Then she opened them and said, "What's the status on the Northwater line? Is it frozen? " Warren looked at her. He looked at the state she was in the ice on her coat, the raw patches on her face, the deliberate way she was holding the cup, and he said, "Hollis checked it an hour ago. It's still running," Hollis said. "Barely, but running.
We'll need to monitor it," she said. If it freezes, the barn animals won't have water through the storm and we'll have to carry it. She looked at Tobin. Can you Can you check it every 2 hours? Yeah.
Tobin said, "Wake me if it freezes. I don't care what time. " Okay. She sat down at the kitchen table because if she didn't sit down, she was going to have to explain why she was still standing by holding herself up with willpower. And that explanation was more embarrassing than sitting. She drank the hot water.
Her hands were working correctly again. That was the main thing. Milo got off the sati. He walked across the kitchen floor in his socks, which he was not supposed to be doing. And he sat down in the chair beside her, not close enough to be intrusive, just beside her, within range.
She looked at him. He didn't say anything. He just sat there with his sling and his serious eyes, and he was beside her, and that was the entire thing he was offering, and it was exactly enough. She looked back at her cup. All eight, she said, to no one in particular.
Every one of them. The storm lasted 41 hours, not continuous, at the same intensity it had peaks and valleys, periods where the wind dropped to something survivable, and then hours where it climbed back to the force that had greeted them at 4 in the morning. They worked in the valleys and held their ground in the peaks, and by the time it began its final withdrawal on the morning of November 2nd, the valley looked like a different country. The drifts along the north fence were over 4t in places. The creek along the east boundary had frozen solid.
Not the skim ice of October mornings, but real ice, the kind that wouldn't melt until March. Three fence posts in the south pasture had come down under snow load, which meant work before the auction drive, but not impossible work. The eight yearlings had survived the storm in better condition than anyone had a right to expect. Calder checked them the morning of after the storm broke with the specific focus of a man who has been worrying about a thing for 41 hours and is finally in a position to assess the actual damage. Tessa stood at the pengate and watched him go through them one by one, checking legs, checking weight, checking the general demeanor that told an experienced stockman whether an animal was stressed or merely cold.
He came back to the gate. Split ears fine, he said. The gray lost a little condition from the stress, but he'll come back in 2 days if we manage the feed right. He paused. The other six are solid, so we can still make the drive.