“Why don’t you lie down and rest for a while?” Scully asked Evangeline, in the middle of the afternoon, when he and Abigail were seated at the table, which he’d drawn closer to the stove, sharing the fine new book of Arthurian tales. “You look plum tuckered out.”

She was exhausted, and there was little to do. Mr. Murdoch had brought in plenty of water, and the midday meal of turkey sandwiches was long past. Supper, a savory soup to which she would add dumplings when the time came, was simmering on the back of the stove.

With a grateful nod, Evangeline trudged over to the bed, unlaced her shoes, and stretched out beneath the covers in all her clothes.

When she awakened, all the lamps were lit and the delicious aroma of hot soup filled the house. She rose hastily and splashed her face and hands at the wash-stand, ashamed that she’d wasted any portion of the scant and therefore precious daylight, but feeling restored, too.

Scully was working at his mysterious figures again, while Abigail and the kitten played quietly in their usual place in front of the fireplace.

“What are you doing?” Evangeline ventured to ask, passing the table, though she would have readily admitted it was none of her business.

Scully looked up, but there was a faraway expression in his eyes, as though his mind had gone ahead to some new place, leaving his body to follow in its own time. “Just some figuring,” he said. “Cattle and land prices, the like.”

“You’re working out how much to ask for your share of the ranch,” she said. She hadn’t meant to utter the thought aloud, and was embarrassed that she had, because the tone of it had revealed too much.

“And the cattle Big John’s driving up here from Mexico,” he answered, with a nod.

“Oh,” Evangeline responded. There wasn’t much else to say, in the circumstances. She fetched the dumpling batter, which she’d left in a shallow kettle in the pantry, covered by a clean piece of flour-sacking, and proceeded to the stove, to begin spooning balls of dough onto the surface of the soup.

“I suppose Murdoch’s reached Springwater by now,” Scully speculated. “Leastways, I hope so. The snow doesn’t look like it will stick, but it’s going to be cold tonight all the same.”

Evangeline considered the things that might happen to a lone, aging peddler with a wagon full of goods, in a land populated by hungry creatures of all sorts and species. “Mr. Murdoch is a seasoned traveler,” she said, addressing herself as much as Scully. “Surely he knows how to look after himself.”

“Springwater’s ten miles from here,” Scully reflected. “That’s a long way, especially at this time of year.”

There was no arguing that, so she made no effort to do so. The journey between the stagecoach station and the ranch had seemed longer to Evangeline, in some ways, than the one from Pennsylvania to Spring-water. No doubt the latter had been just as fraught with danger, if not more so, given the factors of train robbers and highwaymen, the ever-present threat of hostile Indians, and the suspicious-looking “gentlemen” who seemed to think unaccompanied women were courting their attentions, merely by venturing out alone.