Outside, the mountain wind shrieked through the high granite crags, driving the snow against the timber walls, but inside the cedar cabin, the silence was deep, heavy, and completely undisturbed.
The morning broke not with light, but with a pale, pearl-gray luminescence that filtered through the frost on the window panes.
When Elias woke, the fire in the hearth was dead, reduced to a heap of fine gray dust that smelled of cold iron. The air inside the cabin was bitter enough to freeze the water in the washbasin into a solid disc of white ice. Yet beneath the buffalo robe, the heat was so thick and heavy it felt like an oven.
His hand had not moved. His fingers were still laced with Aiona’s, their palms warm and damp where they had pressed together through the long hours of the freeze.
Beside him, Aiona was still asleep, her face relaxed in a way he had never seen in the daylight. The sharp, guarded lines around her mouth were smoothed away; a loose strand of dark hair was caught across her lips, rising and falling with the slow, even rhythm of her breath. Against the wall, Nielli was snoring softly, buried so deep under the patchwork quilt that only the tip of her pale nose was visible.
For five minutes, Elias did not stir. He lay looking at the ceiling, listening to the cabin settle under the weight of the snow.
There was no sound from the yard. No jingle of bridle bits, no heavy thud of strange hooves on the crust. Only the occasional crack of a spruce limb snapping under a load of ice up on the ridge, and the distant, lonely cry of a gray jay in the pines.
Slowly, with the infinite patience of a scout slipping out of an enemy line, he eased his fingers from Aiona’s grip. Her hand twitched slightly in her sleep, her fingers curling into an empty fist before relaxing against the blanket.
He slid out from beneath the buffalo robe, the freezing air hitting his linen shirt like a bucket of well water. He moved silently across the cold floorboards, pulled on his wool socks and heavy boots, and buckled his gunbelt around his waist.
He knelt by the hearth, shaved a handful of dry pitch-pine kindling from the woodbox with his pocketknife, and struck a match against the stone. The sulfur flared blue, then caught the yellow resin with a sharp, crackling hiss. He fed the flame with dry split cedar, blowing gently until the chimney drew the draft upward with a deep, muffled roar.
By the time the iron stove began to tick with expanding heat, Aiona was sitting up in the bedstead.
She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, her braided hair mussed, looking at him through the rising warmth of the room. She did not pull the blanket up to cover herself with awkward haste; she simply sat there, watching him adjust the damper on the stove pipe, her dark eyes clear and sober.
“No tracks?” she asked, her voice husky with sleep.
“Snow’s still falling,” Elias said, setting the iron tea kettle onto the hot plate. “Wind blew all night from the east. If they rode out from the crossing, their own sign would be buried before they reached the gap.”
Nielli sat up like a jack-in-the-box, the quilt falling away from her tumbled hair. She sniffed the air, her nose wrinkling. “It’s freezing in here!”
“It was colder outside,” Elias said, a faint dry note in his voice. “Get your boots on. We need to check the stock before the drift packs against the barn door.”
The work of a winter homestead was relentless, leaving no space for awkwardness or reflection. Within twenty minutes, the domestic machinery was turning again. They ate hot cornmeal mush sweetened with wild honey, washed down with scalding chicory coffee, and then bundled themselves into their heavy coats to face the yard.
When Elias pushed the front door open, he had to set his shoulder against the timber.
A three-foot drift of dry, powdery snow had banked against the porch, curling over the threshold in a glittering white wave. Beyond the porch, the valley was transformed into a blinding, monochromatic expanse of white and gray. The red cliffs of the canyon were streaked with long ribbons of snow; the timberline looked like a ragged line of black iron spears driven into the drifts.
Elias took the broad wooden shovel from the lean-to and began cutting a trench from the porch to the barn, his boots sinking eight inches into the loose powder. Behind him, Nielli carried an iron bucket filled with hot water from the stove to thaw the pump mechanism, while Aiona walked to the chicken coop with an apron full of grain.
Inside the barn, the air was warm and rank with the rich, comforting scent of horse manure, dry hay, and wet wool.
The gray gelding nickered loudly from his box stall, tossing his heavy head and banging his forehoof against the kickboard. In the next stall, the old dun mare blew through her nostrils, her ears pricked forward toward the sound of the bucket.