Evangeline stumbled back to the trunk, rooted wildly through it, and came up with nothing but one of her own shirtwaists. Abigail, she remembered, only owned two nightgowns, and she’d used them both.

They wrapped her in the blouse, then added one of Scully’s winter shirts for good measure. She was awake, though not fully so, and Evangeline sat by the fire holding her, murmuring to her, trying to persuade her to take sips from the cup of cold water that Scully kept filled.

Gradually, ever so gradually, the fever went down. The child was weak in its wake, her strength nearly spent, and Evangeline knew that she was still in very serious danger. Still, there was more hope than before, and she held on to that, like Hortense grasping at the edge of the quilt.

When the sun came up, they were still sitting there. Abigail had sweated through the last of Scully’s shirts and was now wrapped tightly in a blanket and nothing more. She took water, although she complained that it hurt her throat to swallow, and when she finally slept, it was genuine slumber, not a loss of consciousness. Evangeline put her to bed and spent the morning doing laundry, draping shirts and sheets and little nightgowns over the chairs and table and even the bedposts, since the weather wasn’t fit for drying clothes outside. It made the whole cabin steamy and sultry warm, all that hot water and wet cloth, but that seemed to ease Abigail’s breathing. Evangeline took note of the fact and kept a pot of spring water bubbling on the back of the stove at all times.

Scully, for his part, cut several onions into quarters and placed them on the window sill above the bed. They were strong-smelling, but he’d read somewhere, he said, that they were a good remedy for chest congestion.

Abigail was pale, and incredibly weak. She’d shrunk to a wisp of flotsam, and she was listless, with most of the light gone from her eyes. She didn’t protest having to lie in bed, day after day, and that troubled Evangeline more than anything else. She didn’t even seem to mind the chamber pot, which she normally despised. Like Evangeline, Abigail usually preferred to risk wolves and Indians and everything else to go to the privy instead.

November trailed bleakly into December, the hours passing so slowly that it sometimes seemed to Evangeline that she was living a single long, dreary day. The snow hardened, its surface as brittle as old glass. Scully did chores and hunted, Evangeline cooked and watched and prayed, always keeping one eye on her child.

Time was going by, of course, and Evangeline was always aware that the day she would have to face Big John Keating was drawing nearer, moment by moment. Scully meant to ride away then, and he’d take her heart along with him when he went, for sure and for certain. They never discussed Big John’s return, or the spring, but the knowledge was there, in the midst of everything they did say, and a part of every silence, too. His likeness still looked down upon them from the high mantel over the fireplace, a constant reminder.