By the time the stagecoach vanished behind the white curtain of Dakota snow, Abigail Prescott could no longer hear its wheels.
She stood alone beside the rutted trail, two heavy valises planted at her boots and a burlap sack of cast-iron skillets strapped across her broad back. Wind swept over the open prairie with enough force to make the hem of her wool coat snap against her ankles.
For most women Abigail had known in Chicago, being abandoned two miles from shelter in weather like this would have been terrifying.
For Abigail, it was merely inconvenient.
She tightened her scarf beneath her chin and looked toward the faint line of cottonwoods where the driver had told her she would find Whispering Pines Ranch.
“Two miles,” she muttered.
Then she picked up both valises and started walking.
At thirty-two, Abigail had spent enough of her life hearing what she supposedly could not do.
She was too large for fashionable dresses.
Too broad through the shoulders.
Too heavy through the hips.
Too outspoken for polite company.
Too old to expect a respectable marriage.
At gatherings in Chicago, women had lowered their voices when she passed, never quite enough to keep Abigail from hearing them.
Such a shame.
She has a pretty face.
If only she had discipline.
Men had been worse.
Some ignored her. Others treated her as though her body existed for their amusement.
Abigail eventually discovered that a woman could either spend her life pleading with cruel people to reconsider her worth—or she could stop asking them.
So she stopped.
Cooking had become her independence.
She had worked in boardinghouses, hotel kitchens, railway dining rooms, and eventually a respectable Chicago restaurant where the chef had discovered Abigail could turn scraps into meals wealthy customers fought over.
Then she saw Caleb Thornton's advertisement.
DESPERATE NEED OF HEAD KITCHEN MANAGER. WHISPERING PINES RANCH, DAKOTA TERRITORY. EXCELLENT PAY. OWNERSHIP SHARES UPON SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF SPRING CATTLE DRIVE.
Ownership.
Not wages alone.
A stake.
A future.
She had written that same night.
Caleb's reply had been brief.
If you can feed working cattlemen and aren't frightened by hard country, come.
Abigail smiled now as she shoved through another waist-high drift.
Hard country did not frighten her.
Cruel people frightened her less.
The snow did not care whether she was fashionable.
The prairie did not whisper about her waist.
Out here, either a person was useful or she wasn't.
And Abigail knew exactly what she was worth.
Nearly an hour later, buildings appeared through the blowing snow.
Her relief disappeared almost instantly.
There should have been smoke.
There wasn't.
No cattle crowded the corrals.
No horses stamped in the barnyard.
One barn door swung violently from a broken hinge.
Another building had lost half its roof.
The ranch house stood beneath a blanket of snow like something abandoned.
Abigail stopped.
Something had happened here.
She climbed the porch steps and knocked.
Nothing.
She knocked again.
“Mr. Thornton?”
Only the wind answered.
Abigail tried the door.
Unlocked.
She pushed it inward.
The smell struck her before she understood what she was seeing.
Unwashed bodies.
Cold ashes.
Stale sweat.
Sickness.
And beneath all of it, the sour, unmistakable odor of starvation.
Men lay everywhere.
One was curled beneath a blanket beside the fireplace. Another leaned against the wall with his eyes closed. Three men occupied a worn sofa, their faces so thin Abigail could see the sharp outlines of their cheekbones.
More men were scattered through the room and hallway.
She counted automatically.
Eight.
Twelve.
Sixteen.
Twenty.
Twenty living men.
Barely.
A chair scraped in the corner.
A bearded man attempted to stand.
His knees nearly failed.
Even starving, he was obviously tall. Broad shoulders suggested a man who had once possessed considerable strength, but hunger had carved his face hollow.
“Who…” His voice cracked. “Who are you?”
Abigail lowered her valises.
“I am Abigail Prescott.”
The man stared.
She removed her gloves.
“I believe you hired me.”
Something resembling a laugh escaped him before becoming a cough.
“You're late.”
Abigail glanced around.
“Apparently.”
“Or early for the funeral.”
He slumped against the chair.
“Caleb Thornton.”
Abigail had already guessed.
“There ain't a job anymore, Miss Prescott.”
“I traveled nine hundred miles.”
“There ain't a ranch.”
“I can see a ranch.”
“Buildings.” Caleb swallowed painfully. “That's all.”
Abigail crossed her arms.
“What happened?”
A different man muttered from beside the fireplace.
“Caldwell.”
Caleb's expression hardened despite his exhaustion.
“Josiah Caldwell.”
Abigail waited.
“He owns half the businesses in Dry Creek. Controls the only easy pass through the ridge. Been trying to buy Whispering Pines for three years.”
“Why?”
“Water.”
Caleb nodded faintly toward the north.
“Creek running through my northern pasture never dries. Caldwell's ranch goes dry every August.”
“You refused to sell.”
“I refused.”
Caleb's laugh held no humor.
“So he decided refusal was temporary.”
He explained.
Suppliers suddenly stopped extending credit.
Freight wagons carrying Thornton's winter flour and beans mysteriously changed destinations.
The town mercantile refused to sell Whispering Pines anything unless Caleb surrendered his water rights.
Then, three weeks earlier, someone burned the ranch's winter storage building.
Two cowboys had tried riding forty miles for supplies.
A blizzard drove them back.
After that, the men began eating livestock feed.
Then boiled leather.
Then nothing.
“We've got maybe two days,” Caleb said quietly. “Some less.”
Abigail looked at them.
Twenty men.
Men who probably could have lifted fence posts and wrestled yearlings a month ago.
Now one of them lacked enough strength to pull a blanket over his legs.
Something deep inside Abigail hardened.
Not pity.
Anger.
She turned to Caleb.
“Where is the kitchen?”
He stared at her.
“What?”
“The kitchen.”
“I told you. There's no food.”
“I didn't ask where the food was.”
She stepped closer.
“I asked where the kitchen was.”
A young cowboy, perhaps seventeen, lifted a trembling hand toward a doorway.
“There.”
Abigail picked up her skillet sack.
Caleb blinked.
“Miss Prescott—”
“Save your breath.”
The kitchen was almost completely frozen.
Empty shelves.
Dead stove.
A flour barrel containing nothing but dust.
Abigail opened every cupboard.
Nothing.
She checked beneath the counters.
Nothing.
She entered a side room.
Nothing.
Then she went outside.
For half an hour she searched sheds and storage pits while the wind tore at her coat.
Near a collapsed root cellar she found boards beneath the snow.
Abigail dug with a shovel until her shoulders burned.
Under broken timbers lay a burlap sack.
She pulled it free.
Potatoes.
Shriveled.
Some half rotten.
Most frozen.
But potatoes.
Then she found a block of salted pork fat buried beneath dirt and ice.
She smelled it.
Old.
Partly rancid.
Usable.
“Thank you,” she whispered to no one in particular.
She carried everything inside.
Twenty pairs of exhausted eyes followed her when she returned.
Abigail dropped the potato sack.
A cowboy actually began crying.
Caleb stared.
“Where did you—”
“Root cellar.”
“We checked it.”
“You checked badly.”
For the first time, a weak smile appeared on someone's face.
Abigail pointed toward the youngest cowboy.
“What's your name?”
“Jamie.”
“Jamie, can you carry water?”
He hesitated.
“I think.”
“Don't think. Try.”
She pointed to another man.
“You?”
“Wyatt.”
“Can you keep a fire alive?”
“If somebody gets it started.”
Abigail nodded.
“Good.”
Caleb struggled upright.
“They're too weak.”
“So am I supposed to let them become weaker?”
Abigail looked around the room.
“No one is eating a full meal tonight. Do you understand me?”
A cowboy groaned.
“If I feed starving men until they're stuffed, some of you may die.”
She had seen it before among destitute families arriving in Chicago after crop failures.
A starving stomach had to be awakened carefully.
“Broth first. Small portions. Slowly.”
Caleb watched her.
“You know what you're doing?”
Abigail gave him a flat look.
“You hired me because I know what I'm doing.”
Then she attacked the woodpile.
Caleb was horrified when he saw her outside splitting frozen logs.
But Abigail swung the ax steadily.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Her arms burned.
Her lungs hurt.
Sweat formed beneath her coat despite the bitter temperature.
Yet every strike carried years of remembered insults.
Too heavy.
Too much.
Too large.
Too strong.
All those supposed defects were keeping her alive in a storm that had nearly killed twenty men.
When flames finally roared inside the stove, Abigail placed her largest skillet over the heat.
She chopped pork fat into small cubes.
The moment they began sizzling, the sound traveled through the house.
Cowboys raised their heads.
Then came the smell.
Grease.
Salt.
Meat.
Life.
Abigail washed potatoes carefully and sliced them with their skins intact.
She rendered the usable portion of the pork, discarding anything spoiled beyond safety, then boiled the potatoes into a thin broth.
But as she worked, she realized it wasn't enough.
Twenty men could not recover on a sack of dying potatoes.
She entered the great room.
“Any game nearby?”
Nobody answered.
Then Wyatt spoke.
“A stag.”
Abigail turned.
“What?”
“Four days ago.”
He licked cracked lips.
“I shot one near the ravine. Hit him clean, but he ran. Me and Ben tracked him. Found him dead, but we couldn't drag him home.”
“Wolves?”
“Probably found him.”
“How far?”
“Maybe mile and a half.”
Caleb shook his head immediately.
“No.”
Abigail ignored him.
“Tell me exactly where.”
“No.”
This time Caleb's voice strengthened.
“Miss Prescott, that ravine is three feet deep in snow.”
“Then I'll take rope.”
“You could freeze.”
“So could everyone in this house.”
“I won't let you.”
Abigail slowly turned toward him.
Caleb Thornton may have once commanded forty cowboys and thousands of acres.
At that moment, however, he weighed perhaps one hundred forty pounds and could barely stand.
Abigail stepped close enough to look directly down at him.
“Mr. Thornton, you are in no condition to let or forbid anything.”
A few cowboys almost smiled.
Caleb glared.
She leaned closer.
“You hired a kitchen manager.”
“Yes.”
“Then stay out of my kitchen.”
Wyatt gave Abigail directions.
She took rope, a knife, Caleb's rifle, and a lantern.
At the door, Caleb called after her.
“Abigail.”
It was the first time he had used her given name.
She looked back.
His expression had changed.
Not authority.
Fear.
“If you don't see the split cottonwood before dark, turn around.”
Abigail pulled on her gloves.
“Keep my stove burning.”
Then she stepped into the storm.
The white swallowed her within seconds.
Caleb stood at the window until even her tracks disappeared.
Behind him, twenty starving men listened to the fire crackling in Abigail Prescott's stove.
And for the first time in weeks, the Whispering Pines Ranch smelled like food.
More important, it felt like someone had decided they were not allowed to die.