Evangeline shook her head. “I should think tomorrow evening, at the earliest. It’s a long way to the Springwater station, remember.”

“I don’t think I can wait that long to twiddle,” Abigail said seriously.

Evangeline took care not to smile. “There is the chamber pot,” she replied.

Abigail wrinkled her nose.

Soon after, they donned their cloaks, and Evangeline got the rifle down from over the door. Once she’d murmured a silent prayer that there would be no wolves or other predators awaiting them, she led her child out into the frozen morning. It wasn’t as if she could have avoided going out eventually; the stock would need feeding before supper, the cow wanted milking, and there were probably eggs to gather.

They used the privy, which was only slightly more tolerable than the chamber pot, then returned to the house without incident. The achievement gave Evangeline a heady feeling of accomplishment, simple though it was.

After sharing breakfast, Evangeline assigned Abigail a lesson to study—she was memorizing a long poem—then set about dusting and sweeping. Made bold by her successful foray to the outhouse, Evangeline hung the bed quilts out to air, draping them over the hitching rails in front of the house. Then she swept all the floors, including the one in the lean-to, and shook out the single braid rug that lay at the foot of the bed in the main room.

She hung her dresses and Abigail’s from nails driven into the wall, and used the travel chest to store their other belongings, there being no bureau, then brought in more firewood from the supply Scully had left just outside the front door. As she warmed the leftover stew for dinner, Evangeline finally allowed herself to wonder how Scully was progressing, if he’d run into any sort of trouble along the way to the station. She offered another prayer for his safe return, well aware that her motives in doing so were at least partly selfish. A prayer, she reasoned, in her own defense, was a prayer.

Resolutely, she dug out Big John’s photographic likeness and propped it in plain sight on the mantelpiece.

In the late afternoon, Evangeline and Abigail bundled up again, to make their way to the barn and tend the animals. Abigail carried the milk bucket and a small basket for the eggs, while Evangeline brought the rifle. As the shadows began to lengthen, some of her earlier bravado dissipated, but she put on a smile for Abigail’s sake.

The familiar smells of the barn were a comfort, however, by virtue of their very ordinariness; she saw the mare Abigail called Sugarplum, and the cow bearing the unimaginative name of Bessie. There were other horses as well, a huge black and white pinto gelding that probably belonged to Big John, and a compact sorrel mare.

Evangeline checked the water troughs, still full from when Scully had done the chores that morning, and put out more hay and grain. Then, while Abigail tried to coax a barn cat out from behind a stack of crates, Evangeline milked the cow.