The cold in that hall was a different cold, still and old, and Lucy sneezed four times running and made herself laugh. Emma swept without being asked, and swept well. Caleb got the stove drawing on the second try. Nobody carried Samuel to bed. He woke halfway there and would not go to Emma and would not go to Eliza.
So, Caleb sat down on the edge of the bed with the boy on his chest and stayed there, boots still on, until the child went under again. Later, with the children down and the lamp turned low, she made the arrangement plain because anything left unsaid gets settled later by whoever is angriest. " Here's how it will be. " You and the children take the east wing. That door at the end of the hall is the boundary.
I don't know you. That's fair. My hand, Odell Fry, winters in town. So, I'm short from November to April. There's the tack room roof, the north fence, 40 head to be fed and watered, ice twice a day, and a chimney that smokes when the wind's west. "
I can do all of that." " I'll feed all five of you, and you'll take a wage. " A small one. I pay for work. I won't have you telling those children they're eating charity.
And I won't have you thinking it either. Something in his face eased, though he tried not to let it. " Until when?" " Until the spring thaw. " That's when Odell comes back and the ground opens and you'll have your own choices again. "
Until the thaw,"Caleb said. " You have my word on the work and on the rest of it." " What rest of it?"You're a woman alone with five strangers in her house. He put his hat back on, which was his way of leaving. " If I were you, I'd want to know the man understood exactly what he'd been given and what he hadn't.
"He went down the hall. Eliza stood in her kitchen listening to a house that had five more heartbeats in it than it had that morning. At the end of the hall, Emma was still awake in her doorway. " Miss Hart, thank you for the beds." " I want you to know we won't get comfortable." "
That's a strange thing to be proud of." " It isn't pride. " Emma glanced back at her sister's shape under the quilt. We had a house in Sage Bend, then grandmother's, and she couldn't keep us, then Uncle Caleb's cabin. She recited it like a list she had memorized so nothing could surprise her again. "
Temporary places are the worst ones to leave. "Eliza had an answer ready and did not use it because it would have been a promise. " Then don't unpack,"she said. " But hang your coat up. It'll dry faster.
"She woke to a sound she had to lie still and identify. Footsteps in the hallway. Two sets, quick, then a third. A voice hushing them. A door.
She lay in the gray light with it going through her like heat through a cold hand. Caleb had been out since before light. Both troughs were open. The near string was fed and he was up on the tack room roof in a wind that would take your hat pulling rotten shakes and stacking the good ones. " You could have eaten first,"she called up. "
I could have. "He set another shake on the pile. " You'd have been feeding me for free." " You've been up there since 5:00, ma'am. "There was the ghost of something dry in it. "
You said you weren't running a charity. It'd be poor manners to make a liar out of you the first morning. "She went in to the horses and found she was smiling at a bucket. Ben found her out on the third day. He turned up at the barn with his hands in his pockets, looked at everything for 10 minutes, and said, "Your gate hinge is set wrong.
That's why it drops." " Is that so?" " Uncle Caleb says a gate that drags will teach a horse bad manners in a week." " Your uncle's right. It's been dragging two years.
"The boy scuffed at the frozen mud. " I could hold things if he fixed it. I'm good at holding things, and I don't let go early. "He said it like a resume. Eliza kept her face where it belonged. "
Then you're better help than most grown men. Go ask him. "Lucy took 4 days. She hung on the corral fence and watched the horses with her whole body, and Eliza finally walked over with a curry comb. " You want to meet one?"Lucy nodded so hard her hat went sideways. "
Then here's the whole of it. And if you can't do it, you don't come in the pen. Never come at a horse from behind. You talk before you touch. Flat hand on the shoulder, not the nose.
And when I say stand, you stand. Running is what tells them to be afraid. " What if I'm afraid?" " Then be afraid standing still,"Eliza said. " That's most of courage right there. "
The mare was 19, named Biscuit, and had not hurried anywhere in a decade. Lucy put her flat palm on the warm shoulder and started laughing and did not stop for a while. Emma watched from 30 ft off with her arms crossed. She came closer on the sixth day and held the lead rope on the ninth, and on the 12th, when Biscuit shifted and Lucy squealed, it was Emma who said stand still in exactly Eliza's voice. Samuel said nothing at all.
He followed his uncle to the barn and back and otherwise sat wherever the nearest warm body was, watching the room like a small, tired sentry. Eliza did not push him. What she did was leave things, a cut apple on the low bench where he sat, a length of rope with three knots in it, a curl of horsehair from a mane she'd pulled, because a boy who won't talk still likes to hold something. On the 15th day, she came in with her hands raw from the wind and found him standing at the stove holding up a folded flour sack in both arms. " For your hands?"Emma translated from the table in a strange voice. "