Chapter 1 - Worth Two Mules
Before the sun had cleared the eastern ridge, Maeve Callahan learned exactly what Uncle Amos believed she was worth.
Two draft mules.
Not three. Not two mules and a sack of flour. Not even enough money to put a handful of coins into her pocket before sending her away.
Just two animals standing outside the Red Creek mercantile with frost whitening their backs.
Maeve was eighteen years old.
She owned two patched shifts, a pair of stockings worn nearly through at the heels, her mother's cracked wooden comb, and a faded blue dress that had once been too large for her.
Everything fit inside one small satchel.
She stood beside a barrel of salt while Uncle Amos discussed her future with a stranger.
“Useful,” Amos said.
Maeve stared at him.
He did not look at her.
“Quiet. Good with chores. Knows how to cook when there's something worth cooking.”
The stranger across from him was tall enough that he seemed to make the mercantile ceiling lower.
Gideon Reed.
Maeve had heard the name.
Everybody in Red Creek had.
He lived somewhere beyond Black Pine Ridge, in a cabin so isolated that winter storms could erase the trail for weeks. He trapped, hunted, cut timber, and came into town only when he needed salt, ammunition, flour, coffee, or tools.
People said his wife had died.
People also said he had children.
Nobody seemed to know much more.
Gideon wore a dark coat that reached nearly to his knees. Snow had melted along its shoulders. A heavy beard covered most of his face, and beneath the brim of his brown hat, his eyes looked tired rather than cruel.
That distinction mattered to Maeve.
She had become skilled at recognizing cruelty.
Cruel men enjoyed watching fear.
Gideon barely looked at her.
Amos leaned closer.
“Strong enough.”
Gideon's gaze finally lifted.
Maeve expected him to inspect her arms, perhaps her teeth, as Amos had once done when buying a mare.
Instead Gideon looked directly into her eyes.
Something changed in his expression.
Not pity.
Something quieter.
Discomfort, perhaps.
“You told her?” Gideon asked.
Amos shrugged.
“Told her what?”
“That she's coming with me.”
“She knows now.”
Maeve felt her fingers tighten around the satchel.
Gideon's jaw shifted.
“You said she agreed.”
Amos gave a short laugh.
“She's got nowhere else.”
Maeve's mother had been dead eleven months.
Her father had disappeared into a mining camp years before that, and whether he had died beneath a collapsed tunnel or simply chosen another life, nobody knew.
After her mother's death, Amos had taken Maeve in.
At first, he had called it family duty.
Then came the unpaid work.
The smaller meals.
The locked pantry.
The reminders that every bite she ate cost him money.
That morning, Maeve finally understood why Amos had suddenly begun asking whether she could handle children.
Gideon placed a folded document on the counter.
Amos barely read it.
His attention had already shifted toward the window.
Toward the mules.
“Those are both mine?”
Gideon's face hardened.
“That was the agreement.”
Amos smiled.
“Then we're finished.”
Maeve looked at him.
“Uncle Amos.”
He finally turned.
For one foolish second, some young, wounded part of her hoped he might say goodbye.
Instead, he frowned at her satchel.
“You don't need anything else?”
“There isn't anything else.”
“Well.”
He cleared his throat.
“Then don't make trouble.”
That was goodbye.
Maeve followed Gideon outside.
The cold struck immediately.
Red Creek was barely awake. Chimney smoke rose into a pale sky, horses stamped inside hitching rails, and somewhere behind the mercantile a rooster crowed.
Amos went directly to the mules.
He never looked back.
Gideon's wagon waited near the road.
Maeve climbed onto the wooden seat.
She kept her satchel in her lap.
Gideon loaded flour and supplies behind them, climbed up, gathered the reins, and drove north.
For the first mile, neither spoke.
Maeve watched Red Creek disappear.
She expected tears.
None came.
Perhaps she had used them all during the months after her mother died.
Perhaps a person could be abandoned so many times that eventually grief stopped feeling sharp and became something heavy instead.
The wagon began climbing.
Snow thickened along the road.
Gideon remained silent.
Maeve studied him from the corner of her eye.
Her uncle had traded her to this man.
That was the truth, no matter what words appeared on the paper.
She did not know what Gideon expected from her.
A housekeeper?
A wife?
A servant?
Something worse?
She had heard stories about isolated men.
Her stomach tightened.
After another hour, the wind strengthened.
Maeve folded her arms across herself.
Gideon noticed.
He reached behind the seat.
Maeve stiffened.
He pulled out an old gray wool blanket and tossed it into her lap.
“Wrap up.”
Maeve stared at it.
Gideon kept his eyes on the trail.
“Ain't hauling a frozen corpse home.”
The words were rough.
The gesture wasn't.
Maeve unfolded the blanket.
It smelled faintly of pine smoke.
“Thank you.”
Gideon grunted.
She wrapped it around herself.
Nobody had given Maeve anything that morning without first taking something from her.
That realization unsettled her more than the cold.
The trail narrowed.
Mountains rose around them, enormous and white.
By afternoon, Red Creek seemed impossibly far away.
Gideon finally spoke.
“Cabin ain't much.”
Maeve waited.
“Winter came early. Been behind on things.”
“What things?”
He glanced at her.
“Everything.”
That did not reassure her.
“Your children?”
His hands tightened slightly on the reins.
“Twins.”
“How old?”
“Seven.”
“Boy and girl?”
“Toby and Tess.”
Maeve waited for more.
Nothing came.
“Do they know I'm coming?”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“You didn't tell them?”
“Didn't know how.”
Maeve almost laughed, but his expression stopped her.
There was shame there.
Real shame.
“What happened to their mother?”
Gideon's face closed instantly.
Maeve regretted asking.
After a long silence, he said, “Died.”
“I’m sorry.”
He nodded once.
They continued.
The sun had begun descending when the wagon rounded a ridge and Maeve finally saw the cabin.
It stood alone beneath towering pines.
Behind it, mountains stretched toward a purple winter sky.
Smoke rose weakly from the chimney.
A fenced enclosure leaned beside a small barn.
There was no neighboring house.
No church.
No road beyond the trail they had followed.
Maeve's heart began pounding.
Gideon stopped the wagon.
“That's it.”
Maeve stared at the cabin.
Whatever waited inside would become her world.
Gideon unloaded the supplies.
Maeve climbed down, still holding the blanket.
She followed him toward the door.
He opened it.
Warmth did not greet them.
Neither did children.
The cabin smelled of smoke, old grease, damp wool, and something spoiled.
Maeve stepped inside.
Dirty plates covered one end of the table.
Ash spilled from the hearth.
Blankets lay tangled in a corner.
One window was so clouded with grime that almost no daylight entered.
She heard something.
Scratch.
Maeve turned.
Nothing.
Gideon set down a sack of flour.
“Toby?”
Silence.
“Tess?”
Another sound came from beneath the table.
Maeve stared.
Two eyes appeared in the darkness.
Then four.
Slowly, two filthy, barefoot children crawled out.
The boy stood first.
His brown hair hung across his forehead.
His shirt was stained.
He was thin.
Too thin.
Behind him crouched a little girl holding a battered stuffed rabbit against her chest.
Neither child smiled.
Neither spoke.
They stared at Maeve as though Gideon had brought home a wolf.
Gideon removed his hat.
“Toby. Tess.”
The boy moved in front of his sister.
“This is Maeve.”
No reaction.
“She’s staying.”
Tess disappeared halfway behind Toby.
“She cooks,” Gideon continued awkwardly. “Cleans. You listen to her.”
Maeve turned toward him.
That was all?
Gideon seemed incapable of finding another sentence.
Finally, he muttered, “Need to see to the horse.”
Then he walked outside.
Maeve heard the door close.
She was alone with the children.
Toby watched her.
Maeve lowered her satchel.
“Hello.”
Toby's shoulders tightened.
Maeve did not approach him.
She turned instead toward the hearth.
The fire was almost dead.
“Well,” she whispered to herself. “We can't have that.”
She bent to place a piece of wood onto the coals.
A movement flashed behind her.
Small feet struck the floor.
Maeve turned.
Toby launched himself at her.
He seized her arm.
Before Maeve understood what was happening, his teeth sank into her wrist.
Pain exploded through her.
She gasped.
Her free hand flew upward instinctively.
Toby flinched.
His eyes squeezed shut.
He was waiting to be hit.
Maeve froze.
The raised hand remained suspended.
Toby was trembling.
Not angry.
Terrified.
Maeve slowly lowered her hand.
“It's all right.”
His teeth remained against her skin.
“I won't hit you.”
Toby opened his eyes.
Maeve swallowed against the pain.
“You can let go.”
Seconds passed.
Then his jaw loosened.
He backed away.
Tess grabbed his shirt.
Maeve looked at the marks on her wrist.
Then at Toby.
He looked certain punishment was coming.
Instead Maeve picked up her shawl.
“I need firewood.”
She walked outside.
Only after the door closed did she lean against the cabin wall and fight back tears.
Her wrist throbbed.
But the pain wasn't what frightened her.
It was the look on Toby's face.
A seven-year-old child did not learn to expect a raised hand without reason.
Maeve stared toward the darkening forest.
She had thought she was being delivered into the home of a dangerous man.
Now another possibility entered her mind.
Perhaps the greatest danger here had already happened.
And perhaps nobody had survived it untouched.
Behind her, through the cabin wall, she heard Tess begin to cry.
Maeve picked up an armful of firewood.
Then she went back inside.
She had been traded for two mules.
But before that first night ended, Maeve would discover that Gideon Reed had not brought her into a household.
He had brought her into the ruins of a family.
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And beneath those ruins was a secret nobody in Red Creek had ever heard.
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