Chapter 1 - The Stranger in the Woodshed
By January of 1883, Cora Hayes had learned that cold could be louder than grief.
Grief lived quietly.
It sat in the empty chair across from the supper table. It waited inside the wooden chest where her husband’s shirts remained folded because she had never found the courage to give them away. It slept beside her on the narrow cot where the mattress still dipped slightly on Caleb’s side.
Cold was different.
Cold hammered at the cabin walls.
It screamed beneath the door.
It crawled through every crack in the logs and turned water to ice before morning.
And on the worst day of that Montana winter, it killed Cora’s fire.
She stood over the stone hearth with a poker in one hand and stared at the last gray curl of smoke rising from dead embers.
“No,” she whispered.
The cabin offered no answer.
At twenty-eight years old, Cora Hayes owned forty acres of stubborn mountain soil, six hens that had stopped laying, a half-empty sack of flour, two jars of beans, one milk cow too thin to give milk, and enough pride to keep her from begging.
What she did not own was enough firewood to survive another week.
The letter on her table made matters worse.
She had read it so many times that she knew every cruel line.
By authority of the Montana Land and Cattle Syndicate, all occupants lacking recognized title were required to vacate designated holdings before spring grazing operations commenced.
At the bottom was the signature.
Hyram Cole.
Foreman.
Cora hated the name almost as much as she hated the word occupants.
Her husband had built this cabin.
Caleb Hayes had cut every log himself.
He had dug the well, cleared the field, planted the first apple saplings that now stood bare and black against the snow.
He had died believing the land belonged to them.
Now Hyram Cole said otherwise.
Cora folded the paper and slid it beneath a chipped plate.
“Spring,” she muttered. “You can have an answer in spring.”
If she survived January.
She looked at the empty wood box.
The woodshed stood thirty yards behind the cabin.
Thirty yards.
In summer, she could walk it barefoot.
That morning, through the white wall screaming past the windows, it might as well have been thirty miles.
Cora wrapped her faded gray shawl around her shoulders, tied a scarf over her hair, and opened the door.
The wind nearly knocked her backward.
Snow stung her cheeks.
For a moment, every instinct told her to shut the door.
Then she remembered the dead hearth.
She stepped outside.
The world disappeared.
She could barely see the woodshed.
Her boots sank above the ankles, then to the calves where drifts had gathered against the cabin.
“Keep moving,” she told herself.
The words vanished in the wind.
She reached the shed gasping.
Her fingers had gone numb inside her gloves.
She pulled the latch.
The door resisted.
Ice had formed along the bottom.
Cora kicked it twice and pulled again.
The door jerked open.
She stepped inside.
Then stopped.
There was a man lying against her firewood.
For several seconds, Cora believed he was dead.
He was enormous.
Even slumped on the floor, he seemed to fill half the shed. Snow covered the shoulders of a heavy buffalo coat. Dark hair hung wet across his forehead. His boots were expensive, though badly worn by travel.
A Winchester rested near one hand.
Cora immediately backed toward the door.
Every lesson Caleb had ever taught her moved through her mind.
Never trust a stranger in winter.
Never touch a man’s gun.
And never involve yourself in trouble that arrived already bleeding.
She looked again.
A dark stain marked the stranger’s side.
The sight made her stomach tighten.
Then the man groaned.
It was barely a sound.
Cora closed her eyes.
“Oh, no.”
He groaned again.
She stared toward the cabin.
Then toward the unconscious stranger.
“You had the entire territory,” she said bitterly. “And you chose my woodshed.”
No response.
Cora knelt cautiously.
“Sir?”
His breathing was shallow.
She touched his cheek.
Ice cold.
“Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
Common sense spoke clearly.
Leave him.
She had barely enough food for one person.
A wounded man in the mountains probably had enemies.
Helping him could bring those enemies directly to her door.
Then his lips moved.
She leaned closer.
“Water,” he breathed.
That decided it.
Not because she was foolish.
Not because she trusted him.
Because Caleb had once told her that the measure of a person was what they did when kindness became inconvenient.
Cora hated when her dead husband won arguments.
She grabbed the stranger under the shoulders.
He barely moved.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
The next hour nearly killed her.
She tied a rope beneath his arms, pulled, slipped, stood, pulled again, and dragged him inch by inch through the blizzard.
Twice she collapsed.
Once she began crying from exhaustion and fury.
“You weigh as much as a horse,” she yelled at the unconscious man.
The storm swallowed her words.
Eventually she reached the porch.
By the time she dragged him across the threshold, she could no longer feel her fingers.
She rolled him near the hearth.
Then she went back for enough wood to build a small fire.
Warmth returned slowly.
Cora removed his buffalo coat.
Beneath it was an off-white frontier shirt, torn at the side.
She saw the wound.
A bullet had passed through the flesh beneath his ribs.
“Lucky,” she whispered.
If the ball had entered two inches higher, the stranger would have died before reaching her shed.
Cora heated water.
She used the final swallow of Caleb’s old stomach bitters to clean the wound.
The man stirred.
His hand suddenly closed around her wrist.
Cora froze.
His eyes remained shut.
But his grip was powerful.
“Easy,” she said. “I’m helping you.”
His fingers slowly released.
She tore strips from her clean petticoat.
It had been part of her wedding clothes.
Another thing winter would take.
She bound the wound.
Then the stranger began shaking.
Hard.
Cora added another log.
It did little.
His lips had turned blue.
She looked around the cabin.
Her gaze stopped on the cot.
The blanket.
Red, green, black, and cream stripes.
Thick Hudson’s Bay wool.
Caleb’s wedding gift.
The only object in the cabin capable of keeping a person truly warm.
Cora stared at it for several seconds.
Without it, she would spend the night beside the fire wearing every dress she owned.
With it, the stranger might live.
She swallowed.
Then crossed the room.
Cora lifted the blanket.
She wrapped it around him carefully.
“There,” she whispered. “Now you’d better survive, because I’m going to be extremely angry if I freeze for nothing.”
For three days, the stranger burned with fever.
Cora slept in a chair beside the hearth.
She fed him spoonfuls of water.
She changed the bandage.
She rationed her beans.
At night, the man spoke in fevered fragments.
Most made no sense.
A river.
A train.
Someone named Charles.
Then one name became clear.
“Hyram.”
Cora’s hand stopped above the water cup.
The stranger shifted beneath the blanket.
“Hyram… no…”
Cora felt something colder than winter move through her.
Hyram Cole.
The man taking her home.
On the fourth morning, she woke to silence.
The stranger was watching her.
Gray eyes.
Sharp.
Clear.
Dangerous.
Cora sat upright.
“You’re awake.”
His voice came rough.
“You dragged me inside.”
“I don’t like dead men in my woodshed.”
Something almost resembling amusement moved across his face.
“It ruins the firewood,” she added.
He looked at the striped blanket covering him.
Then at her thin shawl.
“You gave me your heavy blanket.”
“You were freezing.”
“You could have frozen.”
“I considered that afterward.”
He studied her for a long moment.
“My name is Boon.”
“Cora Hayes.”
His expression changed almost imperceptibly.
“Hayes?”
Before she could ask what that meant, his eyes turned toward the table.
Toward the eviction notice.
Cora noticed.
“You know Hyram Cole.”
Boon looked back at her.
“How do you know that?”
“You said his name for three nights.”
His jaw tightened.
“What did I say?”
“Mostly nonsense.”
“Mostly?”
“You sounded afraid of him.”
Boon’s eyes hardened.
“I’m not afraid of Hyram Cole.”
A rifle cracked outside.
The window exploded.
Cora screamed as glass scattered across the floor.
Boon moved faster than any wounded man had a right to move.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her down.
A second shot punched into the wall.
Cora crawled toward her shotgun.
Boon kicked the table onto its side.
Outside, horses shifted in the storm.
Then came a man’s voice.
“We followed your trail from the pass, Tagot!”
Cora looked sharply at Boon.
Tagot.
Not Boon.
Boon Tagot.
The voice outside continued.
“Come out, or we burn the widow with you!”
Cora stared at the stranger she had saved.
Boon’s face had changed.
The weakness was still there.
But something colder had taken its place.
Something commanding.
Cora whispered, “Who are you?”
Boon looked toward the broken window.
Then at the eviction notice lying beneath the overturned table.
When his eyes returned to hers, the answer frightened her more than the men outside.
“Someone Hyram Cole has been trying very hard to kill.”
May you like
And outside the cabin, another rifle was raised.
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