Possibly spreading.
“How long since he was fully alert?”
“Yesterday.”
Ellie opened her bag.
She checked carbolic solution.
Needles.
Thread.
Laudanum.
Clean linen.
Thermometer.
Scissors.
Forceps.
Alcohol.
Bandages.
Her hands moved automatically.
Samuel watched.
“Doc Morrison went to Denver.”
“I know.”
“You’re the only one.”
From near the stove, someone muttered, “Twenty miles through that snow?”
Another man snorted.
“She’ll never make it.”
A third voice followed.
“Not carrying all that.”
Ellie shut the bag.
She lifted it.
The leather case weighed more than many women would comfortably carry.
Ellie had carried it through floodwater.
Up narrow staircases.
Across muddy fields.
Once while supporting half the weight of an unconscious miner.
She turned toward the innkeeper.
“Mr. Barnes.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Saddle Daisy.”
Barnes blinked.
“You’re going?”
Ellie looked at him.
“A man is dying.”
Sheriff Mercer laughed once.
Bitter.
“If he dies, don’t come back blaming the mountain.”
Ellie slowly turned.
Mercer crossed his arms.
“You heard Holt. Man’s been rotting in a cabin for three days. You ride out there, poke around, and when Cain dies they’ll call it medicine.”
Ellie tightened the strap on her bag.
“If Jasper Cain dies, it will not be because I failed to try.”
Mercer shook his head.
“You always did need to prove something.”
Ellie stared at him.
“No.”
Her voice was quiet.
“That’s what you never understood.”
She pulled on her cloak.
“I don’t ride into storms to prove what I am.”
She moved toward the door.
“I ride because someone needs help.”
Samuel followed her.
The storm swallowed them.
The first mile was difficult.
The fifth was punishment.
By the tenth, Ellie could no longer feel three of her fingers.
Snow had erased most of the trail.
Samuel rode ahead, sometimes dismounting to examine tree markings and buried stones to make certain they had not drifted too far east.
Daisy, Ellie’s broad-backed mare, pushed steadily through drifts.
The wind found every opening in Ellie’s clothing.
It cut under her scarf.
Through her gloves.
Beneath the heavy wool layers covering her body.
Her thighs burned from gripping the saddle.
Her back ached.
Her knees protested.
But she kept riding.
Samuel glanced over his shoulder repeatedly.
Finally he shouted, “You all right?”
Ellie almost laughed.
“No.”
Samuel blinked.
She raised her voice over the wind.
“But keep moving.”
He smiled for the first time.
They continued.
Near midnight the trail narrowed.
A sheer rock face rose on one side.
A ravine disappeared into darkness on the other.
Samuel dismounted.
“Horses slip here.”
Ellie looked ahead.
“How far?”
“Half mile.”
She climbed down.
Her boots sank almost to mid-calf.
Samuel looked at her.
Ellie said nothing.
She took Daisy’s reins.
They walked.
Each step required lifting her leg high enough to clear packed snow.
The weight of her own body became something she could feel in every muscle.
The kind of awareness she had spent years being taught to hate.
Yet another thought arrived beside it.
Her body was moving.
Her body was climbing.
Her body was carrying medical equipment into a mountain storm.
Her heart was working.
Her lungs were working.
Her legs were working.
Whatever Copper Falls thought of it, this body was getting a nurse to a dying man.
Ellie leaned forward and kept walking.
Samuel stopped once to catch his breath.
Ellie passed him.
He stared after her.
“You do this often?”
“Climb mountains in blizzards?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Ellie almost smiled.
By dawn, a cabin emerged between the pines.