HE FIXED THEIR FENCE, BUT HIS ONE CONDITION CHANGED EVERYTHING

He rubbed down his gelding with a handful of dry prairie grass, checked the horse’s frogs for gravel, and threw an extra fork of mountain timothy into the manger. The animal blew softly against his sleeve, nuzzling his shoulder with a warm, velvet muzzle.

“Easy, boy,” Elias muttered, running his hand down the horse’s strong crest. “Keep your ears up tonight.”

He stepped out of the barn, latched the split-rail gate, and walked toward the cabin.

The light from the front window was a square of orange butter against the creeping blue dark of the yard. Through the glass, he could see Aiona moving between the table and the hearth. She had taken off her shawl, wearing only her dark wool bodice and a coarse apron. Her movements were economical, stripped of hurry, the way his mother had moved back in the hill country before the war took the farm and everything on it.

He scraped his boots on the iron scraper set into the porch log and opened the door.

The warmth hit him like a blanket, carrying the rich, savory smell of braised venison, boiled potatoes, and dried sage. On the hearth, an iron Dutch oven sat buried in hot coals, its lid gray with ash.

Nielli was sitting on the floor near the woodbox, an oilstone in her lap, methodically sharpening an old carbon-steel butcher knife. The steady, rhythmic scritch-scritch of the blade against the stone stopped the moment he crossed the threshold.

“Did you see them?” she asked, looking up through her tumbled hair.

Elias took off his hat, shook the light dusting of frost from the brim, and hung it on the wooden peg behind the door. He unbuckled his gunbelt, but instead of hanging it on the peg as a polite guest would, he laid it carefully across the seat of the chair nearest his pallet, within six inches of his right hand.

“Two riders,” he said, unbuttoning his damp canvas vest. “Riding trail-stock. Carbines in pommel boots.”

Aiona did not stop her work. She used a scrap of homespun to lift the lid of the Dutch oven, releasing a cloud of fragrant, onion-scented steam. “Vance’s people,” she said, her voice entirely flat.

Elias looked at her back. “You know the name?”

“Everyone in the lower basin knows Vance,” she said, setting the lid aside and using a large pewter spoon to dish the stew into three wooden trenchers. “He runs sixty head of scrub cattle out on the public grass near the red crossing. But he doesn't make his living on beef.”

“Rustling?”

“Whatever isn’t nailed down,” she replied, carrying two of the bowls to the table. “And whatever belongs to people who can’t afford to hire five guns from the stock association to watch their fence line.”

She set the trenchers down, her eyes meeting his. “Last winter, the Miller family had their cabin burned out over on the Sweetwater. Miller wouldn’t sell his timber rights to Vance’s partners. Three weeks later, four men rode through their yard in the middle of the night, threw pitch torches onto the shingles, and shot two of their plow horses in the traces. The territorial marshal said it was Indians.”

“Was it?” Elias asked.

“Shoshone don’t use iron-shod horses,” Aiona said, a sharp, bitter edge cutting into her voice. “And they don’t drop brass cartridges stamped from the Union metallic company in New Haven.”

Elias pulled out the heavy bench and sat down. He pulled a trencher toward him, the steam warming his chinned face. “The marshal didn’t investigate?”

“Marshal Cole has seventy miles of territory to cover between here and the railway,” she said, sitting down across from him. “He doesn't come up into the box canyons unless there’s a corpse with a name somebody in Cheyenne cares about. To the law, this is just dirt and timber.”

“It’s good dirt,” Nielli said from the floor, setting her knife aside and scrambling up to the bench. “Father said this valley has the deepest topsoil west of the Black Hills. We grew forty bushels of winter rye last year without even turning the lower half.”

“Land is only as good as the men who can hold it,” Elias said, his voice quiet, devoid of sentiment. “If you can’t hold the perimeter, the dirt doesn't care whose sweat is in it. It’ll feed their cattle just as easy as it feeds yours.”

Nielli frowned into her stew, but Aiona did not look away. She tore a piece of soda bread in half, laid it beside her bowl, and leaned her forearms on the table. Her knuckles were red from washing in the cold creek water, the skin scarred near the thumb where an old scythe cut had healed into a white line.

“Is that why you kept riding after the war?” she asked quietly.

Elias stopped his spoon halfway to his mouth. The room went very still, save for the crackle of a pine knot in the hearth.

“What makes you think I was running from anything?” he countered.