The cold beyond the ranch gate was different from the cold in the yard. The yard had walls and buildings breaking the wind. Out here there was nothing between them, and whatever Wyoming felt like doing, and what Wyoming felt like doing was sustained and serious and absolutely indifferent. She rode behind Matteo, and she kept her face down, and she did not think about being cold. She thought about the things Gideon had told her in fragments over 3 weeks descriptions of the north pasture offered in the practical way of a working rancher explaining his land.
Never as conversation. The ravine, the rock formation on the east side that cattle used as a windbreak, the slope that iced faster than any other because of the way water ran off the hill above. They found his horse first. The animal was standing in the shelter of a cluster of scrub pine with its reinss dragging unhe hurt confused and very glad to see other horses. He won't be far, Matteo said.
A horse goes down, a man rolls. He wouldn't have gone far if he was conscious. And if he wasn't, she said. Mateo didn't answer that. They found him 12 minutes later.
And those 12 minutes were the long Rosalie had experienced since the morning in the Grand Hotel dining room. He was on the east side of a shallow depression in the ground on his side. And when she got off horse and went to him, her heart was doing something she didn't have attention to spare for. She put her hand on his face. Cold, but not the wrong kind of cold.
Still alive, cold. He made a sound. Gideon. She pulled her hand back and put it against his neck, feeling the pulse. Present, unsteady, but present.
Gideon, you need to open your eyes. He didn't open his eyes. But he made the sound again, which was something. He hit his head, Matteo said, crouching beside her. See the gash temple?
He's been out here long enough to be a problem. She was already opening the burlap sack. She pulled the sealed kettle out, pried the lid off, and the steam hit the cold air between them and vanished instantly. She had a tin cup inside the pack. She filled it, let it cool for 10 seconds.
She didn't have to spare. And then she did the thing she'd seen her mother do once with a man who came in from a bad freeze. She didn't try to get him sitting. She put her hand behind his head and tilted it ju just enough and she held the cup to his lips and let a small amount of warm broth rest against them. His lips moved.