Her Healing Ways Read Free

with him.
    â€œI thank thee. Now I must begin the saline draughts. Indigo will try to make those suffering more comfortable.” She turned to the bar behind her and lifted what he recognized as a syringe. He’d seen them in the war. The thought made him turn awayin haste. I will not think of syringes, men bleeding, men silent and cold…
    Several times during the long day, he glanced toward the bar and saw the woman kneeling and administering the saline solution by syringe to patient after patient. The hours passed slowly and painfully. How much good could salt water do? The girl, Indigo, was working her way through the seriously ill, speaking quietly, calming the distraught relatives.
    He drew a long breath. He no longer prayed—the war had blasted any faith he’d had—but his spirit longed to be able to pray for divine help. Two more people died and were carried out, plunging them all into deeper gloom. He kept one eye on the mood of the fearful and excitable people in the saloon. A mob could form so easily. And now they had a target for blame. He wondered if the female doctor had thought of that.
    Would this woman, armed with only saline injections and cleanliness, be able to save any lives? And if she didn’t, what would the reaction be?
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    Much later that night, candles flickered in the dim, chilly room. When darkness had crept up outside the windows, voices had become subdued. Lon saw that for the first time in hours the Quaker was sitting down near the doors, sipping coffee and eating something. He walked up to her, drawn by the sight of her, the picture of serenity in the center of the cruel storm. Fatigue penetrated every part of his body. Afew days ago he had been well-rested, well-fed and smiling. Then disaster had struck. That was how life treated them all. Until it sucked the breath from them and let them return to dust.
    As he approached, she looked up and smiled. “Please wash thy hands in the clean water by the door, and I’ll get thee a cup of fresh coffee.”
    Her smile washed away his gloom, making him do the impossible—he felt his mouth curving upward. She walked outside to where a fire had been burning all day to heat the boiled water for the cleaning and hand-washing. A large kettle of coffee had been kept brewing there, too. If he’d had any strength left, he would have objected. She wasn’t here to wait on him. But it was easier to follow her orders and accept her kind offer. He washed his hands in the basin and then sank onto a wooden chair.
    The Quaker walked with calm assurance through the swinging saloon doors as if she were a regular visitor of the place, as if they weren’t surrounded by sick and dying people. She handed him a steaming cup of hot black coffee and a big ginger cookie. “I brought these cookies with me, so I know they are safe to eat.”
    It had been a long time since anyone had served him coffee without expecting to be paid. And the cookies reminded him of home, his long-gone home.
    He pictured the broad front lawn. And then around the back, he imagined himself walking into the largekitchen where the white-aproned cook, Mary, was busy rolling out dough. But Mary had died while he was away at war, a sad twist. He shrugged his uncharacteristic nostalgia off, looking to the Quaker.
    She sat across from him, sipping her coffee and nibbling an identical cookie. He gazed around him, smelling the harsh but clean odor of lye soap, which overpowered the less pleasant odors caused by the disease.
    â€œYou’re lucky to have a maid who can also nurse the sick,” he said. Ever since the unlikely pair had entered the saloon, the riddle of who the young black girl was had danced at the edge of his thoughts.
    â€œIndigo is not my maid. She is my adopted daughter. I met her in the South during the war. She was only about seven at the time, an orphaned slave. Now she is nearly a woman and, as I said, a trained