“I'll be back before dark,” he said.
Adeline nodded.
Then, as he stepped toward the stable, she called after him.
“Mr. Hart?”
He turned.
“There's a tear in your coat sleeve.”
He glanced down. A seam near his elbow had split almost an inch.
“I know.”
“If you leave it, the tear will widen.”
“Most things do.”
For the first time, her expression held something like amusement.
“That's why people mend them.”
He looked at the torn seam again.
“It's an old coat.”
“So is the world, and people keep trying to repair that.”
She seemed surprised by her own words. For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Adeline lowered her eyes and carried the laundry inside.
Caleb stood in the snow with his gloves half fastened, thinking that the woman had a strange way of saying ordinary things.
He rode out beneath a pale sky, checking the fence lines and the cattle scattered along the sheltered side of the hills. The ranch was not large by Montana standards, but it had been enough when his father owned it and enough when Caleb inherited it. Sarah had always believed the land was generous if a man learned to work with it rather than against it.
She had been right about most things.
The trouble was that generosity could not be forced out of frozen earth, and the land did not care how many mouths waited around a supper table.
Near the north pasture, Caleb found a young heifer separated from the herd, standing in a shallow drift with one hind leg trembling. He dismounted, worked the animal toward shelter, and spent nearly an hour clearing the snow from a gap in the windbreak. By the time he returned to the house, the light had begun to fade.
Smoke rose from the chimney.
He smelled beans before he reached the porch.
Inside, Samuel was attempting to repair the broken wheel of a wooden wagon while Grace sat beside him, holding a strip of cloth. Ruth was on the floor with a row of buttons arranged in a crooked line. Adeline stood at the stove, stirring a pot.
“Did you fix the wagon?” Caleb asked.
Samuel looked up.
“Almost.”
“The axle's split.”
“I know.”
“Then you'll need more than string.”
“I was going to use a nail.”