"We refused to leave. So, he sent his men in the dead of night. They did not come to talk. They came with torches and rifles."
Cora clutched the heavy wool blanket to her chest, her knuckles turning white. "Elias fought them. He killed three of Trent's men so that the women and children could escape into the caves. He bought us time with his life.
Before he rode out to face them, he gave me this watch. He told me, "If I fall, find my brother Caleb in Wyoming. He is the only man who can make this right." Caleb stared at the floor, his fists clenched so tightly his nails dug into his palms.
The grief that had haunted him for 3 years crystallized into a sharp, blinding fury. Josiah Trent, the man who had sat in the town saloon drinking whiskey and shaking Caleb's hand just 2 months ago, was the man who had ordered the slaughter of his brother. "I hid for years," Cora said, her voice bringing Caleb back to the present. "But Trent's men never stopped hunting me.
They knew I was a witness. They knew I could bring the federal marshals down on him. A week ago, they found my camp in the foothills. I ran.
They shot me as I crossed the frozen river." She looked toward the heavy oak door, listening to the shrieking wind. "They are tracking me, Caleb," Cora said, her tone dead serious. "They are led by a man named Wyatt, a killer.
They tracked my blood in the snow before the storm hit. The blizzard slowed them down, but it did not stop them." Caleb looked at the door, then back to the beautiful, fiercely resilient woman sitting in his bed. She was his family now, the widow of his brother, the keeper of Elias's final moments.
He walked over to his gun cabinet, pulled out a heavily oiled Winchester repeating rifle, and began sliding brass cartridges into the loading gate. The metallic click-clack echoed loudly in the small cabin. "Let them come," Caleb said, his eyes hard as flint. "They owe me a brother, and I'm going to collect."
By the dawn of the second day, the howling monster outside had finally died. The blizzard broke, leaving behind a profound, suffocating silence. The Wyoming landscape was transformed into a blinding, pristine ocean of white. The snow drifts piled so high they reached the lower eaves of Caleb's roof, but inside the cabin, the atmosphere was thick with an entirely different kind of tension.
Caleb stood by the frost-rimmed window, his Winchester resting against his thigh. He scraped a small circle of ice away with his thumbnail, peering out into the dazzling morning light. The glare of the sun on the fresh snow was almost painful. Nothing moved.