“Frankly, darlin’, as Rhett Butler said in Gone with the Wind, I don’t give a damn, but I imagine your ears appreciate the warmth. And here’s something else that your hands might say thank you for.” She held out a pair of work gloves. “They’re pretty well worn, but they’re better than nothing.”

“I don’t need them, and they probably would be too small anyway?” he said.

“In case you didn’t notice, I’m a tall girl. I have big hands and big feet, and if you will remember my sweatpants were long enough for you too. The gloves will fit you, and you are a doctor. Your hands are important, but hey, if your ears are as much as you want to protect from frostbite—not to mention blisters on your hands from swinging that ax—then again, it’s your business,” she said.

He took the gloves from her and shoved his hands down into them. “Is there anything you don’t have in that van?”

“Not much, but this fiasco has taught me to put a box of emergency candy bars and some of those packages of instant coffee in the van before I take it out again,” she said.

Cody picked up the ax and started splitting wood again, but he didn’t have anything else to say. Stevie went to work shoveling out the three remaining stalls and putting down fresh straw in each one. The barn would be clean for whoever leased or bought Max’s ranch.

At noon Cody had finished splitting and stacking all the wood. Stevie was done with the stalls and had even swept up the barn floor. And neither of them had spoken a single word to each other. Dixie had come out to romp around in the few bales of hay stacked against the far wall and play hide-and-seek with the cats.

“Time for your dinner, little girl,” Stevie said as she picked up the cria and took her into the tack room that seemed too warm now. She changed Dixie’s diaper, fixed and fed her the noon bottle, and still Cody hadn’t come in.

“Let him stew out there in the cold,” Stevie muttered as she added a can of corn and one of crushed tomatoes to the leftover hash and made a reasonable facsimile of soup. Then she added milk to a few cups of the flour she found in the cabinet and a little of the leftover bacon grease for cooking oil. “I’m having hoecake and soup for dinner. If he wants to starve, that’s his business.”

“Something smells good,” Cody said when he came through the door.

“He speaks,” Stevie said. “We’re having soup and hoecakes. You might know them as campfire biscuits. I had to cook it right on the top of the stove, but I did clean it as best I could.”