Rowan noticed her bare feet again, skin split at the heels. He realized he hadn't given them shoes or even asked about it. Any man in town would have, out of suspicion or cruelty, but Rowan had kept silent. Now he understood the unspoken question hanging in the air. How long could they stay here with nothing but rags on their backs?
He stepped to the corner where he kept a few things he no longer used. An old pair of wool socks, a smaller pair of boots left behind by a passing trader years ago. He set them by the fire without a word. The youngest looked at him, startled, and only after a pause did she reach for them. The eldest murmured something in Apache to her sisters, a quiet thanks he didn't need translated.
She looked at him again, and this time her expression carried something heavier, acknowledgement, maybe respect. As they ate, Rowan's thoughts circled. He wondered where they had come from, what had scattered them, why no men had come with them. The eldest seemed to sense his questions. When the meal was finished, she said, "Slowly, soldiers came.
Settlement men came, too. Our home burned. We left. We walked many nights." She lifted her chin, steady. "Now we are here." Rowan didn't ask for details.
He knew what that meant. Raids, force marches, killings. He had seen it before when he scouted the frontier. The women who survived had nothing left but what they could carry. Their presence here was not chance.
They had come looking for someone who had not send them away. Later, Rowan pulled on his coat and stepped outside with the axe over his shoulder. The cold bit hard, but he needed wood for the stove. He chopped slowly, the sound echoing through the still valley. When he carried the first armload back in, he stopped short.
The youngest was already carrying smaller pieces inside, her arms straining, but her face stubborn. The middle sister was at the table, sewing a torn seam in her dress with sinew thread she had pulled from her own garment. The eldest was kneeling by the hearth, washing the bowls carefully as if the act of keeping them clean meant something. Rowan set the wood down and stood there watching. A thought pressed into him.
These women had not come only to beg. They had come to stay. That night, after another meal of beans and salt pork stretched thin, Rowan sat at the table carving a handle for a broken hammer. The firelight made the room glow. Shadows dancing on the log walls.
The sisters huddled close, speaking softly in their own tongue. But every now and then the eldest glanced his way. He felt it. Her eyes on him, measuring his silence, testing how much room there was between them. Rowan thought about the questions that still hung unanswered.
Did they have family still alive? Would they being sought? Would trouble follow them to his door? He didn't voice them. He had lived long enough to know that answers did not always matter.
What mattered was the choice standing in front of him. He could turn them out tomorrow, keep his life the way it had been. Or he could let this continue, accept the weight that came with it. When he finally set the knife aside, he realized the door was still unlatched from earlier. For years, he had locked it each night out of habit.
Tonight, he hadn't. That was his answer, even if he hadn't spoken it aloud. The women slept close to the fire again, their bodies pressed together for warmth. Rowan sat awake longer, his thoughts heavy but steady. The silence of his cabin was no longer empty, and though he hadn't decided it in words, he knew already.
He would not send them away. The days after their arrival settled into something resembling routine, though it was a routine Rowan had not expected to share. Each morning, the fire was stoked before he reached it. The pot already filled with water. The youngest carrying logs half her size, as if she meant to prove her worth in silence.
The middle sister worked at the hearth, her hands quick, her eyes steady, and Rowan soon realized she could stretch a handful of beans or corn farther than he ever managed on his own. The eldest took charge of what was left undone, cleaning, mending, keeping the others steady. Rowan watched from the edges, silent. The weight of decision still on him, though he no longer thought of sending them away. What the women had not explained in detail was how long they had walked or what dangers they had crossed before reaching his door.
At first, Rowan wondered if men might come looking for them, soldiers, bounty men, or even vengeful settlers. But as days passed without sign of strangers on the road, he understood that the women had truly come from far away. They carried no belongings, no blankets, no tools, nothing but the torn dresses on their backs. It told Rowan that whoever had driven them out had left them with nothing but their lives. That was answer enough.
Trust did not come quickly, but it came in gestures. Rowan noticed it when the eldest left her sisters alone in the cabin one morning to follow him outside while he worked the fence line. She didn't speak at first, only walked near enough that he could see her bruises had begun to fade. She carried herself with the same straight-backed pride as before, but now she watched him work with an expression that was more curious than guarded. Rowan lifted a post in a place, hammering it down with steady blows.
The eldest stood a few paces away, arms crossed against cold. After a long silence, she said, "You keep door open, not locked." Rowan paused, lowering the hammer. "That's right." She gave a small nod, as if she understood more than his words carried. Her eyes lingered on him a moment longer before she turned back toward the cabin. Rowan watched her go, the thought settling heavier than the hammer in his hand.