Klondike Medicine Woman

Margie nudged Frankie hard enough to cause her to stumble. “I think our city doctor will soon learn the difference between what matters and what doesn’t. Don’t you think so?”

Frankie guffawed. “There’s those that look only at the outside and judge. Don’t we know that?”

The pair slapped each other on the shoulders and laughed.

Margie grabbed some stakes. “Now, where do you want the building?”

He showed them what he had in mind and helped them stake the corners. When they finished, he went into the tent and nudged Burns from his sleep. Last night, when Jacob offered to pay him, the boy had eagerly agreed to assist with the construction.

“What’s wrong?” Burns mumbled, burrowing deeper into the comfort of his bed.

“I thought you wanted to help.” It was imperative to get the building up as soon as possible.

Burns groaned but made no move to rise.

“I can think of ways to make you get up.” Jacob stood over the boy, remembering the times he’d teased Aaron to get him out of bed. “I used to toss cold water in my brother’s face when he refused to wake.”

Burns squinted through one eye. “You wouldn’t.”

Jacob shrugged. “Not if you get up on your own.”

Burns moaned. “Is it even morning yet?”

“Open your eyes. Daylight is burning.”

A crash of dropped lumber jolted through the small area and Burns’s eyes flew open.

“What is that?”

“That, young man…” he pulled the covers from Burns “…is two women beginning to build the clinic.”

“Women?”

Jacob laughed. “You going to let them put you to shame?”

For one second, Burns looked as if the idea was unacceptable, and then he settled back into the warm furs.

“They’re so eager, let them do it.”

Jacob nudged the boy with the toe of his boot. “Need I get a pitcher of water?” He was more than half-serious. The boy needed to learn responsibility. Maybe if Jacob had been able to have more influence on making Aaron be a man, his brother would still be alive. But his parents had always excused Aaron’s behavior as exuberance. Jacob recognized it for what it was—irresponsibility. “You can choose to be a child and cuddle into your bed, or be a man and do some work.” Words he wished he’d spoken to Aaron when he had the chance. Though, likely, Aaron would have scoffed at him.

Burns sat up and scowled at Jacob. “I’m a man.” He scrambled to his feet and pushed out of the tent.

Relieved the boy had chosen work over sleep, Jacob checked on Donald, gave him some more laudanum then followed Burns outside, smiling when he saw the boy following Margie’s orders and laughing at her teasing.

He walked around the proposed clinic, envisioning the modern facilities. At the corner of the lot he paused and studied the trail up the mountain. It was hard to believe men and women, even children, had scaled it in the midst of winter. He’d seen the upper portion up close, seen the way people had to bend over to keep from falling off. He’d seen, too, the things that suddenly had little importance when they had to be packed on a person’s back up such an incline. So much stuff had been tossed aside that the place looked like a giant dump.

What must the natives think?

And yet Teena seemed eager to help.

Suspicion tugged at the back of his mind. Had she gone up the trail seeking injured people to practice her malarkey on? He thought of asking Margie and Frankie about her, but they had laughed like they shared some secret when he mentioned his concerns about the superstitious ways. Maybe he’d go find out for himself what she was up to.

“I’m going to see if anyone on the trail needs my help.”

Frankie and Margie stopped work. They glanced at each other, then Margie nodded. “Sure. You go do that.” Again, that darted look at her sister and the flicker of a smile between them. Then, as if sensing his curiosity about what they weren’t saying, they bent and picked up some boards.

“I’ll be back later.” As he walked, a hundred questions burned in his brain. What did they know about Teena? Were there other shamans in the area? He had come here for one thing only: to build a clinic and establish adequate medical care. Then he would return to Seattle. Without getting involved in any complications.

Teena stood over the unconscious man. The trail was too rugged, too rocky for her to help him here. The man was too heavy for her to move. She needed help, but a glance to the side, where men and women marched upward, caring only about the promise of gold across the mountains, and she knew she would not find help from them. Mr. McIntyre promised God would never fail her. And the white man in the hut tucked into the trees, who carried the Good Book up and down the trail, reading it to others and praying with them and for them, promised the same thing.

Teena had stopped to visit him on her way up the trail. Thomas Stone was a kind man with a troubled soul. But he loved the Tlingit and the gold seekers equally. Perhaps it was God’s love that made his heart so open to others. Thomas Stone had prayed with her when she told him about Dr. Jacob and her desire to learn the white man’s healing ways. “Pray and trust God to open the door for you,” Thomas Stone said. “God hears your prayers and answers as He deems best.”

Well, if God heard the prayers of a Tlingit woman and did what was best, she could ask Him to send help for this injured man. God, I need to get him where I can care for him. But I can’t move him on my own. Please, send someone to help me.

The stream of gold-hunting humans kept trudging by, unmindful or uncaring about the injured man. She perched on a rock and waited.

“Siteen.” It was her Tlingit name, spoken by her brother. God had sent help, and it was the best help she could ask for. Jimmy was strong as a papa bear. She sprang to her feet and clambered over the rocks to his side.

“I am glad to see you. I need someone to carry this man down the mountain.”

Jimmy hesitated only a moment before he stepped off the trail, dropped to the ground the pack he carried and followed Teena to the injured man. He grunted as he heaved the man across his shoulders, then picked his way over the rocks toward Treasure Creek.

“I thought you would be helping the doctor,” Jimmy said.

“He is not ready.” Let Jimmy decide if she meant the building or something else.

“Remember what Father said. You cannot become a white woman.”

Why did her family have such concerns? She had no desire to leave her native ways. “I only want to learn their healing ways. Besides, who would ever think I could be a white woman? Look at my eyes, my skin, my hair. I am native. Even if I wanted, I could not be anything else.”

Jimmy made a noise in his throat that could be concern or doubt. “I don’t want to see you searching for something that can’t be yours.”

“Do you mean learning from the doctor?” Had he heard Dr. Jacob’s order to stay away?

“That. And more. These people are different than us, though some of their ways are interesting.”

“Like what?”

“Reading. Don’t you wish you could read from their books?”

“Yes. And I would like to read from Thomas Stone’s Bible.” She stopped so suddenly that Jimmy, following her, had to pull up hard.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She forced her feet to continue onward. She told herself it didn’t matter that Dr. Jacob climbed up the trail, yet her lungs had grown strangely tight and she was again aware of a quickening in the bottom of her heart. He hadn’t yet seen them. Perhaps they could slip by unnoticed.

“I think ‘nothing’ is the doctor. Why do you care so much?”