Saturday dawned beneath a cruelly beautiful sky.
After days of gray, the heavens had cleared to a hard blue, and sunlight glittered across miles of snow-covered Texas plains.
Katrina hated how peaceful it looked.
Nature had nearly killed them and now behaved as though nothing had happened.
She stood outside the chuck wagon, exhausted beyond anything she had previously known.
Her apron was stiff with grease, flour, soot, and dried broth.
Her hands were cracked.
A blister had opened beneath her right thumb.
Her shoulders burned.
She had slept perhaps four hours across the previous three days.
Still, she lit the stove.
The camp needed breakfast.
By sunrise, sixteen recovering cowboys were sitting upright.
Otis ate half a biscuit.
Caleb's brother drank coffee.
Luis Ortega's cousin Pedro asked whether Katrina had any of "that ugly stew."
Katrina stared.
"Ugly?"
Pedro smiled.
"Ugliest thing I ever loved."
She gave him two bowls.
Others remained frighteningly ill.
Nathan Pike drifted between fever and sleep.
Jeb Rollins improved during the night but weakened again before dawn.
Three men had developed bluish lips.
Abernathy moved among them constantly.
Katrina cornered him near the fire.
"Are they worse?"
"Some."
"Tell me which."
"Harper, Sloan, Mendoza."
She knew those names immediately.
"What do they need?"
"The same things we've been doing."
"That's not enough."
"It has to be."
Katrina hated those words.
Abernathy saw it.
"Listen to me. You've done everything right. Bodies don't obey schedules."
"Sunday is tomorrow."
"Sunday doesn't matter to pneumonia."
"It matters to me."
"Why?"
Katrina looked across camp.
Because Wilmer had said half might die by Sunday.
Because once a deadline entered fear, the mind clung to it.
Because she had quietly promised forty men that Sunday would find them alive.
"My father died on a Sunday."
Abernathy's expression changed.
Katrina hadn't intended to say it.
But now that the words were outside, they continued.
"Pneumonia."
Abernathy removed his spectacles.
"When?"
"January."
"I'm sorry."
"He caught cold hauling meat during an ice storm. Kept working. By the time he admitted he was sick, his lungs were already bad."
She looked at the pot.
"I made the same broth for him."
Abernathy was quiet.
"It didn't save him."
"No."
"So don't tell me I've done everything right."
The doctor studied her.
"Katrina, food didn't fail your father."
She looked at him.
"Neither did you."
"You weren't there."
"I don't need to be. Pneumonia kills people despite care. Sometimes excellent care. Sometimes nothing available in our century is enough."
Her eyes burned.
Abernathy's voice softened.
"But that doesn't make care meaningless."
Katrina looked away.
The doctor continued.
"Maybe your father couldn't survive. But I'll tell you this: what he taught you has helped these men survive exposure and exhaustion long enough for their bodies to fight."
He pointed toward Otis.
"That man would not be eating biscuits without you."
Toward Pedro.
"That man was badly dehydrated."
Toward another.
"He couldn't keep solids down for two days. Your broth kept something in him."
Abernathy replaced his glasses.
"Don't turn love into a bargain where death means you failed."
He walked away.
Katrina stood motionless beside the fire.
For months she had carried a quiet belief that she had somehow failed Samuel Foster.
Maybe if the broth had been richer.
Maybe if she had noticed sooner.
Maybe if she had forced him to rest.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Grief fed on that word.
Wilmer found her still standing there.
"You all right?"
"No."
He waited.
Katrina appreciated that he didn't immediately ask why.
After a moment, she said, "My father died like this."
Wilmer removed his hat.
"I didn't know."
"I thought if I could save these men..."
She stopped.
Wilmer understood.
"It wouldn't change what happened."
"No."
"But maybe it'd make it hurt less."
Katrina's eyes filled.
She looked furious about it.
Wilmer did not touch her.
He simply stood beside her.
"My wife died of fever eleven years ago."
Katrina turned.
He had never mentioned a wife.
"We were married three years. Elena."
"I'm sorry."
"I spent five years thinking I should've done something different."
"Could you have?"
"No."
"Did knowing that help?"
"Eventually."
The two stood quietly.
Wilmer looked across camp.
"Maybe we don't save people to make up for the ones we couldn't."
Katrina wiped her cheek.
"Why, then?"
"Because they're here."
That sounded like something Samuel would have said.
Katrina breathed.
Then she tightened her apron.
"Help me lift the pot."
Wilmer smiled.
"Yes, ma'am."
The entire day became organized effort.
Recovering cowboys began helping weaker ones.
Men who could walk fetched water.
Men who couldn't walk chopped soft food from their bedrolls.
Those without fever repaired shelters.
Luis organized sanitation trenches farther from the camp.
Abernathy insisted on spacing sick men's bedding whenever possible.
Katrina boiled cups and utensils.
No one mocked her instructions.
At midday, a wagon wheel cracked.
Normally it would have been an inconvenience.
Now it threatened their ability to transport food and supplies.
Jeb, barely recovered enough to stand, attempted to rise.
Katrina pushed him back.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"Wheel."
"You can't breathe walking ten steps."
"I'm a wheelwright's son."
Wilmer heard.
"You know how to repair it?"
"Better than Tommy."
Tommy shouted from across camp, "That's not saying much."
Jeb pointed.
"See?"
Katrina sighed.
"You give instructions from that blanket."
Jeb directed three men through the repair while coughing between sentences.
Within an hour, the wheel was reinforced.
For the first time since Katrina had known him, his loud mouth served a useful purpose.
Late afternoon brought another crisis.
Mendoza's fever surged.
He began muttering in Spanish, calling for his mother.
Luis knelt beside him.
Abernathy cooled him.
Katrina brought broth, but Mendoza could not swallow safely.
They stopped rather than risk choking him.
As darkness fell, his breathing became weaker.
Luis looked at Katrina.
"He's twenty."
She had no answer.
"He has two sisters in San Antonio."
Katrina sat beside Luis.
"I'll stay."
For three hours they remained with Mendoza.
At some point, Wilmer silently brought Katrina a blanket.
At another, Jeb sent coffee.
The entire camp seemed to hold itself quieter.
Near midnight, Mendoza's fever began to ease.
Abernathy checked him twice.
Then once more.
"Coming down."
Luis bowed his head.
Katrina closed her eyes.
A few minutes later, shouting came from another shelter.
Nathan Pike had awakened.
Not merely opened his eyes.
Awakened.
"What day is it?" he rasped.
Katrina ran.
"Saturday."
Nathan frowned.
"Did I miss breakfast?"
She laughed through tears.
"You missed several."
"Coffee?"
"No."
His face fell.
"Why?"
"Because I finally found something pneumonia improved."
Even Abernathy laughed.
The mood rippled outward.
Nathan awake.
Mendoza fever down.
Harper stable.
Sloan breathing easier.
Saturday passed into the first hour of Sunday.
Katrina stood beside the fire.
Nobody had died.
Wilmer approached slowly.
"It's Sunday."
"I know."
He looked around.
"Count?"
Katrina had counted already.
Forty men who had fallen seriously sick.
Forty still breathing.
Some remained weak.
Some remained dangerous cases.
But all alive.
Katrina pressed a hand against her mouth.
Wilmer said nothing.
Her knees gave out.
He caught her before she hit the snow.
Katrina began crying.
Not the quiet tears she could hide.
Deep, shaking sobs pulled from months of grief, days of terror, years of humiliation, and the impossible relief of reaching the morning she had promised herself.
Wilmer lowered her carefully onto a crate.
"They made it," she whispered.
"They made it."
"My father didn't."
"No."
She looked at him.
"But they did."
Wilmer nodded.
"They did."
Katrina stared at the black iron pot over the fire.
The stew had not been a miracle cure.
It had not conquered pneumonia by itself.
But it had fed exhausted bodies.
It had warmed cold men.
It had given a frightened camp structure and hope.
And through knowledge passed from a butcher to his daughter, Samuel Foster had somehow helped forty strangers long after his death.
For Katrina, that was enough.
Sunday had come.
And nobody had been buried.