Page 21 of The Widow and the Wanted

Okee jerks his chin toward the leather case at my side. “You will go among them,” he says. “With that.”

My fingers tighten on the handle. “You want me to distract them.”

“I want you to offer help. A healer traveling through the plains for coin.”

I swallow. “A woman with a doctor’s case.”

“A woman with a doctor’s case,” he agrees.

Boone lowers his voice. “We’ll take one near the end and that light wagon. Hitch fast. Roll quiet. We’ll meet you downriver where the bank dips in the willows.”

Okee makes a short, sharp birdcall in his hands. “That is the signal. When you hear it, you walk away. Do not run until you are under cover.”

“And if someone stops me?” I ask.

Okee’s eyes don’t blink. “Offer help and no one will stop you.”

My heels are worn raw. The cold has made paper of my skin, cracked at the corners of my mouth. My eyes burn and water. My back aches from trudging through snow with my case clutched in one hand and my pride in the other.

Below us, fires burn. Horses stamp. A wagon waits under a crust of frost.

I am too tired to argue with survival.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll do it.”

Gravel crunches beneath my boots as I cross the open ground toward the wagons. A few heads turn. A woman at the river straightens with a bucket. A man by the fire pauses mid-stir, spoon hovering.

I lift my free hand. Not a wave exactly, but a polite claim to attention.

“Afternoon,” I call. My voice comes out steadier than my insides feel. “I’m traveling through. I’m a healer. If anyone needs mending, coughs, fever, cracked hands, bad feet, I can help. I don’t ask much. Coin or fair trade.”

There’s a moment of suspicion—there always is, on the trail. Then a woman with ruddy cheeks shifts her shawl and steps forward, eyes scanning my case with the caution of someone who has learned the dangers of the territory through experience.

“Healer?” she says. “Like a doctor?”

“Not like the doctors in the towns,” I say, keeping it simple. “But I’ve natural remedies. Tinctures. Liniments. Needle and thread.”

A man near the fire snorts. “We got no coin for snake oil.”

I open the case just enough for them to see the neat rows—glass vials catching the gray light, folded linen, a little tin of salve, the bone handle of my scissors.

“Then don’t buy it,” I say. “But if your child’s lungs are rattling at night, you’ll wish you had.”

Then, from the back of the cluster, a thin cry lifts. A child’s cry. The way it pitches high and keeps going sounds like suffering. A woman turns, frantic.

“Have you anything for a fever?” she says, and there’s fear in it that cuts through every other concern.

I step toward the sound before I can stop myself.

They part for me.

On a blanket near one of the wagons lies a boy of five, maybe six. His cheeks are flushed too bright. His lips look dry. His eyes roll, half open, unfocused. He coughs, and it scrapes deep.

His mother kneels beside him, palms pressed to his forehead. Her hair has come loose in tangles, and her hands shake when she looks up at me.

“Can you—” she starts. Her voice breaks. “Can you help him?”

This is the moment where my wickedness should be clean and easy. Where I should remember Boone and Okee moving like shadows toward the horse line without a pang of shame.