“That’s generally how I understand wives.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
Despite herself, she nearly smiled.
She caught it.
“Why me?”
Gideon looked over Martha’s shoulder toward the mercantile.
Mrs. Bell was standing at the window.
Watching.
So was Abernathy.
Gideon’s jaw tightened.
“Because these people think being thin makes someone useful and being pretty makes someone strong.”
His eyes came back to Martha.
“They’re fools.”
Something twisted beneath her ribs.
“You don’t know me.”
“I know you walked out of that store with three pennies and didn’t let your children see you break.”
Martha stopped breathing.
Gideon lowered his voice.
“I know you give the youngest the middle of the biscuit because it’s soft. I know your boy’s boots are too small because you keep putting new leather on the toes. I know you haven’t bought meat for yourself since August.”
Her anger disappeared.
A far more dangerous feeling replaced it.
Fear.
“How do you know that?”
“I notice things.”
“Why?”
Gideon’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
But Martha saw it.
There was something he was not saying.
Then Bess sneezed.
Gideon looked at the child.
“Snow tonight.”
Martha closed her eyes.
When she opened them, she said the most frightening words she had spoken since Thomas died.
“Caleb.”
“Yes, Ma?”
“Go to the shack.”
Caleb stared.
“Get our blankets. The cooking pot. Your father’s tools.”
“You mean—”
“Yes.”
Martha looked at Gideon.
“If I discover you’ve lied to me about anything, I will take your own ax and split your skull.”
Gideon considered this.
“Fair.”
By sunset, Oak Haven had disappeared behind them.
The wagon climbed higher into the Bitterroot Mountains as gray clouds lowered over the pines.
Martha kept Sarah and Bess pressed beneath either arm, sheltering them beneath quilts.
Caleb sat beside Gideon on the wagon bench.
The boy had said almost nothing.
After an hour, he finally asked, “You really kill a bear with an ax?”
“No.”
Caleb looked disappointed.
“Knife?”
“No.”
“Gun?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“It stole my fish.”
“And?”
“I let it.”
Caleb frowned.
“People say—”
“People say lots.”
Martha watched Gideon from beneath her bonnet.
That, at least, was true.
The wagon climbed another steep bend.
Bess began crying from the cold.
Without speaking, Gideon stopped, removed the enormous bearskin coat from his own shoulders, and handed it back.
“You’ll freeze,” Martha said.
“No.”
“You’re wearing a shirt.”
“Wool.”
“So?”
“So I’ll be cold.”
Martha frowned.
“You said you wouldn’t freeze.”
“I won’t.”
“That doesn’t mean you won’t suffer.”
Gideon looked at her.
Something passed between them.
Small.
Almost invisible.
He turned around.
“Give the coat to the little one.”
Martha wrapped Bess.
Then Sarah.
Then Caleb.
By the time darkness swallowed the mountains, three children were sleeping beneath the mountain man’s coat while the mountain man himself shivered at the reins.
Martha noticed.
She said nothing.
But she noticed.
The cabin appeared suddenly between the trees.
No.
Cabin was the wrong word.
The building was massive, made from thick pine logs with a stone chimney rising above its steep roof. A barn stood behind it. Smoke curled into the dark sky.
Yellow firelight glowed from two windows.
Martha’s heart clenched.
A home.
