Toby had given some of his back to her. She had pretended to eat it and slipped it into her pocket when he wasn't watching. She would give it back to him later. She told herself that. The ankle went when she was crossing the frozen creek bed.
She didn't fall dramatically. There was no loud crack, no sudden collapse. She simply stepped wrong on a stone hidden under a thin skiff of ice, felt the joint turn with a white hot wrongness, and then found herself on one knee with her hands braced against the frozen ground, and Toby grabbing at her sleeve, saying,"Mama, Mama,"in the voice he used when he was working very hard not to cry because he thought crying would upset her."I'm fine,"she said. It came out more automatic than convincing. She heard it herself.
She tried to stand. The ankle held for approximately 1 second before it gave way, and she went back down harder this time, one palm scraping frozen mud. She stayed there for a moment with her eyes closed and her breath coming out in visible clouds, doing the calculation she did not want to do. Miles remaining, temperature dropping, one child, one useless leg. No food.
Toby crouched in front of her. He put both his cold hands on her face like she was something that needed steadying."Mama,"he said."There's smoke."She opened her eyes."He was pointing through the bare trees, maybe 300 yards, through a stand of cottonwood and frozen brush, and there it was, a thin thread of gray smoke rising from something she couldn't yet."Could have been anything. Could have been Ror's men camped ahead of her. Could have been nobody at all willing to help. Could have been a derelict line shack with the roof half gone.
Toby looked at her with an expression no six-year-old should have to produce the expression of someone who has assessed a situation and arrived at a conclusion the adults around him haven't said out loud yet. I can go, he said. No, mama, you can't, Toby. Her voice was sharper than she meant it. She watched him absorb that, watched his jaw tighten the way his father's used to, and the sight of it nearly undid her.
Come here, she said softer. Help me up, she tried. Genuinely tried, got herself upright with one arm around his small shoulders and one hand braced against a cottonwood trunk, and made it approximately six steps before the ankle folded again, and she went down the third time. This time she couldn't stop the sound that came out of her. It's not a scream too careful for that.
Too aware of the open territory around them, but something involuntary that she pressed her mouth closed against too late. Toby stood very still. Then he looked at the smoke. Then back at her. Then at the smoke.
Stay here, he said in a voice so deliberate it didn't sound like him. Don't move, Mama. I'm going to go get help. Before she could answer, he was running. She had never seen him run like that.
Not the running of a child playing or being chased or trying to get somewhere. First, this was something else. This was a small person who had decided that panic was a luxury, and that moving fast was the only remaining option. He ran with his arms pumping and his head down, and she watched him disappear into the cottonwoods, and she thought with a clarity that frightened her,"He is braver than I have ever been."Then she leaned back against the frozen ground and did the only thing she could. She waited.