Klondike Medicine Woman

“What are you staring at?”

She didn’t take her attention from the scene before her as she spoke to her brother, Jimmy. “Him.” She pointed. “Dr. Jacob Calloway. He’s going to start a white man’s place for healing.” They had automatically fallen into their native language.

“More white men. Just what our land needs.”

“We must accept the changes. Learn how to work with them.”

“Who says?”

“We see what happens if we stick to our old ways.”

“If they hadn’t come, our people wouldn’t have died of strange diseases.”

“But they did come. Our people did get sick.” She shuddered at the memory of one after another of her clan dying, their skin marred by the dreaded pox. “We need their medicine to cure their diseases.”

Jimmy didn’t answer. They disagreed on so many things, but he had no argument for this. “I wish they had never come.”

“We cannot push the sun back one hour, let alone the days and weeks it would require to go back to who we were before the white man came.”

“They have brought us a curse.”

She studied him, her face happy with a smile. “They brought us the news that we can know the Creator. We have always known about Him but feared His anger. We did not know He had sent His Son to open up the way for us to lift our hearts to Him.”

Jimmy’s face darkened. “Sometimes I think He is angry at us for being so bold. That is why we are punished with diseases we can’t conquer, and the swarm of people seeking gold, who care not about the land.”

Side by side they stared at the mud and confusion around them.

Teena had her share of doubts, too, but she wasn’t about to confess them to Jimmy. So many times, she wondered if God loved her people as much as He did the whites. “I asked for a chance to learn their healing way. I believe Dr. Calloway is what I need.”

“He will teach you?”

She sighed inwardly, not wanting Jimmy to know what Jacob had said. “God has sent him. He will teach me.”

“Let us hope you can learn what our people need.”

“Let us so pray.”

“I have to get back to work. There’s no end of people willing to pay for someone to take their goods up the mountain.” Jimmy’s voice grew strong with pride. Day after day, he packed a hundred-pound burden up the trail in return for gold.

“I notice you don’t mind taking the white man’s gold.”

“It is in our land. It is our gold.”

“Can you eat it? Can you wear it to keep you warm? Can it cure a dying child?”

Jimmy took a few steps away, then turned to face her. “Trading with the white man takes gold. Did you not say we have to change?” He strode toward the waterfront, found the man he sought amidst the confusion and shouldered a heavy pack.

Yes, they had to change. Learn new ways.

She turned her attention back to Jacob. He stood on the boardwalk and stared around him.

She saw his careful assessment. Then his gaze rested on her. Again she felt a quickening of her heart. As if the future held a thousand unspoken promises. As if she had set foot on a bridge over a deep valley—a bridge between two worlds. As if God had heard and answered her prayer, just like Mr. McIntyre had said He would.

Jacob continued to study her.

Her skin grew warm and prickly. Perhaps now was not the best time to try to explain why she must learn his ways. Let him get used to the idea first. She turned and retraced her steps to the edge of town. She passed the dwelling place of Viola Goddard and paused to consider how anyone could abandon an infant. It was unthinkable. Her people protected their young, knowing the future lay with them. Yet someone had simply left a baby on Miss Goddard’s doorstep, with some gold nuggets to provide for her care. As if gold could make up for family, a clan. How strange these people were. Yet learning some of their ways was essential for her people to survive.

She resumed her journey, following the trail through the trees to her village.

Jimmy came home later in the day. “I thought you would be with the doctor. They brought a man down from the mountain who almost cut his foot off with an axe.”

Teena sprang to her feet. This was her opportunity to help, to watch and learn. “I will go now.”

Her father coughed. Did the white man have a cure for this troubling affliction of her father’s? He’d once been so strong and proud. He was still proud and strong in his mind, but his skin hung on his body and he moved like an old man. “Teena, daughter, do not think you can become white.”

She stopped and slowly turned. “Father, I only want to learn what we need to survive.”

“Perhaps you are right.” He waved her away, coughing with the effort.

She scurried from the winter house. Normally, they would have all moved to the fishing camps, but this year only a handful had gone. Only a handful were well enough. Jimmy stayed to work for the gold hunters. Father had survived the pox, but it had left him too weak to hunt or fish. Teena remained behind to care for him and learn the white ways, so she would know how to help him get better. She trotted noiselessly to Treasure Creek. A crowd gathered on the walk before the place where she had last seen Dr. Calloway, and she guessed they had a reason to be hanging about.

She pushed through them to observe.

A miner held a mask over the man’s nose and dripped some sort of liquid to it. Not only was his foot torn, his stomach was ripped deeply.

She groaned inwardly. A man did not survive that kind of injury.

But Jacob sewed the layers back together. The man didn’t move, though she couldn’t imagine the depth of his pain.

Teena edged closer, but, at a warning glance from the doctor, went no farther. She could see from where she stood. What had Jacob used to render the man so motionless? If not for the way his chest rose and fell, Teena might have thought him dead. The white doctor had a powerful medicine for pain.

Her eyes followed his every movement. He was so intent on what he did. So sure. His fingers steady. Healing hands. She could barely take her gaze from them, but spared a quick glance at his face. His expression led her to think he was both concerned about the man and determined to fix him. Teena understood the feeling of wanting to overcome injury and illness. She also knew the frustration of failing.

Jacob finished and put on a spotless white piece of cloth, then turned his attention to stitching the man’s foot. An axe, they had said, but the foot was torn badly and looked more like the man had caught his foot in something powerful. Besides, how would he accidentally cut his stomach with an ax? It made her wonder if he’d been in a fight with another man brandishing a weapon of some sort. She’d often enough noted how the white man could turn on his friends and try to destroy them. This man looked as if someone had tried to tear him apart.

Dr. Calloway finished and straightened. “He’ll live and likely walk again.”

The crowd cheered.

At the doctor’s signal, the man stopped letting the liquid drop to the mask.

“Did I hear there was a doctor here?” A voice called from the back, and a burly man pushed forward. “You a doctor?”

“I am.”

“My wife is in poor shape. Come and help her.”

Dr. Jacob glanced around the crowd. “I need someone to stay with him until he comes out of the anesthesia. Who will help?”