She did not stumble when her boots hit the icy timber of the boardwalk. She paused, drew a long breath of the frozen mountain air, and swept her dark, amber-flecked eyes across the street. There was no panic in her face, no hesitation. She looked at the false-front buildings, the mud-splattered saloon, the two armed ranch hands lounging across the road, and finally her gaze settled on Elias.
She knew him immediately. Perhaps it was the height of his shoulders, or the solitary, unyielding way he stood against the building, apart from the town.
Elias stepped forward, his boots crunching in the snow. He stopped three paces from her, removing his beaver-felt hat.
“Miss Reyes?”
“Mr. Ward,” she said. Her voice was lower than he had expected—clear, quiet, with a crisp, measured resonance that seemed entirely unaffected by three days in an unheated coach.
“You made good time from Denver.”
“The driver was anxious to outrun the storm,” she replied, looking him squarely in the eye. Her face was pale from travel, her lips slightly chapped by the dry air, but her jawline possessed an unmistakable, stubborn strength. “Are we going far?”
“Fourteen miles to Black Creek,” Elias said. “The wagon is behind the livery. It will take two hours in this wind.”
“Then we shouldn't waste daylight talking on the street.”
Elias reached down to take the leather bag from her grip. Her fingers tightened instinctively on the handle, resisting the pull.
“I can manage my own baggage, Mr. Ward.”
“I don't doubt it,” Elias said, his hand remaining on the worn leather. “I took it because it’s fourteen miles of rough road, and a polite gesture costs nothing.”
Clara studied him for a long beat, her sharp gaze measuring the broad line of his shoulders, the weathered creases around his eyes, and the quiet lack of arrogance in his posture. Slowly, her fingers uncurled from the handle.
“A polite gesture is an unusual thing to find in an eviction notice,” she murmured, a faint, dry irony touching her mouth. “Lead the way.”
As they turned toward the alley leading to the livery, one of Crowe’s men across the street—the Texan, Vance—spat a stream of tobacco juice into the snow and laughed aloud.
“Hey, Eli!” Vance shouted across the street, his voice carrying clearly on the wind. “That what you ordered from the catalogue to save your dirt? Hope she knows how to shoot, 'cause Crowe’s moving three hundred head into your south pasture come Monday morning!”
Elias stopped. His body went rigid, his left hand dropping toward his side.
Before he could turn, Clara’s gloved hand touched his sleeve. The touch was light, but firm.
“Mr. Ward,” she said quietly, not even glancing across the street at the men. “Hired dogs bark at wagons because they have nothing better to do. Let’s get our horses.”
Elias looked down at her hand on his coat. Slowly, the tension drained from his shoulders. He nodded once, led her past the livery doors, and helped her up onto the seat of his high-wheeled buckboard.
The drive out of Dry Hollow was cold and silent.
The road was nothing more than two rutted tracks cut through gray sagebrush, climbing steadily toward the dark wall of the Medicine Bow Range. The wind blew from the northwest, driving stinging pellets of ice against the side of the wagon. Elias had wrapped a heavy buffalo robe around Clara’s knees and pulled an oiled canvas tarp over her leather suitcase, but she sat upright on the bench, refusing to huddle against the cold.
After five miles of silence, she spoke without turning her head.
“The letter you wrote me,” she said, her voice cutting through the rattle of the wagon gear. “Did you write it yourself, or did the county clerk write it for you?”
“I wrote it,” Elias answered, keeping his eyes on the horses’ ears. “Margaret gave me the notion, but the words were mine.”
“You said the ranch was four square miles.”
“Two thousand five hundred and sixty acres. Half of it is timber and rough grazing on the bench. The bottomland along the creek is where the wild hay grows. That’s what Crowe wants.”
“Why doesn't he buy land elsewhere? The territory seems empty enough.”
“Empty doesn't mean fertile,” Elias said. “Crowe owns thousands of acres of dry dirt out on the flat. But stock can’t drink gravel. Black Creek has water that runs from mountain springs all through August. If he controls my creek, he controls the grazing rights for twenty miles around.”
Clara nodded slowly. “And the water company?”
“The Shoshone Ditch Company is Crowe under another name. Two years ago, they dammed the upper fork, claiming the water was needed for territorial development. They choked my ditches down to a trickle, then billed me for maintenance on an empty ditch. When my cattle lost weight and I couldn't make the bank payment, Crowe bought the note.”