Chapter 6
For one terrible second, I thought the whole cabin had become the blizzard again.
Not snow this time.
Flame.
The air turned thick and bitter. Smoke crawled along the ceiling, black and hungry. Thomas woke screaming. Clara followed with a weaker, frightened cry that pierced me deeper than any pain.
Ruth was already moving.
“Daniel!”
“I see it!”
He grabbed the water bucket and threw the door open.
Cold air rushed in.
So did smoke from the back wall.
Someone had stacked brush against the cabin and lit it.
Not a fallen coal.
Not chance.
A hand had done this.
A living hand.
“Joseph!” I shouted.
My brother sprang up from his blanket, coughing.
Ruth placed Clara into his arms.
“Hold her tight and stay low.”
His eyes went wide. “I can’t—”
“You can,” Ruth said. “She needs you.”
That changed him.
His arms closed around my daughter like iron.
Ruth scooped up Thomas and pressed him to me.
“Can you stand?”
I tried.
My legs shook.
Blood rushed from my head, and the room tilted.
Daniel appeared through smoke, one side of his coat glowing with sparks.
“Back wall’s burning,” he said. “We have to get them out.”
Ruth pointed to the root cellar door near the floor.
“No. Too much smoke outside. Cellar first.”
Daniel nodded.
He dragged the trapdoor open.
Cold earth air rose from below.
Ruth shoved blankets down first, then helped Joseph descend with Clara. I clutched Thomas and tried to move, but my body betrayed me.
Pain tore through my hips.
My vision blurred.
“I can’t.”
Daniel knelt in front of me.
“Look at me.”
Smoke made his eyes water.
“Abigail, I have to carry you.”
Fear snapped through me.
A man’s hands.
A man lifting me.
A man deciding where my body went.
I stiffened before I could stop myself.
Daniel saw it.
Even with the cabin burning, he saw.
“I will only do it if you say yes.”
The wall cracked behind him.
Ruth shouted, “Now!”
I looked at Thomas in my arms.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Daniel lifted me as carefully as if I were already broken. I held Thomas against my chest while he carried us to the cellar steps.
Ruth went last, slamming the trapdoor above us.
Darkness swallowed us.
Smoke still seeped through cracks, but less.
We crouched among sacks of potatoes, jars of beans, and damp earth walls while the cabin groaned above.
Thomas cried until his little body trembled.
Clara made small breathy sounds against Joseph’s shirt.
Ruth pressed a wet cloth over my mouth.
“Breathe slow.”
Outside, Daniel’s boots pounded overhead.
Then water hissed.
Wood cracked.
A horse screamed.
Joseph flinched.
“That’s Pa’s horse,” he whispered.
My heart stopped.
“What?”
“I know the sound. He whistles to her.”
Ruth’s face hardened.
Above us, Daniel shouted, “Stop!”
A gunshot split the night.
The cellar erupted in screams.
I pulled Thomas under the blanket with my body, certain the bullet would find him through wood, through earth, through anything.
Ruth grabbed the old shotgun hanging from a peg near the cellar stairs.
I had not even noticed it there.
“Stay behind me,” she said.
Another shout.
Then a crash.
Then silence.
The kind that feels worse than noise.
Ruth lifted the trapdoor a crack.
Smoke poured in.
“Daniel?” she called.
No answer.
She climbed out with the shotgun.
I tried to follow, but Joseph grabbed my sleeve.
“Abby, no.”
“I have to see.”
I handed Thomas to him and crawled up the steps, every movement tearing through me.
The cabin was half smoke, half flame-shadow.
The back wall still smoldered, but snow had been packed against it. Daniel lay near the woodpile outside the open door, one hand pressed to his shoulder.
Blood darkened his sleeve.
Ruth was already beside him.
Across the yard, Deputy Crane stood with his pistol drawn, breathing hard.
Samuel Pierce was on his knees in the snow.
His hands were raised.
His face was blackened with smoke.
For one wild second, I thought I had imagined him.
Then he looked at me.
And hatred burned in his eyes.
Not shame.
Not sorrow.
Hatred.
“You should have died on the road,” he said.
The words moved through me slowly.
Like ice water poured into my bones.
Deputy Crane shoved him face-first into the snow.
“Say another word,” he snapped, “and I’ll gag you with it.”
My mother was not there.
Only my father.
Only the man who had given me life and tried twice to end mine.
Ruth tore Daniel’s coat open.
“Through the shoulder,” she said. “Not deep, but ugly.”
Daniel looked at me through the smoke.
“Babies?”
“Alive,” I said.
His eyes closed with relief.
That relief did something to me.
This man, bleeding in the snow, had asked about my children before himself.
My father, uninjured, had wished us dead.
Deputy Crane tied Samuel’s wrists.
“He came through the trees with a lantern and oil,” the deputy said. “I saw him strike the wall. Mercer rushed him. Pierce fired wild when I shouted.”
“Wild?” Samuel spat, lifting his face. “I aimed.”
No one spoke.
The confession hung in the freezing air.
Deputy Crane looked at him.
Then at me.
“I heard that,” he said.
So did I.
For once, my father’s cruelty had spoken where witnesses could hear.
By dawn, Sheriff Bell arrived with two more men and a sled.
Samuel was taken away in chains.
He did not look back at Joseph.
He did not ask about my mother.
He did not repent.
As the sled moved down the road, I stood wrapped in Daniel’s coat, Thomas against my heart and Clara tucked in Ruth’s arms.
My legs trembled.
My body ached.
But I was standing.
Sheriff Bell approached me slowly.
“I have enough to hold him now.”
“For the fire?”
“For the fire. The assault on Mercer. The abandonment. The false death notice. And if Joseph’s statement holds, conspiracy with Whitaker.”
The name Whitaker made the morning colder.
“Will Caleb be arrested?”
The sheriff’s jaw tightened.
“I’m going to try.”
Try.
That small word again.
The word poor women lived under.
The word rich men hid behind.
Daniel, pale from blood loss but still upright because he was stubborn, stepped beside me.
“You won’t be alone when you do,” he told the sheriff.
Sheriff Bell looked from him to Ruth, then to me.
“No,” he said. “I expect I won’t.”
That afternoon, the Mercers’ neighbors came.
I expected stares.
Whispers.
Judgment.
Instead, women brought blankets, bread, broth, fresh milk, baby cloths. Men repaired the burned wall. Someone carried in a cradle carved years ago and never used.
Mrs. Hale from the ridge kissed my forehead and said, “We heard what was done. We came as soon as the road cleared.”
I cried then.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just tears falling while strangers filled the room my own blood had tried to burn.
Ruth noticed and put Clara in my arms.
“See?” she said.
I looked around at the hands working, the food being set down, the fire being rebuilt.
“What?”
“The world has cruel people in it,” she said. “But it does not belong to them.”
For the first time since my belly began to show, I wanted to believe that.
Then Sheriff Bell returned at dusk.
His face was grim.
“Jonas Whitaker has taken Caleb to Durango,” he said. “They left before noon.”
Daniel cursed.
My hope dropped like a stone.
The sheriff removed a paper from his coat.
“But they left in a hurry. And frightened men make mistakes.”
He handed the paper to Ruth.
She read it.
Her eyes widened.
“What is it?” I asked.
Sheriff Bell looked at me.
“A ledger page from your father’s desk. Payment from Jonas Whitaker. Marked for removal of A.P.”
My initials.
My removal.
Proof.
The room spun.
Daniel stepped closer, but I did not fall.
Not this time.
May you like
I lifted my head.
“Then go get them,” I said.
