Chapter 6 - The Stacks at First Light
The axe heads had grown heavy by the third hour past midnight, but not a single hand stopped moving. Outside the circle of yellow lantern light suspended from the low-hanging cedar boughs, the Wyoming wilderness was a vast, breathing wall of black and white. The snow had settled into a dense, wet crust that hissed slightly whenever a freshly cut log hit the frozen ground.
Eda stood at the end of the staging line, her breath rising in ragged plumes that caught the lamplight. Her palms were blistered beneath her wool gloves, the raw friction burning with every swing, but she did not drop her arms. Behind her, Ruth and Mabel were hoisting a massive six-inch cedar baulk onto the growing stack, their shoulders straining in synchronization. They were five cords short of the night's mark, and the eastern horizon was already beginning to dilute into a bruised, metallic gray.
Silas walked down from the upper ridge leading the bay team, his boots crunching rhythmically in the crust. He carried no axe now; his role had shifted to hauling, working the draft horses with quiet, efficient commands that kept the timber moving down to the lower river crossing before Vance’s arbitrary deadline could arrive. He pulled the team to a halt beside Eda, stepping down from the sled runner without a sound.
"You've been at it twelve hours straight, Eda," Silas said, his voice roughened by the freezing air and woodsmoke. He reached out, his hand hovering for a second before he gently took the handle of the double-bitted axe from her grip. She didn't fight him for it; her fingers were stiff and shaking from the cold. "If you lose a finger to the frost or a slip, the fifty cords won't matter much."
"If we don't finish those five cords, Vance's silent partner takes the water rights, and this whole ranch goes to scrub by June," Eda said, her voice raspy, though she didn't look away from his face. She wiped her forehead with a soot-stained sleeve. "You think I came this far just to lose the roof over our heads because I got tired?"
"I don't think you're tired because you're weak," Silas replied, his gray eyes steady, reflecting the pale light of the dawn. "I think you're stubborn enough to break yourself in half to prove you don't owe anybody anything."
"And what's wrong with that?" Eda challenged, stepping closer, closing the small distance between them until she could feel the heat radiating off his heavy coat. "In the town they left us in, Eda and Ruth and Mabel were just numbers on a ledger. If you don't fight for yourself out here, nobody does it for you. You should know that better than anyone, Silas. You spent three years hiding behind a snowdrift."
Silas didn't flinch away from the truth in her words. Instead, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a strip of clean linen rag, and took her raw, blistered hand without asking. His movements were slow, deliberate, and surprisingly gentle for a man whose life was hewn from timber and cattle. He began wrapping the cloth around her torn palms, binding the skin tight enough to hold against the friction of the axe handle, yet loose enough not to cut off her circulation.
"My wife used to say I had the thickest skull in the territory," Silas murmured, his thumb brushing lightly over her knuckles as he secured the knot. "She wasn't wrong. It took a houseful of stubborn girls from an auction yard to finally knock some sense into me."
"And now you're stuck with us," Eda whispered, a faint, tired smile touching the corners of her mouth for the first time in days.
"Not stuck," Silas said, looking down at her with a quiet intensity that made the winter wind seem to drop away entirely. "Saved."
Before Eda could answer, a sharp whistle cut through the morning air from down by the river road.
May you like
Ruth came running up the logging trail from the lower crossing, her coat flapping around her ankles, her cheeks bright red from the cold and urgency. "Eda! Silas! You need to come down to the bridge right now. Vance is already there—and he brought the sheriff."
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