Not m drastically, not yet. But the storm was telling her something she needed to hear. This winter was not going to be cooperative, and the supplies she had thought might carry them comfortably, comfortably to March, were going to need managing with more discipline than she'd planned. She went to the desk in the corner of the kitchen, where she kept her ledger, the one she'd started up the week she arrived, logging every item in the pantry, and every meal she produced, and she sat down and began making a new kind of list. not what they had, what they needed and when and in what order and what they could do without if they had to. It was the kind of problem she had a particular aptitude for, and she knew it, and there was something almost settling about being faced with a problem she was genuinely equipped to solve.
She was still at the desk 2 hours later when EMTT appeared at the kitchen door in his coat and boots. "I want to help," he said. She looked up. out there. He gestured toward the yard. With the cattle, you're 11.
Mateo started working cattle at 9. He held her gaze with a steadiness that was either maturity or stubbornness or some mixture she hadn't sorted out yet. I know how to handle a horse and snow. P taught me. Does your father know you're planning this?
He's not here to ask. That's a convenient fact, she said. He didn't move. She looked at him for a long moment. He looked back.
He was not going to beg and he was not going to leave. And she recognized the particular quality of that determination because she had felt it herself in doorways not unlike this one with people looking at her the way she was currently looking at him. Put on your second pair of socks, she said, and tell me which horse. Biscuit, she's steady in weather. Take the rest of the biscuits in the cloth and give them to whoever needs them most.
Then find Matteo and stay with him. You don't ride away from Matteo for any reason. Clear? He was already moving for the door. EMTT.
He stopped. If it gets worse out there and Matteo tells you to come back, you come back. Not because you can't handle it. Because this house needs someone in it with sense. And right now that's you.
Something happened in his face. Not quite what she expected. Something younger. Something that hadn't had time to harden yet. All right, he said.
He went out. She went back to her ledger. She had the ration plan mostly worked out by midafter afternoon when she heard horses in the yard. Not one or two but several that and moving fast enough that she put down her pen and went to the wind. Through the snow she could make out the shapes of riders coming in through the gate more than had left in the morning.
She counted. Something was wrong with the number. She went to the back door and opened it. Matteo was in the yard dismounting. Behind him were four ranch hands.
Behind them, on a horse that wasn't moving with its usual pace, was EMTT, no Gideon. She stepped out onto the porch in her house shoes, and the cold hit her like a flat hand. Where is he? Matteo's face was snowcaked and very still. Miss Hartwell, where is Gideon?
One of the ranch hands, she thought his name was Puit, was already talking fast, words running together. North fence gave all the way. Cattle started running for the ravine. Gideon went after the lead group. His horse slipped on the ice, went down.
We couldn't get to him, for there was too much. Where is he now? She said. Still up there, Matteo said. The horse came back without him.
We got the cattle turned, but by then visibility's gone to nothing up there, Miss Hartwell. We turned back because we couldn't see 10 ft in front of us. The cold was going through her house shoes and up her legs. She stood in it and looked at Matteo's face and ran through the same calculation she had been running in the back of her head all day. Except this time the variable she was calculating was a man 20 below by midnight.
Gideon had said it was 3:00 in the afternoon. How long has he been out there? She asked. Matteo looked at his hands. 2 hours maybe more.
2 hours in this without the horse. She didn't say what she was thinking, which was that two more hours would be a significantly different calculation than 2 hours already gone. Which direction? She said. Miss Hartwell, which direction is the North Ravine?
You can't go out there, Puit said. I mean, no disrespect, ma'am, but you can't. The visibility is I've been feeding this ranch for 3 weeks, she said. I know which provisions came from which direction, and how long it took Gideon to ride for each one. I know this land from 3 weeks of listening to every man at this table describe it.
Which direction is the north ravine, and how far? Silence. EMTT's voice from behind Mateo. I'll show her. You will not, Matteo said.
He'll stay here. Rosalie said, "Mateo, you know this land better than anyone. I'm not asking you to take me for a pleasure ride. I'm asking you to help me bring him back before the temperature makes it a different kind of trip. " Mateo looked at her for a long moment. He was the kind of man who weighed things properly before he agreed to them, which she respected even right now when she needed him to weigh it faster.
She went back inside. She put on every layer she had. She filled the largest sealed kettle with the remaining soup from the pot, still hot enough. She packed it and a set of blankets into a burlap sack and came back to the door. Mateo was waiting with two horses.