HE FIXED THEIR FENCE, BUT HIS ONE CONDITION CHANGED EVERYTHING

The timber here was lodgepole pine and scattered stands of mountain cedar, stunted by the altitude and the scouring west winds that poured through the gap. Working alone, Elias had felled four poles, trimmed the limbs with short, vicious strokes of his broadaxe, and dragged them down to the post line using the gelding and a log chain. His shirt was soaked between the shoulder blades, the chill mountain wind biting at his ribs whenever he paused to catch his breath.

He drove the iron spade into the rocky soil, striking a limestone ledge eighteen inches down. The shock traveled up the ash handle, jarring his wrists and sending a familiar ache through his old collarbone break.

“You’re digging too close to the run-off,” a voice called out.

Nielli came up the rise from the springhouse, carrying a burlap sack filled with wild onions and two bundles of dry kindling under her arm. Her boots were two sizes too large, stuffed with wool rags to keep them from sliding off her heels, and she wore a man’s woolen coat with the cuffs turned back twice. She stopped by the cedar cribbing, dropping the kindling with a dry rattle.

Elias leaned on the spade, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. “Water cuts around that ledge. If I sink the post on the high side, the spring thaw won’t heave it.”

Nielli squinted at the ground, her small jaw set in an attitude that was an exact copy of Aiona’s stubborn tilt. “Water didn’t cut there two years ago. It came down through that draw where the birch is leaning. My brother dug the original line four feet west.”

Elias paused, his eyes flicking to the draw. He had noticed the old depression, the rotted pine stubs buried in the wild rye. “Your brother didn’t account for the snowpack from the south ridge. When that drifts five feet deep, the melt has to go somewhere. It took his posts out, didn't it?”

Nielli’s eyes clouded, the defiance flattening into a dull, defensive quiet. She looked down at the mud on her toes. “He was sixteen. He did the best he knew how before the fever took him and father both.”

The wind dropped into the gulch, leaving the meadow uncomfortably still.

Elias looked away, staring down at the rocky hole at his feet. Out on the trail, you never asked a settler about the graves behind the barn. You saw the three wooden crosses leaning in the buffalo grass, you nodded, and you kept your mouth shut. Grief in the territory was like bad water; you didn't stir it up unless you had no other choice.

“He set good corners,” Elias said, his voice low and level. “The bracing was solid. He just didn’t have enough iron for the wire.”

Nielli glanced up, surprised. A small, guarded fraction of her stiffness vanished. She kicked a loose rock into the hole. “We ran out of staples three days before the snow hit that year. He tried to tie the strands with green rawhide. When it dried, the cattle leaned through and snapped the whole run.”

“Rawhide shrinks,” Elias said. “Pulls the staples right out of green pine.”

“He didn’t know.”

“A man only knows what the country beats into him,” Elias muttered, lifting the heavy iron bar from the ground to shatter the edge of the limestone shelf. “Go get that bucket of grease from the lean-to. If we don’t coat the bottom of these cedar butts before we drop them in the wet muck, they’ll rot out before you turn twenty.”

Nielli lingered for a heartbeat, her gaze traveling over his broad shoulders, his worn canvas vest, and the heavy leather holster tied low to his right thigh with a strip of rawhide. In the territories, men who wore their sidearms tied down were usually hunters, rustlers, or hired range detectives—men who expected trouble to come fast and close.

“Aiona says you were in the cavalry,” she said, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial register.

Elias brought the iron bar down with a ringing clink against the rock. “Aiona talks too much.”

“She doesn’t talk at all,” Nielli countered sharply. “That’s how I know. When she doesn’t talk about somebody, it means she’s been watching them. She told me you ride like an officer and work like a hired hand.”

“Tell her to mind her garden,” Elias said, without looking up.

“She’s minding the whole place,” the girl said, her tone suddenly fierce. “Somebody has to. Since father died, three different outfits have stopped at the gate asking to buy our water rights for ten cents on the dollar. Last month, two men from the creek settlement rode right up to the porch and told her a woman had no business holding four hundred acres of bottomland without a husband to work the brand.”

Elias stopped his work. He rested both hands on the top of the iron bar, his gray eyes fixing the girl with a cold, narrow focus. “What did she tell them?”

Nielli’s chest hitched, a sharp, fierce pride lighting her thin face. “She walked into the house, came back out with the double-barrel ten-gauge, and told them that if their horses were still on our gravel by the time she counted to three, she’d pepper their rumps with rock salt and birdshot.”