Anita Mills (30 page)

“What about the other two—cholera and that other thing you mentioned?”

“Tetanus—you probably call it lockjaw. It’s too early to tell yet. I’d say if he develops a bad stomach ache with a fever within the next week, he’ll be coming down with typhoid or cholera. Lockjaw takes a little longer to manifest itself—usually about two weeks, sometimes more. He’ll have a stiff neck and jaw, fever, and joint pain, followed by an inability to talk, a drawing of the body backwards, and light will cause convulsions.”

“Spence, you’re scaring her,” Laura protested.

“I’m just telling her what she needs to look out for,”

“Where did you learn all this stuff?” the woman asked, awed.

“Medical school and the army.”

“He graduated from one of the finest institutions in the country, Abby—and he was the best surgeon in the whole Confederate Army,” Laura told her proudly.

“You don’t say,” Mrs. Daniels murmured, looking at him with new interest. “And we was all thinkin’ he was just a plain mister. I’ll have to tell it around.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. I’m not practicing right now,” Spence declared flatly. “I’m giving myself time to discover if I want to do it anymore.”

“He cut off thousands of legs, Abby, and he had one of the highest recovery rates recorded. He just got a little sick of it.” But as Laura explained the situation, she realized that he’d cracked the door a smidgeon. “Four years of seeing nothing but dead or broken bodies was hard for a man who cared. He sees all those dead men, but he forgets the thousands who went home alive because of him.”

“Laura—”

“Well, it’s the truth.”

“Anyway,” he said, returning to the matter at hand, “if any of those conditions I mentioned exist, you’ll need to bring him over here so I can take a look at him. Do you want me to repeat the symptoms again?”

“I understand what you said.”

“Good.”

“Jimmy’s going to be all right. He’s my sweet boy—makes me wish I had a dozen of him. Nate and Frankie’s the wild ones, you know. Jack’s too little to be much trouble, and the baby’s teething right now. I guess you could say I got my hands full. But I’m better off without Matt, I keep tellin’ myself. I just wish he hadn’t took hisself off with all the money, that’s all. It’s gettin’ hard to feed my boys.”

“Mmm—you smell good,” he murmured, nuzzling Laura’s neck while his hands explored her body beneath the covers.

“It’s that French perfume—when we’re doing this, I close my eyes and think I’m somewhere else instead of in a wagon.”

“As long as you don’t think you’re with anyone else.” He found the hem of her nightgown and began easing it up. “Someday, Mrs. Hardin, we’re going to be enjoying ourselves in the finest hotel in San Francisco.”

“I wouldn’t have anybody else, Spence.” Twining her arms around his neck, she pulled his head down for her kiss.

“I’s got to find the doc! I’s got to find the doc! Ma says he’s over here somewheres, but I ain’t findin’ ‘im!”

A child’s high-pitched, agitated voice penetrated the cocoon of intimacy, breaking its spell. “What the hell—?” Spence muttered. “It’s too late for a kid to be out”

Pulling her nightgown down, Laura sat up. “You’re the only doc around, Spence. He’s got to be screaming for you.”

“The hell he is.”

Somebody stuck a head out of another wagon, cursing. “Get out of here, you goddammed little varmint—we ain’t got no doc!”

“I gotta fetch ‘im! I just gotta! It’s Jimmy, and he’s taken bad!”

“I’ll find your bag,” Laura murmured, rolling from the feather mattress. Calling through the hole in the gathered canvas, she shouted, “He’s in here! He’ll be right out!”

Spence sat still for a moment, taking several deep breaths. He didn’t want to do this, he told himself. If the wound was making the boy sick, it was going to be bad, all right. He just didn’t want to face any more sickness and death.

Holding his bag in one hand, Laura laid the other on his shoulder. “Spence, you’ve got to—you said you would.”

“I don’t have to do anything, Laura! If it’s the wound, the stupid woman’s already killed him! What am I supposed to do?—sit there and watch a kid die?”

“You told her—”

“I know, but the way she was talking, it was nothing—she didn’t even care enough to clean it up! Now she wants me to make it right—and I’ll bet she never even put the carbolic acid I sent with her on it!”

“It could be something else. You don’t know what she’s thinking now.”

“She’s thinking I’ll fix him up!”

“Spence—”

The small boy crawled through the hole, sobbing. “My ma’s skeered, mister! Jimmy’s out of his head, and he ain’t feelin’ nuthin’! She’s a-cryin’, sayin’ he’s a-dyin’!”

“Did she put the medicine my husband gave her on his leg?” Laura asked the child.

“She couldn’t right away, ‘cause—”

“I told you she didn’t,” Spence muttered.

“‘Cause Billy was a-crying, mister! He’s yallerin’ his head off, too, ‘cause his teeth ain’t wantin’ to come in, an’ that sugar titty ain’t doin’ ‘im no good. Ma’s got to keep ‘im quiet, else folks is gonna turn ‘er out. But she just got around to gettin’ everything quiet, so’s she could help Jimmy.”

“You’re Nate, aren’t you?” Laura asked gently. Pulling the scruffy kid onto her lap, she wrapped her arms around him. “It’s got to be hard bein’ the man of the family,” she added softly, soothing him. “Spence, where’s the horehound candy? Nate needs a piece to calm him down.”

He felt as though the walls of a prison were closing in on him, that he was trapped. “I don’t know—under the seat, I think.” Heaving himself to his feet reluctantly, he reached for the leather bag. It seemed as though it had the weight of the world in it.

“Ma ain’t got nobody else,” the child whispered, resting his head on Laura’s breast. “I gotta be strong, she says, ‘cause I’s the oldest one,”

“How old are you, Nate?” she asked, leaning as far as she could to reach under the seat. Holding him with one arm, she managed to open the sack with the other. “I’ve got something little boys like right here. If you suck on it, it’ll make you feel better.”

“I’s five.” As he popped a piece into his mouth, he looked up at her. “Kin I take some to m’ brothers?”

“It’ll make it easier for her to keep them quiet, Spence,”

“Yeah. Well, come on, Nate—you’ll have to show me where we’re going. And don’t give any candy to the baby, or he’s apt to choke.”

As he walked across the dark and silent camp with Nate Daniels’s small hand in his, Spence almost wanted to cry himself. Five was too young for a kid to be bearing such a burden. Hell, he didn’t want to bear it himself.

“What seems to be the matter with Jimmy?” he asked finally.

“He cain’t feel nuthin’ in his leg—when Ma took the hot water to it, he didn’t cry or nuthin’. And the stuff you give ‘er for ‘im—she said it was supposed to burn, but it didn’t do nuthin’ to ‘im neither.”

“I see.”

“That’s bad, ain’t it?”

“Well, it might be.”

“He gets well, I’m givin’ ‘im this whole bag of candy,” Nate decided. “He’s always been a mite sickly long as I ‘member, but he ain’t a bad brother, mister.”

“How old is he?”

“He ain’t but four.”

Laura had told him that, Spence recalled now. “Four,” he repeated.

“You got any boys?”

“One. He’s four, too.”

“Oh.”

He sounded downcast, forcing Spence to ask, “Why’d you say that?”

“Ma says she cain’t feed all of us. I guess she’s fixin’ to give us away.”

“She won’t do that,”

“I was thinkin’ if you wasn’t havin’ no boys, you might could take Jimmy, seein’ as he’s the one that’s gettin’ sick mostly, and you bein’ a doctor man. I’d miss ‘im, but Ma cain’t take care of him proper, and ain’t nobody gonna want ‘im like he is.”

“She’s not going to give any of you away,” Spence consoled the boy. “Mas don’t do things like that.”

“She cain’t help it. We ain’t eatin’ most times. And it ain’t gettin’ no better, ‘cause Pa ain’t comin’ home. He done busted her up for the last time, and he ain’t comin’ crawlin’ back, even if she’s got to starve, she says.”

To Spence’s way of thinking, that was a damned sordid situation, for Abby Daniels to be discussing with a child. As hard as things had been for his own mother before she married Bingham, she’d never let on to him. It had taken him years to realize it for himself.

“I ain’t goin’ to no orphan place,” the kid went on. “And when I get growed up big enough to work, I’m gettin’ back any of us that does.” Nate stopped in his tracks. “We been talkin’ till I went plumb past it—that’s Ma’s wagon over there. Well, it ain’t ours,” he conceded. “But we got to live in it.”

“It’s easy to miss in the dark.”

“She ain’t lightin’ the lantern agin till I get you here, ‘cause we ain’t got enough kerosene neither. I got ‘im, Ma!” he yelled, climbing onto one of the supply wagons.

“Let me get the light on, or he’s liable to fall. There—you kin bring ‘im in now,”

The wagon was a mess. Boxes of supplies came up above the canvas, leaving little room for six people to live, but the Daniels woman had covered the flattest area with a ragged blanket and called it bed for the entire brood. The only things he saw that could pass for her belongings were two gunnysacks stuffed with what looked to be clothes. An Indian in a teepee was a lot better off than this.

Her haggard face looked up at him as Spence climbed over the boxes barring the entrance. “Well, you was right, Dr. Hardin, and I was just dead wrong,” were her first words to him. “It ain’t just a hole anymore. His whole laig’s swolled up, clear above his knee bone—I had to take a knife to his pants just to get a look at it. Guess I ain’t paid enough attention to know how bad it was gettin’.”

“I’ll have to have some room.”

“Nate, you and Frankie take Jack outside.”

“Ma, I hain’t got no britches on,” a small boy protested.

“You hush that,
Frankie
. I’ll be comin’ out with the blanket when I bring Billy out. He’s last, ‘cause I don’t want ‘im catchin’ cold while he’s teethin’, or ain’t nobody gettin’ no sleep. We’ll wrap up together, and nobody’s goin’ to know if you’re nekked or not”

Spence waited until they were all outside before he opened his bag. He was probably going to need help, but there wasn’t room for all those kids, and the last thing he wanted was a cranky baby screaming in his ear. He had to crawl to reach the sick child, and even then, he couldn’t stand up.

“Jimmy?” he said gently, touching the boy’s face. It was hot enough to burn him. “Jimmy, it’s Dr. Hardin. Your mama wanted me to look at that leg.”

The little boy’s fever-dulled eyes fluttered open. “It ain’t there,”

A chill ran down Spence’s spine. “Yes, it is,” he said, touching it, finding the skin hot and tight.

“See?”

“It ain’t hurtin’ no more.”

Holding the lantern closer, Spence looked down, and his gorge rose in his throat. The boy was so thin his eyes looked huge in a small, pinched face, but his injured leg was as big as Spence’s forearm. From the knee down, there were about two inches of hot, red flesh, but below the zone of demarcation, the skin ranged from slate gray to black. The wound itself stunk like something rotten. The June warmth had helped the infection along.

“How bad is it?” Abigail Daniels asked from outside.

“Damned bad.” Closing his eyes for a minute, he summoned the strength to break the news to her. “It’s gangrene.”

“I was afeard of that once I seen it tonight. I guess he’s goin’ to die, ain’t he?” There was a fatalistic sadness in her voice—no anger, just acceptance. “It’s my fault,” she added, sighing. “I wish t’ God, I’da paid more attention, but I didn’t.”

He wasn’t going to disagree with her. “Send Nate for my wife,” was all he could say. “Have him tell her to ask Mrs. Wilson to look after Jessie.”

“I kin look after her.”

Nearly too angry for words, he wasn’t about to let her touch his daughter. “You’ve got enough to take care of,” he answered curtly. “I just want Mrs. Hardin here right now.”

The wait seemed like an eternity, but he knew it wasn’t. She had to dress, get Jessie up, and wake Mrs. Wilson before she could come. But he wanted to talk to her before he decided what he’d do, and that made the minutes pass slowly.

Finally, he heard her tell Nate, “You’re such a good young man,” and he wanted to cry. A boy of five needed to be a child.

“Spence, what’s the matter?” she asked, climbing into the wagon. “Nate said you wanted me, and Abby isn’t saying anything.”

“Because she knows she killed her son.”

“What?”
she fairly screeched. “He’s dead?”

“Not yet.”

Crawling over crates and boxes, she managed to get to him. Her eyes found the child’s face first. “Oh, Jimmy—how you must hurt,” she whispered, smoothing dirty hair back from his forehead. Kneeling beside the little boy, she murmured soothingly, “It’s going to be all right, honey—you don’t listen to anybody who says it isn’t. Spence is going to do his best to make you better,” Looking up at her husband, she said, “He’s burning up.”

“I don’t know that Spence can make him better,” he said wearily. “Laura, it’s gangrene. You can see the demarcation clearly. He can’t feel anything below it because the tissue’s died. And by now, he’s probably got blood poisoning to go with it.”

“You can’t say that in front of him—he’s got to fight.” Tears welled in her eyes, and her throat was so tight she could scarce breathe. She had to force herself to look at the child’s leg. “Good God!” she gasped before she gagged. When she finally managed to swallow, she whispered, “But how could this happen so quickly?”

“There are a lot of reasons, but two are pretty obvious—the wound was dirty, and it’s summer.”

“Yes, but—” She had to bite her lip to keep from crying. “He’s just four, Spence.”

“Yeah.” His palm caressed the boy’s forehead, absorbing the burning heat. “I’ll need chloroform.” As she looked up, he took another deep breath, then nodded. “I’m going to amputate, Laura—it’s the only chance he’s got, and even then it may not be enough. If the poison’s in his blood, everything’s going to fail. She lied to you, Laura—I don’t know why, but she lied to you.”