“Magpie, are you sick? Where has Annie gone?” she asked hurriedly.
“I am sick. White Cloud too. Her medicines have not cured us,” Magpie whispered. There was a wooden cup by the bed and Caroline picked it up. There was some concoction within, which smelt sharp and vinegary. She held it up to Magpie but the girl turned her head away weakly. “No more of that stuff. No more of it,” she whispered.
“If you have a fever, you have to drink something,” Caroline said. “I’ll get some water. You have to get up, Magpie. William’s dirty…”
“I cannot get up. I cannot change him,” Magpie replied, sounding so unhappy that Caroline faltered. “You must do it. Please.”
“But I don’t know how!” Caroline said. “Magpie, why didn’t you send word to me that you were sick?” she asked. Magpie gazed at her, and she read the answer there. Because none of them had thought she would be any help. Tears welled in her eyes. “I’ll clean him. I’ll fetch you water,” she said, wiping her face. The smell of the sick girl and her soiled baby was nauseating, and a rush of dizziness assailed her. But she moved with a purpose, grabbing a pail and heading over to the cistern. “Where’s White Cloud? Where’s Annie gone?” she asked again, from the doorway.
“White Cloud is sick too. She is in the teepee, resting. Annie has gone east, to our peoples’ lands on the Arkansas River… she goes to fetch medicine…”
“The Arkansas River? That’s nigh on two hundred miles! It will take her days and days!” Caroline cried.
Magpie just looked at her, her face slack with exhaustion and despair. “Please, clean William,” she said again.
Caroline fetched a pail of water and a ladle. It took all of her strength to lift Magpie’s head and shoulders so that the girl could drink, but Magpie could only manage tiny sips and found it hard to swallow.
“Please drink some more,” Caroline begged, but Magpie did not reply, lying back on her fetid bedding, her eyes closing. Searching the dugout, Caroline found clean napkins and a towel. She took William out of the carrycot and went outside with him. The filth she found when she undressed the baby made her gag, and she threw the rags onto the coals of the dying cook fire. The water was cold and William began to cry as she dunked him into the pail, swilling the congealed mess from his backside. His cries were weak though, his voice a little hoarse, and he seemed to tire himself out with it, falling into a kind of doze as Caroline finished bathing him and positioned a new napkin between his legs as best she could. Sitting on the ground, she lay him along her thighs and was stroking his arms, entranced, when she realized how warm he was and how flushed his cheeks had grown. She put her fingers to her own forehead to check, and the difference was unmistakable. Hurriedly, she gathered him up and went back into the dugout.
“Magpie… William’s very hot. I think he has a fever too,” she said, bringing the baby to the bedside for Magpie to see. The Ponca girl’s eyes filled with tears.
“I don’t know how to help him. Please… he will get sick too. You must take him… take him to the house! Clean him, feed him. Please!” she said weakly.
“I have cleaned him, see? He will be fine… you’ll both be fine, Magpie,” Caroline declared.
“White Cloud…” Magpie murmured indistinctly. Caroline lay William back in his cot and went over to the teepee. She hesitated outside, afraid to go any further. She thought of White Cloud’s iron gaze, her alien voice raised in song.
“White Cloud? May I come in?” she called tentatively, but there came no reply. Breathing fast, Caroline lifted the tent flap and went inside. White Cloud lay crumpled on the ground like so many old rags. Her gray hair was slick with sweat, matted to her scalp. With her bright eyes closed she was just an elderly lady, small and weak, and Caroline felt ashamed for fearing her. “White Cloud?” she whispered, kneeling beside her and shaking her as she had done Magpie. But White Cloud did not stir. She would not wake. Her skin radiated heat and her breathing was fast and shallow. Caroline had no idea what to do. She went back outside and then faltered, standing alone with her hands shaking, surrounded by people who suddenly had need of her help.
At Magpie’s insistence, Caroline took William back to the house with her. He was fast asleep, his fist wedged into his mouth. She put him in the coolest, shadiest spot she could find and began to explore the kitchen cupboards, looking for food she could take over to Magpie. Steeling herself, she went over to the bunkhouses and found three of the beds occupied. The stricken riders murmured in helpless embarrassment when she entered, assuring her that they were quite well even though they were too weak to rise. Caroline fetched pails of water and made each of them drink, before leaving a further cup of water beside each man’s bed. She had been hoping to find somebody able to ride to town and fetch the doctor, but there was no way any of those remaining could do so. The thought made panic close her throat. She went back to the house and began to make a soup from dried beans and the carcass of a chicken Magpie had roasted two days before. She also fetched a pumpkin up from the root cellar and cooked it up into a mash for William.
In the night William woke her up with thin cries of distress and she rose, holding him to stop his crying with comforting words and kisses. She laid him back down as he went back to sleep, then sat on the edge of the bed and cried quietly to herself, because it was all she had ever wanted to have a baby sleeping next to the bed, and to comfort it and love it. But this child was not hers, and Corin was not lying beside her, and this tiny taste of what should have happened, of how things should have been, was so bitter and sweet.
By morning, there was no denying that William had caught the fever as well. He slept too much, he was hot, and was groggy and limp when he woke. Caroline went over to the bunkhouses with the soup she had made, and then to the dugout to Magpie, pausing outside the teepee. She knew she should go in and try to wake White Cloud again, try to make her drink some water. But fear gripped her, a new and horrible fear born of instinct rather than conscious thought. It made the hair stand up on the back of her neck as she forced herself to lift the tent flap. White Cloud had not moved. She did not move. Not at all. Not even her chest, with the rise and fall of breathing. Caroline dropped the tent flap and backed away hurriedly, horror squeezing her insides, shaking her from head to foot. Breathing fast, she went down into the dugout.
Magpie was weaker, and harder to wake. The whites of her eyes looked grey, and her skin was even hotter. Caroline washed her face with a wet cloth, and ladled more water through her cracked lips.
“How is William? Is he sick?” Magpie whispered.
“He…” Caroline faltered, unwilling to speak the truth. “He has a fever. He is quiet, this morning,” she said gravely. Fear lit a dull light in Magpie’s eyes.
“And White Cloud?” she asked. Caroline looked away, busying her hands with the cloth, the water pail, the ladle.
“She is sleeping,” she said shortly. When she looked up Magpie was watching her, and she could not hold the girl’s gaze.
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help myself or White Cloud,” Magpie whispered, despairingly. “We must hope for Annie to come back soon, and to bring medicine.”
“That will take far too long!” Caroline said desperately. “Somebody will have to go! You can’t wait for Annie!” She stood up, pacing the dugout. “I’ll go,” she said in the end. “I’m well enough. I’ll go, and… I’ll take William with me. The doctor can see to him straight away and then come back with me and look after you and everybody else. It’s the best way.”