Chapter 1 - Far Enough
The stagecoach driver did not set the brake.
He slowed the horses at the bottom of the mountain switchback, tossed Dela Marsh’s canvas bag into the frozen mud, and pointed toward a narrow trail disappearing between black pines.
“Conn’s place is up there.”
Dela looked at the mountain.
“How far?”
The driver squinted as though distance meant something different in Montana.
“Far enough.”
Then he slapped the reins.
The coach rattled away before she could ask what that meant.
Dela stood beside the road until the wheels became a distant clatter and then disappeared completely beneath the restless sound of wind moving through pine branches.
November had painted the Montana sky the color of old tin.
Snow clung to the trees.
Her breath came out white.
She looked down at the canvas bag containing everything she had dared take from Butte.
Two dresses.
One pair of stockings.
A Bible that had belonged to her mother.
Seventeen dollars sewn inside the hem of an underskirt.
And one object she had promised herself she would never look at again.
Dela bent for the bag.
Pain tore through her right side.
Her knees nearly buckled.
For a terrible second, the mountain tilted sideways.
She closed her eyes.
Breathed once.
Twice.
Waited.
Three ribs had been broken six weeks earlier.
At least she believed three.
There had been no proper examination.
Warren had forbidden it.
“A doctor asks questions,” her husband had said while she sat on their bedroom floor fighting for enough air to remain conscious. “And you have a gift for making ordinary disagreements sound dramatic.”
Ordinary disagreements.
That was what Warren Marsh called the night he shoved her against the fireplace mantel.
Dela opened her eyes.
“Not today,” she whispered.
She lifted the bag with her left hand.
Then she started climbing.
The trail seemed determined to prove that she had made a foolish decision.
It climbed through dense forest, crossed a narrow creek already crusted with ice, then climbed again.
Halfway up, Dela stopped against a pine and wondered whether the stagecoach driver had sent her toward an abandoned trapper’s shack as a joke.
Then she remembered what waited behind her.
Warren standing in the doorway.
Warren removing his gloves one finger at a time.
Warren speaking softly because his soft voice was always worse than shouting.
She kept walking.
Almost an hour after leaving the road, she saw smoke.
The cabin sat in a clearing beneath towering pines, low and broad, its roof carrying several inches of snow.
It was larger than she had imagined but rougher too.
A shed leaned behind it.
Split firewood rose in careful stacks along one wall.
A giant gray dog lay beneath the porch roof.
Dela stopped.
The animal raised its head.
Its thick fur made it resemble a wolf.
It watched her.
Dela waited for barking.
None came.
She climbed the final steps and knocked.
The door opened almost immediately.
The man behind it was enormous.
Dela instinctively stepped backward.
He was perhaps forty-four, maybe forty-five, though the mountain had weathered his face in ways that made age difficult to measure. Long dark hair touched his collar. Gray threaded his beard. His shoulders nearly filled the doorway.
He was not handsome in the polished way Warren had been handsome.
There was nothing polished about Rufus Conn.
He looked carved rather than born.
His gaze dropped to the canvas bag.
Then returned to her face.
“Where’s the housekeeper?”
Dela swallowed.
“I’m the housekeeper.”
His brow moved.
“You?”
“Dela Marsh. I answered the notice in the Helena paper.”
Rufus leaned slightly to look beyond her.
“Someone come with you?”
“No.”
“You walked from the road?”
“Yes.”
He studied her again.
“You look like a hard winter could carry you off.”
Normally she would have apologized.
Instead exhaustion answered for her.
“The last few years have tried harder than winter.”
Something changed behind his eyes.
Not amusement.
Not pity.
Recognition, perhaps.
He stepped aside.
“Come in.”
The warmth struck her first.
An iron stove glowed near one wall. A scarred table occupied the middle of the cabin. Shelves held jars, tin cups, flour sacks and tools. Two chairs faced the stove. A bed sat beneath heavy elk hides, while a curtain concealed a tiny sleeping alcove.
Simple.
Quiet.
Orderly.
Rufus poured coffee.
For himself.
“Breakfast before five,” he said. “Supper when I come in. Creek’s east of the house. Keep the stove alive. Laundry outside when weather allows.”
Dela nodded.
“Anything else?”
“I’m not hiring company.”
“I understand.”
“I’m not looking for a wife.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“Good.”
That surprised him.
Only slightly.
Rufus continued.
“I don’t need conversation. You work, I pay you. Neither of us interferes with the other.”
Something loosened inside her chest.
No affection required.
No flattering.
No performing happiness.
No listening for a man’s footsteps and wondering what mood was coming through the door.
Just work.
“I understand.”
Rufus took a rifle from pegs beside the door.
Dela stiffened before she could stop herself.
He noticed.
Without comment, he turned the barrel toward the floor, checked the chamber, and left.
At the threshold he paused.
“There’s coffee in the pot.”
Then he disappeared into the snow.
It was the closest thing to kindness he offered.
During her first week, Dela discovered that a mountain cabin could expose every weakness a person possessed.
Water had weight.
Wood had weight.
Iron had weight.
Even blankets seemed heavier after sunset.
She learned to brace the water bucket against her left hip.
She kneaded bread primarily with one hand.
She carried three pieces of firewood instead of six.
And she learned something else.
Rufus Conn noticed everything.
On the fourth morning, a log slipped from her fingers.
It crashed against the stove.
Dela reacted before thought reached her.
Her shoulders lifted.
Her head ducked.
Her eyes closed.
She waited.
Nothing happened.
Behind her came the quiet metallic sound of Rufus cleaning his rifle.
“Creek’ll freeze harder tonight,” he said calmly. “Bring extra water before supper.”
Dela slowly opened her eyes.
He had not moved.
Days later, she nearly dropped a Dutch oven filled with venison stew.
A bolt of pain shot through her side.
She gasped and set the pot down too hard.
Rufus had entered without her hearing him.
“You hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“The stew didn’t spill.”
His eyes narrowed.
“You protect your right side every time you lift.”
Dela’s mouth went dry.
“Old injury.”
“It won’t interfere with my work.”
“I know.”
He lifted the Dutch oven with one hand, put it on the table and sat.
“Eat.”
He never mentioned her ribs again.
But two mornings later, Dela opened the woodbox.
She stopped.
Every piece of pine had been split smaller than usual.
Half-sized.
Light enough to carry one-handed.
Rufus was already gone.
His coffee cup had been washed.
Dela stared at the wood for a long time.
Kindness had frightened her once.
Warren’s kindness always arrived carrying a debt.
Flowers after bruises.
Jewelry after insults.
Apologies that slowly became accusations.
Everything good eventually produced an invoice.
What do you want from me?
Rufus seemed to want nothing.
That made him more difficult to understand than cruelty ever had.
December arrived beneath a storm that swallowed the mountain for three days.
Rufus could not check traps or haul timber, so he stayed indoors repairing harnesses, sharpening tools and pacing like a bear trapped in too small a cage.
On the second afternoon, Dela stirred beans while Rufus worked leather at the table.
He positioned a punch.
Raised a wooden mallet.
Struck.
The punch slipped.
The mallet crashed against the table.
Rufus cursed and shoved the table away.
The legs screamed across the floorboards.
Dela folded.
There was no decision.
One moment she stood near the stove.
The next she was on her knees in the corner.
Arms over her head.
Forehead almost touching the wall.
Waiting.
But she was not in Rufus Conn’s cabin anymore.
She was back in Butte.
Turkish carpet beneath her knees.
Bourbon on Warren’s breath.
A hand tangled in her hair.
A voice whispering:
Look what you make me do.
Silence filled the cabin.
“Dela.”
Rufus sounded very far away.
She could not move.
“The mallet slipped.”
Her breathing came in short, humiliating gasps.
“I’m not angry with you.”
Slowly, Dela lowered one arm.
Rufus was crouched across the room.
He had made himself smaller.
More importantly, he had not come closer.
His hands were open.
The mallet lay forgotten on the floor.
The enormous gray dog stood behind him, watching.
“Look at me,” Rufus said.
Dela lifted her eyes.
His face held no anger.
Only a terrible understanding.
“You thought I was going to hit you.”
Dela said nothing.
That was answer enough.
Something hard entered Rufus’s expression.
But it was not directed at her.
“Who did?”
Her entire body went still.
Outside, the storm pressed against the cabin.
May you like
And for the first time since arriving on the mountain, Dela understood that running far enough to escape Warren Marsh was not the same as escaping what he had done.
Worse, the look in Rufus Conn’s eyes told her he had just realized the same thing.
