He had enough grain to last himself until the end of March, if he ate carefully, and did not share a single handful with anyone else. The Apache band, all 14 of them, including the children and the elders, would need more than twice that much to make it through the same stretch of winter. If he fed them all, if he fed them enough to keep them alive, his stores would be empty before February was finished, and he would be the one starving when the snow was still shoulder deep. He stood in his barn for a long time on that second morning, looking at the sacks of grain stacked against the wall, feeling the cold seep through his boots, and he thought about what his father would have said. He did not have to wonder very long.
The old man's voice came to him clear as a bell across the years. A man can survive a hungry belly, Elijah, but a man cannot survive a hard heart. If we turn these folks away, we might live through the winter, but we will not live with ourselves after. There is always another way to get through, even when you cannot see it yet. And if there is not, then you go down having done right, and that is worth more than all the grain in the territory.
Elijah made his decision standing there in the cold barn with his breath fogging and his feet going numb. And once he made it, he did not second guessess it or look back. He would share what he had, every last sack of it. And he would trust that the same providence that had brought his father through hard times would bring him through this one, too. He did not say a prayer out loud because he was not the kind of man who knew the words that prayers were supposed to be made of.
But he spoke one in his heart, a simple, quiet request to whoever might be listening, that he not be made a fool for doing what he believed was right. Then he walked out to where the Apache were sheltering in the warmth of his barn, wrapped in blankets and pressed together for warmth. And he told the old man, whose name he had learned was Kusen, that they would not have to worry about food as long as they stayed on his land. Whatever I have, Elijah said, you will share. It is not much.
It will not be easy, but it is what I can give and I am giving it. Kusen looked at him for a long time without speaking. His dark eyes holding depths that Elijah could not read and probably never would. Then the old man reached out and placed one thin hand on Elijah's shoulder, his grip weak from hunger and age, but his eyes steady as stone. "You give what you need for yourself," Kusen said.
"You give what keeps your own life going. This is not a small thing. My people have long memories, and we do not forget those who help us when help costs everything." Elijah nodded once and turned away before the old man could see his face because there was something in his eyes that he did not want anyone to witness. He did not know if the Apache would remember or forget and in that moment it did not matter to him either way. He knew only that the grain was already spoken for and the dye was already cast.
The weeks that followed were the hardest of Elijah Tanner's life. Harder than the winter his wife died. Harder than anything he had faced since the day he first learned what it meant to be alone in a hard country. He split his stores evenly with the Apache, measuring out the grain and the beans and the flour with the same care a doctor might use measuring medicine for the dying. He watched the piles shrink day by day, knowing with every handful he scooped that he was taking it from his own future, and he did not let himself think too hard about what would happen when the last handful was gone.
By the middle of January, his belt was two notches tighter than it had been at Christmas. His clothes hung loose on his frame, and when he caught his reflection in the water bucket, he barely recognized the hollow cheicked man who looked back at him. By the 1st of February, he was eating half of what a working man needed to keep his strength, and he was feeling it in every bone and muscle of his body. The cold seemed sharper when there was nothing in the belly to burn for warmth. The work seemed heavier when the muscles had no fuel to drive them.
He woke some mornings with a pain in his gut that had nothing to do with sickness and everything to do with emptiness. But the Apache did not complain, and he could see the difference his grain was making in them. The children stopped crying at night, their bellies full enough to let them sleep through the cold hours. The old women stopped coughing in the mornings, their bodies strong enough now to fight off the sickness that had been creeping into their lungs. The men stood straighter and walked without the shuffle of the truly starving.
And when they moved around the ranch doing the work they had taken on without being asked, there was a steadiness in them that had not been there the night they stumbled into his yard. They did what they could to help, mending fences that had been on Elijah's list for two winters, caring for the animals with a gentleness that surprised him, bringing in firewood and clearing snow. Kusen told him one night by the fire that his people did not take gifts without giving something back. That it was not their way to let a debt stand unpaid no matter how long it took to balance. Elijah said he was not keeping a ledger and did not expect anything in return.
But Kusen only smiled and said nothing, and there was something in that smile that Elijah did not understand, but was too tired and too hungry to puzzle out. February came and went in a blur of white and gray, and the endless small tasks of keeping alive. The stores dwindled down to almost nothing. The sacks that had once filled a whole corner of the barn, now counting less than a man could carry on one shoulder. By the first week of March, Elijah had given away the last of his grain, scraped the bins clean, and divided the final portion between the Apache children who needed it most.
And he was living on strips of jerked beef that tasted like old leather and the memory of meals he had eaten in better times. He did not tell the Apache how bad it had gotten for him. He did not tell anyone. He just kept working, kept tending his animals, kept putting one foot in front of the other because that was what a man did when there was nothing else to do. Some nights he lay awake and wondered if he would see the grass turn green again.