You're 11. Matteo 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 in snow. Pa 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. Emmett. He stopped. If it gets worse out there and Mateo 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 midafternoon when she heard horses in the yard.
Not one or two, but several, 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 Emmett, no Gideon. She stepped out onto the porch in her house shoes, and the cold hit her like a flat hand. Where is he?