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know,” Bryce said grimly. “He came in, driving twenty starved horses, barely keeping his seat in the saddle. Must’ve been caught in the storm.”
    “Please, take him to the den. I’ll be right there with blankets.” Odessa hurried back upstairs and grabbed two thick woolen blankets, then back to the men, who stood in her kitchen with the stranger between them. “Here, lay him atop this until we get him cleaned up,” Odessa said, laying a blanket down, in front of the stove. She wrinkled her nose. The man wreaked of sour clothes. He was so filthy, she could barely see the true shade of his skin.
    Bryce knelt down on his other side. Tabito reached out to touch his forehead and pulled his hand away quickly. “He burns.”
    Odessa met her husband’s fearful glance and then rose to put some water on the stove. “I’ll need you men to clean him up. Bryce, can you fetch a fresh shirt and pair of pants?”
    The baby must have sensed the commotion downstairs, because he awakened early from his nap, quickly moving from disgruntled cries to a full-blown wail. “I’ll get him,” Bryce called from upstairs.
    Odessa pumped water into a bucket and then poured it into a massive iron cauldron on the stove. Already hot from its constant perch atop the wood-burning oven, the first of the water sizzled and steamed until she poured the rest in. She took a rag and opened the oven to peer at the fire, and decided to add another log. It was already good and hot; it would only take about half an hour to heat the water all the way through.
    Tabito, the ranch foreman, came through the back kitchen door, the washtub on his back. Bryce must’ve asked him to fetch it. He placed it in the corner and stretched out a privacy screen. “The man might not survive a bath,” he grunted.
    “He might not survive unless we clean him up,” she retorted. She made Bryce force all the ranch hands to bathe at least once a week, preferably twice—they had their own tub down in the bunkhouse—and threatened to not feed them unless they adhered to the rules. “Here,” she said, handing Tabito a pitcher and a small cup. “Try and get a little water down his throat, will you?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” he said, walking away.
    She could hear someone running through the slush outside, the splashes beneath their boots, and then there was a quick rapping at her door. Odessa moved to answer it, but Dietrich was already opening it, his face awash with concern.
    “Dietrich, I—”
    “Sorry, ma’am. Don’t mean to go bursting in on ya, but I need to see Bryce or Tabito, right away.”
    “Certainly,” she said. “Come in.” She followed the man, choosing not to say anything about the muddy prints he left on her floor. Tabito and Bryce looked up at him.
    “Boss, we’ve got troubles, down at the stables.” He rotated his hat between nervous hands, in a circle.
    Bryce rose slowly. “What is it?”
    “Doc thinks it’s the strangles. One of the yearlings that came in with this herd is down. You can see two others are sick. Doc thinks all three will die.”
    Bryce handed Samuel to Odessa and edged past him. “They’re still in the separate corral, right? Away from our horses?” He hurried down the back porch steps, two at a time. Dietrich reluctantly followed behind. Odessa stood in the doorway, bouncing Samuel. Her heart pounded. Bryce’s tone told her something was bad, really bad.
    Bryce whirled in the snow. “Dietrich, tell me they’re in a separate corral.”
    “Yes, but—”
    “But what?”
    “They were so hungry, they’ve reached through the fence and eaten out of our horses’ troughs, drunk some of their water.”
    “And our horses?”
    Dietrich was quiet, standing there at the back door as if leaving meant punishment.
    “Dietrich?”
    “I’m afraid they’ve shared those troughs, Boss. A few of them anyway,” he said in defeat.
    Bryce bared his teeth, groaning as if shoving down an oath. “Come on!” he said, breaking into a