Silas stood and grabbed a thick wool blanket from the back of a chair.
Without looking directly at her face, he held it out.
"Get warm."
She took it slowly.
Her cold fingers brushed his hand for only a second.
Silas poured black coffee into a tin cup and set it near the fire.
The woman sat down carefully and wrapped both hands around it.
Only then did he see how badly they trembled.
She had not eaten properly in days.
Anyone with eyes could see that.
Silas sat across from her while steam slowly rose from her drying clothes.
The cabin filled with the smell of wet wool and wood smoke.
For a long time, neither of them spoke.
Finally, the woman whispered a single word.
"Ohio."
Silas lifted his eyes.
"My parents died when I was 17," she continued quietly. "Scarlet fever took them both in the same week."
Silas gave a small nod.
Loss was a language he understood well.
"I worked in a sewing factory after that," she said. "Twelve hours every day."
Her fingers tightened around the coffee cup.
"Then I saw the advertisement."
Silas waited.
"A Montana rancher looking for a wife. Hardworking and sincere."
Her voice stayed steady, but it sounded like she was telling a story about someone else.
"We wrote letters for three months."
She swallowed slowly.
"He promised he would meet me at the Willow Creek Depot. Said he would wear a blue kerchief so I could recognize him."
Her eyes lowered to the floor.
"I sold everything I owned for a train ticket."
Silas did not interrupt.
"I waited two days at the station," she said. "Slept on a wooden bench. But he never came."
The fire cracked quietly in the stove.
"So I started walking."
She looked down at her hands.
"Forty miles."
Silas felt something tighten in his chest.
"Three days," she finished.
She reached down and opened the valise.
Inside sat a bundle of letters tied carefully with a piece of kitchen string.
The paper had softened from the rain, and the ink had begun to smear.
She handed them to him.
"His name was James Hollister," she said.
Silas froze.
James Hollister ran the general store in Willow Creek.
He also had a wife and two children.
And he had never owned a ranch in his life.
Silas slowly looked back at her.
"You know him," the woman said quietly.
Silas nodded once.
"He's got a family."
The words hung heavy in the small cabin.
For a moment, the woman did not move.
Then she stood without anger, without tears.
She walked calmly to the stove.
One by one, she fed the letters into the fire.
The ink curled and blackened as the flames consumed them.
Three months of hope burned away in seconds.