Not asking for help exactly, but not not asking either. She leaned in and looked at Cole carefully. His breathing was working harder than it should. When she put her hand alongside Eli's on the boy's forehead, the fever was real and rising.
"Does your chest hurt?" she asked Cole. Cole nodded. "When you breathe deep?" Another nod.
Eli stood up. "I need to get Doc Marsh from town." "The road's drifted bad on the north end," Clara said. "You just came through it."
"I know the road." "It'll take you two hours round trip in this weather, minimum." She kept her voice level. "Does anyone here know how to make a mustard plaster?"
Ruth appeared in the doorway. She had heard. Her eyes went to Cole, then to Clara. "I know how," Ruth said.
"Then tell me what you need, and I'll get it." "Cabinet beside the pantry," Ruth said. "Dry mustard, flour, the lard tin, and the soft cloth on the second shelf." Clara went.
She moved fast, but not frantically. The kind of efficient speed that comes from keeping a steady head, which she had learned not in any schoolroom but in the long Missouri winter when her husband's lungs had gone bad and the doctor was a day's ride away and she had been the only one there. She was back in two minutes with everything Ruth needed. Eli watched from the doorway with his hands at his sides.
He had the particular helplessness of a man who was very capable in all the wrong directions for the current emergency. Jesse stood beside him, pressed against his father's arm, for once completely quiet. Ruth and Clara worked together at Cole's bedside with the smooth efficiency of women who had both done difficult things with their hands and knew how to follow each other's rhythm without discussion. Ruth made the plaster.
Clara prepared the cloth. When it was ready, Clara spoke quietly to Cole while Ruth applied it, not distracting him with chatter, just talking in a low, steady voice about nothing in particular, keeping his attention on her face instead of the discomfort. Cole kept his eyes on her the entire time. He did not cry.
He was his father's son. When it was done, Ruth said to Eli, "His fever's high, but it's not dangerous yet. Keep him warm and still. If it goes higher tonight, we'll need the doctor."
She looked at Clara. "You've done this before?" "Yes," Clara said. "Your husband?"
"And before that, my younger brother." She straightened up. "I can sit with him tonight if you need me to." Eli was looking at her with an expression she hadn't seen from him before.
Not gratitude exactly, which she didn't want anyway, but something more complicated. The look of a man recalibrating something. "I'll sit with him," Eli said. "He's my boy."