Child of the Dead Read Online Free Page B

ball from a musket. But there were several. He could see three or four between the knee and the ankle. Flies buzzed or crawled around and across them.
    “
Aiee!”
called Beaver. “Another!”
    Wolf turned to follow his brother’s pointing arm. There, in full sight before another of the lodges, sat a man, naked except for a breechclout. Dead, like the other, but seated in a natural pose, this one leaned against his willow backrest. He, too, had been dead for a number of days, Wolf guessed.
    “He is
spotted!”
blurted Beaver Track.
    “Yes … like the other,” Wolf agreed.
    Not wounds
, he thought,
but sores. This is the deadly spirit!
    He felt an urge to flee, but there was a need to understand more. It was apparent that there were otherbodies, scattered through the camp. Some were old, but often there were men and women who had been in their prime. Children, too. This sickness seemed to spare no one.
    Stirring in the back of his mind was something he had heard last season when they had camped at the French trader’s. Old Three Fingers, the trader, had been conversing in hand signs with some Kenzas from upriver. They told of such an illness among a distant people to the northeast, the story told to them by a traveling trader. It would strike suddenly, with fever and coughing, followed by many sores like insect bites. Soon these turned to festering spots that covered the victim’s entire body. Usually, he died, the Kenzas said.
    Yes, Three Fingers had answered, this was a sickness known to his people. “
Poch
,” he called it. Very dangerous …
What had he said!
It jumped from the sick to the healthy, leaving its deadly round tracks behind.
    “
Do any survive!”
Singing Wolf had asked.
    “Oh, yes,” said the trader. “Usually far more than half. But it jumps easily. One does not touch the sick, or anything they have touched.”
    That statement had impressed Wolf. Several sicknesses of that sort were known to the medicine men and women of the People, so it had stuck in his mind. Even so, it was probably only luck that he had suggested not touching anything as they rode in. Or maybe, guidance. Certainly, he had not expected anything like this. This, he now realized, must be the dreaded
poch
that the French trader had warned of.
    One other thing now came to memory. The Kenzas who had told the thirdhand tale had argued, insisting that maybe three out of four had died among the sick, as he had heard it. Most of the listeners had assumed that this was an exaggeration, produced by the retelling of a good story.
    Now Wolf was not so certain. This band, the people who had died here … He had estimated from the number of burial scaffolds that many lodges were in mourning. Now it seemed to be that there were more dead, a corpse or two abandoned in perhaps half of these dwellings. He did not want to investigate too closely.
    He was still convinced, however, that some of the people of this band had departed, followed by the dogs and taking most of the horses.
    “What has happened here, holy man?” asked Broken Lance, bewildered by the enormity of the scene before him.,
    “I cannot be sure, my chief,” said Wolf slowly. “I am made to think it is this way: I was told of such an illness last season, a very dangerous new spirit-sickness. It jumps from the sick to the healthy.”
    Beaver Track looked around them uneasily, and Wolf continued.
    “These people had this bad thing, and some died.” He pointed to the scaffolds. “Then, those who prepared them for burial died, too. Those still alive hurried to leave, in fear of their lives. I am made to think that those who touch the sick or the dead are struck down, too.”
    Broken Lance nodded. “Then it is important that none of the People touch anything here, no?”
    “That is true, Uncle.”
    “Then let us leave.”
    The old chief reined his horse around and rode majestically back up the slope toward the wolves at the crest of the ridge.
    “Pass the word,” he