His boot knife flashed. Wire snapped free, and the woman sagged. She didn’t scream; she had no strength. Silas caught her, lifted her as if she were paper, then gathered the babies one by one, tucking them beneath his coat with a wool blanket from the saddle.

They had half a mile uphill to his cabin. The wind slashed. The horse sidestepped, ears flat.

“You don’t die here,” Silas told the cold, or God, or perhaps the woman whose weight was next to nothing. “Not on my land.”

He carried them home through a world of white.

The cabin was four walls and a sloped roof groaning under snow. The hearth was dead. Silas kicked the door wide, set the woman on a bed of quilts by the cold firebox, and settled the infants into a basket lined with rabbit pelts. Then he worked—wood, tinder, breath, spark—until the hearth caught and the room breathed again.