Klondike Medicine Woman. Linda Ford
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there more?
The doctor straightened, folded his instrument and placed it back in his pocket. “Now let’s have a look at this gash.” He made to pull the moss off.
Teena captured his hands, gently stopping him. “You must not lift it yet. It needs time to work.”
Dr. Calloway gave her a faintly reproving look. “No doubt you mean well, but this requires proper medical care.”
She knew nothing about the white man’s methods. But she knew how to treat a cut. “If you take it off it will get…” She struggled for the English word but couldn’t find one, and had to settle for describing what would happen. “It will get red and oozy.”
“Exactly.” He turned his attention back to the injured man. “You need to keep your wound clean. I have some dressings with me.” He again began to pull off Teena’s work.
The man sat up. “I’m feeling a whole lot better. Whatever this girl did has worked. I’m heading back up the trail.” He pushed to his feet.
Jacob stood, too. “You’ll end up losing your leg if you aren’t careful.”
“I guess I’ll take that chance.” He limped away, Dr. Calloway at his heels, as if he meant to stop him.
The gold seeker paused as he remembered Teena’s fur around his shoulder. He pulled it off and handed it to the doctor. “Give this to the little lady, and my thanks.”
Jacob stared after the man.
Teena shared his sense of helplessness, but had long ago learned people did not always listen to advice, no matter how wise.
“I fear you will get infection,” he called to the man’s back as he limped up the trail. “If you do, please come back to Treasure Creek. I am going to start a medical clinic.”
A medical clinic. White man medicine. Teena’s heart soared. She would offer to help. She’d do anything he asked, if he would only teach her his ways.
The doctor returned to Teena’s side. He slipped her shawl over her shoulders, caught her two braids and lifted them from under the fur. He performed the task naturally, his thoughts obviously elsewhere, but his touch gave the pelt gentle warmth, as if from the noonday sun. For a moment she closed her eyes and enjoyed the comfort.
“I’m going to ask you to stop using your primitive practices on these people.”
Teena slowly turned to stare. “What do you mean?”
“Ignorance kills many.” His expression tightened, marring his strong face and filling his eyes with hardness, but Teena did not back away. She needed this man’s help. Besides, she agreed. Thousands had come seeking the glittering gold—unprepared for the cold, the mountains or any of the dangers. Far too many perished, and hundreds more sat defeated and broken at the edge of the water.
“These people deserve proper medical care.” He picked up his black leather bag and turned back toward Treasure Creek, the boy-man matching his gait stride for stride. He grinned at his young friend. “Seems I got here just in time.”
The boy gave Dr. Calloway an admiring glance.
“You are going to do white man’s medicine?” she asked.
Jacob did not slow his steps, forcing her to hurry to stay at his side. He was a tall man. Taller than most she’d seen. And he walked with purpose. The boy hurried to keep up, too. “That’s why I’m here.”
“You will need help at this clinic?” She congratulated herself on remembering the word.
“I trust there are those who would be interested in assisting me.” He smiled again at the boy.
She rushed onward. “I am Teena Crow of the Tlingit tribe. I will help you.”
He stopped. For a moment he didn’t move, then he faced her, his expression like granite. “Do you know scientific methods?”
Not certain what he meant, she shook her head.
“Are you willing to abandon the practices you’ve been taught?”
She did not answer directly. “I want to learn more.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you.” He strode on.
His words—although softly spoken—were like blows to her. This was what she had longed for, hoped for and prayed for. He was several yards ahead of her and she ran to catch up. “I do not understand.”
“Your people’s ignorant ways have killed many. Now that I’m here, I can save others from such malarkey.” He continued to the busy town that hadn’t existed a few months ago.
Teena stared after him. She must have misunderstood him. Or he had misunderstood her. She followed the pair slowly, at a distance, as they made their way to the center of town. Jacob paused at the church—the first building Mack Tanner had constructed. Now he was adding to it to allow more people to attend services. Across the street stood another building—the school. They taught children to read and write. Mack said the native children were welcome to learn along with the whites, but the Indian children had accompanied their families to the fishing streams and helped with drying fish for the winter.
Teena wished, not for the first time, she could read. Then she could learn how to treat white man’s diseases without need of a teacher.
Dr. Calloway hurried onward to the street opening to the waterfront, the boy still at his side, pointing and talking. The store on the left did not draw the doctor’s interest. Instead, he turned to the empty space across the street. Was this where he intended to have his clinic?
The man-boy spoke, waving his arms wildly. The doctor nodded and the boy hurried toward the waterfront and the throng of people and supplies.
Teena would never get used to the scurrying crowds, the unending noise, the strange smell of so many unfamiliar things.
She hung back, watching as the doctor paced the piece of land.
“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