Kid Cole and Sister Ruth were riding a train out to San Francisco to spend the winter months there where the mild air seemed to help Kid breathe a little easier. Their train seat faced another train seat where a young lady of some means and a mother with a 5-year-old girl on her lap sat. Ruth and Kid had slept through most of the ride, the gentle rollicking putting them to sleep, but they were now awake and observing the people across from them.

The little girl had just had a sticky bun with her lunch and now it was her fingers that were sticky. Her mother was in the process of wiping them, but the girl reached across the young woman to point out the window the woman was beside. "Look, Ma! Cows!"

The young lady had pressed herself back into the seat as if the child's touch would mean certain death.

"I see them, but it's not nice to point, honey," her mother corrected. "Sorry, ma'am."

The lady said nothing in response.

"Is our cow going to be black and white too, Ma?" the girl asked.

"I don't know. Your pa didn't say in his letter. I guess it'll be a surprise."

"Have you ever had a cow before?" Ruth asked the little girl.

"No, and I'm so excited."

"A growing girl needs lots of fresh milk," Ruth said. "At least that's what my momma always used to tell me. If we didn't have a cow, we had goats and if not goats then a cow."

The girl, who'd lived her whole life in the tenements thus far, was awed that she'd grown up with a cow. "Did you ever get to milk one?"

"Of course. Had to really. It was one of my chores."

"How do you milk a cow?" she asked. "I want to be a big girl and help."

"That's up to your parents whether you get to milk or not, but it's simple really if the cow's ready to be milked and not being ornery. I always kind of breathed on my hands to warm them up; they don't take kindly to cold hands. Would you?"

The girl giggled and shook her head.

"You get a hold of the udder and just kind of pull in a rhythm like this," she said, demonstrating the motion. "Can't jerk on them hard, but you can't do it too gently either."

The girl imitated the motion.

"Not bad," Ruth praised. "You'll get the knack of it quickly enough. I'm sure your pa'll help you and show you how it's done."

The young woman, who'd slowly been losing color during the course conversation, seemed to find her voice at last, "Such things are not spoken of in polite company. I can tell you just got off the farm. Things in the city are different from things in the country. You're going to have to clean up your speech."

Sister Ruth's lips twitched in amusement. "Milking cows is a fact of nature just ask a calf. If there was anything wrong with milk coming from a cow, the Good Lord wouldn't have made it so."

The young woman didn't look as if she quite knew how to refute it, but before she could even try, Kid coughed into his handkerchief, and from the look on her face, she didn't consider that polite either.

The train had finally slowed to a complete stop at some small town in Colorado and the young lady jumped up. Ruth wondered if it was really her stop or if she was just switching to another car. "Thank God I'm just a plain old country girl," she said when the lady had gotten off, "if that's what being a proper city girl is."

"Amen," Kid agreed with a twinkle in his eyes.

February 1834

"Mr. Harvey," Josef Quinn said in mild surprise to a patient he hadn't seen in awhile. He hadn't known he was back in Boston. The man asked for frequent consultations for his condition though there wasn't much that could be done, but he paid well for it, so he couldn't complain.

"Dr. Quinn, I want you to take a look at my gout. Tell me if it's really gone." It didn't seem to be as much that he needed an answer as it was that he seemed eager to prove something to him.

"Gone?" He had Mr. Harvey remove his socks and shoes. His mild surprise turned into downright shock. There wasn't a touch of inflammation and Mr. Harvey had just been on a long business trip that should have aggravated it like crazy. Even more disconcerting was that his toes had been slightly deformed as a result of the disease, but they didn't looked look deformed now. He listened to his heart; it sounded steadier and calmer than it had in the past. Had someone out west found a radical new treatment? "Gout just doesn't go away. A simple diet manages it, but being rid of it completely is medically impossible."

"Medically maybe but spiritually not at all. I met a lady named Sister Ruth while I was down in Jackson, Mississippi. She and her husband do a revival circuit. Her husband is some kind of shoot-em up cowboy. Some loon is always trying to take a potshot at him because he has the reputation of being the fastest draw in the west and I guess he must be or he'd have been dead long before now."

Josef cleared his throat. Mr. Harvey had a tendency to get off subject.

"Anyway, getting back to what I was saying. It wasn't just me. I saw her restore people's hearing, their sight, their health through Jesus' name. I might have thought her a charlatan had I not been cured my own self. Didn't work for everybody though. Some just don't have the faith or God's got some other reason for it, she said, but she was something nonetheless. Gave me a newfound respect for faith healers and for God for that matter."

Josef was fascinated. Of course, he believed in God. He worked in a Catholic hospital, surrounded by nuns, though he identified Episcopalian himself. He'd seen the nuns praying over people and he'd seen people make recoveries he couldn't explain, but he'd never heard of anyone so boldly proclaiming the Bible's promises and meeting with such success. "Is there a way I can get in touch with this woman?"

"It so happens I do know how. They said something about how they were going to winter in St. Louis. You could send a letter there and see if it doesn't reach them."

Josef thought about it all day and that night he penned a letter.

I am eager to converse with you as one colleague to another. I believe you could provide great medical insight to doctors in Boston and would arrange for you to address them. You and your husband both would be honored guests in my home during your stay if you choose to accept this invitation...