Elias unbuckled his heavy winter coat, tossing it onto the pallet. He checked the loading gate of his Colt, verified that the empty chamber sat under the hammer, and pulled the leather thong that tied the tip of the holster to his thigh tight against his trousers.
From behind the chimney, he lifted his own weapon: an 1873 Springfield “trapdoor” carbine, its blued barrel shortened to twenty-two inches, the walnut stock scarred by the saddle ring of seven years of cavalry patrols. He slipped three copper cartridges between the fingers of his left hand, dropped three more into his vest pocket, and levered the breechblock open to confirm the chamber was bright and clean.
Snick.
The iron clicked shut with the sharp, final sound of a trap springing.
“Stay behind the timber,” Elias told Aiona, his voice dropping into that rhythmic, mechanical monotone he had used when deploying skirmishers across the Virginia cornfields. “Nielli has the south approach. If they circle toward the corral, she can cover the gate without showing herself. You take the ten-gauge. If anyone gets past the porch and touches the door, you don't ask who it is. You put both barrels through the cedar planking at waist height.”
Aiona picked up the heavy shotgun from the table, cocked both external hammers with two deliberate clicks of her thumb, and looked him dead in the eye.
“And where will you be?” she asked.
“On the porch,” Elias said.
“They’ll shoot you before you can cock that rifle,” she hissed, stepping toward him, her hand reaching for his arm.
Elias caught her wrist. His grip was firm, not cruel, but immovable as an iron band.
“If I’m inside, they burn the house,” he said, his words measured, cold, and clear as mountain ice. “If I’m outside, they have to deal with the rifle first. Men like Vance don’t like to dismount in front of a Springfield. It makes them nervous. And when a man is nervous, he talks before he shoots.”
“Elias—”
“Keep the door barred behind me,” he ordered. “Don't drop the bar until you hear my voice call your name twice. Not once. Twice.”
He didn't wait for her to answer. He pushed the heavy oak door open with his shoulder, stepped out onto the rough pine porch, and pulled the door shut behind him.
The iron drop-bar fell into its brackets inside with a heavy, hollow thud.
The air outside had the clean, metallic taste of coming snow. The valley was dead quiet. Even the wind had died, dying down into the draws, leaving the yellow grass frozen stiff under the twilight sky.
Then they came around the spur of the red ridge.
There were six of them this time. They rode in a loose line, their horses walking with that high-stepping, nervous gait that mounts get when they smell strange ground and cold water. At their head rode Vance.
He was a thick-set man with wide, round shoulders that hunched forward like a bear’s, his bulk wrapped in a heavy sheepskin coat with the wool turned inside. A wide-brimmed felt hat was pulled low over his forehead, but the fading light still caught the pale, puckered line of the scar that ran from his left temple down across his cheek, pulling the corner of his upper lip into a permanent, snarling grimace.
The six riders crossed the creek at the ford, their horses’ hooves splashing through the thin ice with a sound like breaking crockery. They came up the grassy rise, spreading out into an arc thirty yards short of the new wire fence Elias had finished that morning.
Vance raised a gloved hand. The five men behind him reined in, their leather saddles creaking softly in the freezing dusk.
Elias stood on the porch steps, his feet planted sixteen inches apart, his left hand holding the Springfield horizontally across his belt, his thumb resting lightly on the checkered spur of the hammer. He didn't raise the weapon. He didn't reach for the Colt. He just stood there, tall and motionless as a spruce post, his eyes tracking Vance’s hands.
“Evening, stranger,” Vance called out. His voice was a raspy, gravelly baritone that had the rasp of three decades of whiskey and prairie dust behind it.
Elias said nothing. He let the words hang in the freezing air until they died against the granite cliffs behind the cabin.
Vance’s horse tossed its head, blowing white steam through its nostrils. The outlaw leader leaned forward over his saddle horn, his small, dark eyes running over the reinforced shutters, the neatly stacked firewood, and the clean line of cedar posts that ran from the creek to the bluff.
“You’ve been busy,” Vance said, gesturing with his quirt toward the new fence. “That’s three hundred yards of four-point wire. Must have cost thirty dollars in town.”
“Thirty-two,” Elias said, his voice flat.
Vance chuckled—a low, dry rattle in his throat. “A lot of money for a drifting hand to put into another man’s dirt.”
“Not another man’s,” Elias said. “The women have the patent.”
The scarred man’s smile faded slightly, the puckered skin around his mouth drawing tight. “Patents don’t mean much when the snow hits thirty below, cowboy. Two women alone in this canyon aren't going to make it through January. The stock association has already surveyed the run. We’re moving five hundred head of three-year-olds up from the crossing next week.”