Something moved in her face. Quick, gone. Not the skepticism he'd expected, not weariness, something more like a woman who had been told before that she would be protected, who hadn't believed it, who wasn't sure what to do with being told again. She stepped back inside. Cole followed.
And got to work on figuring out Tucson. Two days later, widow Etta Crane. Cole hadn't left yet. He was waiting on a letter he'd sent ahead to a county recorder in Tucson. And Etta came up the road up the road late afternoon driving her wagon with the broke left foot wheel she'd been meaning to fix since April.
Everyone knew Etta. 64, sharp as a filed blade, slow to trust and quick to judge, and right about it roughly 90% of the time, which made her invaluable as an ally and catastrophic as an opponent. She had a boy with her, grandson, 6 years old, small for his age, with a gray look to his face and the particular limpness of a child using all available energy just to stay upright. Cole Hargrove. She pulled the wagon up without pleasantries.
"I heard you married an Apache woman who knows plants." That's largely accurate. "Dr. Hennessy's given Eli three things and none of them have touched this fever. Eight days." She looked at the boy with the specific expression grandmothers develop when they've converted fear entirely into determination.
"I'd rather be made a fool than watch this child get worse." Cole looked at Eli. Looked at the house. "Let me" he started. Kaya was already there.
She'd come from the garden, dirt on her hands, braids just caught from the afternoon wind, and she was looking at the boy without looking at anyone else. Her gaze moved over him the way her hands had moved over Rosie's hoof, slow, systematic. Reading. Etta looked at Kaya, at the ochre dress, the turquoise beads, the braids, the garden dirt on her hands. And then, which Cole would think about later, which impressed him almost as much as what followed, Etta Crane said nothing skeptical at all.
"Just, can you help him?" Kaya looked at her a beat, then held out her hands, an indication, not a request. Etta helped Eli down from the wagon. Kaya crouched to the boy's level, touched his forehead with the back of her hand, not the palm, deliberate, his neck, looked in his eyes, which he allowed with the docile cooperation of a child too tired to resist. His hands, his color.
She stood, went back to the garden. Etta watched her go. Looked at Cole. She'll come back, Cole said. She came back.
Three things from the garden in a folded cloth, two dried things from the kitchen pouch, something wrapped with the particular care of someone who has done this before and knows exactly what can go wrong if you don't. She handed them to Etta with a look that communicated precisely, prepare it this way, not that way, this way. How she conveyed this without words Cole couldn't fully account for, but Etta Crane received the information and received it correctly because she nodded the way a person nods when following precise instructions. Kaya went back to the garden. Etta watched her.