Free Fired Up by Mary Connealy

circle of teepees and drawn weapons. “Yes. Red Wolf reached my ranch.”
    â€œHe lives?”
    â€œYes.” Luke nodded. “He rests there.”
    A furrow creased the woman’s forehead, and Dare doubted that she was understanding more than a few of the words Luke spoke, but she said something in her own language to her people and they seemed to relax, at least a bit. The rifle lowered, an inch at a time, toward the ground, but none of the Kiowa took their eyes off the group from the S Bar S. The knives were still in hand.
    â€œLuke help my people?”
    â€œYes,” Luke said, turning to point at Dare. “My friend, medicine man.”
    â€œKiowa medicine man, Wise Buffalo, died as sun rose. Red Wolf rode away to find you.”
    â€œWe will help, Anemy.”
    The woman turned to face the handful of healthy Kiowa. Anemy spoke swiftly in words that reminded Dare distantly of the few native people he’d seen from time to time.
    Though there was no sign of pleasure at her words, the group nodded. Each of them retreated back into their teepees except the gray-haired woman with the bundle. Shewalked toward the row of bodies and, once there, knelt with the bundle and resumed her wailing chant.
    Anemy turned back, and Dare stepped in, wanting to talk directly with her. “I need boiling water.”
    The woman’s brow furrowed in confusion and she shook her head.
    Dare turned to Luke. “Help me.”
    Luke came closer. “ T’on . That’s the Kiowa word for water.” Then he said to Anemy, “You are Red Wolf’s woman. I am a friend to the Kiowa. Please talk with our medicine man.” Luke rested a hand on Dare’s shoulder. “I will stay close. He needs t’on. ”
    A halting exchange between Dare and Anemy, with Luke’s help, began to produce what Dare needed. Anemy’s broken English became a bit better, as if talking with Luke was bringing back a long-forgotten memory.
    â€œHow long since your village fell sick?” Dare asked her.
    â€œSeven suns. The first child red sickness. This come before. Spreads and kills.”
    While Dare worked, he found out that every family except the one with the sick child had packed up and moved a distance away. They’d left the child’s family behind, but they’d also separated from each other, agreeing to return if the sickness came to them. Putting distance between them and a contagious disease. A self-imposed quarantine? These people had almost as much medical knowledge as he did. There were many families in this Kiowa band, but only these ones had returned, and it had been long enough that Dare hoped no one else had been exposed. The healthy ones here in the village, like Anemy, had survived the lastmeasles outbreak. They’d stayed behind to tend the sick and bury the dead.
    But he did have some medicine they didn’t, like a good supply of willow bark tea, though maybe there were plants in this region with the same ability to bring down fevers.
    With good care and proper medicine, he hoped he could save some who would have died. He also hoped that Luke would react like white people often did. Unlike native people, measles was an unpleasant illness for whites, but rarely fatal. White folks usually survived just fine, yet they were likely to expose tribal people to the terrors of disease.
    â€œDo you have hot water . . . uh, t’on ? I need to get to work.”
    Anemy nodded. “I show.”

    In the light of a fire in the center of the teepee, Glynna knelt and gently slid her arm beneath the shoulders of a delirious boy just a bit younger than Janny.
    â€œTake a sip,” she urged. Glynna slowly lifted him, every muscle aching after hours spent tending the sick children. It was time for another dose of the fever-reducing medicine Dare had prepared.
    This little one moaned and struggled weakly. There were four other children in the teepee, also