18 
18 In dark days of bondage to Jesus I prayed
To help me to bear it, and He gave me His aid.
FROM THE SPIRITUAL “I’M TROUBLED IN MIND”
Gant woke up before dawn, disoriented, his eyes still heavy with sleep.
Someone was pounding full force on the back door. He sat up, waiting for his eyes to focus before swinging his legs over the bed and pulling on his clothes.
The pounding continued, so fierce it seemed to be hammering inside his head. He stumbled to the door, but before he could throw the bolt, someone called out, “Captain Gant!”
Mac had already lunged ahead and stood waiting for Gant in the kitchen, uttering a low but constant growl. When Gant opened the door he found the boy, Silas, his face a tight mask. “We got a girl taken sick,” he said, his words spilling out in a hard rush.
Apparently Gideon had heard the commotion from his room over the shop. No more had Silas got the words out of his mouth than Gideon, still clad in his nightclothes, rushed up behind him. “What’s going on?”
Gant swung the door wider. “Get in here, both of you. And keep your voices down! There’s no need to wake up the whole town.”
Both youths stepped just inside the kitchen. “Asa said I should come get you,” Silas said, his voice low.
Finally, Gant’s head began to clear. Asa…Asa had slept in the barn overnight.
He closed the door. “So…who’s sick?”
“Tabitha. Jalee’s girl. She’s been sick most all night.”
“Sick how?” Gant stared at him. “Throwing up sick? Fever sick? What?”
Silas rubbed his eyes. It looked to Gant as if the boy hadn’t slept much, if at all.
“The fever. But Asa said she’s hurting too.”
“Hurting?”
The other nodded. “Her hands and her legs.”
“How old is this girl?”
“About five or six, I reckon.”
“Sounds as if she needs a doctor,” Gideon put in.
Silas gave an angry shake of his head. “We can’t do that! No way we can chance some white doctor seeing us here!”
“Well, the only doctor you’re going to find around here is white, son,” Gant said, his tone dry. “But he just happens to be someone we can trust.”
After only a quick look at the child in the barn, Gant knew she was seriously ill and immediately turned to Gideon. “You’d best ride out and get Doc.”
Gideon looked at him. “You know he’s not supposed to be treating anyone except the Amish.”
Gant leveled a long look on him. “We need him here. He’ll come.”
Gideon waited but then gave a nod. He started for the barn door, stopping when Silas snapped, “Wait!”
The boy whipped around to face Gant. “This doctor—what makes you so sure you can trust him?”
Sullenness laced the boy’s tone, and Gant had to wonder if the youth had ever trusted another human being.
“I’d stake my life on this man’s honor,” Gant said. “And you can do the same. For now, you and the others stay out of sight. It’ll be daylight soon.”
Silas shot him a dubious look but said nothing more.
Gant had taken care to move the fevered little girl away from the other runaways before Doc arrived. For more than a quarter of an hour now he’d stood watching Doc examine her, trying to assess the seriousness of the girl’s condition by his friend’s facial expressions.
A futile pursuit, as he should have known. David Sebastian was a master at concealing his thoughts.
Finally, Doc closed his medical case and walked over to where Gant was standing. Silas, who had stayed as close as Doc would allow during the examination, followed him.
Gant waited for Doc to fill them in, but Silas, who seemed to have no sense of the word patience, blurted out, “So what is it? What’s wrong with her? Is it catching?”
Doc regarded the boy with a somewhat annoyed look. “I can’t be sure.”
“What, then?” said Gant.
Doc looked at him with weary eyes. “Sorry to say, the child most likely has a serious form of rheumatism. She’s a very sick little girl.”
“Isn’t there something you can do?” Gant asked. “Some kind of medicine?”
Doc expelled a long breath. “Any number of treatments have been tried—quinine, different metals and medications—but none of them seem to help.” He gave a shrug of frustration. “I’ve seen some relief using salicylic acid, but there’s no cure. And it seems particularly vicious when it strikes the young. I’ll do what I can, but it’s never enough.”
“Can she travel?” As soon as the words were out, Gant realized how callous he must have sounded. But he had to know. When the time came to move the runaways, they’d have little warning and would have to work fast.
Doc seemed to understand. “She can, yes, but she’s going to be miserable whether she stays here or moves on. This is a disease that often comes in waves. An attack can last a few days or much longer. Sometimes weeks or months. And sometimes…well, sometimes it doesn’t go away at all.”
He went on to explain. “The pain and fever are caused by inflammation of the joints. If the inflammation can be decreased, so can the pain. I want to talk to the child’s mother. There are a few things she can do that will help or at least give the girl some relief. Hot packs, warm baths…although sometimes cold seems to help more. Unfortunately, it takes some experimenting to find out what’s most effective. What works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another.”
He paused, straightening a little before going on. “I’m concerned that there might be something else going on here as well.”
“Something else? What?” said Gant.
Doc hesitated and drew a long breath. “I think she may have some sort of an ague. I’m not sure the fever is altogether due to the rheumatism. She’s showing signs of something like a bad cold—perhaps even influenza.”
Feeling a bit sick himself by now, Gant shook his head to clear his mind. “I don’t know what we can do for her, things being what they are. She’ll have to stay underground with the others through the day, and if anyone sees us going back and forth to the barn at night, it can raise questions. It sounds as though she’s going to need more care than we can give her.”
“You said you want to talk with her mother?” Silas asked Doc. “But Jalee, she doesn’t speak much English. Not much at all. She’s from one of those places in Africa. Hasn’t been here long. Your man—Asa—he better go with you. He seems to understand Jalee pretty good.” He darted a look at Gant as if seeking an explanation.
“Asa is originally from a village in Africa,” Gant said. “He came here when he was a young man.”
Asa had come to the States on a slave ship, but Gant didn’t volunteer any more information. The thought of his friend’s background never failed to bring a sour taste to Gant’s mouth. He had heard more than he cared to know about the slave ships. The thought of Asa chained below decks in one of those floating coffins was intolerable.
But Silas clearly was reluctant to let the subject go. “Asa is a slave?”
“No, Asa is not a slave,” Gant shot back. “He’s been a free man for years.”
“But he was a slave,” the boy pressed.
Gant merely looked at him, saying nothing.
As if Doc sensed the tension between Gant and the boy, He broke in. “I’ll get Asa to help me explain things to the mother. In the meantime,” he said to Gant, “it would be good to collect some towels or cloths that can be used to apply heat. Moist heat is best. Perhaps you can heat a few at a time on the stove in hot water. Just…do what you can.”
Gant nodded and went to hurry the few people who were still above ground down the ladder below before heading back to the house.
Uneasiness clawed at him like a buzzard on his back all along the path leading away from the barn. All this coming and going back and forth from the house to the barn, the need for Doc at the crack of dawn…it just made it that much easier for trouble to come down on them.
Finally, when he felt as if he was about to choke on the knot in his throat, he muttered a hurried prayer. “Lord, the last thing we need right now is another complication… another burden to hinder us from getting these people out of here and back on their way to freedom. If You intend to get us out of this fix, it seems like now would be a good time to start.”