“If I keep them and the spring closes, they die.”
“So your entire plan depends on my father keeping his word.”
The rancher looked at her.
“So did the marriage.”
The words came out harder than he intended.
Her face changed.
He immediately regretted them.
“I didn’t mean—”
“You did.”
“No.”
“You did.”
She stood.
He caught himself before reaching for her arm.
“Please.”
She stopped.
He said, “The marriage began as insurance.”
“That is true.”
“But it isn’t that anymore.”
Her eyes lifted.
“What is it?”
The rancher opened his mouth.
Then stopped.
She waited.
Nothing.
Pain moved across her face.
“Exactly.”
She left.
He remained at the table until midnight.
The next morning, he found breakfast beside his chair.
She had still cooked.
That somehow made him feel worse.
For three days, they spoke only when necessary.
Then one of the ranch hands was thrown from a horse.
The young man landed badly and could not stand.
The rancher was in the north pasture.
The foreman shouted for help.
His wife ran from the house.
The injured man lay beside the corral holding his leg.
Panic had already spread among the others.
She knelt.
“Don’t move him.”
“He needs the wagon,” one man said.
“Not until we know what’s broken.”
She had no medical training beyond what her mother taught.
But she had common sense.
She checked the leg.
No bone through skin.
Hip movement painful.
Possible break near the thigh.
They built a board splint and moved him carefully.
By the time the rancher returned, the injured man was inside the wagon with blankets rolled around him to prevent movement.
The rancher looked at his wife.
“You did this?”
“The foreman helped.”
The foreman said, “She did it.”
The wife glared.
The rancher almost smiled.
They took the man to town.
The doctor later said moving him differently might have worsened the fracture.
On the ride home, the rancher finally spoke about their argument.
“I know what the marriage is.”
She looked straight ahead.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then say it.”
He held the reins tighter.
“My home.”
Her breathing changed.
He continued.
“You’re my home.”
No poetry.
No grand declaration.
The words sounded almost clumsy.
Which made them feel true.
She looked toward him.
“And the water?”
“I need it.”
“Still.”
“Yes.”
“Would losing it change what you just said?”
“No.”
She wanted to believe him.
She was almost there.
Then June came.
Her father closed the diversion gate.
The channel dried within hours.
The rancher found it before breakfast.
He rode upstream.
His wife knew where he was going before the foreman told her.
She saddled a mare and followed.
By the time she reached the stone gate, the rancher and her father stood twenty feet apart.