Hi, so here we go again. I love this fandom I love Adam. S1-6 are hand downs the best.
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I do plan to write series of this story so if that's something your interested in let me know.
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This is part of a series, this isn't episode related. Neither is this series. Assume everything is S1-S6
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I might add to this...I'll leave it up to you.
Please be aware...some triggers.
Deliver Us From Evil
Part 2 of the Ivy Cartwright Series-In which typhus rips through the town of Virginia City and as usual the Cartwrights get dragged into the drama. Based of a Little House On The Prairie in Season 1-Plague.
Chapter 1-Behind Us A Cliff
It's another tough winter in Virginia City. Adam knows this. So do others. That's how the problem starts.
It's been another tough winter. Adam knows this, he can feel it in his bones as he sits on the edge of the feed store's decking and he looks out over the town. Snow is beginning to fall even though it's a long way off since Christmas. It's cold enough for him to burrow his hands under his jacket and wish that he'd had the sense to bring gloves and it's also cold enough for him to know that once more he's going to have to go through his daughter's clothes and see what can be saved from last winter. Looking at her Adam already knows he's going to need to get her a new coat and those do not fall off trees.
Right now he's waiting for his Pa as he deals with business and he's board. He wants to be in his own house with the roaring fire with a good book and his daughter spread out on the floor colouring with her pencils that cost him a fortune but that make her smile. He wants to be tucking her back into her warm bed and then falling asleep in his own safe and sound in the knowledge of another day.
It's one of those pointless grey days he thinks that comes around every year. Short day, long night and utterly nothing to do.
As he stretches there and contemplates what he might get his daughter for Christmas—she has been dropping hints that another puppy would be a good idea—even if it a way away and he is thinking about her winter wardrobe off the top of his head when he sees Peterson open the door to his mill.
Peterson is a new seller. Adam doesn't like him. He doesn't know why but there is an odd…Mark Burdet flavour to him that sets his teeth on edge. He's in the beginnings of his third decade with a six year old, he doesn't have time to deal with middle age men chasing the Bonanza. But Peterson is cordial even if he is conniving charmer and he's setting up to sell grain at a price that's so dirt cheap it's not even funny.
Seriously Adam doesn't know he does it. Everyone knows if you farm grain this winter has been hard…really hard. Farmers and ranchers are breaking even this year by the skin of their teeth and he knows that they are having a happy Christmas this year simply because his Pa has made investments in a gold mine that's thriving.
He watches as Peterson speaks to John Candor. Candor's a new man too, a family man with a daughter about the same age as Ivy and a son a year older. Tommy had only encouraged his daughter's wildness but Lucy had been quieter and she liked ponies and so it was good for his daughter to have friends. For all his talk on Virigina City, it was a working city and though families scattered around the hills this was not the most friendliest place for children. The school was taught in the same place as the Church and there was a small group of students of all eclectic ages.
Still he thinks lazily stretching out his legs and feeling his back twinge a little. He knows he should not complain. Adam is a man of many means but he knows that he is luckier than most.
"Really?" comes a voice to his left. He turns and looks upwards to see his Pa standing there watching him with that fond amused expression. Since the whole debacle in the summer that Adam for his sanity prefers not to think about things between his Pa and him have been easier. There's a sense that now everything is out in the open he can finally talk about it a bit easier. Now that the secret of his daughter's mother is shared with the one man that he trusts above all others he finds that he can talk a bit more, breathe a bit more, sleep a bit more. All of his flirtations are that…flirtations but he finds that he can breathe a bit easier through them.
He watches with a soft jerk of his chin that gets his Pa's attention as Candor helps himself to three sacks of cornmeal. His Pa is silent for a second watching and then.
"I sure would know where that man got cornmeal at that price"
"And how he can afford to sell it as his own price too" Adam says dryly. "He's outpricing half the market…including the men who are just trying to put food on the tables of their own families"
"Winters's always hard Adam"
"Seems like it's been getting harder and harder with each passing winter Pa"
"Indeed. I also think that the events in Washington don't help either"
Adam resisted the urge to roll his eyes with increasing difficulty. Love his father as he did the fact that the man could not say the word war was both amusing and tragic.
There was a pause where he sat there and then.
"Ivy's going to dinner at theirs two nights from now"
"Oh?"
"Yeah." He sighed and stretched out. "You know Hop Sin was talking about getting flour from them too if the price freeze keeps dragging on"
His Pa tutted. "We remain loyal Adam in good times and in bad to the people who remain loyal to us through our good times and bad and don't you forget it. Now come on, the cold is beginning to get to me and I would like to be back in front of my warm fire before it gets dark. I'll take the horses when we arrive, you tell Hop Sin to get the warming pans in between the bedsheets tonight. It's going to be a cold one if ever there was one"
Adam nodded and then with a stretch he dragged himself off his perch and went to climb on his horse.
He didn't think much as he left town.
Why would he?
Edward Peterson had gotten the cornmeal at a cheap price for one reason and one reason only, to off sell it fast so he could make a profit. He was a businessman not a doctor…after all…he did not know if these things were bad and even if he did…what difference did it matter to him as long as he cemented his place in the town as a respected business owner.
And really…he had said it before…he was not doctor…
He didn't know what all those rats in his grain meant.
Three days later it all went to hell.
Doctor Charles Ingram had been working in Virginia City for two months when he first got the call.
It had been small stuff here and there, a new baby being born, yanking out the odd tooth, fixing the odd broken bone and one very memorable occasion where Ivy Cartwright her dress three inches thick in mud had asked if he could take a look at her puppy—here Adam Cartwright had raised his eyes to the heavens and offered him a scotch—but it had been nothing major.
The truth was he had been minding his own business fresh out of medical school and learning the ropes when John Candor turned up to tell him that his boy was sick.
Charles had immediately gone out to the little rickety ranch where the man, his wife and his two children lived and looked around and known something wasn't right. One of his professors had taught him about gut instinct and had told him that there was only so much that a doctor could learn in books and in cutting up dead bodies, the truth was a man had to learn to be a doctor and to learn meant that a man had to earn a trade. It was the same as ranching he'd said. Sometimes you just got a gut feeling and you had to learn to trust yourself before anyone could ever trust you with themselves or worse…their loved ones.
He'd known stepping into that ranch that something was wrong, call him cynical but he could feel it in his gut. The little house was achingly empty and more to the point he could see the panic etched in both parents faces. Both of their children were sick it seemed but the boy had come down with it fast and with no way of knowing in time it seemed he had past it onto the girl.
He looked down and felt the boys forehead. It burnt.
It burnt hotter than he would have liked.
"Get to town" he said to John Candor whose face was stretched in worry. "Get to town and get as much ice as you can get back here I need to get this fever down on both of them and the best way to do that is going to be to pack them in ice. Sylvie I need all the rags and sheets that you can find"
He didn't turn to see if his instructions were being followed. Only when the doors to the house slammed shut on themselves did he know that they were. He turned to see that Sylvie Candor had stopped dead though looking at where here husband had just disappeared. Something was wrong here, something was very, very wrong.
He stood up leaving the child on the bed prone and went to stand in the kitchen next to her.
There was the remnants of a meal on the table that was most likely set out before either parent had registered just how sick their children were. Bread, meat, some cheese. He didn't see any obvious signs that it was due to food and he took stock of the clean kitchen the only thing out of place the sack of corn meal from Patterson's in the corner. Again that was nothing out of the ordinary for working families around here either.
He turned and it was like his entire body was working in slow motion. His brain could not catch up with his body and neither one of them could catch up with what his eyes were seeing.
For a moment the young woman her face drenched in sweat herself seemed to sway as if she was on the stage and someone was moving her like a puppet with strings and then she fell backwards into his arms. He could see that the whites of her eyes were big in her bony face and then she began to shake uncontrollably. He knew a seizure when someone was having one and so he placed her on the ground and watched for a second trying to stop the convulsions before she did anymore damage.
Only when he was sure it was safe did he swing her up into his arms and take her back to whatever bed he could find.
God he hoped John had not come down with the same thing either. Only now was he beginning to understand why these small farms were always at so much risk in the valley around Virigina City. The truth of the matter was that they were so separate from town, from each other, that if you were a bandit with a clear purpose…or even a doctor with no help…it was going to be very difficult for people to hear you shout.
And the land…well…the land didn't care either way, the land didn't care if you lived or died.
He'd mentioned that once to Ben Cartwright and then had turned to see the eyes of his granddaughter watching him.
He threw his jacket to the side and then began to roll up his sleeves so that he could get to work.
Even as he looked around for something to explain the symptoms he never thought to check the sack of flour in the corner. It would be too late in reality but he had not thought to check it so that was the end of that. Cold comfort for the ones left behind but that was that.
And so as he bustled around the small kitchen trying to find a place to set out his medicines while he waited he didn't notice the sack again nor peer inside it where he would have been treated to the sight of rampant fleas and the beginning of what would later be described as a brutal typhoid outbreak.
And there you go.
Next Chapter-There's no doubt it's typhoid. Now it's the question of telling the town.