Chapter 2 - Smoke on the Ridge
The sleet turned to a relentless, blinding grey snow by midday, coating the high plains in a shroud of frozen silence. Martha spent the morning splitting pine kindling in the lean-to, her muscles burning with a familiar, rhythmic ache. Every swing of the heavy axe was a physical punctuation mark to her thoughts.
Colum wasn't just a burden anymore. He was a complication. And complications, in a valley governed by Amos Higgins and the town council, usually came with a price tag attached.
Inside the house, the rhythmic thump-drag, thump-drag had started again about an hour after sunrise. Martha paused with the axe raised, listening to the muffled sounds of stubborn agony coming through the thin log walls. He was using the heavy oak broom handle as a crutch, dragging his dead weight across the floorboards in a brutal, self-imposed regimen. He had fallen three times. She hadn't gone in to help him. If he was going to claw his way back from the grave, he had to learn how to fall without breaking his neck.
Just as she brought the axe down into the heart-wood of a stubborn knot, a sharp, metallic sound cut through the howl of the wind.
Not the wind. Not the house.
Clack-clink.
Martha froze. She dropped the axe and wiped her gloved hands on her heavy canvas apron, stepping out of the lean-to. The snow was falling so thickly that the boundary fence fifty yards away was little more than a smudge of charcoal against white.
Then she saw them.
Two riders coming up the south trail, their horses heads bowed against the bitter gale, breath pluming in thick grey clouds. Even bundled in heavy buffalo-hide coats and wide-brimmed hats, the silhouette of the man in the lead was unmistakable.
Amos Higgins.
Next to him rode a younger man—Jedidiah Cooper, the town blacksmith’s son, holding a long-barreled Remington rifle resting casually across his saddle bow.
Martha’s blood ran cold. She didn't wait for them to reach the gate; she strode out past the radish patch, her heavy boots crunching through the crusting snow, her hand closing instinctively around the handle of the skinning knife she kept sheathed at her belt.
Amos pulled his bay gelding to a halt ten feet away. The animal stamped the frozen earth, snorting a spray of yellow-tinged foam. Amos spat a stream of dark tobacco juice into the pristine snow, staining it like a drop of old blood.
“Cold ride, Martha,” Amos called out, his voice carrying easily over the wind. His small, watery eyes darted past her toward the darkened windows of the house. “Thought we’d check in on the charity case. Town council’s been asking questions.”
“The town council hasn’t given me a sack of flour or a stick of firewood in three winters,” Martha said, her voice hard as frozen granite as she stood squarely in the center of the path. “They can keep their questions.”
Jedidiah shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, his young face reddened by the wind, refusing to meet her eyes. He was a decent enough boy when his father wasn't breathing down his neck, but he lacked the spine to stand up to his uncle.
“Now, don’t be unneighborly,” Amos grinned, leaning forward on his saddle horn. “Fact is, we had a report down at the mercantile. A stray calf missing from the North Creek pasture. And since your new roommate used to live up in those high timber ridges before the bear introduced him to gravity... well, folks are wondering if he brought some bad habits down with him.”
Martha’s eyes narrowed to thin slits. “Colum hasn’t been off that iron cot since you dumped him in my dirt like a sack of oats. He couldn't steal a blind hen, let alone a calf in a blizzard.”
“That so?” Amos raised a thick eyebrow, glancing significantly at Jedidiah. “Be a shame if the sheriff had to come out here with a warrant and search the premises. Might find things that don't belong to a lonely widow. Might find out the mountain man is more trouble than he’s worth.”
“You want to search my house, Amos?” Martha stepped forward, her voice dropping an octave, carrying a dangerous, low rumble that made the bay gelding step sideways. “You step past this gate with that rifle, and I’ll show you what a lonely widow does with a twelve-gauge scattergun and three barrels of rock salt. Try me.”
Amos stared at her, the mocking grin faltering for a fraction of a second. He hadn't expected fight. He had expected the broken, defeated Martha who used to sit on her porch and take the town’s mockery with lowered eyes.
Before Amos could retort, the heavy oak door of the farmhouse creaked open.
Both men jerked their heads toward the threshold.
Framed in the doorway stood Colum. He was pale as a corpse, his face twisted in a mask of intense pain, but he was upright. He had braced his massive shoulders against the doorframe, his white-knuckled grip locked around the oak broom handle like a boarding pike. His legs were still wrapped in thick woolen blankets tied crudely around his thighs with harness leather, but he was standing.
The wind whipped his black hair across his face, but his pale blue eyes locked onto Amos Higgins with a cold, predatory intensity that made the younger rider, Jedidiah, visibly recoil.
“You looking for a calf, Higgins?” Colum’s voice was low, raspy, but it cut through the howling wind with the chilling clarity of a mountain stream. “Or are you just looking for an excuse to see if I’m still breathing?”
Amos’s jaw tightened. He looked from Colum’s braced posture down to the snow-covered ground, realizing with a sudden jolt that the rumors starting to circulate in town might actually have teeth.
“Looks like you’re still kicking, mountain man,” Amos said, pulling his horse’s head around with a sharp jerk of the reins. “For now. But winter’s long, and the poorhouse is still taking boarders.”
With a curse muttered at his horse, Amos wheeled his mount around, kicking up a spray of frozen slush. Jedidiah hesitated for a second, cast a fearful, apologetic glance toward the doorway, and then spurred his horse to follow his uncle back down the trail.
Martha stood frozen for a moment, watching them disappear into the white squall. Then she turned sharply toward the door.
Colum was already sliding down the doorframe, his strength completely spent, crashing onto the porch boards with a dull groan.
“Damn it, Colum,” Martha muttered, hurrying over to grab him under the arms. “I told you to stay put.”
“Couldn't let... the bastard think...” Colum wheezed, his head dropping against her shoulder as she dragged him back across the threshold out of the freezing gale. “Couldn't let him think we were scared.”
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Martha kicked the heavy door shut with her heel, bolting it tight against the wind. As she helped him back to the iron cot, she realized with a sinking heart that Amos wasn't bluffing about the town. They weren't just waiting for them to fail anymore. They were starting to get scared of what would happen if they didn't.
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