And none of that mattered because she was counting. Two boys, Gideon, Matteo, running from the bunk house with Roy behind him, the ranch hands coming out, everyone. She counted again. Everyone was there. Emmett had Jaime against his side with his arm around his brother's shoulders.
And Jaime was watching the fire begin to show through the kitchen window with wide eyes and a stillness that was their shock or particular steadiness that sometimes comes to people who have been. Frightened enough times to know how to stand inside it. Gideon appeared beside her. He had come out behind her. She didn't know when.
She hadn't seen him go back in, and he had a blanket in his h hand hands that he put around her shoulders without asking. And then he stood beside her and looked at the kitchen window. It's not the whole house, he said. No, she said the chimney housing and the section of roof above it. If Matteo<unk>'s men can get water on the north wall from outside, we can keep it from spreading.
He was already turning to Matteo. She heard him giving the instructions she just laid out. Heard Matteo moving the men. Heard the organized noise of people responding to a problem with direction. She stood with the ledger under one arm and the recipe book box against her chest and the blanket around her shoulders and she watched the kitchen window.
Jaime appeared beside her. He put his hand in the pocket of the coat he'd grabbed correctly. He'd grabbed his coat and he looked at the window. "Is the starter still in there?" He said. She looked at him.
"The crock," he said. "Is it in the kitchen?" "Yes," she said. "It's in the kitchen." He was quiet. Is it gone? Thought she thought about the packed earth floor and the stone counter where the crock sat away from the wooden surfaces that were burning.
The crock itself might survive, she said. Stone doesn't burn. If the fire stays in the roof and the men stop it at the wall, the counter might be intact. But you don't know, he said. Not yet.
He stood beside her in the snow in his coat and his boots with one sock still halfway off his foot. And he watched the window and she stood beside him and watched it too. It took an hour and a half to stop the fire from spreading. Matteo's men worked with bucket from the well and the snow itself, packing it against the north exterior wall to cool the heat, and Roy directed two of them onto the roof on the south side to clear the burning debris before the wind could carry it. Gideon was in it with them.