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**Part 2**

The first three days passed without either of them raising their voice.

Lydia woke before dawn and moved through the cabin as if she were still trying not to be noticed. She swept the floor that did not need sweeping. She stacked the split wood already stacked beside the hearth. When Rowan came in from checking the trapline, she had coffee waiting and her hands folded in her lap. She did not ask what he wanted done. She simply watched his face the way a person watches weather, waiting to learn which way the wind would turn.

On the fourth morning he found her standing at the edge of the clearing with the axe in both hands, studying a length of deadfall he had dragged in the week before.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I know.” She set the axe down. “I wanted to see if I still could.”

He took the axe from her and split the log in three clean strokes. She watched the way the grain opened. When he offered her the next piece, she shook her head.

“My hands shake after the third swing,” she said. “They have for a year.”

He did not ask why. He finished the wood himself and carried it inside. That evening she sat closer to the fire than she had before. The distance between her chair and his had narrowed by the length of a boot.

On the sixth night the temperature dropped hard enough that the water in the tin basin froze solid by morning. Rowan woke to the sound of the latch on her door lifting and settling again. He lay still and listened. After a moment the door opened all the way. She stood in the doorway with the quilt from her bed wrapped around her shoulders.

“The wind comes through the chinking on that wall,” she said. Her voice was steady. “I can feel it on my face when I lie down.”

“I’ll mud it tomorrow.”

She nodded but did not leave. The fire had burned down to coals. In the low light her face was all angles and shadow.

“You said the door latches from the inside,” she said. “It does. I checked.”

“Good.”

“I keep checking.” She pulled the quilt tighter. “I don’t know when I’ll stop.”

He sat up. The blanket fell to his waist. She did not look away, but she did not come closer either.

“You can leave it open if you want,” he said. “Or closed. Whatever lets you sleep.”

She considered that. Then she stepped back into her room and left the door ajar the width of her hand. Rowan lay down again and stared at the narrow strip of darkness until his eyes closed.

Vernon Hayes rode up the mountain on the ninth day.

Rowan heard the horse before he saw the rider. He was splitting kindling behind the cabin when the sound of iron shoes on stone carried up from the switchback. He set the axe against the chopping block and walked around to the front. Lydia was at the creek filling the water bucket. She straightened when she saw his face.

“Stay inside,” he said.

She did not argue. She set the bucket down and went in through the side door. By the time Hayes cleared the last line of trees, the cabin looked empty.

Hayes was a big man gone soft at the middle, with a beard the color of dirty snow and a repeating rifle laid across his saddle. Two younger men rode behind him. One of them had a coil of rope tied to his horn.

“Creed,” Hayes called. He reined in twenty paces from the porch. “Heard you bought something that belongs to me.”

“Heard wrong.”

“Old man Hayes sold her to me first. We had an understanding.” Hayes spat. “Then he took your silver and drank it before I could collect. That makes her stolen property.”

“She’s not property.”

Hayes smiled without showing teeth. “Everything’s property if the price is right. I’m willing to be reasonable. You give her over, I give you back your fifty dollars and we forget the inconvenience. You keep her, and I start wondering what else you’ve got up here that might settle the debt.”

Rowan rested his hand on the porch post. The rifle was inside, above the mantel. He had left it there on purpose. Hayes’s men were watching his hands.

“She’s not here,” he said.

“Then you won’t mind if we look.”

“I mind.”

One of the younger men shifted in his saddle. Hayes lifted two fingers and the man settled again.

“You’ve been up here a long time, Creed. People forget what you did in the war. I haven’t. A man who can do those things can do other things when he’s lonely. I’m offering you a clean way out. Take it.”

The door behind Rowan opened. Lydia stepped onto the porch. She had put on the brown dress and pulled her hair back the way it had been the day he bought her. Her hands were empty.

“I’m here,” she said.

Hayes’s smile widened. “There she is. Come on down, girl. Your new arrangements are waiting.”

Lydia looked at Rowan. He did not move. She turned back to Hayes.

“He paid my father,” she said. “You didn’t. That makes whatever understanding you had worth less than the whiskey my father spent the money on.”

Hayes’s expression cooled. “You’ve got a mouth on you now. We’ll fix that.”

“You’ll have to come get me first.”

The younger man with the rope started to swing down. Rowan stepped off the porch. He did not run. He walked until he stood between Lydia and the horses.

“Last time I’m going to say it,” he told Hayes. “Turn around.”

Hayes studied him for a long moment. Then he laughed once, short and ugly.

“You’re one man, Creed. I’ve got three. And I’ve got time. Winter’s coming. You can’t watch every trail.” He gathered his reins. “I’ll be back when the snow sticks. Bring friends. Or don’t. Either way, she leaves with me.”

They rode out the way they had come. The sound of the horses faded slowly. When the ridge was empty again, Rowan turned. Lydia was still on the porch. Her arms were wrapped around herself, but her chin was up.

“You shouldn’t have come out,” he said.

“If I stayed inside, he would have thought I was hiding. Hiding makes men like him curious.” She looked past him at the empty trail. “He’ll come back.”

“I know.”

“What do we do?”

Rowan picked up the axe he had left by the block. The weight of it settled into his palm the way it always had.

“We get ready,” he said.

That afternoon he showed her how to load the spare rifle. Her hands shook on the first three tries. On the fourth the cartridge seated cleanly. He did not praise her. He simply nodded and had her do it again until the motion smoothed. They moved the woodpile so it blocked the clearest line of sight from the lower trail. He dug a shallow pit behind the cabin and lined it with stones for a second fire, far enough that smoke would not mark the house if they needed to stay dark. Lydia carried water and did not complain when her shoulders burned.

At dusk they ate beans and salt pork in silence. When the plates were empty she said, “You told him I wasn’t property.”

“You’re not.”

“You paid fifty dollars.”

“I paid to stop something worse. That’s not the same thing.”

She turned the spoon in her fingers. “My father used to say a daughter was only worth what a man would give for her. He said it like it was a kindness. Like he was doing the measuring so someone else wouldn’t have to.”

“Your father was a drunk and a coward.”

“Yes.” She set the spoon down. “But he wasn’t wrong about the measuring. Men have been doing it my whole life. You’re the first one who looked at the number and decided it was too low.”

Rowan stood and carried the plates to the basin. The water was cold enough to ache. He washed them anyway.

“I’m not a good man,” he said with his back to her. “I’ve done things in the war that don’t wash off. I came up here so I wouldn’t have to watch decent people decide what to do with me. Buying you doesn’t make me better than Hayes. It just means I got there first.”

“I know what you are,” she said. “I watched your face when you counted the silver. You looked like you wanted to be sick. Hayes wouldn’t have looked like that.”

He dried his hands on the rag and turned. She was still at the table, watching him with the same steady attention she had given the apple the day he met her.

“When he comes back,” she said, “I won’t go inside.”

“Lydia—”

“I spent twenty years learning how to make myself small. It didn’t keep me safe. It only taught them I would stay small if they told me to.” She stood. The chair legs scraped once against the floor. “If he wants me, he can try to take me while I’m looking at him. I won’t make it easy.”

Rowan crossed the room. He stopped an arm’s length away. Close enough to see the faint scar at the corner of her mouth that he had not noticed before. Far enough that she could step back if she wanted.

“All right,” he said.

She nodded. Then, carefully, she reached out and set her hand on his wrist, just above the place where the cuff of his shirt ended. Her fingers were cold. She left them there for three heartbeats, then let go.

“Thank you,” she said. “For not being him.”

Outside, the wind moved through the pines. Somewhere lower on the mountain an owl called once and went quiet. Rowan banked the fire. Lydia checked the latch on her door, then left it open the width of her hand again. He lay down on his side of the cabin and listened to the small sounds of her settling. The rifle rested against the wall within reach of both of them.

Sleep came late. When it did, he dreamed of snow, and of hoofprints filling in behind them as fast as they were made. In the dream Lydia stood on the porch with the spare rifle in her hands, and when Hayes rode into the clearing she did not look away.

He woke before dawn with the taste of cold iron in his mouth and the certain knowledge that the dream had only been practice. The real thing was still coming up the mountain. And this time, neither of them intended to be small.