Clara looked over.
“All of it if you want.”
Anna swallowed.
“And then?”
“And then there is more.”
Something happened in the girl’s face.
Not belief.
Longing for belief.
She ate.
Too fast.
Clara did not tell her to slow until coughing started.
Then gently:
“Nobody is taking the bowl.”
Anna froze.
Clara kept her hands in the dough.
“I mean it.”
The child looked at Samuel.
He nodded.
Anna ate more slowly.
Afterward Clara wrapped two pieces of cornbread in cloth.
“For later.”
Anna whispered:
“Do I have to give it back?”
Clara’s hands stopped.
“No.”
The child touched the cloth.
“It’s yours.”
Anna began crying without sound.
Clara looked away to give her privacy.
Samuel loved her painfully in that moment.
Not because she fed a child.
Because she understood that feeding without control mattered.
By the third day, Samuel had cleared enough surface path for the freight sled.
Clara dressed before sunrise.
Samuel watched.
“You don’t need to come.”
She turned.
“Say that again.”
He reconsidered.
“You definitely need to come.”
“Better.”
The sled had been reinforced years earlier.
Broad deck.
Low step.
Heavy runners.
Their mule pulled it through the cleared trail.
Clara sat wrapped in buffalo hide, cheeks red with cold.
At the Hale cabin, Anna ran outside.
“You came!”
Clara smiled.
“I said I would.”
Thomas heard the voice before he saw her.
When Clara entered, he stared.
She was used to it.
She removed her gloves.
“If you say anything foolish about my size, I will clean your wound twice.”
Thomas blinked.
Then laughed weakly.
“I was going to say Samuel married well.”
“Acceptable.”
She examined his leg.
The infection was severe but localized.
No black tissue.
Good.
Clara cleaned it.
Thomas swore.
She cleaned more.
Anna stood outside the room covering her ears.
Samuel held the lamp.
Thomas gripped the bed frame.
“You enjoy this.”
“No.”
Clara pressed clean linen into place.
“If I enjoyed it, I would charge extra.”
Thomas’s fever began falling three days later.
That was when the real danger became social rather than medical.
He would live.
Now they had to decide how.
The valley would eventually discover him.
The tax man certainly would.
Thomas wanted to leave once snow melted.
Clara said:
“No.”
He stared.
“You own me now?”
“No.”
“Then—”