The thought was so terrible that every time it entered her mind, she squeezed her eyes shut and whispered that she was sorry.

Sorry to God.

Sorry to Mama.

Sorry to the two tiny creatures bundled against her chest.

Mostly, she was sorry because she knew that before morning, she might have to choose.

Outside, the Montana wind screamed across the valley hard enough to shake snow from the roof beams. The windows of the little Pell cabin had disappeared beneath white drifts. Frost crawled along the inside walls in glittering veins.

Inside, four pieces of firewood remained.

Hattie had counted them twenty-seven times.

One thick piece.

Two medium ones.

One thin branch she had broken over her knee.

That was all.

The iron stove had gone from red-hot to warm, from warm to barely breathing. Hattie sat with her back pressed against it, wrapped in her father’s old buffalo coat.

Inside the coat were two newborn babies.

The boy was stronger.

Hattie had named him Asa, after the grandfather she remembered only from a faded photograph.

The girl was smaller.

Her breathing frightened Hattie.

So Hattie had named her Mercy.

Because mercy was what they needed.

“Come on,” Hattie whispered.

Mercy’s tiny mouth remained closed.

Hattie dipped the corner of a clean rag into the last cup of milk and touched it against the baby’s lips.

Nothing.

“Please.”

The baby’s eyelids fluttered.

Hattie tried again.

“Just a little.”

Mercy turned her face away.

Hattie’s throat tightened.

She wanted to cry.

She didn’t.

Tears froze. Tears wasted warmth.

At least that was what Papa had once told her when they were caught outside during a November storm.

So Hattie swallowed everything.

Her fear.

Her hunger.

Her anger.

And the sentence she had refused to say aloud for six days.

Finally, it escaped.

“Nobody came back for me.”

The wind answered.

Six days earlier, her father, Tom Pell, had saddled the bay gelding before sunrise.

Mama had already been dead for several hours.

Hattie had found Papa kneeling beside the bed, holding his wife’s hand.

He hadn’t cried.

That frightened Hattie more than crying would have.

The twins had been born early during the night. Mama had weakened after the second baby came.

By dawn, she was gone.

The babies screamed from hunger.

Papa stood.

“Hattie.”

She looked at him.

“I’m riding for Twin Falls.”

“Now?”

“I’ll bring Doc Hollister. And Mrs. Weaver. She can feed the babies.”

Hattie looked toward the window.

Snow was already falling.

“Papa, don’t.”

“I’ll be back before nightfall.”

“You promise?”

Tom Pell had crouched before his daughter and put both hands around hers.

“Before nightfall.”

Then he kissed her forehead.

Those had been the last words her father ever spoke to her.