The Touch of Fire by Linda Howard
“I’ll need my bag,” Annie said briskly, her mind already on the monumental job ahead of her even as she rocked the baby in her arms.
CHAPTER
15
“There’s nothing you can do,” Rafe said with slow menace. “It’s measles. It’s the same as smallpox: they’ll either die or they won’t.”
“I can give them something to bring the fever down. I can make them more comfortable.” They had been arguing for ten minutes. She still held the baby, who had smiled at her to reveal two tiny white teeth and was now noisily sucking on a plump fist.
“What will you do when some of the warriors get well and decide to kill me and make you a slave? That’s if the medicine man doesn’t get jealous and decide you should die, too.”
“Rafe, I’m sorry, I know it’s against your better judgment, but I can’t leave any more than I could not have come here in the first place. Please understand. Most of them are already broken out in spots, so it will only be a few days before they’ll begin getting well. Just a few days.”
Rafe wondered when his brain had begun turning to mush where she was concerned. “You know I can make you go.”
“Yes, I know,” she admitted. He was strong enough to make her do anything he wanted. She could even understand his position, and knowing the validity of his arguments made her doubly appreciate his restraint, especially since he was usually so implacable.
“It’s dangerous for us to stay so long in one place.”
“But on the other hand, an Apache camp is probably the safest place for us to be if we aren’t moving. How many bounty hunters are likely to look for us here?”
None, he had to admit.
He found himself giving in again. “All right. Will four days be enough?”
She thought about it. “It should be.”
“Whether it is or not, four days is the outside limit. When a few of the bucks start moving around, we leave.”
“All right.” She saw the wisdom of his qualification. Just because she would be working to help the Apache didn’t mean they would appreciate it.
She had counted sixty-eight people. She had never had so many patients at one time before and hardly knew how to begin. The first thing she did was go from wickiup to wickiup and check on the condition of each person. Some people seemed to have mild cases of the disease, some severe. The old woman who had evidently been trying to care for the entire band worked up enough courage to fly screeching at Annie when she knelt beside the sick people in the wickiup where she had hidden. Rafe quickly caught the old woman’s arms and made her sit down. “Stop it,” he said sharply, hoping his tone of voice would keep her quiet even though she wouldn’t understand what he was saying. He wished he spoke at least a few words of the Apache tongue, but he didn’t, and it wasn’t likely anyone here would speak any English. The old woman, however, cowered back into her corner and contented herself with glaring at the intruders.
Annie didn’t have much hope for the ones with black measles, though she had seen people recover. The greatest danger, to all of them, was the fever that could soar so high it caused convulsions. She had seen that often people who survived such a high fever weren’t right in the head afterward. There was also the possibility of pneumonia and other complications. If she let herself stop to think, common sense would force her to admit it was hopeless to expect much. Rather than do that, Annie didn’t let herself stop. Even if she saved just one person, that was one person, an atonement for Trahern.
She hoped her supply of willow bark held out. She fetched water and put it on to boil, all the while deciding on her course of action. She would make the tea weak; it would lower the fever even if it didn’t break it, and her supply would last longer that way. She was sure the Indians themselves would know which local plants could be used to fight fever, but the language barrier prevented her from asking.
While the tea was steeping she began another search of the wickiups, this time looking for any of the herbs the Indians normally used. Perhaps she would be able to use some of them. Rafe followed her every step, as alert as a hunting wolf.
The baby was howling again. It was probably hungry. She went into the wickiup where it lay screaming and picked it up. Evidently it was more frightened than hungry, for again it cuddled contentedly in her arms. She couldn’t bear listening to it cry continuously like that, so she carried the infant with her, reasoning that it couldn’t be exposed to the disease more than it already had been.
She did find bundles of dried plants but didn’t recognize most of them. She wished she had spent more time in the area so she could have explored the healing properties of the local plants. Nevertheless she gathered them up; maybe the old woman would be able to indicate how some of them were used.
The two young boys had crept out of their wickiup to stare at her and Rafe with huge, frightened eyes. One of the youngsters carried a bow that was as long as he was but made no effort to use it. Annie smiled at them as she rushed past in an effort to reassure them, but they hid their eyes.
“Let me have the baby,” Rafe muttered as she held it with one arm and tried to measure honey and cinnamon into the willow-bark tea with her free hand. She looked at him in surprise; somehow the idea of a baby being cradled in those steely arms seemed ludicrous, but she gladly gave up her burden.
The baby began to cry again. Rafe cradled the fuzzy little head in his big hand as he held the child to his chest, but it wasn’t soothed. Annie gave it a worried look. “I hope it isn’t getting sick,” she said. “Measles is so hard on tiny babies. Maybe it’s just hungry.”
More than likely it was crying because Annie wasn’t holding it, Rafe thought. It was undoubtedly hungry too, but Annie’s touch had calmed it despite that. He dipped his finger into the jar of honey and slipped it into the little mouth. The baby squalled around his finger for a minute, then the sweet taste registered and it clamped down on his finger with a frantic sucking. He winced as two sharp little teeth dug into his flesh. “Hey! Damn it, you little cannibal, turn loose!”
The honey was gone and his finger wasn’t very productive. The baby began wailing again. Rafe started to dip his finger in the honey again but Annie stopped him. “You have to be careful giving honey to babies. Sometimes it makes them really sick. Maybe the mother is still nursing; why don’t you check and see? If not, I wrapped up a biscuit left over from breakfast. Soak it in water and give it to the baby in tiny bites. And see if the baby needs drying.”
She was gone in a flurry of skirts. Rafe looked down with alarm at the little carnivore in his arms. How had he wound up as mammy? How was he supposed to see if the mother was still nursing the baby? The woman was almost unconscious, and he didn’t speak Apache anyway. And what did Annie mean, see if it needs drying? So what if it did? He had no idea what to do about it.
Feeding it, though, seemed like a good idea. He could handle that. He searched the saddlebags until he found the leftover biscuit. The kid was squalling again, and kicking in outrage. He’d thought all Apache babies were kept bound in cradleboards, but maybe that was only when the mother was carrying it around.
He did as Annie had directed and soaked the biscuit in water, then broke off small bits of the soggy bread and poked it into the baby’s mouth, taking care to avoid those two small teeth. Evidently the baby had already learned the mechanics of eating, because it knew what to do. Blessed silence fell again.
Rafe kept his attention on Annie as she moved from wickiup to wickiup with the pot of willow-bark tea. The two little boys were staring at him as if he had two heads. Probably Apache warriors didn’t tend to babies. He could understand why.
The baby did feel decidedly damp. Sighing in resignation, Rafe began unwrapping it. After all, he couldn’t keep thinking of it as “it.” Time to find out if it was a he or a she.
It was a she. To his relief, being wet was her only problem. The naked baby in his lap seemed to enjoy the cool freedom, and kicked energetically while she made cooing sounds. He smi
He tucked her into the cradle of his arm and set off for the wickiup where Annie had found her. There should be some clean cloths in there to wrap her in. When he opened the flap, the young woman who was the baby’s mother tried to roll onto her side so she could get up. Her fever-dulled eyes were fixed desperately on the infant. Rafe squatted beside the woman and gently pushed her onto her back again.
“It’s all right,” he said as soothingly as he could, hoping his tone of voice would calm her even though she couldn’t understand the words. He patted her shoulder, then touched his hand to her face. Her skin was scorching hot. “We’ll take care of your baby. See, she’s fine. I just finished feeding her.”
The woman didn’t seem comforted, but she was too ill to struggle. She closed her eyes and seemed to sink into a stupor. Beside her lay a warrior who was breathing heavily and hadn’t stirred at all. His round face and bristly hair looked exactly like the baby’s.
Rafe found the cradleboard and binding cloths, but he didn’t want to wrap the kid up to where it couldn’t move. He improvised a hip wrapping and was just tying it off when Annie entered the wickiup with her pot of willow-bark tea.
“It’s a girl,” Rafe said. “I don’t know if the mother’s still nursing her or not. The kid ate the biscuit like she knew what she was doing.”
Annie couldn’t help smiling at the plump brown infant resting so calmly in the crook of his muscled arm. She had always liked babies; helping a woman give birth had always been her favorite part of being a doctor. When she had picked up the Indian baby earlier it had felt—right, somehow. Maybe it was because she had been thinking about having Rafe’s child, and for the first time she had pictured herself as a mother.
Gently, she opened the front of the woman’s dress. Rafe turned his back, jiggling the baby and talking to her. The mother’s breasts were normal, not swollen with milk, so Annie knew that, for whatever reason, the infant had already been weaned. It was unusual for a baby so young not to still be nursing, but sometimes the mother either didn’t have milk to begin with or something happened that stopped her milk. Annie had even seen a few cases where the infants had weaned themselves as soon as they started cutting teeth. She closed the woman’s dress. “You can turn around now. The baby has already been weaned; we’ll have to feed her.”
She lifted the woman’s head and patiently spooned the tea into her mouth, coaxing her to swallow. It was more difficult with the warrior, for she couldn’t rouse him. Looking at him, Annie felt her stomach clench; she didn’t think he would live. She didn’t give up, though. She talked to him and stroked his throat, making him swallow a little bit of tea at a time. His body heaved with coughing, another symptom of the disease. She put her hand on his chest, feeling the congestion rattle in his lungs.
Rafe watched her with enigmatic eyes. She healed wounds with her hot touch, calmed babies and horses, drove him crazy when they were making love, but could her special gift do anything against a disease? He realized that he hadn’t considered that before, and wouldn’t really be able to tell now. Some of the Indians would recover from the measles and some of them wouldn’t; there was no way to tell which of the survivors would have died without Annie. And would it be her herbs, or her touch? Unless, of course, all of them survived. The thought made his heart jump into his mouth, and he fought to keep the panic out of his eyes. God, if she could do that, how could he justify keeping her to himself? Something that special wasn’t meant to be hidden away. It would be criminal to do so.
His mouth twisted wryly. He was a fine person to be worrying about anything being criminal or not.
No longer hungry, the baby began yawning. Rafe put her down on a blanket and did what he could to help Annie.
There were two women and one man, besides the old woman, who were still on their feet, but they were feverish and alarmed by the intrusion of white people into their camp. The man had tried to get his weapons, but had calmed down when Annie had spoken softly to him and tried to show that she meant no harm and was trying to help. Annie mentioned this to Rafe as they worked, and he swore to stay by her side from now on. If the Apache warrior had been a little less sick, he might have killed her. He was furious with himself for being so careless.
The old woman crept out again. She watched as Rafe held one big warrior up so Annie could coax him to drink the bark tea. The warrior tried to struggle and Rafe effortlessly subdued him. The old woman spoke to the warrior, perhaps reassuring him; he relaxed, and drank the tea.
The old woman’s face was lined with wrinkles like the arroyos scoring the land, and she was thin and bent. She studied these two whites who were the enemies of her people, carefully watching the big man who wore his weapons with such ease, but even the great Cochise admitted that not all white people were bad. At least these two seemed to want to help—well, the woman wanted to help, and the white warrior with the fierce pale eyes let her have her way. The old woman had seen it before in her long life: even the boldest, strongest warrior became oddly helpless around a certain woman.
The woman was interesting. She had the strange pale hair, but her eyes were dark like those of the People. She knew healing, so perhaps she was a medicine woman. The band’s medicine man had been one of the first to succumb to the spotted disease, and everyone had been terrified. Perhaps this white woman knew how to cure the white man’s disease.
The old woman shuffled forward. She indicated herself and said, “Jacali,” which Annie took to be her name, then gestured toward the pot of tea Annie was holding. Annie gave it to her. The old woman sniffed it, then tasted it. She gave it back to Annie with some words and nods, and by gestures gave them to understand that she would aid in the care of her people.
Annie touched herself and then Rafe, repeating their names. The old woman said each name in turn, the syllables harsh and distinct, but Annie smiled and nodded and the introductions were considered finished.
She was glad of an extra pair of hands. Of the entire band, only this old woman and the two boys showed no signs of measles. Everyone would have to be fed, and now that Annie had dispensed the willow-bark tea she set about making a weak broth from the Apaches’ stores of dried jerky. It would have helped had there been one big pot, but if there was such an item in the camp she hadn’t seen it. Rafe built up the cook fires and she turned the chore over to Jacali, showing the old woman how weak she wanted it. Jacali signaled her understanding.
“What now?” Rafe asked.
She tiredly rubbed her forehead. “I need to make a horehound cough syrup, to help relieve the congestion in their lungs. I think several of them have pneumonia already. And they need to be bathed in cool water to help lower the fevers.”
He pulled her to him and held her for a long minute, wishing he could make her rest, but he knew they would both be much more tired before the crisis had passed. He kissed her hair. “I’ll wash them down while you make the cough medicine.”
He had chosen to undertake a monumental task. By his reckoning there were almost seventy of the Indians, with only three of them healthy, four if he counted the baby girl with the spiky hair. There were old people, young people, middle-aged people, the strong ones afflicted as well as the weak. He stripped
muscled warriors down to their breechcloths, fighting some of them, so he could ease the aches of fever with cool water. Knowing the Apache notions and rules of modesty were as strong as, though somewhat different from, those of the white man, he took care not to expose the women any more than necessary, merely pushing their dresses up so he could bathe their legs and arms.
The children were the easiest, but they were also the most frightened. Some of them cried when he touched them. He handled them gently as he removed their clothes, an
It was the grief in Annie’s eyes that hit him hardest.
He knew some of the Apache customs dealing with death, but he didn’t know how they were going to manage. Apaches wouldn’t live in a wickiup where someone had died, but he couldn’t bring the sick people outside or be continually moving them from one wickiup to another whenever someone died. Nor did he know the Apache custom for burial. Finally he decided to leave it to Jacali, for she would do as much as she was able within their customs.
Cooling the fevers was a never-ending job. If someone had slipped into a doze he left them alone, but those who were restless, or whose fevers had gone so high that they were insensible, had to be continually bathed. The three who had been trying to help Jacali had evidently been in the beginning stages of the disease; by that night, they were as sick as the others.
Annie moved from one patient to the other, dispensing the horehound cough syrup to those whose lungs sounded congested. To others, who were coughing but whose lungs sounded clear, she gave a hyssop and honey mixture.
It went on all night. She didn’t dare sleep, for she was terrified that someone would go into convulsions from the fever. She boiled more willow-bark tea and spent hours coaxing fretful, violent, or unconscious patients to swallow. Some of the younger children cried most of the night, and their misery wrung her heart. Those whose spots seemed to be itching were washed with apple-cider vinegar. The baby girl howled vigorously whenever she became hungry or needed cleaning, or was frightened by the absence of her mother. The young woman tried several times to respond to her baby’s cries, but she was too weak.