She shook her head at him. “Naw, don’t do that. He suffer, we all gonna suffer.”

“I’ll do it,” Norman said. “I need to put those horses up anyhow.”

“You seen the ice busting out the river?”

“Yuht. Godawful big chunks shelving up atop each other, riding and jamming the channel broken in the middle.”

She nodded. “Been years I seen that. Used to love I was down to see it. Don’t get round like old times, me.”

“I appreciate you made it down to here. That horse would’ve rode double, I bet.”

“Less far to fall, them snowshoe.” She grinned at him. “Get on, put you horse up and fix that doctor, him be hurtin pretty good by now I bet.”

“Yuht. I bet.” He turned to the bed, Leah watching him. He felt awkward, oversized in the room of women. His sister in the straight chair by the washstand. She’d gone out while he was talking to Marthe and was back in her skirts. So he only settled his gaze serious upon Leah and said, “I’ll be back.”

She said, “I know.”

To Connie he said, “I’ll take care of your horse.” As he went out Leah asked Connie about the ride uphill. Then he pulled the door shut. The doctor was missing. Norman went downstairs and found him in the kitchen standing over the range with a fresh cup of coffee. Norman pointed to the door to the cellar steps and said, “Down there’s a piddly cask of applejack. Cider in the barrel’s not bad too. I got to care for my horses; then I might join you in a tipple.” The doctor raised rheumy eyes upon Norman and gazed at him hard, the look of a man caught between being found out and deliverance. He sighed and slowly twisted his cup in the saucer, his motion deliberate, calibrated. He pursed his mouth and relaxed it open. “The girl is fine?”

“She is.”

“I feel I’m no help here.”

“You’re here come help is called for.”

“That’s right.” The doctor twisted the cup a final time and let go of it. “You need help with your horses?”

“No,” said Norman. “Go on down cellar. Could be a jolt’d do us both good. I’ll be only a couple of minutes.” Thinking, Let him go ahead and satisfy himself without being watched and then catch up to him before he’s too far gone. Thinking that inside himself was the same dweller owned the doctor; thinking his fields and woodlot and numbing round of work was not so different from the sweetened bite of drink. He wondered what it was for the doctor. And wondered if he’d grow to know his own more as age came to him. Hoped it would not be so. And saw no reason to believe that. So he scooped up Marthe’s bearpaws to set in the entryway where the webbing would stay cold and coatless went out into the night, leaving the doctor to himself.