Jonah Crow spent his hours waging war on the wood. He had found a stash of seasoned logs under the sagging porch, but they were frozen solid, hard as iron. He brought them inside to thaw near the stove, then split them with a hatchet, the sound of the blade biting into the wood cracking like pistol shots in the small room. His hands, already calloused from years on the trap line, began to split at the knuckles from the dry cold, bleeding sluggishly into the grain of the wood. Millie Laru had her own war.
She took charge of the interior with a quiet, fierce efficiency that Jonah had not expected. She melted snow in the heavy iron pot for water, straining it through a piece of clean cloth to catch the pine needles and grit. She took the flour Jonah had bought, the flour he had paid $12 for, and turned it into flat dense biscuits cooked on the stovetop. They moved around each other like ghosts in a hallway, careful not to touch, careful not to speak more than necessary. They were roommates of necessity, bound by the lethal temperature outside rather than any shared goodwill.
But Jonah was a man who noticed things. It was how he had stayed alive this long. He watched Millie when she thought he was sleeping or staring into the fire. He saw that she did not move like a town woman. There was no wasted motion in her.
On the fourth day, Jonah brought in a snowshoe hare he had snared near the tree line before the worst of the snow hit. He tossed the frozen carcass onto the table. "I will dress it," Jonah said, reaching for his knife. Millie reached out and took the knife from the table before his hand could close around it. "Sit down, Jonah," she said.
"You have been chopping wood for 4 hours. Your hands are shaking. " Jonah stiffened, unus to being told what to do, but he watched as she took the hare. She did not flinch at the stiff limbs or the cold fur. She worked the knife with a surgeon's precision, skinning the animal and gutting it in clean, sure strokes. She wasted nothing.
She saved the pelt to dry near the fire and set the meat to stew with the last of the dried beans. You have done this before, Jonah said. It was not a question. Millie wiped the knife clean on a rag and set it down. My father was a trapper, she said her back to him as she stirred the pot before the whiskey took his hands.
He taught me how to use mine. Jonah watched her. He realized then that the town's assessment of her helpless, cursed, trouble, was wrong. She was iron wrapped in silk. Millie was studying him, too.
Jonah could feel her eyes on him when he sat by the fire, oiling his boots. She watched him the way a wounded animal studies a strange dog, trying to decide if he was there to guard the herd or tear out a throat. She noticed that he spoke little. He did not fill the silence with boastful noise like the men in the saloons down in the valley. When he did speak, he looked her in the eye.
He did not look at her chest or her hips. He looked at her face, and his eyes, cold as they were, held no deception. The truce between them was fragile, made of silence and distance until the chimney rebelled. It happened in the late afternoon. The wind shifted violently to the north, slamming a downdraft straight down the flue.
The stove, which had been drawing poorly all day, suddenly belched a thick black cloud of smoke into the room. Ash and soot exploded outward. The room instantly filled with choking, blinding gray fog. "Open the door," Jonah roared. He lunged for the stove.
The metal was searing hot. He grabbed the handle of the firebox with his coat sleeve, but the heat seared through. He ignored the pain. The pipe was clogged or the damper had jammed. If he did not clear it, they would suffocate or burn.
Millie threw the door open. The blizzard screamed in. A wall of freezing air colliding with the smoke. The temperature in the room dropped 30° in a second. Jonah grabbed the stove pipe with his bare hands, wrenching it sideways to break the seal and clear the blockage.