The first thing Matilda Hart noticed was that the giant did not laugh.
That should not have mattered.
Men laughed at all sorts of things inside the Prospector’s Rest.
They laughed when cards went badly.
They laughed when whiskey went down the wrong throat.
They laughed when another man slipped in frozen horse manure outside the stable.
They laughed at stories they had heard twelve times because winter in Leadville gave men more darkness than entertainment.
And sometimes they laughed at Matilda.
Not always loudly.
Not always cruelly enough for Abigail Thatcher to consider it a problem.
Sometimes it was only a look shared across a table when Matilda squeezed through the swinging kitchen doors.
Sometimes a miner moved his chair dramatically farther aside.
Sometimes somebody asked whether the kitchen had enough flour left after she finished supper.
Once a drunk man had offered to weigh her against ore sacks.
Abigail laughed hardest at that one.
Matilda had learned to survive laughter by behaving as though she could not hear it.
But the giant did not laugh.
He stared.
That frightened her more.
Steam lifted between them from the iron bowl he had abandoned on the table.
The boarding room was packed with miners, freight men, prospectors, two mule drivers, a traveling dentist, and one frightened young schoolteacher stranded by the storm.
Every face had turned toward Matilda.
Outside, wind hammered snow against the windows so violently that the panes rattled in their frames.
Inside, Matilda could hear her own breathing.
The giant stood close enough that she had to tilt her face almost painfully upward to meet his eyes.
Seven feet tall, they said.
Maybe a little less.
Maybe more.
Nobody carried measuring tape into a blizzard.
His enormous fur coat made him seem broader still, grizzly hide hanging from his shoulders, frost melting slowly from the long dark hair around his collar.
His beard was thick and rough.
His pale blue eyes were not.
Those eyes were strangely steady.
Almost stunned.
He looked at her as though she had walked out of a grave.
“You cooked this?”
His voice filled the room without effort.
Matilda’s fingers twisted around the dish towel in her hand.
“Yes, sir.”
“Yourself?”
“Yes.”
“No help?”
She swallowed.
“I had help chopping potatoes.”
A small kitchen boy near the back doorway stared at his boots.
The trapper looked toward the bowl again.
Then at Matilda.
“Who taught you?”
There.
That was the question.
Not:
How much do you eat?
Not: