A Prairie Infanta

In the dust‑kissed town of Aguilar, Colorado, the narrow main street is flanked by adobe churches, cottonwoods and the looming silhouette of the Dauntless colliery. Jane Combs, a broad‑shouldered woman who tends a modest homestead at the town’s edge, lives as plainly as the paint‑less shack she built, earning the wary respect of most neighbors—except Señora Vigil, whose old grudges still linger. Their uneasy coexistence is marked by a boundary dispute that has kept the Vigil children wary of Jane’s presence.

One bright May morning a wagon drifts to the foot of Jane’s rise, its canvas shelter shielding a fever‑stricken woman who has been travelling from Taos. The town doctor, breathless and confused, calls out to Jane, pleading for her help as the dying passenger clutches at life. The unexpected appeal pulls Jane from her fields into a sudden crisis, promising a day that will test her fortitude and perhaps reshape the fragile peace of the valley.