“Propane tank must be empty, so I guess I’ll have to use the woodstove, provided I can ever get a fire going,” he said.

He was about to give up ever being warm again, when he glanced around the room and noticed a rusty old match holder on the wall to the left of the stove. The burlap curtain hanging over the window where the vent pipe went outside covered part of it, but still Cody fussed at himself for not seeing it earlier as he made his way toward it. His mama always kept a container of matches a lot like that on the wall beside the stove at the ranch house.

“Country folks put things where they need them,” he said and reached for a match, and discovered that there were only six left.

He held one of the matches close to the little chips of wood and struck it against the stove. Nothing happened. He tried again, and the head of the match popped off, but there was no flame. The same thing happened with the second one.

His heart had begun to beat fast, and he had visions of busting a bale of hay and covering himself with a layer of the stuff just to get warm. “Four more tries, and then Jesse may find me frozen when he shows up here.” He thought of his brother and the rest of the family, all warm on Sunflower Ranch while the cold was seeping into his bone marrow.

At the thought of his brother, he jerked his phone out of his pocket only to see that the battery was almost dead. He didn’t even try to call but sent a text: I’m fine. Slid off the road not far from Max Hilton’s old barn. Will hole up here until storm blows over. He hit send, and the screen went dark.

He tried the third match. When it flared, he held it carefully next to the kindling until a tiny little blaze started, and then he blew on it to encourage the thing to grow. That tiny blaze meant more to him right then than all the money he had in the bank. When the blaze finally ignited and warmth began to spread out from the stove, he slumped down on the old brown-and-orange-plaid sofa not far away. His eyes slid shut, but he snapped them open and recited the signs of hypothermia out loud, starting with shivering and ending with drowsiness.