She put her hand behind his head and tilted it just enough, and she held the cup to his lips and let a small amount of warm broth rest against them. His lips moved. "There," she said very quietly, not to Mateo. "There you go," he swallowed. The reflex was still working.
She gave him a little more. It took 4 minutes, which felt like 40 before his eyes opened. They were unfocused and dark and did not appear to know where they were, but they were open. "Can you hear me?" She said. His mouth moved.
"Not quite words. Don't try to talk. We're taking you back. I need you to stay awake." Mateo was already working the blankets around him. They got him onto his horse with the kind of ungainainely effort that left no room for dignity.
Most of its windows were dark, and Matteo held the reigns of Gideon's horse while Rosalie rode alongside with her hand on Gideon's arm because she could see from the way he was sitting that without something to anchor him, he was going to lose his balance, and she was not going through this exercise twice. She talked to him the whole way back. Not encouragement, not softness. She talked to him the way you talk to someone who needs to stay conscious, which is to say she gave him things to think about. She told him about the ration plan she'd been working on.
She told him about the soup she'd sent out at noon. Most of its windows were dark. She told him that Emmett had written out to help and had behaved with more sense than half the adult men she'd known. And she watched his face when she said that, and she saw something tighten in it that told her he had heard, and it meant something. The ranch came back out of the white in front of them, and she had never in her life been so relieved to see a set of buildings she didn't own.
Emmett was at the gate. He saw his father on the horse, and his face did something. She was glad she was close enough to witness relief so complete and so visible that it stripped away every year of careful management he'd built over it. "He's all right," she said. "Go open the back door." He ran.
They got Gideon inside and onto the kitchen bench, which was the nearest flat surface and the warmest room. She sent Matteo for dry blankets and told Roy, who peered from somewhere, to keep the fire the fire up and to find out whether there was any whiskey in the house, not for drinking, but for the cut on Gideon's temple, which was going to need cleaning. She knelt in front of him. He was more conscious. Now the warmth was doing its work, and the broth was still doing its work, and his eyes were tracking properly.
Both of them following the same thing at the same time. "How many fingers?" She said, holding up three. "Three," he said. His voice was rough and tired. "Good." She took his hands and hers and looked at them, checking the fingers, the color.
Not Frostbitten, barely. "Can you tell me your name?" He looked at her. "You know my name? I need to know you know it. Gideon Samuel Rusk." A pause.