It was a perfect log cabin, thoughtfully sited, handsomely built, with strong chinked walls and even windows paned with glass.  The barn held the same carefully considered dimensions and tight construction.

The enormity of such a life broke over her.  Who built this house?  The Family were brave but they had each other.  Out here settlers would be completely alone.

“That plowed field has crops started,” she said.  “That means they were here not that long ago, doesn’t it?  How strange.  Who were they?  Why did they leave?”

He’d left the door open.  Charlotte went inside.  She ran her hand slowly over the rock fireplace, stooped to sift the ash in the hearth, felt the smooth-planked floor.  She sat on the wooden bed frame built into one corner.  Another just like it occupied the opposite corner.  Two men?  Or parents on one side, children on the other?  What kind of parents?  Hearty, she decided, strong, unafraid.  Assuming the father had built the cabin, she saw him as a determined man with good hands.  And the wife?  Like all the women she knew, burdened but resilient, still able to find occasions to laugh.

She came back out.  Chace was waiting.  She walked over to the broad cleared field.  Hardly anything was more than ankle-high, corn, beans, potatoes, peppers.  She knew the seeds or cuttings for those had once traveled a long way, zealously guarded, more precious than gold.  Now, the birds and various passing animals would get the entire crop.

“I’ll bet they had a cow.  And chickens.  And a dog.  And I think there were children, so maybe a pony.”  She was daydreaming up an entire family and how they lived.

“We could stay a while if you want.  We’re getting closer.”

Closer.  She focused on the barn.  “Real shelter for the horses.  They’d hardly know what to do with it.”

“After all the brushing and oats I think they’d have their minds turned in that direction anyway and it wouldn’t be hard to figure out.”  She knew he was still unhappy that she hadn’t listened to him and had fed the last of the oats to his horse as well as hers.  “Rain’s another consideration.  Coming soon.”

“It’s good with you, then?”

“But not to sleep in the house, if that’s what you were thinking.”  She quietly noted the continuing thought that wherever they slept, it would be together.  “Staying with the horses is the thing.”

Charlotte nodded.  “I wouldn’t want to sleep in that house.  It’d give me the shivers.”

Charlotte watered the horses and led them to stalls.  She stood up in the loft and threw down armfuls of sweet hay.  “So upsetting,” she called down to him.  “Poor well-fed horses.”