I took the lantern and went around through the feed corridor to the far door. I lifted the board and shoved it open against the wind. She was sitting in the snow with her back against the wall and her knees pulled up. She had a blanket around her that was more ice than wool at that point, and her hair was loose and full of it. She looked up at me without any particular expression, not frightened, not grateful, not anything I could name, just looking.
Apache, I knew that much. I'd been in this part of the territory long enough to know the difference. She said something I didn't catch over the wind. I said, "Come inside. " She didn't move.
She said it again slower. And this time I caught two words of English in it or close to English. Something like cold and fire. Or maybe she said something else and those were just the words I was ready to hear. She pointed at the barn.
Come inside, I said again and reached down. She looked at my hand for a moment, then she took it. Getting her into the barn was its own task. She wasn't small, but she wasn't steady, and the snow was past my boot tops by then. I got the door closed and latched and put her near the horses because the horses were the warmest thing I had short of the house.
The bay mare turned her head and looked, but didn't spook. I counted that a good sign. She pulled the ruined blanket off herself and just dropped it. Underneath she had a hide shirt, leggings, moccasins that were soaked through. She was shaking so hard I could hear her teeth.
I stripped off my outer coat, the big sheepskin, and held it out. She took it without a word and put it on. It came nearly to her knees. She sat down in the straw with her back against the mayor's stall and tucked her feet up under herself and looked at me. I don't know what I expected.
I don't know what I thought was going to happen next. I'd been alone so long I'd half-forgotten what it was to have another person in a space with me, to have someone's eyes on me and mean something by it. There's a house, I said, warmer than this fire. She understood something in that. She stood up again shakily, but she stood and I led her out and across the yard through the driving snow to the house and got the door open and got her inside.
She stood just past the threshold and looked around the room the way a person looks at something they're measuring. The fire was banked low and I got it going again fast while she stood there. I didn't watch her, but I knew she was watching me. I pulled the chair closest to the hearth and gestured at it. She sat.
I put water on, found the bread I'd made two days ago, cut some of the smoked elk, and laid it out. I wasn't sure what she would eat. I didn't know enough to know. I put it all on the table and stepped back and let her decide. She ate.
She ate methodically and carefully and without hurry, which told me she'd been without food for a while. A hungry person who has had to ration before doesn't eat the way a hungry person who's never had to does. She knew how to manage herself. That told me something. I sat on the other side of the fire and drank coffee and didn't talk.