the bed, while Bone settled down comfortably on a nearby rug.
Because of the cast, Rita lay on her back with her arm elevated on pillows. Davy nestled in close to her other side and fell sound asleep.
Davy slept, but Rita didn't. She looked around the room, grateful to be home, glad to have survived whatever the Mil-gahn doctors had dished out. To be fair, Dr. Rosemead was a whole lot different from the first white doctor she'd met, an odd-looking little man with strange, rectangular glasses and huge red-veined nose who had been called in for a consultation when she first got sick in California.
The Baileys hadn't needed another girl-of-all-work, so Gordon found her a job at a farm a few miles up the road.
There, barely a month later, she began to feel tired. A cough came on, accompanied by night sweats. She tried to hide the fact that she was sick, because she didn't want to risk losing her job and being sent home, but finally, when the lady found her coughing up blood, she sent Rita to bed and summoned the one itinerant doctor who treated the valley's Indian and Mexican laborers.
Dr. Aldus was his name, and Rita never forgot it, no matter how hard she tried. He came to see Dancing Quail in the filthy workers' shack where she lay in bed, too sick to move. He examined her and then spoke to the foreman who waited in the background to take word to the farm owner's wife.
'We'll have to take the baby,' the doctor said. 'The girl may live, but not the baby. Go bring my things from the car. Ask the cook to set some water boiling.'
The doctor came back to the bed and loomed over Dancing Quail. 'It's going to be fine,' he said. 'Everything Is going to be okay.'
Those were the exact same words Dr. Rosemead had used all these years later, but with Dr. Aldus, everything was definitely not okay. His breath reeked of alcohol. He swayed from side to side as he stood next to her bed.
'No,' Dancing Quail pleaded, struggling to get up.
'Leave my baby alone,' but he pushed her back down and held her pinned until the foreman returned, bringing with him the doctor's bag and a set of thick, heavy straps.
Somehow the two of them strapped her to the bed frame, imprisoning her, holding her flat. The doctor pressed an evil-smelling cloth to her face. Soon Rita could fight no longer.
She woke up much later, once more drenched in sweat.
The straps were gone. She felt her flattened belly and knew it was empty. She was empty. The straps were gone, and so was her baby.
She cried out. Suddenly, Gordon was there, leaning over her in the doctor's stead, his broad face gentle and caring.
'Why didn't you call me?' he asked, speaking in Papago.
'Why didn't you send someone to tell me you were sick so I could come take care of you?'
Rita couldn't answer. All she could do was cough and cry.
Around four, Rita shook Davy. 'Wake up,' she said.
'Fat Crack will come soon and I must be ready.'
Davy sat up, rubbing his eyes. 'Ready for what? Where are you going?'
'To Sells. For a ceremony.'
'What kind of ceremony? Do you have to leave again?
You just got here.'
'It's important,' she said. 'The ceremony's for you, Olhoni.'
His eyes widened. 'For me? Really?'
She smiled. 'Really. The singers will start tonight. On the fourth night, you will be baptized. A medicine man will do it.'
'A real medicine man? What will he do?'
'Don't ask so many questions, Little One. You will see when time comes.
He will baptize you in the way of the Tohono O'othham. Have you spoken to the priest yet?'
'Priest?' Davy returned. 'Oh, the one out at San Xavier?'
Rita nodded. 'Mom saw him, this morning. She said he was coming to see me today, this afternoon, I guess. I don't know why.'
Rita sighed in relief Father John had asked, and Diana had consented.
'I do,' she said. 'Listen, Olhoni, you must listen very carefully.
You are very old not to be baptized, not in your mother's way and not in the Indian way, either, Most people are baptized when they are babies.
This is not good, so we are going to fix it. I asked Father John to speak to your mother, because where the Anglo religion is concerned, it is better for Mil-gahn to speak to Mil-gahn.
Do you understand?'
Davy nodded seriously, but Rita doubted she was making sense. 'When Father John comes to see you, do whatever he asks.'
'But what will he ask?'
