Without uttering a single syllable, Tazhi set to work. She reached out with rough, calloused hands and grasped the hems of Sarah’s torn, dust-encrusted calico skirts. Sarah instinctively flinched, pulling back half an inch against the hides.
"Be still, white sister," Tazhi said. Her English was broken, thick, and deep, carrying the cadence of mountain water over gravel. "You shake like leaf in snow. Your blood runs thin."
Chato remained kneeling by the entrance of the lodge, his Winchester rested across his thighs, his dark eyes watching the doorway to ensure no follower of Tah-zay attempted to intrude upon the sanctuary. "Let her touch you, Sarah," Chato murmured in his quiet, resonant baritone. "Tazhi has brought forty sons and daughters into the light. She knows the ways of women when the moon is full."
Sarah forced herself to breathe, relaxing her stiffened limbs one breath at a time. Her calf muscles cramped violently as Tazhi pulled off her cracked, dust-caked leather boots. When the wool stockings were peeled away, both women saw the damage wrought by the desperate flight across the jagged limestone canyons: the skin of Sarah's heels was split and blackened with dried blood, while long, angry red welts from catclaw acacia crisscrossed her swollen shins.
Tazhi let out a low, clicking sound of disapproval through her teeth. She turned to a small fire pit in the center of the lodge, where a flat soapstone pot was heating over glowing cedar embers. With a short wooden paddle, she scooped a generous dollop of tallow rendered from mountain sheep, mixed with crushed yucca root and yellow sulfur powder. The ointment was pungent and sharp, smelling of earth and hot tallow, but the moment Tazhi's warm palms smoothed the salve over Sarah’s split heels, the fiery throbbing began to subside into a soothing, numb coolness.
"Your feet walked where only bighorn go," Tazhi muttered, never looking up from her task. "A woman with heavy belly should sit beside water, not climb the devil’s stair."
"I had to run," Sarah whispered, her voice cracking as tears cut clean lines through the alkali dust plastered to her face. "They came into my house. They were going to kill us for gold that never existed."
Tazhi paused, her grease-slicked hands hovering over Sarah's ankle. She looked up, her dark, rheumy eyes locking onto Sarah's with an intensity that pierced right through the young widow’s exhaustion. "Men who carry iron stars and men who wear black hats are same wolves. They smell weak animal and show teeth. My sister died at the river when the blue coats came with burning wagons. We know what it is to run while the belly carries the tomorrow."
Tazhi set her salve aside, washed her hands in a wooden bowl of warm water, and retrieved a small earthen cup from near the hearth stones. She held it to Sarah’s cracked lips. The liquid inside was dark brown, steaming, and smelled faintly of juniper berries, wild mint, and an earthy, bitter root Sarah did not recognize.
"Drink," Tazhi commanded gently.
"What is it?" Sarah asked, pulling back slightly.
"Squaw-bush and crushed iron-weed," Chato answered from the doorway. "It cools the hot blood. It tells the small one inside you that the running is finished."
Sarah trusted the young warrior who carried her husband's memory in his heart. She tipped the cup and drank. The brew was bitter, biting the back of her tongue with the taste of tannin and wild mint, but as it reached her stomach, a deep, heavy warmth bloomed through her center. The baby, which had been thrashing frantically against her ribs for hours, gave one long, sweeping roll and settled deep into her pelvis, growing calm and still.
Tazhi laid a broad, calloused hand directly onto Sarah’s belly, over the rough calico fabric. She closed her eyes, tilting her head as though listening to a voice that only the old could hear. She moved her palm in slow, deliberate circles, measuring the child’s position and the firm resistance of the womb.
"A boy," the old woman stated with absolute certainty. "He kicks like pony. Strong heart. He did not die in the stone because his father’s shadow walks behind him."
Hearing those words, Sarah’s composure finally gave way. The tears she had choked down since Carpenter's boots had splintered her door came flooding out in a silent, shuddering torrent. She buried her face in the rough trade blanket, her shoulders shaking with the release of three months of unspeakable terror, loneliness, and suffocating despair.