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Since then, Owen had hired help. A wet nurse from town had come daily, fed the baby, and left again.
But the day before, she had sent word that her own child was sick and she could not travel.
That was how Owen ended up on this stagecoach, heading to his sister in Fort Collins, hoping she knew someone who could help, hoping the baby would survive the trip, hoping he could keep from failing the one person Caroline had left behind.
Even holding the child, Owen sat like a man bracing for a fight.
He wasn’t used to being helpless.
The baby’s cries turned harsher, then thin again. The child’s face was blotched red, his mouth wide, the sound coming from a place so deep it seemed impossible a body so small could hold it.
Mrs. Keene pressed her lips together.
“He sounds hungry,” she said softly, as if she were testing the truth of it.
Owen’s eyes flicked to her, sharp.
“He’s been fed,” he said again, stubborn as a fence post.
Pruitt huffed.
“Lord,” he muttered. “If this is what raising children sounds like, I’ll take my chances with dynamite.”
The old man snored.
Vera sat still.
She kept her hands folded so tightly her fingers tingled.
Her chest felt like it was filling with heat, like her body was preparing for a baby that wasn’t there. Shame burned behind her eyes because she knew what her body wanted to do, and she knew what people would say.
A widow.
A rich man’s baby.
Kindness had a cost for women like her.
Especially in a territory where everyone watched everyone else like it was sport.
At a relay station outside Cheyenne, the stagecoach finally rolled into a yard cut out of dust and stubbornness.
The place smelled like horses and old sweat. A few buildings leaned into the wind, held together by nails, rope, and the refusal to admit defeat.
The driver climbed down with a curse and spat into the dirt, and the horses shook their heads, foam at the bit.
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