh was red, the skin crackled and crispy, with a juicy layer of fat just beneath it. It had been weeks since Aiden had eaten any fat and he craved it. Then Tupic took some roots out of his bag. They were about the size of a baseball and looked a bit like turnips.