Chapter 2 - THE SECOND BODY IN THE SNOW
Seth was not the only one lying beside the creek.
A man lay facedown twenty feet beyond him.
Cora stopped so abruptly her bare feet slid in the snow.
For one terrible second she could not understand what she was seeing.
Seth’s small body.
Broken ice.
Blood.
A stranger in a brown coat.
Then Seth whimpered.
Everything else disappeared.
Cora ran.
“Seth!”
She dropped to her knees beside him.
His eyes fluttered.
“I’m sorry.”
Blood soaked the left side of his wool shirt.
Cora’s stomach turned.
“No. No, sweetheart. Don’t move.”
“I crossed.”
“I know.”
“Pa said not to.”
“We can discuss disobedience when you’re eighty.”
She pressed both hands against the wound.
Seth screamed.
Cora nearly broke with him.
“Sorry. I know. I know.”
Behind her, snow crunched.
She spun.
Caleb stood ten yards away.
His face had gone white.
“Seth?”
“Go get your father.”
“He rode to the south fence.”
“Then get Jonas from the bunkhouse.”
Caleb stared at the stranger.
“Who’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
The man moved.
Barely.
Cora saw one gloved hand claw at the snow.
Alive.
“Caleb.”
The boy looked at her.
“Run.”
He ran.
Cora forced herself to examine Seth.
The blood was not coming from a cut caused by ice.
The wound was too clean.
Too round.
A bullet.
Her skin went cold for a reason unrelated to winter.
Someone had shot a seven-year-old boy.
“Seth.” She leaned close. “Did you see what happened?”
His lips trembled.
“I wanted to prove Caleb was scared.”
“Of the creek?”
He nodded weakly.
“I went across. Then the man came out.”
“The man lying there?”
Another nod.
“He yelled at me.”
“What did he say?”
Seth’s breathing became shallow.
“He said get down.”
Cora looked toward the stranger.
“Then?”
“There was a bang.”
Her heart stopped.
“From him?”
Seth shook his head.
“Trees.”
Someone had been shooting from the trees.
The wounded stranger may have tried to protect him.
“Then he pushed me.”
Cora followed Seth’s gaze.
Broken ice.
If the stranger had shoved Seth out of the line of fire, the boy must have struck the rocks near the bank.
She searched the snow.
There.
A bullet groove through a pine trunk chest-high to an adult.
Another buried in the ice.
This had been an ambush.
Hoofbeats thundered from the direction of the house.
Wyatt.
He came down the slope like a man outrunning death.
Cora had never seen his face like that.
Not stern.
Not controlled.
Terrified.
He jumped from the saddle before the horse stopped.
“Seth!”
“I’ve got pressure on it.”
Wyatt dropped beside them.
His hands shook when he touched his son’s hair.
“Boy.”
Seth opened his eyes.
“Pa?”
“I’m here.”
“I crossed.”
Wyatt swallowed.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You save that breath.”
His voice broke.
Cora looked at him.
“Wyatt, it’s a gunshot.”
He froze.
“What?”
“The bullet entered here.”
She moved one blood-soaked hand slightly.
“I don’t think it exited.”
Wyatt’s expression changed.
The fear remained.
But underneath it came something much darker.
“Who?”
Seth whispered.
“Trees.”
Wyatt turned toward the timber.
His eyes moved slowly over the ridge.
Then he saw the second man.
He stood.
Cora caught his sleeve.
“Seth first.”
Wyatt looked down at her bloody hands.
For an instant she thought he might argue.
Then he nodded.
“Jonas!”
The ranch foreman arrived with Caleb and two hands.
Jonas Hale was fifty, gray-bearded, broad across the shoulders.
His face changed when he saw Seth.
“Jesus.”
“Get a door off the shed,” Wyatt ordered. “We need a litter.”
Jonas pointed toward the stranger.
“That’s Elias Crowe.”
Wyatt went still.
“You know him?”
“Worked the Fletcher spread last year.”
Wyatt stood and crossed to the wounded man.
Cora stayed with Seth.
Caleb knelt beside her.
“Is he going to die?”
“No.”
She said it too quickly.
Caleb heard the lie.
His face crumpled.
Cora took one hand off Seth long enough to grab Caleb’s wrist.
“He is alive right now. That’s what we work with.”
Caleb stared at her.
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
Something in his expression steadied.
Wyatt rolled Elias onto his back.
The man had been shot high in the chest.
Blood bubbled near his collarbone.
Elias’s eyes opened.
He saw Wyatt.
“Thornton.”
“Who shot you?”
Elias coughed.
“Rusk.”
Wyatt’s jaw tightened.
“Which Rusk?”
“Benton.”
Jonas swore.
Cora knew the name.
Everybody in the valley did.
Benton Rusk owned the Black Ridge Mining Company north of town.
He had spent years buying mountain claims, timber leases, and water rights.
Cora had heard women at church say he could smile while destroying a family.
Elias grabbed Wyatt’s coat.
“He knows.”
“Knows what?”
“The survey.”
Wyatt’s eyes narrowed.
“What survey?”
Elias looked toward the creek.
“The silver line.”
Then he lost consciousness.
Wyatt stared at him.
Jonas appeared with the makeshift litter.
“We take both?”
Wyatt hesitated only once.
“Yes.”
They carried Seth first.
Cora walked beside him barefoot until Wyatt noticed.
“What in God’s name—”
“I ran out.”
“You have no shoes.”
“I am aware.”
He pulled off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders.
She tried to resist.
“Wyatt—”
“Put it on.”
“I’m covered in blood.”
“So is my son.”
That ended the argument.
At the cabin, Cora turned the kitchen into a surgery room.
The nearest doctor lived eleven miles away.
Jonas rode for him.
Cora had no medical training beyond teaching children how not to bleed to death after schoolyard accidents.
But she could boil instruments.
She could keep Seth awake.
She could stop Caleb from seeing too much.
Wyatt sat beside Seth gripping the boy’s hand.
Seth whispered, “You mad?”
Wyatt bent over him.
“Furious.”
The boy’s eyes filled.
“At you?”
Wyatt’s face broke.
“No.”
He pressed his forehead to Seth’s tiny knuckles.
“At myself.”
Cora looked away.
She suddenly understood something.
Wyatt Thornton did not love gently.
He loved like a man expecting God to collect payment.
The doctor arrived two hours later.
By then Seth was drifting.
Dr. Amos Finch examined him.
“The bullet missed the lung.”
Wyatt exhaled.
“Can you get it out?”
“I believe so.”
“Believe?”
Finch glared.
“You want certainty, ask the Lord. You want surgery, hold the lantern.”
They worked for thirty-seven minutes.
Cora stood at Seth’s head.
Wyatt held his shoulders.
When the bullet finally struck the metal tray, it made a small sound.
A tiny piece of lead.
Such a small thing to create so much blood.
Dr. Finch stitched the wound.
“He needs watching.”
“For how long?”
“Tonight decides a great deal.”
Wyatt sat beside Seth.
He did not move for three hours.
Neither did Cora.
At midnight, Caleb appeared in the doorway.
“Cora?”
She looked up.
He had never used her name before.
Only teacher.
Or woman.
“What?”
“The other man woke up.”
Wyatt lifted his head.
They found Elias Crowe in the downstairs guest room.
Jonas had bandaged his shoulder.
Elias looked gray.
Wyatt stood over him.
“Tell me about Benton Rusk.”
Elias laughed once.
It hurt.
“Figured you’d ask.”
“What survey?”
Elias looked at Cora.
Then back at Wyatt.
“Your wife know what she married into?”
Cora stiffened.
Wyatt’s expression hardened.
“She does now.”
“No.”
Elias’s eyes sharpened.
“She doesn’t.”
He reached weakly inside his torn coat.
Jonas stopped him.
“Easy.”
“Paper.”
They found a folded map inside the lining.
Elias handed it to Wyatt.
A red line crossed the northern half of the Thornton ranch.
Wyatt stared.
“What is this?”
“Federal mineral survey.”
“On private land?”
“Under it.”
Elias swallowed.
“Silver seam runs from Black Ridge straight beneath your upper pasture.”
Wyatt said nothing.
Cora watched his face.
Elias continued.
“Rusk offered the surveyor five thousand dollars to change the boundary.”
Jonas swore.
“Surveyor refused?”
“Refused.”
“Where is he?”
Elias looked toward the dark window.
“Dead.”
Silence filled the room.
Wyatt’s voice dropped.
“And you?”
“I stole his copy before Rusk’s men could burn everything.”
Cora looked toward the ceiling.
Above them, Seth slept with a bullet wound in his side.
“Why come here?”
Elias looked at her.
“To warn him.”
“Then why were you at the creek?”
“Rusk’s men caught me near the north ridge.”
He closed his eyes.
“I ran.”
Wyatt unfolded the survey.
His land.
His water.
His sons.
Everything suddenly connected.
Elias whispered, “Rusk won’t stop.”
Wyatt’s eyes hardened.
“No.”
“He thinks you don’t know.”
Wyatt looked toward the staircase.
Toward the room where his seven-year-old son lay wounded.
Then he looked at the blood still dried on Cora’s dress.
“He knows now.”
Outside, wind shook the windows.
Cora realized the marriage she had entered for shelter had become something else entirely.
The house was no longer simply a roof.
The children were no longer simply part of the bargain.
And Wyatt was no longer only the mountain man who had rescued her from hunger.
May you like
Someone had fired into his family.
And Cora suddenly understood with frightening clarity that she considered herself part of that family too.
