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company.”
    â€œPlease,” said Jennifer, “I can’t stay. I was told that you do some doctoring.”
    Lucy stepped up to the wagon, her dark eyes serious. “Is someone sick?”
    â€œMy husband. He’s got a fever.”
    Lucy Baker turned grim. Without another word, she went into her soddy. Jennifer, still sitting on her wagon seat, wondered what to think. Then Lucy’s husband came out from behind the building, tucking his shirt into his pants. “Morning, Mrs. Vandermeer.”
    Jennifer remembered him, too, from Franz Hoffmann’s store. He was the man with the coffee-label patch. Jennifer had thought it rather unfriendly, the way he responded to Bill Wilkes, but he certainly didn’t seem unfriendly now. Though his clothes were a bit frayed, he was still an amiable enough looking man, even handsome, with black hair, pale grey eyes, and an apparently steady smile.
    Lucy Baker, wearing a red sunbonnet and armed with a satchel, reemerged. “Walter Vandermeer is sick,” she told her husband as she hauled herself up onto Jennifer’s wagon.
    â€œBad?” asked her husband.
    â€œHe fainted in the field,” said Jennifer.
    â€œTell Todd to fetch Nancy and to bring her to Mrs. Vandermeer’s house,” said Lucy to her husband. “Come, Mrs. Vandermeer.”
    Jennifer flicked the reins, and the ox began to plod.
    â€œYou needn’t go back through the town first,” said Lucy. “Just cut across that way.” She pointed in a direction off the trail and straight across the sea of grass.
    Jennifer did as her neighbor instructed, and the ox pressed into the long stems, the wheels of the wagon turning in the grass like the paddle wheels of a Mississippi riverboat.
    Along the way Lucy asked Jennifer about Walter’s symptoms. Jennifer told Lucy what she could, and then, for a while, the two women didn’t talk. Finally, Jennifer said, “I’m sorry I was so rude to you in Mr. Hoffmann’s store.”
    â€œOh, that’s quite all right,” said Lucy. “You’re not the first unhappy wife to be dragged out this way by her husband. It must be pretty awful for you.”
    â€œYes. Awful.”
    â€œYou’ll get used to it.”
    â€œNo,” said Jennifer, shaking her head, “somehow I don’t think I will.”
    Lucy checked in her satchel—“Where are you from?”
    â€œOhio.”
    Lucy closed her bag. “We passed through Ohio on our way out here. We’re from Pennsylvania. Here eight years. Left home right after Seth got back from the War.”
    â€œEight years! Tell me, did you mind much when your husband took you out here?”
    â€œMind?” Lucy Baker raised her eyebrows. “Heavens, no. It was my idea.”
    By and by, the wagon broke onto the faint trail leading to Jennifer’s homestead. Again, the two women didn’t say much more until Jennifer spotted her dugout in the shallow rise. “There,” she said with some embarrassment. “That’s where I live.”
    Soon, she pulled the wagon up in front of her dugout, and Peter opened the door and stepped out.
    â€œHow’s Poppa?” asked Jennifer, afraid of the answer.
    â€œHe doesn’t talk,” said Peter, looking very worried. “He just lies there and shivers.”
    Lucy Baker lowered herself to the ground, took her satchel from the seat, and marched in. Jennifer followed.
    Inside the somber room, Walter lay on his back trembling and sweating profusely. Emma stood by the bed, holding her ceramic-faced doll and watching her Poppa. Lucy approached, removing her bonnet and pulling a high-backed chair with her.
    â€œAre you a doctor?” asked Emma.
    â€œI’ll have to do” Lucy reached over and put a hand on Walter’s forehead.
    â€œHow does he look?” asked Jennifer.
    â€œLike he’s come down with the shakes,” said Lucy, opening her satchel.