Part 7
“The creek slowed me,” Nolan said.
“I thought it might.”
Evelyn rose gradually. Flint lifted his head to let her move but did not step away.
“He’s cut his left foreleg. I don’t believe it’s deep.” She bent with her hand traveling down from his shoulder. “I want it covered until we can clean it.”
From her pocket she drew a strip of red cloth. Nolan had seen that color around her thread spool, at her windows, stitched into the edge of the pad so she could set it in the same place each time.
She wrapped the leg neatly enough to protect the scrape without tightening it against swelling. Flint stood while her cold fingers worked.
“We walk home,” she said.
“I can take you up behind me.”
“And ask him to hurry after us? No. Let your horse walk. He’ll follow something that isn’t frightened.”
Nolan brought his mount into the hollow. Once the two horses had smelled each other, he loosened the reins and let them hang. Evelyn coiled her lead without clipping it on.
They started down the sheltered slope with the lanterns. Behind them came the soft crush of hooves through the thin snow.
Neither horse needed urging.
The return was slower. They kept to ground Flint could manage without slipping, and paused when he stopped to listen. Wind still combed the exposed slopes, but the lower stretches gave them relief.
After a while, Nolan noticed Evelyn’s shoulders trembling.
He handed her his lantern, took off his coat, and settled it around her before she could turn fully toward him.
“You’ll freeze,” she said.
“I was on horseback most of the way out. You weren’t.”
“That doesn’t make you weatherproof.”
“No. It gives me a little to spare.”
She drew the front closed and returned his lantern.
For several minutes, their footsteps were the only conversation.
“He used his head tonight,” she said at last. “Some of them don’t stop running.”
“He’s had practice making choices lately.”
“Yes.”
The horses followed them around a bend in the creek. Flint’s muzzle briefly brushed the other animal’s flank, then he fell back into his own place.
“When Thomas was ill,” Evelyn said, “I found out how much of our farm I had been carrying already.”
Nolan shortened his stride to match hers.
“He worked. I don’t mean to take that away from him. He was a good husband.” She watched the ground ahead. “But I kept the bills paid. I knew the breeding records and the buyers. After he died, everyone spoke as if I’d been living inside his accomplishment.”
She shifted the coat higher around her neck.
“I mourned him. There was room for that. There didn’t seem to be room to mourn losing the farm as something of my own.”
Nolan waited until she finished.
“I’m listening,” he said.
“I know.” She looked toward him briefly. “This isn’t a complaint about you.”
“You don’t have to protect me from hearing it.”
“No.” A small breath escaped her. “You’ve made that easier than most.”
“I ought to.”
“Ought doesn’t always get done.”
The sky had begun to pale when the ranch buildings came into view. Silas and Hank worked at the broken fence by lamplight. The loose canvas had been dragged down and weighted in a heap well away from the horses.
Flint passed through the opening without waiting to be led. He stopped near his trough and lowered his head.
Hank looked at Evelyn inside Nolan’s coat, then bent to pick up a hammer.
Silas brought over a lamp.
“Coffee,” he said. “Kitchen stove’s going.”
Evelyn knelt to remove the temporary wrap. In the better light, the scrape was plainly shallow. She cleaned it from the supplies Silas brought, checked for swelling, and covered it with fresh cloth.
When she stood, her knees nearly failed to straighten.
Nolan moved closer without taking hold of her.
“Inside.”
“I can warm the cottage.”
“After you’re warm.”
She looked as though she might argue. Then she handed Silas the used cloth and followed Nolan to the house.
He fed the kitchen stove while she sat with a cup between her hands. He cut bread, put it beside her, and filled her cup again when it was empty. By the time she had eaten, the shaking had become occasional rather than constant.
Outside, a hammer struck at measured intervals.
“People talk as though you trust a horse because you know what he’ll do,” she said, watching the stove door. “You have to leave room for what he chooses.”
Nolan sat opposite her.
“You’ve been leaving yourself that room here.”
Her eyes came up.
“Watching whether I’d keep the agreements,” he said. “Not just make them.”
She set the cup down carefully.
“You paid to replace him on the drive before you knew he’d ever be useful. You let Bellamy answer me. You signed what I wrote without making a contest of it.”
“They were fair terms.”
“That’s why I wanted to see whether they’d stay terms.”
He pushed a piece of wood farther into the stove with the poker, then laid it aside.
“Have they?”
“Yes.” She rubbed warmth into one hand with the other. “But I need to ask you something that isn’t in them.”
He sat still.
“Do you want me to remain because I’ve become useful? Or because there’s room here for the life I intend to have, whether or not it makes yours easier?”
Nolan looked down at his hands. One knuckle had split in the cold. He had not felt it until now.
“Both,” he said. “The work matters. So do you. I can pay for one. I can’t claim the other because I’m paying.”
She did not answer.
“I won’t ask you to make a personal choice while you might have to wonder what refusing would do to your livelihood.”
The hammering stopped outside. Someone tested the gate.
“That’s a straight answer,” she said.
“It’s the one I have.”
She picked up her cup, found it empty, and held it a moment anyway.
“Wait until spring. Ask me then.”
“Spring,” he repeated.
She nodded and rose.
At the kitchen door, she paused with Nolan’s coat over her arm.
“You need sleep.”
“You’ve been up as long as I have.”
“Yes, but I haven’t got year-end figures waiting to make me cross.”
He took his coat from her.
“The storage room’s still warm,” she added. “The fuel held well.”
“You checked?”
“I passed the door.”
He laughed quietly. She gave him the nearest thing to a smile he had seen that morning and went out.
Through the window, he watched her cross to the cottage. Beyond her, Flint stood behind the repaired rail, one foreleg wrapped, his nose buried in hay.
Nolan carried the cups to the basin and left the account books closed…
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