“Could mean nothing.”
“The creek dropped fast after the September rains.”
“That usually means hard freeze.”
“Yes.”
Caleb glanced north.
Clara continued:
“My joints hurt.”
He looked back.
“That’s your evidence?”
“My knees are better than Silas Broome’s almanac.”
Caleb laughed.
But not fully.
Because he had noticed too.
The high country had been colder than normal.
Three mornings already with ice on the shaded pools.
A bear he tracked had entered its den early.
He had found frost beneath pine litter where none should remain past midday.
He looked at Clara.
“How much food do you have?”
“Enough.”
“For you.”
“Yes.”
“For anyone else?”
She did not answer.
Caleb understood.
“Clara.”
“What?”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Prepare to feed everybody.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
She scattered more grain.
“People prepare themselves.”
“Some won’t.”
“Then they will learn.”
He studied her.
He knew that was not what she believed.
Clara could sound hard.
She could not watch a hungry child and remain so.
Caleb said quietly:
“You cannot save a whole valley with one pantry.”
Clara turned toward him.
“No.”
“But maybe I can stop one person from dying.”
“That enough?”
“It has to be.”
He had no answer.
For the next six weeks, the thin chickens became part of Clara’s daily routine.
Four recovered quickly.
Three laid small eggs by the second week.
Two remained weak.
One died despite everything she tried.
Another developed a rattling breath and never improved.
Clara butchered that bird before disease could waste the meat.
The dead bird she buried away from the henhouse.
The remaining ten gained weight slowly.
Not much.
Enough.
Clara fed them cracked corn, garden scraps, boiled potato skins, insects scratched from beneath fallen leaves, and grain swept from the mill floor that the miller considered useless.
People laughed less when they saw the birds later.
But they still laughed.
Especially Silas Broome.
Every Saturday, Clara went to Laurel Ridge to trade.
She bought salt.
Two extra sacks of flour.
Dried beans.
Cheap onions.
Molasses.
Lamp oil.
Silas saw.
“You expecting an army?”
“No.”
“Then why are you hoarding flour?”
“I’m buying flour.”
“Same thing.”
“Not unless I hide it from market.”
He frowned.
Clara continued walking.
Rumors began.
Clara was frightened of winter.
Clara believed the pass would close.
Clara was building a secret pantry.
Clara had lost sense after Benjamin died.
The last one angered her.
Not because people thought she was foolish.
Because they used her dead husband to explain a woman making decisions they did not understand.
Caleb heard the rumors too.
One afternoon, he found Silas and two farmers laughing outside the smithy.
Silas said: