Page 63 of The Widow and the Wanted

“In my coat,” I rasp.

Okee don’t let go. He drags me over the threshold, and Lula slams the door with her foot, locking out the whole white world like it didn’t just try to kill me.

Once the heat hits me, I nearly cry like a child.

They got me down by the fire. The room spins. Lula’s face hovers close—blonde hair coming loose from its pins, eyes bright and hard.

“Stay with me,” she orders.

Then the pain rolls in hard and honest, and everything after that is fire and hands and the taste of metal and Okee’s voice in my ear telling me to breathe.

The blur of voices and frantic hands fades to nothing and then⁠—

The pain has me in its fist.

It could have been a moment. A blink. The heat and cold both seep in slow. Gauze is wrapped tight around my shoulder now, and an ache sits in my bones. The medicine stings my nostrils, whatever remedy she’d worked on me. Pain is still sharp enough, though dulled from when it first ripped through me.

I lie on my side on the pallet near the hearth, an inch from going black again.

Lula’s herbs sting, burning the evil out by force. I remember now how her fingers pressed and searched, packed and tied. How Okee’s hold squeezed around me like a vise on my ribs. The panic in him.

The thought of him spreads like warmth coming back. Life returning.

Across the room, Lula and Okee bend over the canvas sack I brought, the cloth slumped on the table. Okee stands beside her, broad shoulders braced. He’s been up all night, checking if my breath is steady, if my skin still has color, if I’m drifting too far.

Lula rolls her sleeves up. She looks like she’s been born for a crisis—chin high and daring, mouth set in that line that says the world could go to hell.

“You were lucky,” she says. “Clean shot. No splintering. I drew the bullet out, rinsed the wound in salt water and wrapped it tight. Most of your troubles were from the cold and blood loss, but as long as you’re breathing, you’ll make more. I think you’ll live.”

Lula reaches into the sack. “Let’s see what Mr. Maddox brought us, shall we?”

She pulls things out one by one, lining them up for inspection. “Coffee,” she says, setting the tin down on the table. “Lard.”

Okee grunts with approval.

“Salt,” she continues, drawing a small bag out from the sack of plunder. “Beans.”

“Good,” Okee says, crossing his arms.

Lula continues, turning the labels outward. “Tomatoes. Sardines. Something called—” She squints. “Fine canned oysters,” she reads, incredulous, setting down a squat tin like it was suspicious. “In spiced tomato sauce.”

I let out a cough that hurts. “I weren’t lookin’ all right? I threw in whatever I could grab.”

Lula digs in again, cooing. “Whiskey,” she says at last, lifting the bottle by the neck.

The sack’s near empty now, sagging in on itself. Lula digs her hand to the bottom, fingers searching. “And—” She pulls out a handful of coins. “He emptied the till.”

“Didn’t do it for sport,” I mutter. “I already killed the man. Figured I’d at least get somethin’ out of the trip besides a bullet.”

Lula sets the coins down carefully.

Okee studies the reward flyer. “They have the gall to fund this. I’d bet those men thought everyone on the expedition was lost. Could work to our advantage.”

“How’d you mean?” I ask.

“Hollister wouldn’t attach his name to this tragedy if he thought he’d left a credible witness alive. Someone to vouch for two drifters who were easy enough to blame and take for killers.”

Pain blooms as I pull myself up on my elbows with a long groan. “A witness,” I say, tasting the word like it’s rotten. “You mean Lula.”