Frontier Survival

The suffocating granite walls of the mountain closed around Caleb Vale’s chest like a tightening fist, but nothing could match the cold terror of hearing his ten-year-old son whisper that the solid rock was breathing. “Toby!” Miriam’s scream tore through the pines outside so violently that a flock of startled birds exploded from the high branches. Her heavy bundle of firewood crashed into the frost-bitten dead leaves, forgotten as the earth swallowed her only child. Only seconds earlier, Toby had been standing beside the jagged northern ridge, one small, pale hand pressed flat against a hairline black seam in the ancient stone. He had tilted his head, his dark curls catching the pale October light, looking less like a boy braving the wilderness and more like a creature listening to a secret language. “It’s breathing,” he had murmured. Before Caleb could drop his axe or …

The bullet that punched through the thick pine wall was no warning shot, but a jagged messenger of blood and intent. Glass rained down across the puncheon floor, a glittering frost of ruin that caught the dim embers of the hearth and scattered them into ash. I threw myself flat against the rough planks, dragging the heavy wool quilt over my head as the heavy thud of hooves churned the snow outside. Through the fractured casing of the front window, the freezing night air poured in with a sudden, predatory bite, smelling of wet fur, stale tobacco, and burnt powder. The wind howled through the breach, carrying with it a voice that curdled the marrow in my bones. “Abigail! I know you’re in there, you ungrateful little bitch!” It wasn't Josiah’s voice. It was smoother, coated in the oily drawl of a man who spent …

The whiteout struck with the suddenness of a gunshot, instantly erasing the horizon and blinding the three desperate riders who were already freezing in their saddles. If they did not reach the timberline of Carter’s ridge within the hour, the biting sub-zero gale would turn their veins to ice. The cowboys had laughed when they saw the old rancher filling his barn with sacks of flour, barrels of beans, and stacks of firewood. By the time winter arrived, those same men would be riding through a white wall of snow toward his ranch, praying he had prepared enough to keep their families alive. But as the wind screamed across the valley, stripping the breath from their lungs, those mocking memories felt like a lifetime ago. It had begun with firewood. Every morning in September, Samuel Carter disappeared into the pine forest before sunrise, his solitary …

The instant Lydia Fenwick whispered, “It hurts,” she braced for the rage she had spent her whole life learning to survive. She lay stiff beneath thick buffalo robes, both palms pressed against Gideon Rourke’s scarred chest, her breath shallow and trapped in her throat. Outside, a February gale tore across the Idaho mountains, shaking the pine shutters and driving fine white snow through every crack in the unchinked cabin walls. Gideon had paid her railway fare, married her before indifferent witnesses, given her his surname, and brought her to the only warm house for miles. Every man Lydia had ever known believed kindness was a debt, a loan that had to be repaid in flesh and humiliation. “Please,” she whispered, forcing the trembling words past her mounting fear, her fingers digging uselessly into the rough fabric of his woolen shirt. “We can try again later …