Mountain Cabin

The rusted blade of the timber saw bit through frozen larch with a shriek that set the winter crows boiling up out of the black pines. Blood and pine sap were frozen to Einar Holmstrom’s knuckles, but he did not feel the cold because he was too busy watching the tracks in the valley floor three hundred feet below. Two horses were climbing the long switchbacks from the south, their riders hunched against a freezing November drizzle that turned every spruce needle into a hanging knife. Anna Ramsay stood in the cabin doorway behind him, a heavy wool shawl pulled tight across her collarbones, her eyes fixed on the lead rider with an intensity that made the surrounding forest feel completely still. She had spent nearly three years on this ridge since Tobias McKenna rode away, three years of splitting kindling, hauling river water, and …