"Lord Almighty, who are you?" "Please, don't send me back into the storm." "Where did you get this?" "You recognize it? It belonged to my brother Elias, and he disappeared 3 years ago."
Neither the brutal Wyoming blizzard nor the wind howling like a dying animal outside the cabin woke Caleb. Instead, he was roused by the freezing, trembling weight of a woman sliding beneath his quilts. When he finally struck a match, it wasn't the sight of the wild runaway herself that stopped his heart, but what she clutched in her bleeding hands. The winter of 1886 was known across the Wyoming territory as the Great Die-Up. It was a season of unforgiving, bone-snapping cold that froze cattle upright in the snow and buried homesteads under drifts the size of church steeples.
For Caleb Hayes, a solitary rancher living in a remote cabin near the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, it was a season of ghosts. Caleb was a hardened man, carved from the very granite of the mountains he called home. At 32, his face was lined by sun, wind, and profound loss. Three years prior, his younger brother Elias had ridden south toward the New Mexico territory and vanished without a trace.
The authorities claimed Elias had likely fallen prey to bandits or the harsh elements, but Caleb's gut told him otherwise. Elias was a survivor. His disappearance had left a hollow echo in Caleb's life, turning him into a recluse who preferred the company of his horses to the deceitful nature of men. On the night of December 14th, the blizzard outside was a living, breathing monster.
The wind shrieked through the chinks in the cabin's log walls, and frost crept up the inside of the glass panes like icy ivy. Caleb had banked the fire in his cast iron stove, reducing it to a bed of glowing ruby red embers to conserve the last of his split oak. Clad in thick long johns and wrapped in two heavy buffalo robes, he lay in his cot staring up at the darkened rafters, listening to the storm tear at the cedar shakes of his roof. It was just past midnight when the sounds changed.
Beneath the steady roar of the wind, there was a heavy thump against the heavy oak door of the cabin. Caleb's eyes darted toward the sound. A bear? Unlikely in this weather.
The wind shifted and he heard it, the unmistakable scrape of metal on metal. The heavy iron latch of his door was being lifted. Before Caleb could throw off the heavy robes, the door burst open. A violent swirl of snow and freezing air blasted into the room, instantly plunging the cabin's temperature below freezing.
Caleb reached blindly under his pillow. His hand closed around the cold, checkered walnut grip of his Colt .45. "Close that door," Caleb barked over the roaring wind, thumbing the hammer back with a sharp click. There was no answer, only a desperate choked gasp.
The heavy door was pushed shut against the gale, plunging the room back into near total darkness, save for the faint orange glow of the stove. Caleb held his breath, his revolver aimed toward the entryway. He heard the intruder stumbling. Heavy, wet footsteps dragged across the plank floor.
"I said stay put," Caleb warned, his voice low and dangerous. "I got a gun leveled right at your chest." Still no answer. Instead, there was a heavy thud followed by the sound of something dragging across the floorboards.