The Devil's Paintbox (34 page)

“And the Great Spirit is learning about all the countries in the
Atlas of the World.”

Aiden laughed and quickly brushed the tears off his face, pretending to scratch his forehead.

“What do you think happened to Dr. Carlos?” Tupic finally asked. “It must have been terrible for him.”

“I don't know,” Aiden said coldly. “I don't care.”

He felt the chill start to creep through his clothes.

reakfast was a drink of water from the river. Then they dragged out the canoe and were paddling downriver before the morning mist had lifted.

“How far until the Salish camp?” Aiden asked.

“Maybe another mile.”

“Can I walk in by myself?”

“They are used to white men, but I will be with you.”

“No. The police in Seattle will be looking for you in every Indian village nearby.”

“They would not betray me.”

“Not one?” Aiden pressed. “What if there's a bounty on your head? You escaping out of jail is bad enough, but they're sure to put the guard's death on you too, and that's hanging. Even if no one betrayed you, if they all protected you, what if the police found out later that the Salish helped you—what would happen to them?”

Tupic was quiet, but Aiden felt him paddling extra hard.

“I will go in alone,” Aiden went on. “I'll say I found the canoe abandoned on the riverbank. I'll get food for you; then you will go to Mr. Jackson's trading post. It's on the sound, a place called Brightfish Bend, north of Seattle. You'll have to make your own way to the coast, but then there should be a trail.”

“But I have to go with you to get the money,” Tupic protested. “I can't describe where we buried it.”

“I don't need your money.”

“How will you buy the vaccine?”

“I'm not going to buy it,” Aiden said.

“What do you mean?”

“Why would someone like me need to buy smallpox vaccine? Did you think about that? Do I just walk into the general store and ask for it?”

Tupic looked surprised, then embarrassed. “You get it from a doctor.”

“Just like that?” Aiden sighed. “Do you even know what it looks like? I mean—how it comes? Is it liquid in a jug? Or in little medicine bottles? Or is it a powder?”

“I don't know,” Tupic said. Aiden knew it wasn't Tupic's fault, but he still had to fight the urge to grab him by the throat and throw him out of the canoe. Aiden was about to walk into a strange city to somehow obtain something, he didn't know what, from someone, he didn't know who, and transport it out again, he didn't know how.

“Just get yourself to Mr. Jackson's trading post and wait there.”

“What will you do?”

“Figure something out.”

They paddled in silence for a while. “Allow two days for me in Seattle,” Aiden went on, thinking aloud. “Then a day to Jackson's place.” He counted up the days and felt sick at the lack of them. “I have to get back to the logging camp by Sunday. If I can't make it to Jackson's, I'll send word.” It was a rickety little plan, but it was the only one he could come up with.

The city of Seattle was nothing like Aiden had imagined. He felt guilty for how nice he had made it sound to poor Polly so long ago, on the night of the wolves. There were no ice cream parlors or music halls. Aside from a few brick buildings, most were rough clapboard, weathered gray and all the same. Some of the downtown area along the shops had boardwalks, but to cross the street he waded through ankle-sucking mud thickly studded with horse droppings. The breeze smelled of tidal ooze, and the sky was thick with sooty smoke from the piles of burning sawdust slag at the sawmill. He ran a finger down the side of his face and found it black with grit.

It wasn't even four o'clock, but the winter twilight combined with the smoke in the air had lanterns flickering in windows. As he walked down the main street, voices called to him from every doorway, offering jobs, berths on ships, clean rooms, the cheapest whiskey, fair gambling, good laundry, the salvation of his soul and the best women.

“You hungry?” A Chinese boy grabbed his hand and tugged him toward a saloon. “Need best room? Golden Palace for you. Good stew here, real beef! No mule, no dog, no rat!”

“No thanks,” Aiden said. “I'm looking for Ruby's place. Can you show me?”

“Ruby no good! Bugs in bed, water in whiskey! Come stay Grand Palace! Very nice here,” the boy said loudly. Then he winked, tilted his head and cupped his fingers in an unmistakable way of asking for a tip. Aiden walked on, and when they were out of sight of the Grand Palace, he stopped.

“Well?” he said, casually tumbling a penny between his fingers.

“You need wash? Pretty girl? Good job? I know!” “No thanks, just Ruby's.”

“Down there.” The boy pointed at one of the shabby buildings at the bottom of the hill.

Ruby was unimpressed with Aiden's mention of Mr. Powhee's name, but she seemed like a woman who would be unimpressed by anything short of Christ himself sitting on a unicorn, and even then she would bite his coin.

“Fifty cents for a bunk. Twenty-five more to guard your kit,” she said. “I have a locked room, and this is the only key.” She pulled a sturdy metal key out from the bosom of her dress. She was a tiny woman with streaky red hair and just enough of a mustache that it showed in a certain slant of light. It was difficult to place her age; she could have been fifty or a hard-living thirty. She wore ropes of beads and silver necklaces, long sparkling earrings and rings on every finger, though Aiden suspected more glass than jewels.

“I'm looking to meet some old friends,” he said. “Perhaps you have heard of them. They arrived in a wagon train in late October.”

“People come and go.”

“One is a preacher—the Reverend Gabriel True. Also a doctor …” He hesitated, finding it hard to even say the name. “Carlos Perez.”

Ruby laughed. “I have little need for preachers or doctors unless there's a dead body around, and when there is, names are not handed about.” She looked at him over a pair of gold-rimmed half-glasses that she wore on a beaded chain. “But my cook is a Bible fellow, you can ask him if you like.”

“How about any old doctor, then?” Aiden asked. Ruby narrowed her eyes and looked him up and down suspiciously

“You can't stay here if you're sick.”

“Sorry ma'am, I'm not sick at all. It's just that I'll be going north for the gold mining come springtime, and I hear there's smallpox up there. I mean to get myself vaccinated while I'm here.”

She sniffed, and pushed her grimy sleeves back, displaying rows of bracelets on each arm: thin gold and silver bands, Indian beads and Chinese ivory.

“Dr. Abradale can do that, I suppose. He's a queer one, and English, but he's the only one there is.” She pulled a heavy gold pocket watch out of her skirt. She must be wearing twenty pounds of jewelry and baubles, Aiden thought. “It's just after five, and he leaves his office at six o'clock promptly to take his supper at the Golden Palace, so you'll find him easily enough. Will you be dining here?”

“I don't know,” Aiden said. “I will have a bed, though, thanks.” He put fifty cents on the counter.

“And your kit?”

“I don't really have any,” he said, nodding to the small bag he carried over one shoulder. She examined his coins carefully and pointed out the room where he would have a bunk.

“I have three clear lanterns out,” she said. “Two yellow is Sally's next door. Before that, two red for Little Joe's; his whores are all diseased, so talk to Sally if you have that need. That marks your path from the high road. We have our guards, but be mindful nevertheless.”

r. Abradale s office was easy to find, a low narrow building squeezed between a hardware store and a burned-out church. There was no bell, but the front door was open, and so Aiden walked into a vestibule with two benches.

“Hello?” he called. “Dr. Abradale?” He entered the examining room and saw a battered wooden cabinet against one wall, two chairs against another and in the center a table with an enamel top. Aiden had never seen a doctor's office before, but it seemed as if there should be more to it. There was another entry at the rear of this room, and he had just raised his hand to knock when the door suddenly flew open.

“Someone there?”

Aiden saw a plump little man with thick spectacles, wiry, uncombed gray hair like a clump of lichen clinging to his head, a soiled smock and a scalpel in one hand.

“Yes? Hello? What's the problem?” the man asked brusquely.

Aiden looked warily at the raised scalpel. “Oh, sorry.” Abradale lowered the knife. “Just trimming some specimens. Come, come.”

Aiden entered the second room, not sure exactly what sort of specimens were being trimmed. He was relieved to see the table covered with plants.

“Good lot of new ferns today, you see,” he said in a
clipped English accent. “Fascinating phylum. Pteridophytes; most primitive of the vascular plants.”

“You're the doctor?” Aiden looked doubtfully at all the plants.

“Yes.” The man stared at him impatiently his eyes big as chestnuts through the thick glasses. “Botany is a hobby. Though I am published in the field. Orchids were my original subject. Named three in Surinam. But there's a lady botanist down there now, you see. Paints pretty watercolors. Weak on taxonomy in my opinion, but she's popular. So I came up here. Not a glamorous field, ferns, but fascinating. And no ladies up here doing watercolors, eh?

“So what's wrong?” He peeled off the thick glasses and gave Aiden a quick glance up and down. “You look fine.”

Aiden explained that he wanted a smallpox vaccination.

“Good idea, very smart,” Abradale grunted. “Surprising how many don't take the vaccine, in this day and age. There's some religions against it, do you know? And some just bloody stupid. But I cannot give it to you.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I don't keep any here. Especially not now.”

“Why not?”

“There's Indians on the hunt for it. Came right here to my own door. Bad business. Police caught them, though. A whole band of them ready to murder. Killed a police guard. Crushed his throat. I did the postmortem. Brutal.”

Aiden didn't know what a postmortem was but felt it best not to ask about anything brutal. He had to work to push away the image of Silent Wolf being beaten to death.