Chapter Thirty-Two

It was a week after Thanksgiving. The day dawned cold and gray, and by mid-morning, a heavy sleet began to fall, making outdoor work impossible. Carina had been waiting for just such a day. "Let's work up some herbs," she suggested to Amalia. "We're running low on a few things and they'll make the house smell good."

"Got to have the house smelling good," Amalia said. "But yeah, I was thinking it would be a good day for that. Maybe some mullein and sage?"

"We've also got that aspen bark."

"Okay. And how about some chamomile? You're running low on hair rinse."

"If I am, it's because someone else around here is using it too." Carina fixed her sister with a look that made her blush. "How about I do the chamomile while you work up the other stuff?"

While Carina stoked the kitchen stove and set a pot of water to boil, Amalia and Donovan put on hats and leather ponchos and went out to the drying shed. The scent of so many herbs in one small room was disorienting, but Amalia seemed immune to it and got straight to business. From a wooden chest she pulled a few plastic tubs which seemed to Donovan the height of luxury and prosperity. By the light of their strongest electric lantern, Amalia began selecting from the dried weeds and flowers hanging in bunches on the wall and from the ceiling. She told him a little about their properties as she handed them to him.

"You know a lot about this stuff," Donovan said.

"Not really. I don't think I'll ever be able to match my mother. She knew this stuff better than anyone I've ever met. People used to come here from all over the valley for advice, and we did a good business in medicinals while she was alive."

"She sounds like an interesting woman."

Amalia opened a small chest to reveal a mound of thin, curled tree bark. "She tried to teach me and Carina her business, but Carina was only interested in what potions she could use to worm her animals and how she could keep her hair from getting greasy out here where she couldn't wash it every day. As for me, I just didn't have the same talent for it."

"You must've learned something. You saved my life."

"Antibiotics and a fast horse saved your life. Even so, nothing makes you feel more inadequate than being unable to save your own mother."

"Maybe there was nothing anyone could've done."

"No. I'm sure there was something, if only I could've found it."

Donovan considered debating this point, but thought better of it. "I know you did the best you could."

"My best and Carina's best weren't good enough." Amalia looked around one last time, then tucked a basket of aspen bark under her poncho. "Come on. Even at the slow pace she works, Carina must've gotten those bottles sterilized by now."

* * *

By afternoon the kitchen was strewn with herbs and bottles. While Donovan worked at the kitchen table with the mortar and pestle, Amalia measured strong grain alcohol into bottles and Carina stood over a steaming pot on the stove. When a distant jangle of bells caught their attention, Carina looked up from her work and went to the kitchen window, while Amalia ran toward the front of the house. Donovan’s first instinct was to grab a gun, but something in the women's attitude told him there was nothing insidious about the situation.

Amalia hurried back to the kitchen. "It's Alvi! Get your shoes!"

Carina clapped like a little girl. "It feels like he’s been gone forever! I wonder how he made it through in this weather."

"I'm sure he's used to it, and a good thing. I've got a pair of boots that need his attention."

"Who is Alvi?" Donovan asked, tagging after the women as they ran toward their bedrooms.

"He's a peddler," Carina said. "He also repairs shoes."

Donovan peeked out the window to see a dark man in wild, colorful clothes pulling up by the gate. He was driving two large donkeys hitched to a gypsy wagon emblazoned with yellow letters and jingling madly with bells. Donovan tried to read the side of the cart, but the looped and scrolled letters spelled out words that were unfamiliar to him: Alvi: Zapatero, Vendedor de Comidas Finas, Nociones y Más."

Carina pushed past him in her heavy blue cloak. She ran down the front steps and over to the cart where the man grinned and swooped off his little fedora, impervious to the cold and sleet.

"Alvi, it's been so long. Where have you been?"

Alvi held his hat over his heart. "I have been all over the world looking for the very best merchandise to tempt my beautiful Carina and her gracious sister."

Carina glanced toward the cart, her face glowing with anticipation, but then her gaze fell on the donkeys, ears drooping, their fur muddy and bedraggled. "I think the first thing we need to do is get your animals clean and bedded down, because you aren't going to continue on in this weather."

"Alvi and his famous all-weather burros go everywhere, in all kinds of weather." He darted a glance toward his team. "But if my lovely hostess insists, I'm sure Caudillo and Patrón would enjoy a visit to your warm barn."

"I do insist." Carina grabbed a bridle and led them past the house, stopping near the low wall by the mulberry tree to back the wagon into a favorable spot and unhitch the team. Then while Carina continued to the barn to rub down the animals, Alvi started setting things in order, lowering a set of steps to the wagon door and rummaging inside until the little gypsy cart rocked back and forth as if possessed.

Donovan nearly collided with Amalia as she came out of her bedroom, a pair of work boots in each hand.

"Where'd he go?"

"Carina parked him around back. She's off to the barn right now to bed down the donkeys."

"Good, then maybe he'll do my shoes first." She threw on a leather poncho, pulled up the hood and hurried out.

This left Donovan alone in the kitchen. The only boots he had were his Guard boots and a pair that he had bought in town the month before. Neither was in need of repair, and he had seen peddlers before. After straightening the kitchen and covering anything that looked like it might need protection against the omnipresent desert dust, he put on a jacket and went to the barn to help Carina.

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