Chapter 3
I did not sleep after that.
I lay with Mercy tucked against my chest while Silas sat by the door with his rifle across his knees.
Every time the wind moved, his head turned.
Every time the roof creaked, my arms tightened around my baby.
Someone had stood outside.
Someone had listened.
Someone had known I was alive and had chosen the storm for me.
At dawn, the world beyond the door was pale and vicious. The storm had weakened but not ended. Snow still fell in slanting sheets. The pines bent under white weight.
Silas opened the door only a crack.
The cold rushed in like a hand.
“We move today,” he said.
I stared at him.
“I just birthed a child.”
“I know.”
“I can barely sit.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why would you say something so foolish?”
He looked back at me.
“Because whoever came here may come back. And next time he may not stay outside.”
My mouth went dry.
Mercy made a tiny sound against me.
That settled it.
I would have crawled through broken rock before I let anyone touch her.
Silas spent the morning preparing. He took apart what remained of the broken crate and lashed the boards into a sled with rawhide strips. He lined it with canvas, hay, and half his blanket.
He gave me broth made from dried meat and melted snow. It tasted like smoke and salt and life.
Then he helped me sit up.
Pain flashed so bright I nearly fainted.
His hand caught my shoulder.
“Easy.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m practicing.”
A corner of his mouth moved.
It was almost a smile.
He wrapped Mercy first. Then me. Layer after layer. His blanket. My shawl. A piece of canvas tied across my shoulders. He worked without embarrassment, without pity, without softness that made me feel weak.
When he lifted me onto the sled, I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached.
“Tell me if the bleeding worsens,” he said.
“You a doctor now?”
“No. But I know when blood means hurry.”
I looked at him.
“Silas.”
He crouched beside me.
“What did you see in those tracks?”
His face closed.
“Two men.”
My breath caught.
“Two?”
“One stood by the window. One went to the creek.”
“How do you know?”
“I know tracks.”
“Could it have been Thomas?”
“No.”
The answer came too quick.
I hated him for it.
Then I hated myself, because I knew he was right.
Thomas had soft boots from Helena. Fine leather. Too smooth for mountain snow.
The tracks Silas found were heavy, nailed, and deep.
Working men’s boots.
Or hired men.
He tied a rope across his chest and began to pull the sled through the snow.
The first mile was agony.
Every bump sent pain through me. I bit my lip and held Mercy tight. Silas moved slowly but never stopped for long. He had the patience of a mule and the stubbornness of a saint.
The forest was white and silent.
Too silent.
Once, Silas raised his hand.
He listened.
I listened too.
At first, I heard only wind.
Then metal.
A faint clink.
Far behind us.
Silas turned his head.
“Don’t speak,” he whispered.
My heart slammed.
He pulled the sled off the narrow track and into a cluster of snow-heavy firs. Then he covered us with a white canvas and crouched beside a fallen log, rifle ready.
Hoofbeats came.
Slow.
Muffled.
Two riders passed through the trees not thirty yards away.
I saw them through a slit in the canvas.
One was thick-necked and hunched in a buffalo coat. The other was thin, with a red scarf tied around his hat.
I knew that scarf.
It belonged to Hiram Vale.
He worked for Amos Whitfield, my father-in-law.
My blood turned to ice.
The thick man stopped his horse.
“Tracks vanish here.”
Hiram cursed.
“Mountain man knows what he’s doing.”
“You said she’d be dead.”
“She should be.”
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
Mercy stirred. I prayed without words.
The thick man spat into the snow.
“Old Whitfield ain’t paying us to chase ghosts.”
“He’ll pay when he has the deed,” Hiram said. “Woman dies, baby dies, Thomas comes home grieving, and the valley claim slides neat into the family books.”
The valley claim.
My father’s land.
My inheritance.
My throat closed.
I had thought Thomas married me because I was steady. Because I worked hard. Because, once, before his father’s voice became louder than his own, he had looked at me as if I were worth choosing.
But Hiram’s words crushed the last gentle lie in me.
Thomas had brought me into the mountains.
Thomas had left me.
Thomas knew.
The thick man shifted in his saddle.
“What if the brat lived?”
Hiram laughed.
“Then we make sure it don’t.”
My whole body went rigid.
Silas’s hand moved, slow and careful, until it touched my shoulder through the canvas.
Not comfort.
Warning.
Do not move.
Do not breathe too loud.
The riders circled for several minutes, but the falling snow had softened our trail. At last Hiram cursed again and kicked his horse onward.
When the sound faded, I did not cry.
Something harder than grief had entered me.
Silas pulled the canvas back.
His face told me he had heard everything.
“My husband is alive,” I said.
He said nothing.
“He left us to die.”
The words should have broken me.
They did not.
I looked down at Mercy. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth moved in sleep. She had fought her way into this world while grown men plotted to erase her.
Something inside me settled.
I was not only a deserted wife anymore.
I was a mother.
And the woman who had screamed in that shack was not the woman who rose from it.
“Silas,” I said.
He crouched beside me.
“I need to get to town.”
His brow tightened.
“You need a bed.”
“I need a witness. I need a judge. I need someone who can stop them.”
“Whitfield owns half the men in Virginia City.”
“Then find the other half.”
He studied me.
Snow clung to his beard. His eyes were tired, but there was something like respect in them now.
“You understand what you’re saying?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“They will call you mad. Weak. Hysterical from childbirth. They’ll say you imagined it.”
“Then I’ll speak louder.”
“They may try to take the child.”
I held Mercy tighter.
“They’ll die trying.”
Silas looked toward the direction the riders had gone.
Then he stood and adjusted the rope across his chest.
“My cabin is closer than town. You live through tonight first. Then we decide how to make them answer.”
“No,” I said.
He turned.
May you like
I met his eyes.
“Then we make them answer.”
