Excerpt
It was market day, and Jonnie had bled through her best shirt.
She hissed as I drew the shirt over her head, turning slightly so that I could see the gash running cockeyed over her ribs. There was a bandage on it, but whoever had put it on had done a poor job. She swore when I touched the edge, where blood welled beneath the cloth.
"Well, if you'd just let me do it in the first place—" My fingers were gentler than my words. I unwound the stained cotton from her side and dropped it on the hay scattered in the back of the wagon. "Who tied this up, Keke? Somebody else with hooves instead of hands?"
"Bess," she said, almost a whine. I kissed her cheek to keep her distracted while I swabbed the wound with water from a flask Ma passed me. "Lord a'mercy, this couldn't have waited?"
"Waited 'til what? You fainted right off the cart here? You already ruined your nice shirt." I folded the aforementioned shirt twice and pressed it to her side, so that part of it covered her chest and part of it the gash. "Here. Hold this. Press it down hard."
"I know how to dress a wound," she muttered, but she did what I said. I heard Pa snicker above our wagon horse's hoofbeats. "What am I supposed to wear then, Miss Fix-It?"
I didn't have an answer for that, though we'd need to come up with something and right quick. The market town that served Sawgrass was but fifteen miles north and we were nearly there. She couldn't go sauntering through the stalls and tip her hat to the church ladies with her bosoms out to the world. I was the only lucky soul who got to admire those bosoms. But we had more urgent matters just then, because if the bite in her side wasn't seen to, she wouldn't be sauntering anywhere at all.
Not to mention Jonnie'd think it a poor display of her expertise if word went around the limerunners she trained up so nice were still liable to bite—her or anyone else.
"Who gave you this anyway?" The sound of my voice would act as an anchor, and the question would force her mind to focus. I glanced at the boy trotting behind the wagon on his placid marsh-tackie, mounted to the side of the six limerunners following us in a string to market. The solid ponies were better at herding half-broke limeys than any dog. "That nasty blue-eyed one there? I'll bet it was him."
"Not him, Bess!" Aaron, Pa's horse-boy, piped from my left. He winked his own blue eyes, one and then the other, and lifted his hat toward the limey my joke had been aimed at. A single icy eye glared out of a white blaze scarring the colt's otherwise-inky coat. "She was out 'fore light in Sanctus River to catch a few more."
"Is that right," I said, not at all a question, and tugged the linen strip in my hand just a little tighter than necessary. It wound around Jonnie's ribs once and again, tucked beneath itself at intervals to form a basic plait. Her heart thudded under my palm, too fast and fluttering. "And how'd that go for you, Jonnie?"
She didn't answer, just pressed her lips together and stared hard at the clear sky above us.
We'd planned to ride to market with six half-broke limeys, and so we'd proceeded, which meant that she hadn't managed to catch any extra. Keke, the trained beast trotting in her own string, belonged to Jonnie and would never be sold. Six were what she and Pa had agreed on with a few people looking to buy, and so why she'd needed to go out and try to haul in a couple more…
