“What are you doing?” she said, almost frantic.  The woman wore a plain dress that rode far up over her midsection and was carrying a newborn child.  Each step seemed more difficult than the last, but she kept coming.  When she reached Charlotte she stopped.

“I’m fine,” she said.  “Just a little breathless.  It’s better to get up and walk around than just lie there.”

“I’m not so sure,” Charlotte said, wondering what she could possibly provide in the way of assistance.  “I don’t have anywhere to sit.”

“If I sat I’d never get up,” the woman said.  She was tall and her face was young but worn.  “I’m Fiona.  I wanted to show you my baby.”  She unwrapped the bundle in her arms just enough to expose a tiny pink child with a bow mouth and eyes shut tight.  “And I wanted to thank you in person for the water.  Bad planning on my part, giving birth still one day away from the creek.  I suppose I could have managed somehow without those jugs, but I’m so glad I didn’t have to.”  Her tired eyes were warm with emotion.  There was suddenly so much in Charlotte’s heart that she didn’t know what to say.  “You did the right thing maybe without even knowing it,” Fiona continued wearily, “choosing Brewster to parcel out the bread.  It’s funny, for a child, he’s the only one who could possibly have done it fair.  So thank you for that, too.  It was delicious.”

Brewster had given a piece to the mother who’d just had a child?  Charlotte was completely lost.  She only wished this woman would sit down somewhere before she fell down with an infant in her arms.  Then unexpectedly, Fiona reached up and touched Charlotte’s battered face.  Tears were in her eyes.

“I’ll take you back to your wagon,” Charlotte said hastily.  “You’re exhausted, and no wonder.”

“I’ll take her back,” her husband said.  Charlotte looked up into his eyes and might as well have been looking at Conner Mathis again.  She recognized him without any doubt in her mind as the hothead Ellis Gray had spoken about.  She stepped back as if she’d been burned.  It was what he had expected her to do, step very far back.  Maybe Ada didn’t talk, but this one likely couldn’t wait to spread the word.

8

8

The sentinel’s rifle did go off early.  Charlotte rose from her bed.  She sat among the covers for a moment, disoriented.  She thought they would rest one more day.  Was she confused?  Didn’t Ellis Gray say that was the plan, to rest the mother and new baby?