“What about you?” Evangeline asked, touched by his rough kindness as she had never been by Charles’s tender neglect.

He grinned. “I don’t think Big John would appreciate it much, if I were to bundle up with you,” he answered, well aware that Abigail was sleeping again. “Go on. She’ll be warmer, too, if the two of you snuggle up.”

Evangeline climbed awkwardly into the back and, with some quick maneuvering, got Abigail onto her lap without waking her. When they were both wrapped in the faintly gamey bear hides, Scully set the mules moving again with a low whistle and a slap of the reins.

* * *

Twilight was casting shadows over the snow when the house first came into view, and the cries of wolves and coyotes echoed from the hillsides and the timber. Evangeline peered through the gathering gloom at the log structure that would be her home, and Abigail’s, from then on.

It probably had no more than three rooms, Evangeline estimated, not counting the lean-to, but to her, on that particular evening, the place looked like a palace. There was a barn with an empty corral adjoining, and several other out-buildings and sheds. Fledgling fruit trees, naked in the chill, were lined up like soldiers on the low hill above the house. Snow rested heavily on the roof, and two chimneys jutted, one of tin, one of stone, toward the darkening sky.

“Are we home, Mama?” Abigail asked, blinking and rubbing her eyes. “Is that our house?”

Evangeline could only nod, being too weary and too cold to do much else.

Scully seemed as energetic as he had that morning, before dawn, when he’d sat at one of the tables in the stagecoach station, shoveling in the breakfast June-bug had served him as though he were starved. He drew the team and sleigh to a stop in front of the house—it might more properly be described as a cabin, Evangeline thought uncritically—and she looked at the windows, shuttered and set high in the thick log walls.

“Real glass,” Scully said proudly, following her gaze.

She and Abigail climbed down from the sleigh, with his help, and Abigail raced forward and threw open the heavy door. It was not the prospect of shelter that drew her daughter, Evangeline knew, but simple curiosity. Back in Pennsylvania, she’d done a great deal of boasting about going to live on a ranch, where she would have a pony and become personally acquainted with wild Indians.

Evangeline followed her daughter, but at a much slower pace.

It proved to be colder inside than out, and there was a dankness in the air, underlaid with the smells of wood ash, old cigar smoke, and musty linens. It was a house in dire need of a woman’s tending, Evangeline thought, with a rising of her spirits. First thing in the morning, she would push up her sleeves and set to work putting the place right.

After pushing the door closed, Scully found matches and lit a kerosene lantern standing in the center of a crudely made table. In the shadows, which were now receding into the corners with seeming reluctance, Evangeline made out the shapes of a cookstove, a bedstead, and a washstand with a pitcher and bowl on top.