Tahnancoa's eyes widened, and for the first time all morning, she held a hand over her mouth and giggled.
Paige laughed too. "I know it sounds pretty crazy, but there's a good chance that it'll work. Will you give it a try?"
The bleakness that had been in Tahnancoa's eyes all morning returned, and she nodded. "I said I would try your medicine, Paige, and I will, even though I doubt that it will work." The ghost of a twinkle came and went in her eyes. "Some of Lame Owl's remedies were a lot worse tasting than this one."
When she left, equipped with a thermometer, Paige wondered how Dennis would react when Tahnancoa started coming on to him at odd hours of the day and night.
She imagined herself and Myles in the same situation, and a wistful grin came and went on her face. If Dennis was anything like Myles, it wouldn't be a problem at all.
June came, and summer with it. Almost overnight, the prairies were dotted with buttercups and dandelions, and men and women worked in backyard gardens.
When Paige went out to feed Minnie one morning, she found Armand LeClerc in her backyard, shovel in hand, digging and planting a stack of seeds and bulbs.
"Armand, how are you?" Pleased and surprised, Paige walked over to shake the old man's grubby hand. "This is really nice of you, but I have to warn you, I know zilch about taking care of a garden."
"So?" His bushy white eyebrows lifted over mischievous black eyes. "Armand will care for your garden, Madame."
"But I thought you told me once that when spring came you were going back to your farm."
He shook his head. "I 'ave no farm. The government, he has taken the land, Madame la docteur."
"But how can they do that, Armand?"
He shrugged, his old face set in bitter lines. "We Métis, we 'ave the land from our fathers, no papers to say we own it."
Paige was outraged. "But that's terrible. Isn't there something you can do?"
He didn't answer. He picked up the shovel and began to dig again. "Here, we will put the potato, yes? And here, carrots, and spinach here."
Armand came every day. When the vegetables were planted, he brought flower bulbs and cuttings, and soon hollyhocks, poppies, daisies, and sunflowers were growing in neat beds at the front of the little white house.
Paige tried to pay the old man, but he refused.
"You come from far away, Madame la docteur. I think you bring magic along with you."
Puzzled, Paige asked Myles what the old man meant.
"The Métis are very superstitious, darling, and very religious. Armand was there the day you arrived, and he heard your story and believed it. He thinks it was a miracle." He kissed her. "Sometimes I think so too," he added, only half joking.
The third week in June, Myles had to ride out to treat an officer at an outpost who'd suffered a gunshot wound to the leg, and he invited Paige to come along. The trip would only take a day, and the route was near Clara and Theo's homestead. Paige could visit there until Myles returned.
Clara was delighted at the unexpected visit, but it took all Paige's self-control to hide the shock she felt when she saw Ellie.
The baby had deteriorated in the weeks since Paige had last seen her. Now nine months old, Ellie's huge blue eyes seemed too large for her tiny, pinched face. She was still not sitting upright or trying to crawl. She was, however, starting to talk, illustrating clearly to Paige that the little girl's problem was physical rather than mental.
It hurt to hear the little piping voice identify Mommy and Daddy and dog and baby. As always, Ellie's nature was exceptionally sweet and agreeable, and she played pat a cake and hide-the-baby with Paige, smiling her angelic smile, but she tired quickly and slept a great deal of the time.
"She has convulsions about every third day now," Clara said, a dreadful weariness in her eyes and voice. "Usually not the bad ones, just little ones. I keep hoping she'll grow out of them, like Dr. Baldwin thought might happen."
Paige could hear the entreaty in Clara's voice, begging her for reassurance, but Paige couldn't bring herself to tell Clara what she knew to be an outright lie—that Ellie would get better with time.
Ellie wasn't going to grow out of anything. It was obvious to Paige that the baby was dying.
The ride home later that evening with Myles should have been carefree. Instead, Paige couldn't shake the depression that had been growing ever since she'd laid eyes on Ellie that morning. She talked to Myles about it as the horses picked their way across the uneven prairie.
"Next week, Clara and Theo are going to be coming in on Tuesday to pick up more of those tonics I prescribed for Ellie, and I feel like such a fraud, Myles. That damned stuff isn't going to help, other than getting some vitamins into her."
A few moments before, the sun had set in waves of spectacular color in the western sky. The ever-present wind had died, and the prairie stretched before them, calm and serene, broken here and there by clumps of stunted pine, studded with sagebrush and wild roses in full bloom, but Paige didn't see the beauty that surrounded her. She was obsessed with Ellie.
"Myles," she begged, "in all your wandering, or maybe in your experience as a doctor in the war, can you think of anything that might help Ellie? Anything, Myles, no matter how farfetched or unlikely. Anything you've ever heard about that we could do to help her?" Paige moved restlessly in the saddle. "If she was your own baby, Myles, what would you do?"
Myles reigned Major to a stop, and Paige pulled Minnie up beside him. Myles sat, staring thoughtfully out over the prairie.
"A few years back, darling, I read an article published in the Virginia Medical Monthly, by a Dr. Jacob M. Toner," he began. "Never had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman myself, but his article stuck in my mind." Major whinnied and pranced, and it took Myles a moment to settle him.
"This article was an address Dr. Toner had given back in seventy-seven, to the Rocky Mountain Medical Association. In it, he praised Indian medical practitioners for their use of syringes, sutures, the enema, their knowledge of anatomy, their childbirth practices. He went so far as to say the Indian shamans have treatments for things we western trained physicians consider hopeless. Lots of doctors laugh at Indian medicine, dismiss it as savage hocus-pocus." Myles looked at her, his handsome face solemn. "I don't, Paige. I've seen wounds that should have killed a man, healed by the Indians. If Ellie was my child, I'd take her to a shaman."
He clucked to Major, and the big horse started off again, the jingle of the horses' bridles and the creaking of the leather saddles combining pleasantly with the songs of meadowlarks and the whispering of the slight breeze that heralded the coming night.
“Trouble is," Myles went on, "it might be impossible to get the Fletchers to trust an Indian shaman with their daughter. It's unfortunate, but settlers' feelings run high against the Indians in these parts, and about the last thing they'd be likely to do is ask for help for Ellie from people they fear and look down on."
"Maybe they won't, but I damned well intend to," Paige declared, her jaw set and her mind made up. Tahnancoa had been taught the healing techniques of the Indian shamans. Tahnancoa and Clara were her friends, although the two of them had never met. Both of them loved babies as much as Paige did. All she had to do, Paige schemed as she rode beside Myles, was figure out a way to get the two of them together. Soon.
That part, at least, wasn't difficult. Dennis made deliveries of beef to the fort every week. Paige wrote an urgent note to Tahnancoa, telling her she needed to see her on the Tuesday that Clara would be there. She gave the note to Myles to pass on to Dennis, hoping against hope that Tahnancoa would come.
She did, and so did Clara.
They sat like stone effigies on either side of Paige's kitchen table, and the strained silence was broken only by the increasingly desperate sound of Paige's voice, making ridiculous small talk.
Ellie was sleeping on the bed in the spare room, and Paige had struggled through a half-hour in which neither woman had volunteered a blessed thing to the conversati
on she was trying to kindle.
"More tea, Clara? Tahnancoa?"
Damn it, she felt like pouring it over their respective heads.
Awakening from her nap, Ellie started fussing, and Clara sprang to her feet and went hurrying off to collect her daughter.
Tahnancoa got to her feet, her face set in stem, inapproachable dignity. "I will go now, Paige Randolph."
"No, you won't go," Paige hissed, scowling at her friend. "Sit down. Right now," she ordered between gritted teeth. "I need you here."
Tahnancoa looked shocked, but she sat down again, staring at Paige as if she'd taken leave of her senses.
Clara, a freshly diapered and immaculate Ellie on her arm, came back into the room and took her place at the table.
Paige watched as Tahnancoa's eyes gravitated to the baby. She saw the sudden understanding on Tahnancoa's face when Ellie's fragility and thinness fully registered.
"Ellie Randolph, come here and see your Auntie Paige." The agreeable little girl grinned and held out her arms.
Paige took the slight body and knelt with her at Tahnancoa's knee.
"Say hi to another auntie," she cooed, ignoring the expression on Clara's face. "This is Tahny, can you say hi to her, Ellie?"
The baby babbled something, and then reached out and took a handful of the bright red skirt Tahnancoa was wearing and tried to cram it into her mouth. Tahnancoa smiled and reached out a finger, stroking the velvet skin on Ellie's sunken little cheek.
Paige promptly lifted the baby into Tahnancoa's lap, and Ellie transferred her attention to a beaded necklace Tahnancoa wore.
The ruse worked like magic. Tahnancoa relaxed for the first time all morning and cradled Ellie, bending to sniff at the sweet baby fragrance of her tufts of golden hair.
"What a beautiful girl you are, small one," Tahnancoa murmured softly, and Clara's face softened and lit up with motherly pride.
The three women were drawn into a circle now with the baby at its center. When Tahnancoa said, "How old is she?" it was Clara who answered, and only Paige caught the slight frown that flitted across Tahnancoa's face. Ellie, because of her size and fragility, seemed much younger than she actually was.
"She's starting to talk quite a lot now," Clara offered. "Just the other day, she put two words together. Theo was outside, and when he opened the door, Ellie laughed and said, "Da Da come."
Paige and Tahnancoa made appropriate admiring noises, and Paige was beginning to really relax when suddenly Ellie made a strange noise in her throat. Her spine stiffened and then bent backward, and her eyes rolled up until only the whites showed. Her body began to twitch and then to jerk spasmodically.
"Oh, Lord help us, she's having one of her convulsions," Clara cried, rushing over to Tahnancoa. She tried to take the baby, but it was impossible to transfer the wildly jerking child from Tahnancoa's arms.
Clara began sobbing, a high-pitched, despairing sound that mingled with the choking noises that now came from Ellie's throat. Paige snatched up a spoon to insert in Ellie's mouth so she wouldn't swallow her tongue, but Tahnancoa already had her finger between the tiny, clenched lips.
Paige swept the dishes from the table and grabbed up several clean tablecloths to pad the surface so they could lay the baby there.
Tahnancoa rested the small body gently on the table, and Clara, still sobbing, loosened her daughter's clothing so she could breathe freely.
Paige ran for her medical bag. There was an injection she could give if the convulsion showed signs of worsening, but by the time she returned, bag in hand, the seizure was already disappearing.
Tahnancoa, her finger still clamped tight in Ellie's mouth, made soft, crooning sounds over the baby as the thrashing of the small limbs gradually slowed and then stopped. Ellie's mouth became slack.
Tahnancoa removed her finger, which was bleeding a little from the force of Ellie's clamped teeth, and after what seemed an eternity, the baby stirred. She opened glazed eyes and stared listlessly at the ceiling. Her mouth quivered and pulled down, and she gave two huge, shuddering sobs.
Tahnancoa gently transferred the baby to Clara's arms, and with an effort, Clara stopped crying and tried to smile down into the thin little face. "There, there, love, Mommy's here." Her voice trembled, and the arms that held Ellie were quivering as though she too were convulsing. "Everything's fine, Mommy's right here."
"She has done this before," Tahnancoa said. It was a statement rather than a question, and Clara nodded.
"They're—they're getting more frequent all the time," she whispered, tears once more trickling down her cheeks. "She's—she's not growing the way she ought."
Suddenly, as if a dam had broken, Clara's face twisted with agony and she choked out, "I'm scared, I'm scared all the time now. I see the way people look at her, compare her to their own babies. I'm so afraid she's—she's going to— to die." She turned on Paige, her face a mask of helpless fury, her arms clasping Ellie so tight that the baby too began to sob. "You're a doctor, you say you're a doctor. Can't you do something to stop this?" Unable now to stifle the gasping sobs that shook her body, Clara thrust Ellie blindly at Tahnancoa and ran from the room.
Tahnancoa soothed the crying baby. She met Paige's eyes in silent question.
"My medicine is useless in this case, Tahnancoa," Paige said with a sigh. "This is why I wanted you here today. Do you think there's anything you can do for Ellie?"
Tahnancoa didn't answer right away. She hugged the baby to her, rocking her and singing a lullaby in her own language, a lilting song that sounded like a brook trickling across pebbles.
At last, she looked at Paige and gave a single nod. "There is a healing ceremony. I saw Lame Owl use it on a child like this one."
Clara came back just then, her nose and eyes red, a handkerchief clutched in her hand. "I'm sorry," she stammered. "I spoke out of turn." She took Paige's hand in hers and said again, "I apologize, Paige. I didn't mean to lash out at you. I know you're doing all you can, but sometimes I feel so helpless. So hopeless."
Paige took her in her arms and hugged her. "Forget it, Clara. God knows I feel that way myself. Now, let's make a fresh pot of tea," she suggested, wondering how many women in the history of the world had used tea to ease their pain and mend their hearts.
Tahnancoa went on holding the sleeping baby. Clara made no attempt to take Ellie. Instead, she touched Tahnancoa's finger, still bleeding from the bite of Ellie's teeth.
"I'm grateful to you, Tahnancoa." It was the first time Clara had used her name. "You thought fast, putting your finger in her mouth that way." She touched one of her daughter's curls. "She trusts you, look at how she's sleeping on your shoulder."
Paige seized the opportunity. "Tahny's a healer, Clara. Her grandmother is a famous shaman, an Indian healer, and she's taught Tahnancoa to be one as well." Paige felt her heart begin to knock against her ribs, knowing that either woman—or both—could refuse what she was about to suggest. "Clara, there's nothing I or any other medical doctor I know of can do for Ellie," she stated. "Just as you said, she's getting worse." There was no longer any point in pretense. "There's a ceremony that Tahnancoa knows of, a healing ceremony that might help Ellie. If Tahnancoa would agree to try it. . ."
Paige gave Tahnancoa a beseeching look, and the dark haired woman hesitated a heart stopping second before nodding assent.
Paige looked at Clara, holding her breath. But Clara was looking at her baby, cradled lovingly in Tahnancoa's arms.
"Would you try?" Clara's words were humble. "Please, Tahnancoa, would you try to help her?"
Tahnancoa looked down at Ellie. "I will try. But there are no promises," she warned. "If the Great Spirit wishes to take her, he must be obeyed. But if I can bring the darkness out and make her well, I will do that too. You will bring her to my cabin tomorrow morning just after sunrise. Paige will show you the way."
Theo, surprisingly, was in full agreement when Clara told him.
"Way I see it, we gotta try anything we can
," he said, smiling tenderly at his daughter as she pulled at his beard.
He loaded them all in the wagon the next morning before dawn, and Paige directed him along the trail to the Quinlans' cabin.
Dennis and Theo didn't know one another, but they were both farmers, and they soon were deep in a discussion of livestock and crops. They wandered off in the direction of the barn, and Tahnancoa led Paige and Clara inside the cabin.
Tahnancoa was in native dress today, the first time Paige had seen her in her native costume. Her buckskin dress and leggings were finely made, intricately beaded with patterns of birds and flowers, the background a soft dove gray that suited her natural duskiness and huge dark eyes.
She seemed a stranger, however; Paige felt a remoteness in her friend.
As soon as they were inside the cabin, Tahnancoa took Ellie in her arms and from a cup, spooned some herbal preparation she'd prepared into Ellie's mouth.
It must have tasted vile, because Ellie made a face and shivered. The women smiled, and Tahnancoa persevered, coaxing the baby to swallow another spoonful, and then another.
When Ellie refused to swallow any more, Tahnancoa spread a tanned buffalo hide on the floor with a blanket over it, and she laid Ellie on it.
"Clara, you will sit here at her feet, Paige, over there at her other side," Tahnancoa instructed.
Tahnancoa knelt near the baby's head, and Clara and Paige awkwardly settled themselves in the appointed places. Paige felt a stab of apprehension, wondering just exactly what procedure Tahny had in mind.
Tahnancoa now sipped at some concoction herself, drinking from a hollowed buffalo horn, her eyes closed, seeming to pray or meditate. After a time, she withdrew a small stone, several feathers, and a piece of shiny quartz from a buckskin bag at her side. She placed the objects at equal intervals around the baby who lay, quiet and good-natured, observing the proceedings with curious eyes. From time to time, Ellie patted her hands together or waved and babbled to her mother, but she seemed content to stay where she was.
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