The tribe of Chief Standing Elk had moved three days prior, retreating from the exposed river basin to a sheltered valley known as the deep creek, where the canyon walls rose high enough to break the gale. But even here, the cold was a living thing. It seeped through the thickest buffalo robes, froze the water in the skin bags before it could be poured, and turned the breath of the horses into clouds of shattered glass. Elias Thorne felt the cold in the metal of the rifle he carried, but mostly he felt it in the silence of the camp. Hunger had arrived before the snow.
The game trails were empty, the deer having moved south or hidden deep in the timber. The rations in the camp were strictly measured. A handful of dried meat, a scoop of parched corn. As watched the children, they did not run or play between the lodges anymore. They sat close to the fires, conserving energy, their eyes large and dark in faces that were becoming too thin.
He worked to keep the silence from eating him alive. He chopped wood until his hands blistered and callous grew over the blisters. He hauled water with the women, ignoring the sullen stares of the young warriors, who believed such work was beneath a man, even a white one. Winona worked harder. She was the spine that kept the lodge upright.
She moved with a desperate economy, wasting no motion. When she looked at him across the fire in the evenings, her face was gaunt, the sharp angles of her cheekbones casting shadows in the flickering light. "We have enough for 2 weeks," she told him one night, scraping the bottom of the cooking pot. "If the snow holds off, and if it doesn't," Elias asked. She did not answer.
She handed him the bowl containing the larger portion, as she always did. He tried to push it back, but she fixed him with a stare that brooked no argument. "Eat," she said. "I cannot haul you if you fall." The isolation of the valley was broken 4 days later by the arrival of a traitor.
He was a man named Gasket, a peddler who drove a muledrawn wagon piled high with pots, blankets, and dubious tinctures. He was allowed into the camp not out of friendship, but because the tribe was desperate for ammunition and salt. Elias stayed inside the lodge cleaning his rifle, but the camp was small. Discovery was inevitable. Gasket came to the chief's fire to haggle.
Elias was outside stretching a hide when the traitor walked past. Gasket was a short man with a beard that looked like a bird's nest and eyes that shifted constantly, weighing the value of everything they touched. He stopped when he saw Elias. The wind whistled through the bare branches of the cottonwoods. Gasket took a slow pull from a flask at his hip, his eyes narrowing.
He didn't speak immediately. He walked a circle around Elias, looking at his boots, the cut of his trousers, and finally his face. "You are a long way from the garrison." "Friend," Gasket said, his voice greasy with false cheer. "I am where I belong," Elias replied, not looking up from his work.
"Are you now?" Gasket stepped closer. You have the look of a man I saw on a poster back at Fort Laramie. A poster with a very heavy price on it. $500 if I recall. For a man named Thorne.
Elias stopped scraping the hide. He gripped the handle of the tool, his knuckles white. I don't know any Thorn, Elias said, his voice low. And I don't have $500. No.
Gasket laughed. A wet hacking sound. But the army does, and the Indian agent, Mr. Vain, he pays double for information that leads to the capture of renegades, especially ones who steal maps. Elias stood up slowly, towering over the smaller man.
Gasket took a quick step back, his hand dropping to the knife at his belt. "You are mistaken," Elias said. "Maybe," Gasket grinned, revealing yellow teeth. Maybe not, but the road is long and a man has time to think. He turned and walked away, whistling a tune that graded on Elias's nerves like a file on steel.
That night, the tension in the camp broke. It did not start with soldiers. It started with smoke. Just before dusk, a pillar of black smoke rose from the south, staining the purple sky. It was coming from the direction of the Miller ranch.
a settler outpost on the edge of the territory. Whiskey runners, Winona whispered as they watched the smoke from the ridge. They burn the ranchers out, steal the stock, and then blame us. It's a frame up, Elias said. The military tactics clear in his mind.
They create the crime and leave a trail leading right to your doorstep. The retaliation came swiftly. It was not a disciplined military advance, but a chaotic, lightning-fast raid under the cover of darkness. Elias was sleeping lightly, his hand near the rifle stock when the first shot cracked the frozen air. It was followed by the scream of a horse and the terrifying high-pitched war cries of men trying to sound like something they were not.
"Get down!" Ellas shouted, rolling off the furs and dragging Winona to the floor. Bullets punched through the leather walls of the lodge, ripping through the space where they had been sleeping seconds before. Outside, the camp erupted into mayhem. Women screamed, dogs barked, and the thunder of hooves tore through the center of the village.
Elias grabbed his rifle and crawled to the flap. "Stay here," he ordered Winona. "I am not a child," she hissed, grabbing her knife. Elias rolled out into the snow. The night was lit by the muzzle flashes of riders galloping between the lodges, firing indiscriminately.