FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH.
"Oh, Kit; I can't bear to leave you behind! It breaks my old heart all
to flinders!" lamented Abel, laboriously climbing into the great wagon
which Jim and Pete were now to draw back to their old home and wherein
were already seated Mercy, with Kitty's children. "If it wasn't for
these babies of yourn, I'd never stir stick nor stump out this
afflicted town."
"Well, dear Abel, the babies _are_, and must be cared for. I know that
you and Mother Mercy will spoil them with kindness; but I hope we'll
soon be all together again. Good-by, good-by."
The Sun Maid's voice did not tremble nor the light in her brave face
grow dim, though her heart was nearer breaking than Abel's; in that
she realized far more keenly than he the peril in which she was
voluntarily placing herself.
"Well, Kitty, lamb, do take care. Take the herb tea constant and keep
your feet dry."
"That will be easy to do, if this heat remains," answered the other
quietly, looking about her as she spoke upon the sun-parched ground
and the hot, brazen sky. "And you must not worry, any of you. Gaspar
says the tepees are as comfortable as the best log cabins, though so
hastily put up. You will have plenty of air and the delicious shade of
the trees; the blessed spring water, too; and if you don't keep well
and be as happy as kittens, I--I'll be ashamed of you. I declare,
Mercy dear, your face is all a-beam with the thought of the old
clearing, and the bleaching ground, and all. So you needn't try to
look grave, for, as soon as we can, Wahneenah and I will follow."
Then she turned to speak to Gaspar, who sat on Tempest close at hand,
his handsome face pale with anxiety and divided interests, but stern
and resolute to do his duty as his young wife had shown it to him. And
what these two had to say to one another is not for others to hear;
for it was a parting unto death, it might be, and the hearts of the
twain were as one flesh.
Also, if Mercy's face was alight with the glow of her home returning,
it was moved by the sight of the two women--Wahneenah and her
daughter--who were taking their lives in their hands for the service
of their fellow-men.
Never had the Indian woman's comeliness shown to such advantage; and
her bearing was of one who neither belittled nor overrated the dignity
of the self-sacrifice she was making. She wore a white cotton gown,
which draped rather than fitted her tall figure, and about her dark
head was bound a white kerchief that seemed a crown. With an impulse
foreign to her, Mercy held out her hand; because in ordinary she
"hated an Indian on sight."
"Well, Wahneeny, I'd like to shake hands for good-by. There hain't
never been no love lost 'twixt you an' me, but I 'low I might have
been more juster than I was. I think you're--you're as good as ary
white women I ever see, savin' our Kit, of course; an'--an'--I--I wish
you well."
There was a moment's hesitation on Wahneenah's part; then her slim
brown hand was extended and closed upon Mercy's fat palm with a
friendly pressure.
"In the light of the Unknown Beyond, the little hates and loves of
earth must disappear. You have judged according to the wisdom that was
in you, and if I bore you a grudge, it is forgotten. Farewell."
Then the foster-mother slipped her arm about the waist of her beloved
Sun Maid and supported her firmly as the oxen moved slowly forward,
the heavy wheels creaking and the three children shouting and clapping
their hands in innocent glee, quite unconscious of the tragedy of the
parting they had witnessed.
Abel gee-ed and haw-ed indiscriminately and confusingly, then
belabored his patient beasts because they did not understand
conflicting orders. Mercy sat twisted around upon the buffalo-covered
seat, her arms holding each a child as in a vise and her neck in
danger of dislocation, as long as her swimming eyes could catch one
glimpse of the two white-robed women left on the dusty road.
"They look as pure as some them Sisters of Charity I've seen in Boston
city. And they won't spare themselves no more, neither. Poor Gaspar
boy! How'll he ever stand it without his Kit, and if--ah, if--she
should catch--Oh, my soul! oh--my--soul! I wonder if he's takin' it
terrible hard!"
But though she brought her body back to a normal poise, her morbid
curiosity was doomed to disappointment, for Tempest had already borne
his master out of sight at a mad pace across the prairie.
The enemy which had come with the infantry over the great water was
the most terrible known,--a disease so dread and devastating that men
turned pale at the mere mention of its name--the Asiatic cholera.
When it appeared, the garrison was crowded with the settlers who had
fled before the anticipated attacks of the Indians and, as has been
said, every roof in the community sheltered all it could cover. But
when the soldiers began to die by dozens and scores the refugees were
terrified. Death by the hand of the red man was possible, even
probable; but death of the pestilence was certain.
The town was now emptied far more rapidly than it had filled; and
early in this new disaster Gaspar had hastened to the old clearing of
the Smiths and had made Osceolo, aided by a few more frightened,
willing men, toil with himself to erect wigwams enough to accommodate
many persons. He had then returned for his household and had been met
by his wife's first resistance to his will.
"No, Gaspar, I cannot go. I have no fear. I am perfectly 'sound.'
Probably no healthier woman ever lived than I am. I have learned much
of nursing from Wahneenah, and my place, my duty, is here. I cannot
go."
"Kit! my Kitty! Are you beside yourself? Where is your duty, if not to
me and to our children?"
"Here, my husband, right here; in our beloved town, among the lonely
strangers who have come to save it from destruction and have laid
their lives at our feet."
"That is sheer nonsense. Your life is at stake."
"Is my life more precious than theirs?"
"Yes. Infinitely so. It is mine."
"It is God's--and humanity's--first, Gaspar."
"Your children, then; if you scorn my wishes."
"Don't make it hard for me, beloved; harder than God Himself has made
it. Do you take Mother Mercy and Abel and go to the place you have
prepared. The children will be as safe with her as with me; safer, for
she will watch them constantly, while I believe in leaving them to
grow by themselves. Between them and us you may come and go--up to a
certain point; but not to the peril of your taking the disease. The
Indians are no less on the war-path because the cholera has come.
_Your_ duty is afield, guarding, watching, preventing all the evil
that a wise man can. Mine is here, using the skill I have learned from
Wahneenah and faithfully at her side."
"Wahneenah? Does she wish to stay too; to nurse the pale-faces, the
men who have come here to fight her own race?"
"Yes, Gaspar, she is just so noble. Can I do less? I, with my
education, which the dear Doctor has given me, and my youth, my
perfect health, my entire fearlessness. You forget, sweetheart; I am
the Unafraid. Never more unafraid than now, never more sure that we
will come out of this trouble as we have come out of every other. Why,
dear, don't you remember old Katasha and her prophecy? I am to be
great and rich and beneficent. I am to be the helper of many people.
Well, then, since I am not great, and rich only through you, let me
begin at the last end of the prophecy, and be beneficent. Wait; even
now there is somebody coming toward us asking me for help."
"Kit, I can't have it. I won't. You are my wife. You shall obey me.
You shall stop talking nonsense. You may as well understand. Pick
together what duds you need and let's get off as soon as possible.
Every hour here is fresh danger. Come. Please hurry."
But she did not hurry, not in the least. Indeed, had she followed her
heart wholly, she would never have hastened one degree toward the end
she had elected. But she followed it only in part; so she stole
quietly up to where the man fumed and flustered and clasped her arms
about his neck and laid her beautiful face against his own.
"Love: this is not our first separation, nor our longest. Many a month
have you been away from me, up there in the north, getting money and
more money, till I hated its very name,--only that I knew we could use
it for others. In that, and in most things, I will obey you as I have.
In this I must obey the voice of God. Life is better than money, and
to save life or to comfort death is the price of this, our last
separation."
After that he said no more; but recognizing the nobility of her
effort, even though he still felt it mistaken, and with a credulous
remembrance of Katasha's saying, he made her preparations and his own
without delay and parted from her as has been told.
"Well, my dear Other Mother, there is one thing to comfort! Hard as it
was to see them all go, we shall have no time to brood. And we shall
be together. Let us get on now to our work. There were five new cases
this morning; and time flies! Oh, if I were wiser and knew better what
to do for such a sickness! The best we can--that's all."
"What the Great Spirit puts into our hands, that we can always lift,"
replied Wahneenah, and, with her arm still about her darling's waist,
they walked together Fortward. It may be that in the Indian's jealous,
if devoted, heart there was just a tinge of thankfulness for even an
evil so dire, since it gave her back her "White Papoose" quite to
herself again.
"Well, I can watch her all I choose, and no burden shall fall to her
share that I can spare her. The easy part--the watching and the
soothing and the Bible reading--that shall be hers. Mine will be the
coarsest tasks," she thought, and--as Gaspar had done--reckoned
without her host.
"It is turn and turn about, Other Mother, or I will drive you out of
the place," Kitty declared; and after a few useless struggles, which
merely wasted the time that should have been given their patients, it
was so settled; and so continued during the dreadful weeks that
followed.
Until just before midsummer the nurses were almost wholly at the
Fort, where it seemed to Kitty that a "fresh case" and a "burial"
alternated with the regularity of a pendulum; and then a little relief
was gained by taking their sick across to Agency House and its ampler
accommodations. But even these were meagre compared to the needs; and
more and more as the days went by did the Sun Maid long for greater
wisdom.
"That is one of the things Gaspar and I must do. We must have a
regular hospital, such as are in Eastern cities; and there must be men
and women taught to understand all sorts of diseases and how to care
for them. I know so little--so little."
But experience taught more than schools could have done; and many a
poor fellow who had come from a far-away home sank to his last rest
with greater confidence because of the ministrations of these two
devoted women. And at last, very suddenly, there appeared one among
them whom both Wahneenah and her daughter recognized with a sinking
heart.
"Doctor! Oh, Doctor Littlejohn! I thought you were safe at the
'Refuge' with Mercy and Abel. How came you here? and why? You must go
away at once. You must, indeed. Where is the horse you rode?"
"I rode no horse, my dear. If I had asked for one, I should have been
prevented,--even forcibly, I fear. So I walked."
"Walked? In this heat, all that distance? Will you tell me why?"
But already, before it was spoken, the Sun Maid guessed the answer.
"Because, at length, through all the shifting talk about me, it
penetrated to my study-dulled brain that there was a need more urgent
than that the Indian dialects should be preserved; that I, a minister
of the gospel, was letting a woman take the duty, the privilege, that
was mine. I have come, daughter of my old age, to encourage the
sufferers you relieve and bury the dead you cannot save."
"But--for _you_, in your feebleness----"
He held up his thin white hand that trembled as an aspen leaf.
"It is enough, my dear. Consider all is said. I heard a fresh groan
just then. Somebody needs you--or me."
Wahneenah now had two to watch, and she did it jealously, at the cost
of the slight rest she had heretofore allowed herself. The result of
overstrain, in the midst of such infection, was inevitable. One
evening she crept languidly toward the empty house which had been her
darling's home and behind which still stood her own deserted lodge.
She was a little wearier than usual, she thought, but that was all. To
lie down on her bed of boughs and draw her own old blanket over her
would make her sleep. She longed to sleep--just for a minute; to shut
out from her eyes and her thoughts the scenes through which she had
gone. How long ago was it since the wagon and the fair-haired babies
went away?
She was a little confused. She was falling asleep, though, despite the
agony that tortured her. _Her?_ She had always hated pain and despised
it. It couldn't be Wahneenah, the Happy, crouching thus, in a cramped
and becrippled attitude. It was some other woman,--some woman she had
used to know.
Why, there was her warrior: her own! And the son she had lost! And
now--what was this in the parting of the tent curtains? The moonlight
made mortal?
No. Not a moon-born but a sun-born maiden she, who stooped till her
white garments swept the earth and her beautiful, loving face was
close, close. Even the glazing eyes could see how wondrously fair it
was in the sight of men and spirits. Even the dulled ears could catch
that agonized cry:
"Wahneenah! Wahneenah! My Mother! Bravest and noblest! and yet--a
savage!"
"Who called her so knew not of what he spake. From one God we all came
and unto Him we must return. Blessed be His Name!" answered the
clergyman who had followed.
Then the frail man, who had so little strength for himself, was given
power to lift the broken-hearted Maid and carry her away into a place
of safety.