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dollars? That’s a fortune.”
    “Until today, a bottle of powders was only two bits.” He shook his head. “But, then, not until today did someone on this road need the powders for something the other road did to him. We’re to be doubly punished, it seems.”
    “ Five dollars? ” That was three months’ salary at Joseph’s, the highest-paying job she’d ever had.
    Tavish reached out, cupping her jaw with his hand. “Now, don’t you go fretting yourself over this. You’ve plenty on your mind as it is. We’ll see to Ian.”
    How could she help but worry? Biddy would never rest so long as Ian was suffering, and Ian would suffer so long as he had nothing to ease his pain.
    “How can Johnson set so high a price on medicine he knows is so badly needed? It’s inhumane, is what it is.”
    “Son?”
    They both turned at the sound of Mr. O’Connor’s voice.
    “Run up the road, Tavish, and let your ma know her boy’s awake.”
    “Aye, Da.” Tavish turned to Katie. “Care to walk with me a piece?”
    The offer was tempting, but Katie’s mind was churning too much on the latest difficulty to go for a stroll, even with him. “Actually, I’d best get back to Granny Claire’s.”
    He walked with her as far as the road, then pressed a lingering kiss to the back of her hand. “A fine good day to you, Sweet Katie.”
    “And to you.”
    Tavish walked farther up the road, while Katie made her way down toward her new home.
    Five dollars. The price echoed as painful beats in her heart. Harvest was yet a few weeks off. Farming families wouldn’t have a great deal of cash on hand until after they sold their crop.
    Aye. But you have some. Hidden in an old, dented biscuit tin in her new room was the money she’d saved over the past eighteen years, her sole means of returning home. In the few short days since she’d decided to remain in Wyoming she’d begun imagining what she might do with her precious savings. Land of her own had been the excited answer. She could have a place of her own, a home she could never be thrown off of. If her connection to Tavish progressed, that money would help support them both, perhaps pay off the note on his land, free him of that burden.
    Five dollars would set you back quite a spell.
    She needed her savings in the short-term as well. ’Twas the only money she had to live on now that she hadn’t a job. And what little she brought in from selling her bread went to buy supplies for making more bread; there was no true profit in it yet.
    She stepped inside Mrs. Claire’s house. ’Twould take her some time to grow used to calling her “Granny” as the kind woman had requested.
    Mrs. Claire— Granny —sat in her rocker beneath the front window, as always. She pierced Katie with a concerned look. “Has Ian improved at all?”
    “He’s awake and talking a very little, but he’s hurting something terrible.”
    Mrs. Claire gave one of her wizened nods. “Poor man’ll likely be pained for days to come. Weeks, maybe. My younger brother fell from a wall when he was a lad. His head pained him for months afterwards.”
    Months. Would Ian suffer that long? How would he recover without anything to give him relief? How would he even begin to do the work that needed doing on a farm in the midst of harvest? Could he manage any of it in so much pain?
    “You look worn to a thread, Katie,” Granny said.
    “I am pulled a touch thin.” Indeed, Katie felt run clear off her feet. “I need to rest my own four bones a spell.”
    Granny smiled her wrinkly grin. “Your ‘own four bones.’” She shook her head in amusement. “You’ll have me thinking I’m back in Ireland again, talking that way.”
    Katie nodded. “That was part of our bargain, if I remember correctly.”
    “Indeed.” Granny gave her a sharp look. “You just set your mind to rummaging up a few more words and phrases from the Old Country, and try not to worry.”
    A moment later, Katie stood in the room Granny Claire had