Fervent Charity by Paulette Callen

and barn. As she passed through the barn door, a big drop landed on her shoulder like someone wanting her attention.
    The sun rose and the world lightened in spite of thick cloud cover. In the east, above the horizon where the clouds thinned, lay a brilliant sash of orange, like prairie fire.
    October. The Dakotah called it Falling Leaves Moon . This was also the time when insects lost their vigor and the broad-winged black and orange butterflies drifted through the air in a final, sad and majestic dance of death; when honking lines of low-flying geese swept overhead on their way to warmth and sun; when the prairie began to doze and the sound of wind gained ascendancy over all other sounds as they receded into the stillness of winter.
    Gustie turned the horses loose in the fenced pasture behind her house. Biddie trotted her dignified way around the perimeter of the enclosure, while Moon leapt like a filly and pranced in the opposite direction. The two mares came together and stood side by side, tossing their heads taking in all the scents carried on the early morning air. Gustie caught her breath. What a lovely picture they made!
    Gustie brought in her cream jug. She started the coffee, tapped through the thin crystallization of water that topped the cream and spooned a generous portion of thick yellow stuff into her coffee cup. The aroma of boiling coffee permeated the house.
    Before she could enjoy her first sip, she heard the thudding of hooves outside. Besides Jordis, Gustie’s only regular callers were Iver with his deliveries, and Mary or Lena and Will, but their horses were all shod. This was an Indian horse. Had Moon jumped the fence? Gustie opened the door and dropped her gaze to Leonard, Little Bull’s son. Behind him, his father’s horse Swallow foamed sweat, his head held low.
    “Leonard! Come in here. What’s the matter?”
    “Jordis.” The boy seemed dazed and cold.
    Gustie turned toward the bedroom. Jordis was standing in the doorway, still in her nightgown.
    “My father wants Jordis to come. There’s a sickness on the reservation.”
    Jordis whirled to get dressed.
    Gustie went down on her knees in front of Leonard to be eye to eye with the boy who was small for his thirteen years. “What kind of sickness?” Gustie placed her cup of hot coffee in his hands.
    “People are dying. They have fevers.”
    “Did your father send for Dr. Llewellyn?”
    Leonard nodded. Gustie urged him to sip the coffee. He did.
    “Does the doctor know what kind of sickness? Did he give it a name?”
    “Father says it’s the rotting face.”
    “Rotting face? What…?”
    Behind her, Jordis said, “Smallpox.” Gustie heard a moan and realized she had made it herself. She looked over her shoulder.
    Grim and silent as stone, Jordis was tucking her shirt into her split skirt.
    Gustie grasped Leonard fiercely by his shoulders nearly spilling his coffee. “Leonard, have you been vaccinated?”
    “I... I don’t know...”
    Gustie took away the cup and set it on the floor. She pulled Leonard’s poncho over his head, fumbled with his buttons, pulled his shirt down over his bare shoulders, and examined each of his arms in turn. There, on his left arm was the light puckery oval. “You have been vaccinated, Leonard. You won’t get sick.” As Gustie helped him back on with his shirt, she said, “Surely, most of the people on the reservation have been vaccinated. Little Bull would have seen to that. Wouldn’t he?”
    Jordis was buttoning her wool shirt. Gustie knew that she bore the scar—a smallpox vaccination being the only legacy of good from the mission school that still haunted her memory, the only scar from her time there that did not still hurt. Gustie asked again, “Wouldn’t he?”
    Jordis said, “The chief does not give orders. He cannot make people do what they will not do. He serves. He does not rule.”
    The terror that had subsided for a moment filled Gustie once more. She said to Jordis, “I’ll follow