Evidently sensing that she represented no danger to them, the deer lingered a few moments, sniffing the air, then turned at last and sprang off into the timber, white tails bobbing in the early light.

Smiling, Evangeline picked her way over a natural pathway of stones to the place where the crystal-pure water spilled down a low rock face, there to fill the first bucket. Then she filled the other. It would be the first of several trips, and by the time she’d fetched enough to fill the hot water reservoir in the house and put coffee on to boil, Bessie was demanding to be milked with such insistence that she fairly rattled the windows. Abigail was toasting bread for herself and Scully when Evangeline finally finished with the livestock and the chickens and came back to the house, hands numb, face stinging.

“Look, Mama,” Abigail chimed, showing several slices of bread, only partially blackened, on a plate. “I cooked!”

“Indeed you did,” Evangeline said, and Scully, lying on his good side on the cot, his head propped in one hand, winked at her.

Trying not to show how cold she was, Evangeline busied herself setting down the milk bucket, taking off the pistol and her cloak. She would have to go back out to get the eggs and chop some firewood soon, but the prospect was entirely too daunting, with her toes and fingers ready to fall off.

“The horses all right?” Scully asked. She could tell he’d been holding back the question, that even then it had escaped him against his will.

She gave him a wry look. “Would that you were doing as well,” she said. Leaving the massacre of breakfast to Abigail for a little while, she stood near the stove, both hands extended. The process of warming them was painful; she had intended to knit herself a new pair of mittens on the long journey, but the air had been too full of soot and smoke for such work on the train, and the ride too bumpy on the stagecoaches. At least Abigail had several pair, all made with thick wool. That was the important thing.

“I can’t stay in this bed, Evangeline,” Scully said.

“Of course you can,” Evangeline argued.

“He probably needs to twiddle,” announced Abigail, worldly-wise.

He laughed aloud at that, and Evangeline, after a moment’s mortification, joined in. “That I do,” he admitted.

“You’ll use the chamber pot, then,” Evangeline informed him.

“Not while I have a breath in my body,” came the response.

She gave up then. If the bull-headed man thought he could make it to the privy and back without falling on his face it was no concern of hers. Well, not much, anyway. She’d be the one who had to drag him back inside; there was no getting around that. “Do whatever you like,” she said, none too graciously.

“I’ll need my pants,” he answered.

Evangeline considered refusing to fetch his spare set of clothes, then decided it was a pointless effort and went into the lean-to to retrieve the necessary garments. Abigail located his boots, and she and Evangeline kept their backs turned while, with agonizing slowness, Scully dressed himself. At least partially.