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every form of human injury imaginable. She knew something of how people carried themselves when they had a wound to nurse or hide. And watching Cassie Jure walk up the bank to their tilt, she’d seen something in the woman’s gait beyond her customary limp that made her watchful and wary. She stood at the fireplace tending a pan of capelin and leftover brewis but she was eyeing Cassie where she sat with the men. Only something calamitous could have occasioned her visit up the river, but she drank her tea calmly while they discussed the number of animals on the trapline this year and how much snow was down compared to last winter.
    Peyton inquired after his father’s health, as casually as he could manage. Cassie spoke briefly of Lieutenant Buchan’s visit and John Senior’s agreeing to assist in the expedition he had planned. She said he had taken the officer across to White Bay to meet with William Cull.
    “That’s a queer turn of events,” Reilly said quietly.
    Peyton hid his relief that Cassie hadn’t come with bad news of his father by nodding into his mug and wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
    Reilly turned to his wife and asked after the food and she waved her hand to shush him up. “Fire don’t work no faster ’cause you hungry, Joe Jep,” she told him. “Missa Jure not going to starve this minute now, are you, Missa Jure?”
    Cassie looked across at her and shook her head no.
    When they’d eaten their breakfast and dawdled over more tea and gossip, Annie shooed the men outside and they dressed themselves and packed food for the day. Peyton looked to Cassie while Reilly checked the works of a trap-bed on his lap but she refused to acknowledge him. The men left the shack after guessing they’d be by again around dark and Cassie started in to clear away the dishes. “You walking all night,” Annie said, “you got to rest now.” But Cassie refused to sit and they worked in silence until they were done. Afterwards Annie boiled the kettle to make more tea and then sat across from Cassie with her legs spread to accommodate the size of her belly. “Must be more than one in there,” she said and she laughed and wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand. She said, “Annie Boss not so good at reading your mind, Missa Jure.”
    Cassie looked towards the one tiny window.
    Annie set her mug down and rubbed her hands back and forth along the length of her thighs.
    Cassie said, “You’re the only person I could ask this of, Annie.”
    Annie would not make eye contact with her. “Whose baby you got there?”
    “Nobody’s,” she said. “It’s not going to be anyone’s baby.”
    Annie nodded. “Make you real sick, Missa Jure, guarantee. Some women up and die with the sick.”
    The white woman folded her arms and tightened them around herself. Her jaw was set awkwardly askew as if she was gnawing on the inside of her mouth.
    “Missa Jure.”
    “I know what I want,” she said.
    “Maybe nothing happen but you get ill,” Annie said. “You sick and still got that problem.”
    “I’ll take that chance.”
    Annie nodded to herself and let out a long breath of air. “God decide, not you, not me. Okay?” She crossed herself and got up to gather maidenhair and bog myrtle and skunk currant from the dried bouquets hung from the rafters above the fireplace, talking aloud all the while in her own language as if to someone else in the room.
    Cassie said, “Thank you, Annie.”
    Annie turned towards her, waving her hands in front of her face. “No,” she said. “Don’t want to hear it.” She pointed a finger. “Whatever happen, I got to live with too.”
    Cassie raised her hand, about to argue, and then thought better of it. She placed her hand back in her lap and simply nodded.
    By early afternoon Cassie had begun vomiting and between spells of throwing up she lay on the single bed in the room and held her stomach and keened. The cramps knifed at her stomach and crawled up her spine to her shoulders. Her