Everyone except Prescott woke up alert and talkative the next morning, but they all kept to their beds and rested for several more days. None of them could muster the strength even to walk outside, although they fed themselves and drank the tea and water she brought them. Parker and Marion thanked her profusely whenever she showed her face to them.
Melody thanked her with her eyes. She would have petted Maggie’s hand if Maggie hadn’t pulled away to the others.
Paul remained as sullen as ever. When she brought him his breakfast, she sat down next to his bed and tried once again to engage him in conversation.
“How are you feeling this morning?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’ll live.”
She smiled at him. “I’m glad of that. I would be devastated if you died when we’re so close to getting married.”
“It might not be as close as you think,” he remarked. “We won’t be going to Boise to get married anytime soon.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“For a start,” he replied. “none of us can get out of bed. It’s gonna be probably weeks before we’re well enough to make that trip.”
“Even if it is weeks,” she countered. “it’s still not that far away.”
“I wouldn’t count on it too heavily, if I was you,” he insisted.
“It’s all I’ve been dreaming about,” she told him. “I can’t wait to marry you. Can’t you wait to marry me?”
His face set hard and impenetrable. “I don’t want to marry anybody. I don’t think much of this marryin’ business. You know that.”
“I still want to marry you,” she maintained. “I think we’ll be happy. Just look at Marion and Parker. They’re happy. Won’t you be happy when we’re all family and we can get on with the rest of our lives?”
“We aren’t family,” he grumbled. “and getting married won’t make us that. If Marion and Parker are happy together, more power to ‘em. There’s only two people here I call family, and that’s Parker and Prescott. It don’t matter if I marry you or somebody else. It takes more than marryin’ to make a person family to me.”
“Come, now, Paul,” she pressed him. “Let’s at least try to be affectionate to each other. After all, we’ll be spending the rest of our lives together, all alone up here in the wilderness. Let’s make it nice for each other.” She reached out and laid her hand across his on the fold of the blanket. “Don’t you like me? I like you an awful lot.”
He jerked his hand out from under hers as though it burned. “Leave me alone with all that. I’ve got no use for that affectionate stuff. Go try your tricks on Prescott. Maybe he’ll like you.”
He turned his face away from her. He didn’t even touch the food she brought him until hours later.
She clutched her forsaken hand and rubbed it with the fingers of her other hand. She stared down at him, trying hard to mask her hurt with contempt. No retort or rebuke sufficiently stinging to match his rejection came to her mind, although she opened her mouth more than once to speak. Retreat remained her only option.
She turned away. Parker snoozed in the bed nearest her. But in the next bed over, Prescott lay with his eyes open, watching and eavesdropping on her conversation with Paul. He recognized the distress in her face and he smiled kindly at her.
She fetched a plate of breakfast for him and sat down on the edge of his bed.
“Cheep, cheep, mother bird,” he joked as he opened his mouth for her to feed him his food.
She laughed through her tear-misted eyes. “Here’s your worms, little bird.”
He laughed, too, and chewed his meat and biscuits. “These biscuits are really good. They’re just as good as Melody’s flapjacks. Maybe even better.”
“Thanks,” she murmured.
“I mean it,” he insisted. “You’re just as good as Marion or Melody.”
She smiled at him again. “You’re too kind.”
He licked the grease off his lips. “Don’t pay any attention to what that cussed hooligan says. You’re going to make him a fine wife.”
“If he marries me, you mean,” she replied. “He might send me packing instead.”
“He wouldn’t dare,” Prescott retorted. “Parker would have his head on a platter if he did. I’d have his head on a platter if he did. He ought to be whipped for even talking to you like that.”
“He has a right to say what’s on his mind,” Maggie remarked. “If he really doesn’t want to get married, he shouldn’t be compelled to do it against his will. He’d make a most unpleasant husband if he was.”
“He’ll make an unpleasant husband regardless,” Prescott muttered. “I don’t know why any woman would want to marry him.”
“I think he’s all right,” Maggie maintained. “He’s probably just frustrated because winter’s coming and he’s stuck in bed when he should be out there bringing in food to keep us all alive this winter. I think he’ll come around in time.”
Prescott shot a sour glance toward the corner. “He’s always been bad tempered. But this mail-order bride business has brought out the worst in him. I sincerely pity you for having to marry him.”
“I’ll be all right, too,” she declared. “Now, let’s stop talking about him. Let him fester on the floor in the corner. Let’s talk about you instead. How are you feeling? Tell me the truth now.”
“I’m all right, too,” he told her. “I just feel very weak. I don’t hardly have the strength to move a muscle, which is just as well, because when I try to move, my whole body hurts. Even talking hurts, and breathing.”
“I should change your dressings,” Maggie replied. “And I should clean your wounds while I’m at it. Now that Marion’s awake, I can ask her about the alder she used for the tonic. We don’t want your wounds becoming infected.”
“Oh, please, don’t,” he begged. “I just couldn’t face it.”
“All right,” Maggie conceded. “But we’ll have to do it sometime today. The dressings haven’t been changed since I left to get the doctor. We’ve let it go too long already.”
“The idea of it makes me wish I’d died of the fever,” Prescott fretted.
“Now, don’t start talking that way,” she scolded. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to keep you alive, and I expect you to do your part to stay that way.”
He smiled weakly. “Yes, mother bird.”
“Now, eat your breakfast,” she ordered. “Then get some sleep. When you wake up, we’ll get to work to change them. Once it’s finished, we can leave you alone to recover for a few more days before we do it again.”
He ate the food she spooned into his mouth. “Thank you.”
She stood up. “Go to sleep. I’ll see you when you wake up.” She tucked the blanket around him, stroked his cheek, and went to wash the dishes.
While she scrubbed the plates, Marion talked to her about the alder saplings she needed to make Prescott’s tonic. She described the plants in detail and told Maggie exactly where to find them on the banks of the creek.
After she finished her chores and let the horses out into the corral, she strolled through the forest in search of them. The forest dripped noisily with the melting frost and the trees crackled and popped when the sunlight hit them.
She found the little pool Marion described. It wasn’t much more than a puddle where some rocks slowed the flow of water. But the trickle of water over the stone lip into the pool made beautiful music. She sat down on a log and listened to it for a while. It soothed her until she forgot Paul’s insults.
She found the saplings and pulled three or four. She took them back to the cabin.
As she emerged from the shade of the forest, a rider on horseback came up the trail from the direction of the road, leading another horse behind him.
“Nero!” she called. She ran to meet him.
She threw her arms around the big horse’s neck and pillowed her cheek against his shoulder. “Oh, I missed you so much!”
The rider observed her.
“You must be Henry,” she remarked. “I’m Maggie Clement.”
He chuckled. “I’m guessing this is your horse.”
“He isn’t exactly mine,” she admitted. “He just helped me out when I really needed it. He’s my most trusted friend.”
“He’s a real charmer,” Henry agreed. “Now, if you’re happy to take custody of him, I’ll head back. I have a long way to ride to get back to Twin Falls, and I have a wife and kids waiting for me.”
“Certainly,” she exclaimed. “Thank you very much for bringing him up.”
She took the horse by the lead rope and turned him into the corral with the others. She buckled a nose bag of oats onto his halter before she took the alder saplings into the house.
Marion told her how to prepare the tonic and a poultice for Prescott’s shoulder. Maggie noticed he hadn’t woken up yet, so she got her usual stew started on the stove and laid out the strips of scrap cloth for his dressings. She brought several buckets of water from the creek and set as many pots as she could find to heating them on the fire.
Marion scrutinized her. “You’re really taking all of this in your stride, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?” Maggie asked.
“You’re running this ship like an expert,” Marion pointed out. “To watch you, no one would ever think you were a rank beginner just a few weeks ago. To think I had to teach you how to put wood on the fire. To think you had to borrow one of my aprons because you didn’t have one of your own. No one would ever guess.”
Maggie cocked her head. “What’s the matter? What am I doing wrong?”
“Nothing,” Marion insisted. “Look at that stove. You have a soup cooking to feed all these people. You have medicine brewing for Prescott’s shoulder, and you’re heating all this water for God knows what else.”
“I have laundry to do,” Maggie informed her. “I’ll have Prescott’s shoulder to wash. I’ll have the dishes to clean up after everyone’s eaten, and I have the floor and table to scrub.”
“That’s what I mean,” Marion replied. “You’re doing all these things off your own bat. You’re running the place. You put me to shame, lying in bed like this.”
“Nonsense,” Maggie scolded. “You should be lying in bed. You’re recovering from scarlet fever.”
Marion shook her head. “I never could lie idle while someone else did all the work. I just had to roll my sleeves up and pitch in, too.”
“Don’t you dare stir from that bed,” Maggie ordered. “You’ve done enough just telling me how to make the tonic and poultice. You should be going back to sleep yourself, now that you’ve eaten something. You need to conserve your strength.”
Marion leaned her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes. “Yes, ma’am. I’m exhausted, anyway. Just talking wears me out.”
Maggie took the tonic and poultice off the stove and set them on the table to cool. She tiptoed over to Prescott’s bed and found him awake. “Are you ready to change your bandages?” she asked.
He gulped. “You might as well do it now. Get it over with.”
She patted his hand. “You’ll feel better afterward. And we’ll put clean blankets on your bed while we’re at it. Then you can go back to sleep.”
He closed his eyes. “I don’t care. Just do what you have to do.”
The tonic still wasn’t cool enough, so she changed his bedding first. She rolled him first one way and then the other, the way she saw Marion and Melody do it the day they all fell sick. Prescott whimpered terribly every time she moved him. By the time she finished, he lay drenched in sweat and very pale.
“Now lie still,” she ordered. “I’ll take your bandages off, swab the wounds with the tonic, and put on the poultice.”
He gulped again and nodded, but didn’t open his eyes. Tears moistened the corners of his eyes and he pressed his lips together to stop them trembling.
Maggie cut the bandages away with Marion’s sewing scissors. Some of the compresses stuck to the wound. Prescott cried out when she pulled them free. She bathed all the wounds on the front and back of his shoulder before laying the poultice over the top of them. Then she bound up the whole shoulder with clean bandages and covered Prescott with his quilt.
He didn’t speak to her after it was over. His breath shuddered every time he inhaled, and his nostrils flared with the effort of coping with the pain.
Maggie went over to the stove and sat down next to Marion’s bed. “He’s in a lot of pain. There must be something we can do to make him feel better.”
“You could make a pain tonic out of willow bark,” Marion suggested. “Give him that along with the pine needle tea. That’ll lessen the pain, anyway.”
“Really?” Maggie asked.
“Sure,” Marion maintained. “I’ll tell you where to get it.” She eyed Maggie. “His wounds aren’t infected, are they?”
“How can you tell if they are?” Maggie asked.
“Are they weeping any white puss, or anything else?” Marion asked. “Do they have a bad smell at all?”
“No,” Maggie told her. “They’re hardly weeping anything at all. They bled a little bit when I pulled the bandage off, but only a very tiny amount. Before that, they were just about dry. Kind of crusty, if you know what I mean. And no smell. Here.” Maggie showed Marion the compresses she just removed from Prescott’s shoulder. “Take a look.”
Marion examined the cloths. “No, no infection here. I just wondered if that was the reason he’s in so much pain.”
“Maybe the fever weakened him,” Maggie suggested. “Maybe he can’t handle the pain as well as he could if he hadn’t been sick.”
“That must be it.” Marion described where Maggie could find the willow for the pain tonic.
Before evening, Maggie served Prescott her concoction of willow bark tea along with the pine needle tea she served to all the recovering invalids. He drank it willingly when she told him what it was, and afterward, he slept much more soundly.