Chapter 7 - The Choice at the Stones
Elias froze, his hand still resting on the cold stone of the anchor point. He turned his head slightly, trying to pierce the wall of white driving down from the upper ridge.
Three horsemen. He could tell by the irregular rhythm of the hoofbeats—heavy, deliberate, and entirely unhurried, as men ride when they believe nobody is watching them.
Beside him, Serena didn't pull back. She dropped flat into the lee of a granite boulder, her fingers closing around the iron skillet as she pulled herself up just enough to look over the crest of the drift. Elias dropped beside her, the cold earth biting through his trousers, and thumbed the hammer of his rifle back to half-cock.
“They’re using the old timber trail,” Elias muttered against her ear, his breath pluming white in the freezing air. “They think the gate’s still buried deep enough to ride right over.”
“They’re too close,” Serena whispered back, her eyes fixed on the gray curtain before them. “If we wait until they hit the wire, they’ll see our tracks in the drift before they clear the corner.”
“If we shoot now, we give away our position, and we don't have enough lead to take three men with carbines in an open scatter.”
“We aren't going to shoot them, Elias.”
He turned his head to look at her, the falling snow catching in the dark strands of hair that had broken loose from her braid. “Then what are we doing out here?”
“Making them think the mountain itself turned them back,” she said, her voice cold and completely level. She pointed down toward the steep drop-off where the ravine fell away toward the creek bed. “The trail narrows down to eighteen inches right where the cedar roots hold the bank. If you fire one shot into the snowbank five yards to their left, the echo off the stone wall will sound like half a troop.”
Elias looked from Serena to the narrow ledge, then back to her face. There was no hesitation in her eyes—only the hard, calculated logic of someone who had survived worse odds by refusing to panic.
“And the wire?” he asked.
“The wire stays,” Serena said. “Let the horses find it after they’re turned.”
Before Elias could argue the risk, a massive bay horse loomed out of the swirling white, its head lowered against the gale, breath blowing in thick gray clouds from its nostrils. The rider hunched over the saddlebow wore a heavy sheepskin coat encrusted with frost, a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes. It was Hollis’s cousin, a man named Vance who had spent the last two years buying up delinquent tax titles across the county.
Vance pulled his horse up short as the animal’s chest brushed the invisible line of hemp stretched tight across the trail. The horse tossed its head, snorting in alarm as it stepped back onto the unstable ice of the shelf.
Elias didn't wait. He raised his rifle, aimed high into the towering snowdrift above the ridge, and pulled the trigger.
The crack of the rifle was swallowed instantly by the wind, but the concussion against the granite walls echoed back like a rolling volley of artillery. The high drift above the trail shuddered, then let go in a massive, white cascade of loose powder that fell directly across the path of the three riders.
The lead horse shrieked, rearing straight up in the panic of the sudden white avalanche, its hooves tangling instantly in the taut hemp line. The animal went down hard, throwing Vance sideways into the snowbank, while the two trailing riders hauled back on their reins so violently their mounts slipped sideways on the icy crust.
“Get back!” one of the trailing men shouted, his voice cracking with panic as he tried to wheel his horse around in the narrow chute. “It’s an ambush! Get out of the cut!”
Without waiting to see if Vance cleared his stirrup, the two riders whipped their mounts around and plunged back down the trail toward the open flats, disappearing into the gray curtain of the storm within seconds.
Vance struggled to his feet half-buried in the drift, cursing furiously as he tried to free his leg from the fallen bay, his gloved hands clawing frantically at the snow.
Elias started to stand, but Serena’s hand caught his coat sleeve, holding him down in the shelter of the rock.
“Let him walk,” she said quietly.
“He knows where the house is,” Elias growled.
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“Let him try to walk back to the settlement in a four-foot drift without a horse,” Serena replied, her eyes watching the cursing man stagger backward down the trail, dragging his numb legs through the white crust. “By the time he reaches the valley floor, the frost will have him begging for a warm stove.”
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