“Ought not leave your feet to blacken neither,” he answered.
His bluntness ought to have offended her. Instead it steadied her. He moved without fuss, laying wool blankets around her shoulders, setting a kettle closer to the coals, feeding the fire until it roared. The cabin revealed itself in the growing light: one main room, a narrow bed, a table, shelves of preserves, sacks of beans and flour, traps hanging by the wall, a well-used Bible on the mantel, and beyond a curtain, what looked to be a smaller back room.
He handed her a steaming cup. “Sip slow.”
Ruth obeyed. The broth tasted of salt and marrow and mercy.
He busied himself at the stove as if giving her privacy inside one room was possible through motion alone. At length he spoke without turning. “You got a name?”
