Shaw almost smiled.
Faun stepped forward.
“What did Papa say about me?”
Gideon’s face softened.
“He said you gave the best hugs west of the Missouri.”
Faun considered this.
“That’s probably true.”
Maylin laughed.
The laugh immediately became a sob.
Faun and Shaw rushed into her arms.
For several minutes, Maylin held her daughters and cried.
Then Faun suddenly remembered the presents.
The first package contained a wooden horse.
Shaw gasped.
Faun received a cloth doll wearing a blue dress.
There were winter coats.
Mittens.
Boots.
Books.
Peppermint candy.
Maylin watched her daughters become children again.
Then she noticed something about Shaw’s wooden horse.
One ear was slightly larger than the other.
Her heart stopped.
“Daniel made that.”
Gideon nodded.
“The toys were his.”
Maylin lifted the horse.
“He made them before he died?”
“Yes.”
“He meant to give these to them?”
“Last Christmas. He hadn’t finished them.”
Daniel died only weeks later.
Maylin looked at the doll in Faun’s hands.
These were the last Christmas gifts their father had ever made.
“And everything else?” she whispered.
“The food, clothes and blankets?”
Gideon looked uncomfortable.
“I bought those.”
“Why?”
“I owed Daniel.”
“For what?”
“My life.”
That evening, the blizzard became worse.
Gideon could no longer safely leave.
Maylin allowed him to sleep beside the fireplace.
But as the hours passed, she noticed unsettling details.
He knew where Daniel had kept the whetstone.
He knew one board beside the pantry squeaked.
He knew the chimney damper jammed if pushed too far.
Finally, Maylin asked:
“You’ve been inside this cabin before.”
Gideon became still.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before.”
“I would remember you.”
“You weren’t home.”
Maylin stared.
“What exactly were you to Daniel?”
Gideon sighed.
“Before he met you, Daniel wasn’t quite the man you knew.”
Maylin frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“We rode together.”
“Rode where?”
“Places decent people shouldn’t.”
Slowly, Gideon revealed the truth.
Years before Daniel married Maylin, he and Gideon had ridden with men who stole cattle from corrupt land syndicates and hijacked freight belonging to powerful businessmen.
Daniel eventually abandoned that life.
Gideon did not.
Years later, Daniel found Gideon wounded in Idaho and saved him from men hunting him.
“He told me something while sewing up my shoulder,” Gideon said.
“What?”
“That a man isn’t defined by what he did on his worst day.”
Gideon stared into the fire.
“He said a man is defined by what he chooses to do when the next day comes.”
Maylin understood why Daniel had trusted him.
Then someone slammed a fist against the cabin door.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Gideon jumped to his feet.
“Mrs. Harrow!”
Maylin recognized the voice.
