Some children were.
But he started paying attention and realized it wasn't silence exactly.
Miles talked to his brothers.
He talked to Clara.
He talked to Pete occasionally in the direct way of a child who had decided someone was trustworthy based on criteria only he knew.
What he didn't do was initiate contact with anyone he hadn't already decided about.
The deciding appeared to take Miles considerably longer than it took his brothers.
The breakthrough, if you could call it that, came unexpectedly, the way the things that mattered usually did.
It was a Thursday afternoon, 10 days after Clara arrived, and Gideon was in the barn working on a piece of tack that had been on his repair list for two weeks.
He heard the barn door open and didn't look up, assuming it was Dermit.
It was Miles.
The boy came in quietly and stood about six feet away, watching Gideon work with that same assessing look he applied to most things.
Gideon kept working.
After four minutes of silence, Gideon counted involuntarily.
Miles said, "What's wrong with it?"
"The stitching split on the back panel. If it goes completely, the whole thing fails."
Miles came closer.
He looked at the tack in Gideon's hands, then at the tools on the workbench, then back at the tack.
"Can it be fixed?"
"Depends on how far the damage went. Sometimes you can restitch it, reinforce the weak sections, and it's fine. Sometimes the leather's compromised enough that repair just delays the failure."
Miles thought about this with more concentration than the topic seemed to require.
"How do you know which one it is?" he asked.
"You work through it and see."
Gideon turned the piece over.
"You keep going until you either fix it or you know it can't be fixed. Standing there guessing doesn't tell you anything."
Miles was very still for a moment.
Then he said quietly, but clearly, "My father couldn't be fixed."
Gideon set the tack down.
He looked at Miles.
Miles was looking at the workbench, not at him, with the careful detachment of a child who had learned to say true things sideways so they hurt less on the way out.
"No," Gideon said. "He couldn't."
Miles looked up.
"Mom says it wasn't his fault he got sick."
"It wasn't."
"But she cried a lot after."
He pushed a small bolt across the workbench with one finger.
"She tried to hide it, but Noah can hear through walls."
Gideon thought about Clara Whitmore making a full breakfast at five in the morning three days after arriving at a stranger's ranch because she had four boys to hold together and not a single one of them could see her fall apart.
"Your mother's strong," he said.
"I know," Miles said.
There was no pride in it.
Just recognition.
"But she's tired. She's been tired a long time."
He picked up the small bolt and set it back down in exactly the same spot.
"I'm going to help Caleb with the water buckets."
"All right."
Miles walked back to the barn door, then stopped with his hand on it.