My current theme with this story is to show the couples becoming closer during that long, snowed-in winter. I'm hoping to eventually write one chapter about each couple.
That first horrible night after the kidnapping, Alice cried herself to sleep. Several of the other girls did too, for they were all heartbroken and miserable at being trapped on this farm until the spring thaw. Alice had felt a little better, and certainly much safer, since she saw Millie stand up to the boys and banish them to the barn, and she was more grateful than she could say to her friend for ensuring that their virtue would remain untouched. But still, when she pictured her parents' dear faces, when she thought about how long it would be until she would see them again, tears sprung to her eyes, and her throat closed up with sorrow.
But as a preacher's daughter, Alice had been taught to never dwell on her sorrows. Why, she could recite a dozen Bible verses about that very thing, and "Idle hands are the devil's workshop" had always been one of her parents' favorite sayings. So the next morning, her first full day on the Pontipee homestead, Alice sprang out of bed with a new determination. She'd gotten her crying out of the way, and she decided that she wouldn't be idle anymore.
Her first project was tackling the big upstairs bedroom that was now theirs, and she rallied her friends into helping her. The room didn't look like a complete pigsty, as Millie said it had when she first arrived here, but it did still look like the rough sort of place where only men lived. Millie had already gathered up the boys' clothes and boots and taken them out to them in the barn earlier that morning. Now Alice and the other girls made the beds, swept the floor, scrubbed the windows, and hemmed and rehung the ragged curtains, which took them almost half the day. As they worked, Martha spotted some brightly-colored fall leaves still clinging to a tree just outside the window. She broke the twig off the branch and set it in a chipped cup on a shelf, and Alice smiled and said, "Why, those leaves look just as pretty as flowers, Martha."
Alice had been a sort of surprise child – the youngest of four girls, born several years after her three sisters. She knew from a young age that her ma and pa were older than most parents. Growing up in Bismarck, it had been expected of her that as the youngest daughter, she would never marry, but live with her parents and care for them until they died. Honestly, she'd never really minded the idea. She'd never dreamed about getting married someday like other little girls did.
But things changed when her family left the Dakotas for Oregon Territory. Reverend Elcott knew that preachers were scarce out west, and he felt it was his duty to go there and preach the Gospels. Alice's older sisters were already married with their own families, so she was the only one who accompanied her parents on the long journey west. In their new Oregon town, women were almost as scarce as preachers, and the shy, pretty young preacher's daughter suddenly found herself showered with attention from all the young men. It was only then that her parents began pressuring her to find a husband. But Alice still didn't really want to get married... not until that fateful day when she went to the barn-raising and saw Gideon Pontipee. She remembered thinking right from the start that they were meant for each other, that they matched – the youngest daughter of all girls, and the youngest son of all boys.
Looking back now, after Gideon had kidnapped her and caused an avalanche, Alice wanted to kick herself. She felt so stupid for falling in love with him so fast. She knew it was a sin to wish violence on anyone, but she was so angry that she half-hoped when the mountain pass cleared in spring, the townspeople would come here and shoot Gideon and his terrible brothers. They deserved it. Why, they were no better than animals!
But Alice couldn't let herself get bogged down by despair. So she focused on her work all day, and by dinnertime, she felt almost back to her cheerful old self. She'd gone nearly the whole day without crying, and her moods seemed to be evening out. She was still unhappy to be stuck here, of course, but she was making the best of it, just like her parents would've wanted, and that made her feel closer to them. And having Millie here with them was a great comfort, too, to Alice and all the kidnapped girls. As they started making dinner, Millie said cheerfully, "I know how much you girls all miss your families, but I have to say, I'll be right glad to have your company at meal-times."
In the kitchen, Dorcas and Ruth set the table while Liza and Martha helped Millie with dinner, for even a skilled cook like Millie couldn't cook for thirteen people by herself. Sarah and Alice were tidying up in the parlor when all seven of them heard the knock on the kitchen door. Alice knew that it must be the boys, probably looking for their dinner, and she stopped sweeping and gripped the broom handle tightly, suddenly afraid again.
Millie opened the door, and Alice heard her talking with whichever-brother in a cool, calm voice, but she couldn't make out their words. She couldn't even tell if it was just one brother or all of them. But after she heard the door close, she hurried over to the parlor window and peeked through the curtains. Outside, one of the Pontipees – she could tell from his height that he wasn't Gideon – was walking across the farmyard to the barn, hunched over a bit against the cold, holding something bulky in his arms.
Alice stood there for a moment, pretending to sweep the floor by the window, but really, she was thinking. The Pontipees, like most families on the frontier, only had enough silverware pieces for themselves. Millie had had to bring her own fork, spoon, and knife to the farm with her when she married Adam. And those silverware pieces were all in use tonight. Dorcas and Ruth were setting the table with them right now. So how were the boys eating dinner, out there in the barn?
After the way they'd behaved last night, she wouldn't be surprised if they were eating their bare hands. Or fighting over the food like animals! A flash of anger went through Alice at the thought... but she was curious to know for sure. She could hardly believe what she was doing as she made an excuse to Sarah about emptying the dustpan, wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, and slipped outside. She quickly crossed the farmyard, sidled up to a crack in the barn wall, and peered through it.
Millie had given the boys a pot of stew and a loaf of bread, the same meal that the girls were eating indoors. The pot was in some embers to keep it warm, and the brothers sat Indian-style in a circle around it on the dirt floor. They weren't fighting over the food or eating with their hands like savages, as Alice had half-expected. They had carved two new spoons out of wood and were sharing them as best they could. One man would eat a spoonful of stew straight from the pot, then hand the spoon off to his brother. They cut slices of bread from the loaf with their pocketknives, and they drank from a water jug that they passed around their circle, too.
Gideon happened to be sitting facing the little crack in the wall, so Alice had a good view of him. He suddenly looked so small, sitting there on the floor between his tall brothers, and his eyes were red and puffy, as if he'd been crying. Alice blinked and rubbed her eyes to make sure that she wasn't seeing things, then peeked through the crack again. Yes, Gideon really had been crying – she was sure of it.
Alice's thoughts were a confused jumble as she walked slowly back across the farmyard to the house. Different images of Gideon flashed through her mind – the handsome man who had danced with her at the barn-raising, and the terrible man who had kidnapped her last night, throwing a blanket over her head and throwing her in a wagon like she was an animal, and the teary-eyed man that she had just seen huddled on the barn floor. It didn't seem possible that all three of them could be the same man... and yet, they were.
Then Alice thought about the dining room in her own home back in town. She could still see the polished silverware, the cut-glass serving bowl, the white linen napkins that she'd embroidered herself. She could still hear her father's deep, solemn voice as he bowed his head and said grace before the meal. Then she pictured Gideon and his brothers slicing the bread with their pocketknives and carving new wooden spoons to eat with. They weren't eating with their hands like brutes, she realized, because they weren't brutes when you really got down to it. They were just backwoodsmen living in a rough, wild country, trying to make do as best they could. Alice supposed that they had been trying their best all along... even last night.
Alice didn't forgive and forget with Gideon that night. It would still be some time before she forgave him for kidnapping her, and it would be even longer before she decided that she still loved him. But on that cold, snowy winter's night, the first frosty edge of her anger at him began to thaw.