Dark ridgelines in the distance.
The kind of wide, empty sky that either made a person feel free or made them feel very small, depending on how they were doing that particular day.
"It's bigger than I expected," Clara said after a while.
"What?"
"The sky."
He glanced sideways at her.
She was watching the horizon with an expression that wasn't quite wonder and wasn't quite fear.
Something between.
"You get used to it," he said.
"Do you?"
He thought about that longer than the question probably deserved.
"No."
She turned and looked at him, and the honesty in his answer seemed to catch her off guard.
She turned back to the road without saying anything else.
From the back, Caleb's voice drifted up.
"How many cattle do you have, sir?"
Gideon kept his eyes forward.
"Two hundred thirty head. Give or take."
"Give or take what?"
"Whatever the winter takes."
Silence.
Then Ethan's voice, measured and older sounding than 13 had any right to be.
"Has it been a bad winter?"
"Hasn't started yet," Gideon said. "Ask me in February."
The ranch came into view just as the light started going pale and thin, the way it did in late afternoon in November.
Like the sun was doing the work but didn't much feel like it.
It was a working ranch.
Gideon had never pretended it was anything else.
The main house was solid.
Two stories.
Timber-framed.
Built to take whatever the plains decided to throw at it.
But solid wasn't the same as warm.
The porch boards needed work.
The shutters on the east-facing windows hadn't been properly latched in months and showed it.
Inside, he knew, wasn't much better.
He watched Clara take it all in as he pulled the wagon up to the front.
Her face didn't fall the way he half expected it to.
She looked at the house the way she'd looked at the sky.
Studying it.
Calculating.
"The kitchen is on the south side," he said. "Gets the most light."
"Good."
She was already stepping down from the wagon before he'd fully set the brake.
"What's the state of your pantry?"
He almost said bad, but that felt like an understatement.
"Functional."