It was not Nathan who drove it, but an ancient, one-eyed teamster named Zebediah Vance, whose gray beard was stained yellow around the mouth with tobacco juice and whose sheepskin coat looked as though it had survived three separate grizzly encounters. The two draft mules he drove were enormous black brutes with steam pouring from their nostrils like locomotives. Behind the spring seat sat a freshly split, fragrant half-cord of dry red tamarack, banked tight against the tailgate.
"Mornin', ma'am," Zebediah croaked, touching his tattered fur cap with a three-fingered mitten. "Nathan told me to fetch you, the young'uns, and whatever you can't bear to leave freeze-dried. Said if you weren't ready, I was to sit here and freeze till you were."
"I am ready, Mr. Vance," Eleanor replied.
She had spent the previous night packing their lives into two battered leather carpetbags and Davidâs old tin trunk: the boys' spare woolens, their school slates, the family Bible, two iron kettles, and her grandmotherâs silver-plated thimble. She had banked the ashes in the hearth, drawn a bucket of water so the well-rope wouldn't freeze stiff in the shaft, and locked the rough cabin door behind her. Leaving that sod roof felt like a surrender, yet as she hoisted Samuel onto the buckboard bench between herself and the old teamster, the warmth radiating from the hot soapstone Zebediah had tucked under the floor rug told her that surrender was, for once, the only route to life.
Henry sat on the wooden seat with his chin lifted, Davidâs hunting cap pulled low over his ears, his hand clutching the carved pine horse inside his coat pocket.
The climb up the limestone crest took nearly an hour. The road was a steep, serpentine trail chopped into the frozen slope of the ridge. As the mules hauled the heavy wagon above the river flats, the timber thickened into stands of lodgepole pine and dwarf juniper, their boughs bowed heavy beneath burdens of white powder.
When they crested the final bench, Eleanor let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
Crowley Ranch was not merely a homestead; it was an outpost built for a siege. The main ranch house was a sprawling, two-story structure of squared lodgepole logs, chinked with gray lime and mortar. Its steeply pitched roofs were shingled in cedar, with two massive river-stone chimneys anchoring either gable. Surrounding the yard stood a labyrinth of outbuildings: a bunkhouse long enough to house twenty men, a blacksmith shop with black coal-smoke trailing lazily into the zinc-colored sky, a commissary, a smokehouse with hams hanging behind iron mesh, and an immense barn with double gambrel roofs that could easily swallow three ordinary farmhouses.
Everywhere there was life, rough and purposeful. Cowhands in canvas slickers and fringed buckskin chaps moved between the pens, carrying iron kettles of boiling water to thaw frozen troughs. Heavy stock horses snorted behind split-rail pens. It smelled of horse manure, cedar pitch, woodsmoke, and fried baconâthe smell of survival bought with sweat and hard iron.
Nathan Crowley stood by the wide doors of the barn, holding the cheek-strap of a young, nervous roan mare while Walter Higgins's apprentice worked a rasp against her rear hoof. Nathan was bareheaded despite the wind, his dark hair ruffled by the breeze, his sheepskin coat open at the throat to reveal a gray flannel shirt.
As the wagon rumbled into the packed yard, Nathan released the mare and wiped his hands on a piece of burlap. He walked toward the buckboard with that long, easy stride that seemed at odds with his bulk.
"You made good time, Zeb," Nathan said.
"Mules smelled the hay, boss," the old man grunted, setting the handbrake with a violent iron clatter.
Nathan stopped by the wagon wheel. His gray eyes swept over Eleanor, taking in the frayed wool of her shawl, the pale set of her jaw, and then shifted to the boys.
"Henry. Samuel." He nodded once to each.
Samuel peered down at him from beneath Eleanorâs arm. "You got twenty-seven horses, Mr. Crowley? Truly?"
A faint, fleeting twitch disturbed the corner of Nathanâs mouth. "Twenty-eight as of midnight. A roan filly dropped in the lower barn. You do your chores and don't spook the stock, maybe you can feed her a bran mash come sundown."
Samuel gasped, looking up at his mother with an expression that bordering on holy worship.
"Help Mrs. Pierce down, Zeb," Nathan said, then reached up with his own gloved hands to swing the boys clear of the high wheel, setting them lightly onto the frozen gravel of the yard. When he turned to offer his hand to Eleanor, she hesitated for a bare instant before placing her palm in his. Even through thick horsehide, the heat and strength of his grip were startling. He took her weight as though she weighed no more than a fleece of sheared wool, swinging her gently to the ground.
"The wind is rising again," Nathan said, his voice dropping slightly so the hands across the yard couldn't hear. "Come inside. Martha has the stove lit."