Their eyes flicking around the cabin, sparse, rough, but warmer than the night outside. None of them spoke. Rowan didn't either. The only sound was the pop of the fire in the hearth and the wind pressing faintly against the shutters. For the first time in years, Rowan Pike was not alone.
The cabin felt tighter with four people inside. The air heavier though the fire did its best to push warmth into the corners. Rowan sat back at the table, the knife and whetstone still there, but he didn't touch them. He watched as the three women stood near the hearth, their eyes darting across the room as if trying to measure where they were and whether they were safe. The eldest kept her shoulders square, but Rowan noticed the way her fingers trembled when she held them out toward the fire.
She was the one who had spoken at the door, and her presence carried weight. The middle sister had a sharper edge in her gaze. Rowan guessed she was the one who had tried to take charge when the eldest faltered, though she deferred once her sister stepped forward. The youngest stayed closest to the fire, pressing her hands to her arms as if she could rub life back into herself. Rowan realized none of them had eaten recently.
The thinness in their faces and the hollow sound of their breathing made that plain. He rose, crossed to a shelf, and pulled down a small sack of beans and a strip of salt pork. He dropped them onto the table with a dull thud, then pointed toward the pot hanging on the hook over the fire. "Food," he said simply. The middle sister moved immediately, stepping forward without hesitation.
She lifted the pot, poured in water from a jug, and set to work. Her movements were quick, careful, like someone used to making do with little. Rowan watched her stir the beans in silence. The smell of the pork beginning to seep into the air. He took a moment then to study them with more care.
Questions pressed into his mind, the same ones any man would have asked if he'd seen three Apache women alone on a winter road. Why were they here? Where had they come from? What had happened to the men who were supposed to protect them? Rowan didn't speak the questions out loud, but he thought them, and he guessed others would too if they ever saw these women at his side.
The eldest caught his eyes once, then again, and after a long pause she said quietly, "We walked for many days. Our people gone." She didn't explain whether gone meant dead, scattered, or pushed away. Her English was broken, but clear enough. No place. We came here.
Rowan let her words hang. He didn't push for more. He knew enough of the wars between settlers and tribes to understand what gone could mean. And he wasn't a man who liked to hear details that couldn't be undone. He looked at their feet.
Raw. Red from the cold. No boots. Not even moccasins. That told him enough about what they'd endured.
When the beans began to soften, the middle sister filled four bowls. Rowan noticed how they split theirs between the three of them, leaving the largest portion untouched, sliding it closer to him. He frowned, pushed it back, and said, "Yours." His tone was flat, but it carried weight. The youngest looked up at him then, wide-eyed, as if surprised a man would turn food away. She hesitated before eating, then bent her head and took the bowl in both hands, sipping from it like it was more precious than anything she'd held in days.
Rowan felt something shift in his chest. Not pity, but a steady pressure, like responsibility pressing down whether he had chosen it or not. Later, when the bowls were empty, Rowan reached for a blanket folded on a shelf and tossed it toward the floor by the hearth. The sisters laid it out, curling together on the boards close to the fire. Rowan sat back at the table, staring into the flames, his thoughts circling.
He had let them in out of instinct, maybe decency, but now he wondered what came next. The valley was long, and the winter was hard, and supplies didn't stretch far even for one man. Still, he hadn't bolted the door. That meant something, and he knew it. The night grew quiet.
The sisters drifted into uneasy sleep. The youngest breath hitching softly now and then. Rowan stayed awake longer, listening to the fire crackle. His mind caught between the silence he had chosen for years and the weight of three lives now lying under his roof. For the first time in a long while, he felt unsettled.
Not because of fear, but because he knew tomorrow would no longer look the same as yesterday. Morning came slow. The first light of day leaked through the cracks in the shutters, gray and cold. The kind of light that made everything look harsher than it had the night before. Rowan was already awake.
Sitting on the edge of the bed he had built himself years earlier. Boots laced, shirt pulled on. He listened to the steady breathing from the hearth where the three women slept curled together under the blanket. For a moment, he thought about how strange it was to hear more than his own breath inside this cabin. Strange, but not unwelcome.
When he stood, the eldest stirred first. She blinked at him then sat up slowly, pulling the blanket tighter over her shoulders. Her hair was tangled, strands falling across her face, but her eyes were sharp and watchful. Rowan noticed that she did not look at him with fear, only with a kind of guardedness, as if waiting to see if he would change his mind about allowing them to stay. The middle sister rose next.
Without asking, she moved toward the table and began gathering what little there was for breakfast. Rowan had a habit of eating cold bread or jerky in the mornings, but she filled the pot with water and dropped in the last handfuls of dried corn, stirring it over the fire with quick, official motions. She did not waste words, but her actions said enough. They intended to pull their weight. The youngest woke last, shivering as she sat up.