In 1883, Sarah was thirteen and Emma was eleven when their father died on their lonely Wyoming homestead. The snow had already swallowed the fields. The nearest neighbor was twenty miles away. An orphanage meant separation. Hard labor. A life neither of them wanted. So they stayed. Two children in a house built for a family, choosing each other over every fear waiting outside their door.
They knew how to cook and sew, but surviving winter demanded more. The cold crept through the walls. The roof groaned under ice. Nights stretched out so long they felt like punishment. They wasted firewood. They shivered through meals of raw potatoes when the fire died. They cried only when the other one slept. Still, they learned. Sarah pored over their father’s old trapper’s guide. Emma studied the patterns left by foxes and hares. Together they taught themselves how to keep a fire alive and how to keep hope alive.
The winter tried to break them. A blizzard sealed the doors and they clawed their way out with frozen hands. In February, Emma slipped through thin ice and vanished into black water. Sarah dragged her out and wrapped herself around her sister for hours, refusing to let her slip away. They faced every night with one thought burning brighter than the hearth. Do not lose each other.
When spring finally arrived, the sisters were thin but unbroken. A traveling minister found them living alone and could not believe what he saw. Two children who had met winter eye to eye and refused to kneel. It was only years later that Sarah discovered a folded scrap of paper Emma had written during their darkest days. It said, “If I fall, you keep going. If you fall, I carry you.”
Their story became more than survival. It became proof that love can hold back the cold. It can steady shaking hands. It can turn two frightened girls into their own shelter.
Love kept them alive. And sometimes, that is enough to outlast any storms.