“But at least there were lots of folks here then. There was a big kitchen set up to feed everyone, and we could all go there for a meal once a day. The food was plain and not very good, but as you said, any food is better than none. And there were more people here, families as well as the other workers and the guards. There were other women to talk to while I did the wash at the river, and other women to help me when my baby came. The women who were already here when we arrived had learned a bit of how to manage, and they taught us. But most of us didn’t know a thing about how to live outside a city. We tried. Most of the houses you see around here, women built. And some fell down faster than we put them up, but we had each other to help.” She shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment. “Then it all went bad at once.”

Without asking her I added the last of the hot water to the uncoiled tea leaves in the bottom of the pot. It made a final pale tea. I divided what remained of my sugar equally among the five bowls and carefully dippered the weak tea over it. The children watched me as if I were stirring molten gold.

“What happened?” I asked as I put Amzil’s cup into her hands.

“Rig had an accident. A heavy stone fell off a wagon and crushed his foot. He couldn’t work anymore. So even though his time wasn’t up, they let him stay at home here with us all day. I was glad to have him here at first. I thought he could help me a bit, could mind the children while I tried to make things better for us. But he didn’t know how to do anything around a house and his foot wouldn’t heal. It only got more painful, and he had a fever that came and went. The pain made him mean, and not just with me.” She glanced at her elder daughter and old anger flashed in her eyes. She shook her head. “I didn’t know what to do for him. And he hated me by then anyway.” Her eyes went past me to the fire and all feeling emptied out of them.

“Two days before he died, the guards said it was time to move camp. The prisoners who had worked off their time and their families could stay here and build a new life, they said. A lot of them decided to move on with the work crew anyway. But those who stayed got a shovel, an ax, a saw, and six bags of different kinds of seed. And they gave us what they said was two months of flour, oil, and oats. But it didn’t last our family more than twenty days.” She shook her head again.

“I did my best. I dug holes and planted those seeds. But maybe it was the wrong time or maybe the seed was bad or maybe I did something wrong. Not many plants came up, and a lot of the ones that grew got eaten by rabbits or just died off. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to grow vegetables. Before too long, people just started to leave. Nothing here to hold them, I guess. Some of them lasted the first winter. Others didn’t, and we buried them. When spring came, pretty much everyone who could got up and left, heading back west, trying to get back to a place where they knew how to live. Some of us couldn’t go. Kara might be able to walk a full day, but Sem and Dia are too small to walk that far, and I couldn’t carry them both. I knew that if I started walking, at least one of them would die on the way. But maybe that would have been better than staying here. Here we are, winter’s closing in again, and we have even less this time than we had last year.”

A long silence fell and then she said, “I fear we’re going to die here. And my biggest dread is that I’ll die before my children do. And there will be no one left to protect them from whatever comes next.”

I had never heard such black despair. Worse was to see in the children’s eyes that they fully understood what their mother said. My heart spoke. “I’ll stay a day or two, if you want. I can at least help you make this place tight for the winter.”

She looked at me flatly and then asked with acid sweetness, “And what will you want from me in exchange?” Her eyes traveled over me disdainfully. I knew what she thought I would ask of her, and that it disgusted her. I also read in her eyes that if that were what I demanded, she’d give it to me, for the sake of her children. She made me feel like a monster.

I spoke slowly. “I’d like to sleep in here, near the fire instead of out in the shed. And I’d like a day or two of rest and grazing for my horse, and some time out of the saddle. That’s all.”

“Is it?” She was skeptical. Her mouth pinched again, bringing out the cat in her again. “If that’s all, I’ll say yes to that, then.”

“That’s all,” I said quietly, and she nodded sharply to the deal we had struck.

She and her children slept in the only bed, across the room from the fire. She put herself between me and her children, and her pistol between her and me. I slept on the floor by the fire.

The next day, I built a wood crib for the firewood, so I could stack it so it would stay dry. It was crudely built from salvaged wood and nails, but it worked. I put a roof over it to keep the snow off the firewood. Amzil and Kara stacked the wood between the supports as I showed them while the other children played nearby. I found good thick logs and cut them into stout chunks. “These will burn a long time, once you’ve got a bed of coals going,” I told her. “Save them for the worst nights, when the snow is deep and the cold hard. Until then, use up the small stuff, and whatever else you can forage for yourself.”

“I’ve had one winter here. I think I know how to manage,” Amzil said stiffly.

“Probably better than I do,” I conceded grumpily. I’d worked all morning. My shirt was stuck to me with sweat despite a chill wind blowing off the rain-soaked hills. Hunger gnawed at my guts. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I rolled my shoulders and stretched. I leaned the ax up against my chopping block.

“Where are you going?” Amzil demanded suspiciously.

“Hunting,” I decided abruptly.

“With what?” she asked. “For what?”

“With a sling, for whatever I can get,” I replied. “Rabbits, birds, small game.”

She shook her head and folded her lips, obviously thinking I was wasting time when I could be cutting more wood. But the morning’s work had already convinced me that I’d need a more substantial meal than watery soup. I’d begun thinking of food, against my will, and had suddenly become aware of the birds calling to one another.

“Can you do that?” she asked me suddenly. “Kill birds with a sling?”

“We’ll see,” I said. “I used to be able to.”

I was fatter than I’d been as a boy, and out of my territory. Dawn and dusk were the best times to hunt, and this was neither. I tried the woods first, where tree trunks that spoiled my swing and tiny branches that deflected my missiles frustrated me. From there, I moved to the logged-off hillside behind the town, and there I did better, braining a rabbit that foolishly stood up on its hind legs to see what I was.

It wasn’t much of a hunter’s bag, but Amzil seemed delighted with it. She and the children gathered round me as I gutted and skinned it and cut it up for the pot. While she took it inside to start it cooking, I scraped the skin and stretched it as tightly as I could before tacking it, skin side up, on a board to dry. “You’ll need to keep this out of the weather,” I told her. “Once it’s dried, it will be hard and stiff. You’ll have to work it, rolling it slowly until it softens up again. But it will give you a rabbitskin with the fur on. Four or five of these sewn together would make a blanket for the little one.”

I’d kept back the sinew from the rabbit’s hind legs. I showed it to her. “This makes the best snares. There was a lot of rabbit sign out there. If you set two or three snares each evening, you’d have a fair chance of having some meat in your diet on a regular basis.”

She shook her head. “They’re too smart. I’ve seen rabbits out there, at dawn and in the evening. But I’ve never been able to catch one, and the traps I’ve made don’t hold them.”