The Ballad of Lucy Whipple by Karen Cushman

wet shoes."
    I shivered, although my face grew hot. I wasn't ready to admit Butte might not make it. "Don't be foolish. You're not dying. You're not even twelve yet."
    He leaned back and closed his eyes. "I ain't scared though," he said, and I could see him trying not to be. "I figure I ain't never had a chance to do nothing worth going to Hell for."
    "You're not dying," I repeated, knowing no other way to comfort him, or myself, and we sat then in a silence broken only by the constant ringing of hammer on anvil from Amos Frogge's blacksmith's shop.
    July and August were hot and dry as a cookstove. The ground cracked, the rivers dried up, and I was homesick for Massachusetts summer rain. There being no water, the miners had to break rock to look for gold instead of washing it out of the gravel. Many of them just gave up and went to the saloon or to Sacramento or even back home.
    Nights were too hot for sleeping, which was just as well since no one with ears could have slept for the noise of Cora tearing at her cage and Butte coughing.
    So many people turned up kind. Bean Belly Thompson brought from Sacramento a bottle of "Dr. Lippincott's Celebrated Lung and Nerve Tonic With Sarsaparilla, Garlic, Pennyroyal, Verbena, and Elecampane Root, Effective Against Disorders of the Lung, Hysteric Affection, and the Bite of a Mad Dog" and wouldn't take a penny for it. It didn't help Butte. Snowshoe Ballou brought some elk clover root that Hennit sent. It didn't help either.
    Mr. Scatter heard there was a doctor in Skunk Valley, so Jimmy Whiskers and his mule, Arabella, went to fetch him. It took three days, during which only Mama's hope kept her and Butte going.
    The Skunk Valley doctor was near as young as me, with a skinny, spotted face. When he saw Butte, he grew so pale that his spots stood out like poppies in the sand.
    "I ain't really a doctor," he whispered. "Pulled a few teeth and tended cuts and bruises with some salve my mother gave me for sunburn. Hog's grease and cowslip flowers. But this boy looks real sick, and I ain't no real doctor."
    "You are as useless as a wart on a hog's bottom!" Jimmy hollered, and threw him out the door. The boy left, Butte got no better, and Mama got sadder and quieter, as if all her hope had ridden out of town with the boy who was no doctor. Jimmy and Arabella set out for Marysville or Sacramento or San Francisco, or "even, bygod, all the way to Boston," he said, in search of a real doctor. Mama let him go, but she didn't hold out hope for his coming back in time to help Butte.
    Prairie and Sierra and I took turns feeding Butte the peppermint tea Mama made and the awful-tasting herb tonics Lizzie brewed up. He didn't talk about dying in front of Mama and the little girls, but when we were alone, he had a lot of questions: Would he see Pa and Golden like the preachers said? Would he see Jesus? Would he see anything or just lie in a hole in the ground while rain leaked in? I had few answers for him.
    "Law, Butte, how would I know, never having been dead? Seems to me anyone who'd know isn't around to tell about it. What I'd hope is that all the good things preachers tell us about Heaven and angels and seeing God are true, and all the bad things aren't. I reckon it's hot enough around here without having to worry about Hell, too."
    Once he asked, "What will happen to you without me? You're all girls and not even a little boy to be man of the family." He thought a minute and then said, "I think the Gent is sweet on Mama. If—"
    "We don't need the Gent. If you were to die, and you're not, Mama and me could take care of this family."
    "Maybe you could at that. You got more guts than you think." He grinned. "Maybe everything will turn out."
    Brother Clyde came back from bringing the word of God to other towns and camps. He sat with Butte, telling him about God's heavenly kingdom and resting in Abraham's bosom. As Brother Clyde talked in his great ringing voice, Butte's fears seemed to leave him much the