The cold muzzle of a loaded Henry rifle pressed hard against the base of Cyrus Creed’s skull, while a trembling voice hissed, “If you look under this cloth, Creed, you won’t survive the hour.”
The frozen November wind of 1884 howled through Orofino, Idaho Territory, carrying the raw scents of woodsmoke, cheap whiskey, and the sharp, metallic bite of an oncoming blizzard. Cyrus had ridden down from the jagged peaks of the Bitterroots for three things only: a block of coarse salt, a fresh canister of black powder, and enough flour and lard to survive another brutal winter alone in his drafty cabin. He had no intention of lingering in the muddy, brawling mining town, and he certainly had no intention of playing the hero.
Then he heard the laughter—sharp, cruel, and echoing off the rough-hewn timber facades of the saloons.
A dense crowd had gathered around a high-sided freight wagon stuck deep in the town square’s frozen sludge. Atop the wagon box stood Thaddeus Cooper, a slick-tongued eastern speculator whose eyes darted like trapped beetles, waving a crumpled legal document in one hand as though he were auctioning off broken-down plow mules.
“Gentlemen, I won’t lie to you,” Cooper shouted, his voice cracking slightly over the din of the jeering onlookers. “This here is a ruined lot brought all the way from St. Louis to marry Mr. Jeremiah Higgins. But when Higgins finally lifted her veil at the boarding house, he nearly lost his lunch. The marriage contract’s broken, null and void. The girl’s disfigured. A regular monster, I tell you.”
The crowd erupted into fresh, howling laughter, punctuated by the metallic clink of beer mugs and stamping boots.
Cyrus stood frozen at the edge of the throng, his jaw tightening so hard a muscle twitched beneath the jagged old cougar scar that ran from his left ear down to his collarbone. Beside the wooden wheel of the wagon stood a heavyset young woman clad in a plain gray dress streaked with the gray mud of the trail. Her soft, full arms were tightly wrapped around her trembling torso, and a rough, coarse burlap sack covered her entire head like a shroud. Someone had crudely hacked two uneven, jagged holes into the fabric so she could peer out at the mocking boots of her tormentors. Someone had decided her face—and her humanity—deserved to be hidden from the light of day.
A drunken miner near the front of the pack scooped up a heavy clump of frozen mud and hurled it.
It struck her squarely on the shoulder with a dull, wet thud.
She flinched violently, letting out a small, wounded sound of pure terror, yet she didn’t cry out or try to flee. She only pulled herself tighter beneath the suffocating folds of the scratchy sack, absorbing the abuse like a stray dog beaten too often to bite back.
“Just need to recover her stagecoach fare from St. Louis,” Cooper called out, sensing the crowd’s bloodlust turning to boredom. “Twenty dollars takes her. Put her to work back in the camps. Scrub floors, haul water, feed the mules. Keep the sack on her head, and she’ll earn her keep well enough!”
“Wouldn’t pay two copper cents for a fat monster!” a voice roared from the shadows of the hitching rail.
Cyrus felt the heat rising in his chest, hot and violent. He knew what men did when they saw physical flaws before they saw a human soul; he had lived with the whispers, the averted eyes, and the cruel nicknames ever since the cougar ripped his cheek open in the high passes. But what these men were doing was a slow, deliberate murder of the spirit.
“Ten dollars!” Cooper cried, his panic leaking through his bravado. “Someone give me ten, or I’ll cut her loose right here in the freezing mud!”
The muffled sound of weeping drifted from beneath the burlap sack, quiet and heartbreakingly desolate.
Cyrus was already moving before his conscious mind caught up with his legs. Standing six-foot-three and broad across the shoulders, he carved a silent, formidable path through the crowd without uttering a single word, the sheer menace of his unreadable expression causing the miners to part instinctively before him. He reached deep inside his heavy buffalo-hide coat, fished out a leather pouch stuffed with heavy river gold, and hurled it upward.
The pouch struck Thaddeus Cooper squarely in the chest with a solid, heavy thud.
“There’s fifty in there,” Cyrus said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that cut cleanly through the howling wind. “Write the bill of sale.”
Greed eclipsed Cooper’s surprise almost instantly. His fingers fumbled with the drawstring of the pouch, catching the glint of raw gold nuggets inside. He snatched a stubby pencil and a greasy ledger page from his coat pocket, scribbled a frantic signature, and ripped it free.
“Sold. To the mountain man,” Cooper sneered, thrusting the paper at Cyrus. “She’s all yours, friend. But I’d keep that hood fastened tight if I were you. You’re going to need a remarkably strong stomach when you finally see what’s underneath.”
Cyrus didn’t deign to answer the speculator. He turned his back on the jeering crowd, walked directly to the trembling woman, and extended a massive, calloused, gloved hand.
Through the tiny, ragged eyeholes of the sack, she stared down at his outstretched palm as if it were a mirage. Her own father had cast her aside; her intended husband had humiliated her in a strange city; and now an intimidating, scarred stranger had just spent fifty gold dollars to yank her out of the mud.