Come on, Gideon. He came on. She led the mayor with one hand and held the lantern with the other, and kept the rope going back to the house taut enough to follow, and they came out of the north field and through the yard and into the barn, with the storm trying to prevent all of it and failing. She got the mayor stalled and he worked his hands enough to check her legs properly. A strain maybe, not a break, something rest would handle.
And then Viven was pulling at his sleeve. Inside, she said, "The bull. The bull is a,000b animal with a coat for this weather. The bull will survive. " She looked at him with a severity that told him she was angry and managing it. You won't if you stand in this barn much longer.
Inside now. He went inside. She got him through the kitchen and got the coat off him and got the fire built up and sat him down in the chair that had become his chair. And she got his boots off and found the blanket. And she did all of this with the efficiency of someone who has decided that being efficient is how they are going to hold themselves together.
And she didn't speak until she'd gotten the kettle on and had sat down in the other chair facing him. Then she looked at him. Her face, now that the efficiency had done its job, had something in it that was not the composure. She was pale under the cold redness, and something around her eyes had the particular tightness of someone who had been frightened and was now past the frightened part, but not past the part that came right after. I told you not to go alone, she said.
You did. I meant it. I know you did. Then why? She stopped.
She put her hands on her knees and looked at the fire and let out a slow breath that was visible in the still cold air of the kitchen. Don't do that again. He looked at her. He looked at the melting ice crystals still caught in her hair and the rope burn on her palm where she'd been holding the lantern line and the specific evidence of what she had done. Gone out into a white out blizzard in Montana in December with a rope around her waist and a lantern and nothing else to find him.
He thought about all the things he might say about that and about what it cost a person to do what she'd done and about what it meant when someone who was used to having no one to depend on walked out into a blizzard for the specific purpose of making sure you didn't die in it. He didn't say any of those things. He said, "You should look at your hand. " She looked at it. The rope burn was red and raw across her palm. "It'll be fine," she said.