"Good woman," he said, "in the particular direct way of people who have learned English as their third or fourth language and have no patience left for the decorative parts of it." "Good hands," he looked at her hands. The work thickened knuckles, the calluses in the right places. "Your husband was mechanic?" "Yes," Martha said. "You were mechanic, too?" Yes, Martha said more carefully this time, waiting for wherever this was going. Erikson nodded once slowly like something confirmed.
My wife was better farmer than me, he said. I dug the holes. She knew where to put them. He looked at Silas. Good woman you have here.
She works for me, Silas said. Yes, Ericson said in a tone that suggested this distinction did not particularly impress him and went back inside. Martha kept her eyes on the supply crates so that Silas couldn't see her face for a moment. The Kowalski family was last, and it was at the Kowalski homestead that the day went from difficult to something else entirely. They heard the youngest Kowalski child before they saw the cabin, a high, thin sound that didn't belong in that mountain air.
The kind of sound a child made when the crying had been going on long enough that the child was too exhausted to make it properly anymore. Silas pushed the horses and Martha held the bench rail and they came around the last bend to find John Kowski standing in the yard with his youngest daughter in his arms and his wife visible through the open cabin door. Moving quickly with the jerky purposefulness of a person trying to manage something they were frightened of. Silas had the wagon stopped and was out before Martha finished descending. Yan, he said the medicine Yan Kowalski said immediately.
Please tell me you brought the medicine. Martha was already at the wagon bed pulling aside tarps. She heard Silas say, "What happened?" And she heard Jan's answer fever 2 days climbing since yesterday the three-year-old couldn't keep water down. And she found the medicine box that Eleanor had listed in her supply manifest and pulled it out and turned. Linum Quinine, what do you need?
Yan looked at her, surprised by her. Clearly hadn't entirely registered her presence until now. Queen and he said, "And Willowbark, if you have it." "We have both," Martha said, because she had read Eleanor's supply manifest three times on the road, and she knew exactly what was in every crate. "Your wife is inside?" "Yes," Martha was already moving. The Kowalski cabin was warm and very small, and Anna Kowolski was at the child's bedside with a cloth and a bowl of water that was not cold enough.
The child, a small girl with dark curls plastered to her forehead, was the source of the thin sound Martha had heard. Up close, it was worse. Up close, Martha could feel the heat coming off the child before she'd even crossed the room. "I'm Martha Whitaker," she said, crouching beside the bed, talking to Anna the whole time. "I'm not a doctor, but I've managed fever before.
May I?" Anna Kowalski looked at her with the eyes of a mother who had been alone with this for two days and would have accepted help from a stranger, from a wolf, from the mountain itself if it offered. She moved back. Martha took the cloth from the bowl, rung it out, refolded it, and laid it on the child's forehead with the particular efficiency of someone who had done this and knew what she was doing. The water need to be colder. She looked at Anna.