Don't Hang My Friend

by Raffensperger, John;

  need help, come instantly and was signed, Bessie Pendleton.

  We follered the Indian’s old wagon pulled by a swaybacked nag on the road north out of town and then on a dirt lane that branched off to a big swamp next to the river. An Indian tribe had lived there until the militia drove them across the Mississippi River during the Blackhawk war. Even after they left, the settlers wouldn’t have nothing to do with the place on account of quicksand, rattlesnakes, skeeters and bad spirits. The folks who lived out that way said the Indians didn’t mean any harm and let them come back in the fall to hunt and fish and lay in a winter’s supply of meat.

  After going through the woods for about a half hour, we come to log huts arranged in a circle around a smoldering campfire. A dozen or so old women sang a low, mournful chant in front of an Indian teepee. Up in the sky, Orion was in the east and the Dog Star was just skimming over the trees. The moon wasn’t out yet and away from the fire, it was dark as the inside of a grave. It was plumb scary being amongst those savages. The women were chanting and marching around the fire. Every so often one of them gave a yell and rattled a stick. Doc got down from the buggy and followed the Indian to the teepee, whilst I tied the horse to a tree. Pretty soon, Doc yelled, “Tom, bring the lantern.”

  A bull’s eye lantern was attached to the buggy so we could see the road on dark nights. It was also useful to examine patients because it focused the light real good. I pulled the lantern off the buggy and ran into the teepee. There was another little fire and a smoky kerosene lantern was hanging from a pole. People were lying on the ground around the edge of the teepee. Bessie Pendelton, the preachers spinster daughter, was by the fire.

  “One child was sick when they got here a week ago and now all the children in camp are deathly ill,” Bessie said. She rubbed smoke out of her eyes. “The first one died yesterday.”

  I had never seen Miss Pendelton take on like this. She always looked like she just ate a sour pickle, but now her hair was down, her sleeves were rolled up and her eyes were misty either from crying or the smoke. Doc lit the bulls-eye lantern with a sulfur match and knelt by a child, who might have been five or six years old. I shined the lantern at the child, but couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. The kid’s eyes were closed, his skin was hot as a Fourth of July firecracker and a stream of yellow snot came out of his nose. He kept rolling his head from side to side and held a hand over his left ear. When Doc pulled the covers off, there were bright red spots on his chest and face.

  “Scarlet fever,” Doc said.

  “I was afraid of that. What can we do?” Bessie asked.

  “Nothing much, cold water to bring down the fever, wash out the nose and throat with warm salt water and watch for complications. Probably he will die, because the Indians don’t have resistance,” said Doc.

  I held the lantern while Doc examined the rest of the children. Outside, the chanting got louder and sadder, like it came from another world.

  “It’s the death chant,” Bessie said.

  “They all have scarlet fever and this little fellow is pretty far gone,” Doc said.

  “He’s the son of Chief Raven in the Sky,” Bessie said.

  I held the lantern up close, while Doc pried the boy’s mouth open and looked down his throat, which was red and swollen and covered with yellowish pus. Next, Doc had Bessie hold the boy’s head while he tried to look inside his ears. I held the light in different ways, while Doc pulled the ear upward. “I don’t have enough light to see the eardrum.”

  “I have an idea.” Bessie opened up a big purse and took out a small hand mirror. “This was a gift for the chief’s wife,” she said.

  Bessie arranged the bulls-eye lantern on one side of the boy’s head, while Doc reflected light into the ear with the mirror.

  “There is pus behind his ear drum. Tom, get the straight bistoury and make up some whiskey with sugar and water. Add three drops of laudanum.”

  An Indian woman had thrown some sticks on the fire, so there was light to find the instruments and medicines. The whole time we had been looking at the patients and examining the boy, the big Indian with the black feather stood at the door of the teepee with his arms folded. He looked mean enough to take scalps. I got to wondering why we were helping Indians, when they were killing settlers in Wyoming.

  I had sharpened the straight bistoury that morning and knew right where it was in the instrument case. It didn’t take no time at all to mix the whiskey and laudanum in a medicine glass. Bessie sat on a pile of old blankets and held the boy in her arms, while Doc got him to drink the medicine. After he got the taste of it, the stuff went down pretty easy and he dropped off into a restless sleep. We got the lantern and the mirror adjusted just right. I held the boy’s head and Doc stabbed the ear drum. Yellow pus shot out of the ear.

  “There, he should feel better and with any luck, he could make it,” Doc said.

  He cleaned the boy’s ear with a bit of gauze soaked in carbolic acid. We stayed inside the teepee for another hour or so, until the boy’s fever came down and he went to sleep. The chief, the same big Indian who came to our door, stood there just like a statue and didn’t say a word. While we were getting our things together, Bessie gave instructions to the Indian women. Doc stayed with the boy when I took the instrument case to the buggy and hitched up the horse. Chief Raven in the Sky had taken Bessie to the camp in his wagon. Doc said she could ride home in our buggy.

  It was a tight fit with the preacher’s daughter on the seat between Doc and me. Every time the buggy swayed or went over a rock, or into a hole, we just sort of bumped into each other. She was wearing a simple woolen dress instead of her usual black bombazine with a bustle and before long I got the idea that she was more of a woman than I had thought. Doc must have thought so too. They struck up a pretty good conversation and pretty soon they got to calling each other Bessie and Robert. I was drowsin’ off and they were talking real low.

  “Why do you go to the Indian camp?” Doc asked.

  “This tribe is all that’s left of a powerful Indian nation who owned most of the Illinois territory. The militia drove them out of the state during the Blackhawk war, but the tribe came back every year to hunt on the big marsh and lay in meat for the winter. For a long time, they had a fall powwow, but most of them died out from disease and starvation. I help them with food and medicine,” she said.

  “That’s right kind of you. I am happy to help.”

  I figured she was trying to make Presbyterians out of them, but didn’t comment. The horse knew the way home. I held the reins real loose and sort of drifted off. Old Bessie poked me with her elbow. I guess I had been laying my head on her bosom and had been dreaming about being in bed with Mary back at the orphanage, and then I got to thinking about Rachel. I felt really guilty every time I had impure thoughts about her on account of she was different from Mary. I never got that right in my mind, why one should be any different than the other, but that’s the way it was. I thought and dreamed about both girls, but Rachel was on a pedestal, beyond my reach. I was still asleep when we got home and Doc unhitched the horse. Somehow, I got to bed.

  Doc and Bessie went to the camp every day after office hours. They getting to be thick as thieves and the gossip around town made out like they had a flaming romance. I went along after school and tried to get acquainted with the children, but they cringed away from us white folks. It was just plumb disturbing, especially since we meant them no harm. It was surprising, how the Indians took such good care of their children, even if they were savages. I got to thinking about how us whites ain’t much better than anyone else.

  Three days after our first visit, Little Feather, the chief’s son shook all over and his eyes rolled back in his head. There was a swelling behind his ear. Doc said the infection had spread from his ear to his brain. “There is pus on his brain and there ain’t a thing we can do.” The Indian women wailed something terrible because Little Feather was Raven in the Sky’s only son and would have become the
Chief.

  Doc was real down at the mouth for days after that. I felt sorry and was regretful that I had thought of going west to fight Indians.

  Doc studied his books every night to find out how we could treat the brain infection. The pictures in Gray’s Anatomy didn’t help in understanding the connections between the ears and inside the skull. Doc said the infection had to go through the mastoid cells and then into the brain. “There has to be a way to operate and drain the pus. It’s the only way to save these children,” he said.

  He was busy trotting around town taking old Bessie to social events and the concerts her students gave with squeaky violins. Once, he even went to church. She tried to get him to go to the Wednesday night prayer meeting. For a spell, he gave up playing poker with the drummers at the Camp House, but he and Mr. Birt still shared a bottle a couple nights a week. She got real cranky when Doc wouldn’t go to church and the romance tapered off. I never knew what Doc saw in her anyway, lessen he was lookin’ to be more respectable. Sometimes he mentioned that woman in New Orleans in a wistful tone.

  It got real cold the last part of November and just about every house in town had someone down with pneumonia or whooping cough. At first, there were only a few cases of scarlet fever. Then it spread like wildfire through the town and even to folks in the country. It was pretty mysterious, but Doc said it just showed that germs carried the disease from person to person. I drove the buggy almost every night while we made calls in the country. More than once, I had to hold a mirror and direct light into an ear, so Doc could let out pus. Just before Christmas, two more children died with swelling behind their ears and brain fever. When he came home after those children died he studied the anatomy book again.

  “Tom, there’s something different about a child’s anatomy that makes them more susceptible to these infections. We need to study a child’s skull.”

  Chapter Twenty

  It got so that I could diagnose scarlet fever by the terrible sore throat, high fever and skin that turned red and peeled off in little scales like a snake. Some kids got rheumatism and others couldn’t pee when their kidneys stopped working. Doc painted infected tonsils with a carbolic solution and drained pus out of abscessed ears. Sponge baths brought down the fever, but nothin’ helped very much.

  When Billy Malone’s little sister came down with fever and a sore throat, I knew right away what was wrong. She couldn’t swallow and had a real bad earache. My heart just about broke from hearing her cry out in pain. Billy couldn’t even stand to be in the house when she carried on. I held the mirror while Doc cut the eardrum and drained pus. It was just like the Indian boy. At first, she was better. Two days later she had a terrible headache and her fever came back. She was dead by the end of the week. Billy cried his eyes out when they lowered her little casket into the ground.

  “Ain’t there nothing more to do?”

  “Doc says if he could study a skull, he might learn how to help,” I said.

  “How ‘bout an animal skull?”

  “No, it has to be a real human skull and a young one at that. I ain’t having nothing to do with skulls. Those big empty eye holes give me the shivers,” I said.

  I thought about Billy’s sister and all the other kids who died and had the terrible dream about trying to kill a ghost. It was hard to know who it was, but it didn’t make for a peaceful night. The next morning, Doc looked up from his bacon and eggs. “You comin’ down with something. Those big dark circles under your eyes don’t look healthy.”

  I squirmed around and played with the eggs, but figured it was time to get this thing off my chest. “Ever since getting out of the orphanage, I have bad dreams about trying to kill someone, but there’s something that stops me every time. It’s just about making me sick.”

  “Maybe it’s from that bump on the head you had a while back. You always talked about killing Indians or Rebs. Most boys your age are bloodthirsty savages, but they get over it and sometimes turn into useful citizens.”

  He put down his fork and gave me such a look as I have never seen on any man. His eyes became dark and flat and there wasn’t no expression on his face. It was like something inside of him got turned off. “Killing is easy, Tom, too easy, until after it’s done. For some men, it’s like drink. They can’t get enough. There were a few like that in the war, but thank God, most men didn’t want to kill. It’s better to save lives. I learned that and I hope you do too.”

  He left to go see another sick child. My insides felt all messed up. It was like I hated Reverend Pendelton and old Murphy so bad, I wanted to squeeze the life out of them. On the other hand, I was so scared of dead eyeholes, I couldn’t even think about hunting for a skull. I owed Doc and kept thinking about what he said. In the bright daylight the picture of the deaths head in the book didn’t look so bad. I got to thinking that a skull that had been buried long enough for the flesh to rot off wasn’t much use to anyone. The more I thought about the whole thing, it sort of made sense. If Doc could study a skull and learn to save little children, like Billy Malone’s sister, it would be worth the risk. Then I got to worrying about what folks would say if a grave was dug up. If we did the thing, it would have to be in broad daylight when there weren’t no hants around. Everybody knew that spirits hovered over burial grounds at night, looking to take away live people.

  Billy Malone was all broke up about his sister and I figured he would help get a skull on account of he was so brave and wouldn’t be afeared of skeletons and graves like most people. It got pretty warm between Christmas and New Years, when school let out. One afternoon, we were hunting along the river, hopin’ to pot a duck or a rabbit.

  “I don’t suppose you know of any old graveyards out in the country?” I asked.

  “Now what do you want with an old graveyard? They’s haunted and them hants will ketch you and put you down in one of them graves if you ain’t careful. Nosiree, you don’t want nothin’ to do with any graveyard.”

  Billy sat down on a log and skipped a flat stone across the river. He was pretty good; it skipped four times. Then he tossed a stick into the water and handed the .22 rifle to me. “See if you can hit that stick.”

  I shot and the splash of the bullet rocked the stick. I couldn’t tell if the bullet even touched it. It’s always like that if you shoot at a stick, on account of it won’t sink. It’s more fun to shoot at a bottle.

  “Doc needs to study a skull to find out why so many kids are dying with scarlet fever. Seems the least we could do is find some old skull that ain’t no use to nobody. Besides, just supposing that you got an infection in your ear and it spread to your brain. Wouldn’t you want the doctor to know what to do?”

  The stick had floated farther away. Billy took careful aim and broke it in two pieces with one shot. He was crazy about guns.

  “Has Doc still got that big Navy Colt?”

  “Sure, he keeps it in the bottom of his medical bag.”

  “I might know where to find an old graveyard if I could shoot that Colt pistol.”

  I sat down on a log and thought about that. It would be easy to snitch the pistol out of the medicine bag, but Doc would find out right away. Snitching might be allowable for a good cause and it wasn’t even really stealing if you took something and then put it right back. It was hard to know what was right and wrong in a case like that. It was sort of like picking apart a hard knot in a piece of hemp rope. If a skull could help Doc save sick kids, wouldn’t that make it right to borrow the pistol?

  “What do you want with that old pistol?”

  “Why, to shoot it, what else? Those forty fours make a terrible noise and it’s about the most powerful gun ever invented. If you get that pistol, I’ll take you to an old graveyard in the hills bout’ a mile back from the river. I seen gravestones last fall when I was hunting squirrels. There used to be a cabin back there before the war, but the people all died. The bodies would be old and most likely, the flesh is all rotted off. I ain’t goin’ lessen you get that pistol. Loud
noises and burning gunpowder scares spirits of dead folks.”

  Doc hardly ever used his bag on Saturdays when he saw country folks in the office. On Friday night, after I filled the medicine bottles and sharpened the scalpels, I sneaked into his office. The Colt pistol was wrapped in an oily cloth at the bottom of his bag. It was heavy and looked as if it had been used hard. The barrel was scratched and there were dents in the wooden grips. I held it in one hand and sighted at the bookcase across the room. The pistol wobbled and so I couldn’t line up the sights. When I held it in both hands, it settled down and I eased back the hammer. It was all primed and loaded, so I let the hammer down to half cock and spun the cylinder. That pistol made me feel powerful, like I could lick most any man alive, even Murphy. I imagined firing at those men with hoods and killing them one at a time. Then I got to feeling foolish and remembered Doc saying that it was bad to kill. I wrapped the pistol in a newspaper and put it in a feed sack. We figured on getting a real early start, so we would get to the graveyard at noon, when the hants were least likely to be hovering around.

  The next morning, I told Aunt Alice I was going hunting with Billy Malone.

  “You ain’t goin’ anywhere until you split wood for the cook stove,” she said.

  That took almost an hour; she fixed chicken, fresh bread and apples for a lunch. I put the food in the sack on top of the gun and got a shovel from the tool shed. Billy was waiting down by the river with an old mare he had borrowed from the livery stable. She was bony and swaybacked and might have been gray once, but now was mostly white, especially around the muzzle. Nobody rented that old horse anymore and that’s how come Billy was able to borrow her. We rode bareback with Billy up in front. The spine of that horse was sharp as a knife and when Billy got her up to a trot it felt like I was split right up the middle. I almost fell off and had to hold on to Billy’s coat.

  It was nearly noon afore we got across the river. Old Sam Turner, who ran the ferry wanted to know why we were carrying a shovel. I said that we were going to dig for gold. He laughed and said there weren’t no gold in these parts.