The day before the attack dawned clear and cold, with a wind that smelled of coming rain and pine resin, and the household prepared the way people prepare for any hard chore: steadily, together, without panic, and without pretending the chore was not hard. Elias woke before light and walked the whole valley in the gray dawn, checking the trail where Deputy Cole kept watch, checking the fence line, checking the creek, and noting, with a tracker's eye, every place a man might come through in the dark and every place a defender might stand. He came back to the cabin with a plan in his head, and he laid it out at the breakfast table plainly, the way he laid out fence work.
Rifles cleaned and loaded, he said. "Water barrels filled, both of them, and set by the barn and by the cabin door. Horses moved into the barn tonight, all of them, with the doors barred from inside. The storm cellar behind the cabin readied, with blankets and water and a lamp, in case the fire gets ahead of us. And no one sleeps alone tonight. We sleep in the cabin, together, with the door barred and a watch kept in turns."
Mara nodded, and June nodded, and then they set to work, and the day took on the rhythm of preparation. Mara cleaned the rifles with steady hands, oiling the actions, checking the sights, laying the cartridges out in neat rows on the table like she laid out seed in the spring. June filled the water barrels, bucket by bucket from Willow Creek, her sleeves rolled above her elbows, her face flushed with the work, and she sang while she worked, a low, tuneless song that steadied them all more than she knew. Elias moved the horses into the barn one by one, talking to each of them, and he barred the barn doors and checked the hay, and he thought about how a barn full of dry hay is a temptation to any man with a torch, and he moved the loose hay to the far end and soaked the ground near the door with water from the creek.
By afternoon the sky had darkened, and the wind had picked up, rattling the pines above the cabin and sending leaves skittering across the yard. Deputy Cole came down from the trail and reported that he had seen nothing, and that he would watch all night, and Elias thanked him and sent him back with hot coffee and bread. Tom Alden rode out in the late afternoon with a load of nails and a short, heavy hammer, and he stayed for supper, and he told them, in his plain blacksmith's way, that Cedar Hollow was watching, and that Kline would be a fool to try anything now, and then he looked at Elias's face and added, quietly, "But fools with torches are the most dangerous kind. Keep your rifles close."
After Tom left, the three of them sat in the cabin as the light went, and the lamp burned low, and the fire in the hearth crackled, and for a while no one spoke, because there was nothing left to say that had not been said in the work of the day. June mended a shirt by the fire, her needle flashing, and Mara sat with her accounts book open but unread, and Elias sat on his pallet by the door, cleaning his revolver one last time, his hands sure and unhurried.
As the afternoon wore on, the wind dropped and a fine rain began to fall, pattering on the cabin roof and on the pines, and the smell of wet earth rose up around the house, clean and sharp. June came in from the creek with her dress damp at the hem and her hair curling in the wet air, and she built up the fire and set a pot of beans and salt pork to simmer, because a household facing a hard night should face it fed. Mara went through the cabin room by room, the way her father had taught her to go through a house before a storm: shutters latched, lamp oil checked, the storm cellar door oiled on its hinges so it would not stick, blankets folded and set just inside the cellar mouth, a bucket of water and a dipper beside them. Elias, meanwhile, walked the barn once more, speaking low to each horse, checking the barred doors, and he stood a long time looking at the hay store and thinking about how quickly dry hay goes up, and how a man with a torch needs only a moment of carelessness from everyone else. He moved the last loose bundles to the stone-floored corner, far from the door, and he soaked the straw near the entrance until it was dark and heavy, and he told himself that preparation is not fear, any more than mending a fence is fear. It is simply the work that lets people sleep. Supper was eaten quietly, with the rain on the roof and the firelight on their faces, and June told a story about a fish she had once caught in Willow Creek that was,