By summer, Clara had thirty-one birds.
Silas Broome visited one afternoon.
He stood beside enclosure.
“Those the same miserable chickens?”
“Descendants.”
He nodded.
“Ugly.”
Clara looked.
“They’re chickens.”
“Most are ugly.”
She smiled.
Silas had changed somewhat.
Not completely.
Important.
People rarely become new personalities because one winter scared them.
He still talked too much.
Still boasted.
But when another farmer mocked a widowed woman at market that spring, Silas told him to shut mouth.
Clara heard.
Pretended not.
The settlement formed a winter cooperative.
That was Clara’s idea.
Caleb supported.
Silas surprisingly became loudest advocate.
Each household contributed according to ability during harvest.
Grain.
Beans.
Salted meat.
Dried fruit.
Firewood.
Blankets.
Emergency stores kept at meeting house and two secondary barns.
Public inventory.
No single family controlled.
Clara insisted.
“What if someone steals?”
A farmer asked.
“Then three keys.”
“Held by who?”
“Different households.”
Silas said:
“Not me.”
Everyone looked.
He shrugged.
“I already know people don’t trust me.”
Laughter.
Even Clara smiled.
Three keys went to Reverend Hale, Widow Cole, and the miller.
Clara refused one.
“Why?”
“Because if I hold food and measurements, people will think it is mine.”
Caleb looked proud.
She noticed.
“Stop.”
“What?”
“That face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you’re proud like I’m child.”
“I’m not.”
“What then?”
He leaned close.
“Thinking about every winter.”
Her heart still reacted.
Annoying.
They did not marry immediately.
Everyone assumed they would.
That alone made Clara delay out of stubbornness.
Caleb found this hilarious.
“You are refusing marriage because Silas thinks we should?”
“Partly.”
“Reasonable.”
“You agree?”
“I’ve waited this long.”
They spent summer together.
Caleb maintained his mountain cabin.
Clara kept hers.
He came down more often.
She climbed to his place for first time in June.
The journey was brutal.
Steep.
Rocky.
She stopped often.
Caleb never hurried.
Never offered hand unless terrain genuinely required.
At top, she saw why he loved it.
His cabin overlooked three valleys.
Blue ridges folded into distance.
Wind smelled of pine.
His winter cache was not one shed.
It was a stone-lined root cellar cut into slope, smokehouse, and loft storage.