Sister Ruth and Kid were having a Sunday stroll. He swore it helped with his consumption. She had her doubts, but it was his body, so she figured he ought to know.
He slipped his hand into hers. Maybe some would consider it foolish at their age to be holding hands, but she thought it was terribly romantic and she rewarded him with a smile. Besides, they were newlyweds after all, despite being in their 60s.
She heard the clunk of cowbells and immediately she was transported to her girlhood when she traipsed around the countryside with her grandmother, sharing the gift of healing with their neighbors. Sometimes praying for the livestock too.
She remembered how her grandmother had told her stories on the way, one of them being about a cowherd who got lost in a mountain and was offered the choice between being given gold coins, a cowbell, or the woman doing the offering and the cowherd chose the cowbell.
It was funny how a sound could take you back through the years. How a memory could lay forgotten until something as simple as cowbells triggered it. She smiled at the pleasant remembrance.
April 1844
The angry rain pelted hard against her bruised skin, plastering her hair that was falling down in dark brown tendrils to her skin. She should have sought shelter, but she remained in a huddle against a brick wall, watching the dirt-packed street turn muddy under her shoes.
She didn't know where she was and that was distressing, but she had the distinct feeling she shouldn't have been there.
It was an alley that much she could tell. It was littered with refuse, unlighted, and abandoned unless one counted the glowing eyes belonging to the rats that feasted in the piles of trash. She couldn't explain why anyone would go into this alley, lest of all her.
It made no sense and the harder she tried to make sense of it, the more her head hurt.
She rubbed her arms in a useless effort to bring warmth, which alerted her to the fact that her sleeve was torn. She didn't want to think about why that was.
A stranger, a man, approached and she stiffened. An unexplained terror filled her.
She relaxed when she saw on closer approach that he wore a badge. The 5 silver points marked him as a friend, a rescuer.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Can you stand?" he asked, now directly in front of her.
"I think so," she said, her voice shook from the cold and the unease she felt.
He put down 2 large, warm hands for her to grasp onto and she gladly accepted them, not sure at all that she could stand despite what she'd said.
Her knees buckled a little, but she didn't fall down as the sheriff reached out to steady her. She smiled in gratitude. He had kind, gray eyes. He was only a little taller than herself and looked to be in his 30s.
The lawman took his tan-colored coat off and held it over her head though as wet as she was, she didn't see how it mattered whether she got a little wetter.
She noticed his gaze went down to her hands. She looked there too. They were grazed and bleeding. No wedding ring. And why did it feel as if she should be holding onto something? Her hands ached to hold something. She folded her arms instead, so they wouldn't feel so empty.
He'd been watching her movements closely. "Were you robbed?" he asked.
She tried to recall what had happened before she found herself hugging the wall. "I'm not sure."
"Were you attacked?"
"I reckon I must have been."
His forehead wrinkled to show he was carefully considering what she said. It smoothed again as he looked at her kindly. "What's your name?"
She opened her mouth to answer him, but nothing came out. She swallowed thickly. "I-I don't know."