Millie's life is tied to it. Keep her safe and the claim is yours. Signed. Etienne Laroo. Jonah lowered the letter.
He looked at the map. It showed the ridge, but it had markings on it that did not match the official surveys. Millie looked at him, her face pale. He knew, she said softly. Etienne told me.
He said, "When the cabin is safe on paper, Jonah will come. " I did not know how he knew your name. I thought I thought he was just telling stories to keep me from being afraid. She looked at Jonah with wide eyes. I waited because I had nowhere else to wait. Jonah looked at the letter, then at the woman.
He looked at the walls of the cabin he had bought for $1. He realized then that the price had been a lie. The cabin was not a bargain. It was a fuse. Etienne had set a trap for the men who wanted to destroy Millie and he had used Jonah as the match to light it.
Jonah folded the letter and put it in his pocket. He looked at the door. The winter was far from over. We are not just hiding anymore. Millie, Jonah said, his voice grim.
He placed his hand over hers on the table. We are holding the match. The weather broke on a Tuesday, 3 weeks after the blizzard had sealed the cabin on Black Pine Ridge like a tomb. The wind, which had been a constant, screaming presence against the logs, suddenly dropped to a sullen whisper. The sky lifted, trading the heavy, bruising purple of the storm for a flat steel gray that promised nothing but a pause in the violence.
Jonah Crow stood on the porch, testing the air. It was still cold enough to freeze breath in the throat, but the bite was different. It was the stillness of a predator waiting to strike again. He looked down at his own shoulder. The wolf bite was angry.
Despite Millie's stitching and the poultices of pine sap and boiled bark, the wound was hot to the touch, the skin around it tight and red. It needed a doctor, or at least medicine better than whiskey and hope. Inside, the flour sack was folded over, nearly empty. The coffee was gone, and Millie's hands were cracked raw from the dry cold and the scrubbing of rough fabric. The skin split deep enough to bleed when she made a fist.
"We have to go down," Jonah said, turning back into the room. Millie looked up from the stove. She was pale, the hollows under her cheekbones more pronounced than they had been a month ago. You mean you have to go down? She said.
Jonah nodded. I will take the packhorse. I can be back before nightfall at the trail holds. You stay here. Keep the door barred.
No, Millie said. It was a quiet word, but it stopped Jonah in his tracks. He looked at her. She was standing straight, her chin lifted in that stubborn way he had come to recognize, and secretly to admire. Millie, Jonah said, his voice low and reasonable.