Part 3
Chapter 3
Water bubbled up, freezing, cold, and dark. She filled the buckets.
Carrying them back up the slope was an exercise in pure torture.
Water sloshed over the rims, instantly freezing to her skirt, turning the heavy wool into a stiff, dragging weight.
Halfway up, her boot slipped on a patch of black ice. She went down hard.
Her knee hit the frozen ground with a sickening crack.
One of the buckets tipped, spilling half its contents down the hillside.
Martha lay there in the freezing mud, the cold seeping into her bones, the pain in her knee radiating up her thigh.
Up at the cabin, standing on the porch, Jed watched her.
He leaned against the post, a dark silhouette against the gray wood. He was waiting for it.
The breaking point, the tears, the surrender. Martha looked up at him.
Through the biting wind, she could see the grim satisfaction in his posture....
PART 2: Martha lay in the frozen mud, her knee throbbing with every heartbeat. She looked up at Jed standing on the porch, waiting for her to cry. Instead, she planted both hands into the snow and pushed herself upright.
The spilled water was already turning to ice around her boots. Martha grabbed the remaining bucket and tested her injured leg. Pain shot through her knee, but she refused to make a sound.
Jed's expression changed slightly. He had expected tears, not defiance. "You hurt?" he called down.
"Of course I'm hurt," Martha shouted back. "But I'm not dead." She picked up the iron bar and used it as a walking stick.
For the first time since she arrived, Jed came down the slope. He reached for the bucket, but Martha pulled it away. "I can carry my own water," she said.
"You can barely walk." His voice was no longer mocking. "Then walk slowly," she answered. Jed stared at her for several seconds before finally taking the other bucket.
They climbed back toward the cabin together, neither speaking. When they reached the porch, Martha's injured leg gave way.
Jed caught her before she hit the floor. His rough hands steadied her, and for one brief moment, neither of them moved. Martha saw something unexpected in his scarred face—not satisfaction, but worry.
"Inside," he muttered. "Before you freeze."
That night, Jed wrapped her knee with strips of clean cloth and warmed a stone beside the fire. Martha watched him work in silence. The man who had spent days trying to make her quit was now carefully making sure she could stand again.
But neither of them noticed the dark clouds gathering beyond the mountain ridge. By morning, a blizzard would cut Bitter Creek off from the outside world.
And Martha would discover why three women had truly fled Jed's mountain.
PART 3: By sunrise, the world outside the cabin had disappeared beneath a wall of snow. Martha woke to the sound of wind hammering the logs like an angry fist. Her injured knee was swollen, but she could still bend it. Jed was already awake, staring through the small window toward the ridge.
"The pass is gone," he said quietly. Martha pushed herself upright and looked outside. Snow had buried the trail they had climbed only days before, leaving nothing but a white slope stretching into the trees.
"How long until it clears?" she asked. Jed shook his head. "Could be three days. Could be three weeks." He checked the firewood and counted the sacks of flour, beans, and salt with a grim expression. Their supplies were enough if they were careful, but not enough for carelessness.
Martha noticed the worry in his eyes. "What aren't you telling me?" she asked. Jed hesitated before answering. "The creek isn't the only danger on this mountain." He told her there was an abandoned mining tunnel farther north, and during heavy storms, men sometimes used it to cross the ridge unseen.
"Men?" Martha repeated. Jed nodded. Years earlier, thieves had used the mountain trails to hide stolen goods and escape the law. Most were gone now, but Jed had discovered fresh tracks near his property more than once.
Martha stared at him. "And you brought three women up here knowing that?" Her voice was cold. Jed looked away. "I didn't bring them here to hurt them." He admitted that he had placed the advertisement because he needed someone who could survive the mountain, but he had never expected anyone to actually accept.
"Then why didn't you tell them the truth?" Martha demanded. Jed's jaw tightened. "Because every time I tried, they looked at my face and decided I was a monster before I finished speaking." Martha glanced at his scar. For the first time, she wondered how he had gotten it.
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Before Jed could answer, three sharp knocks sounded against the cabin door. Both of them froze. Nobody should have been able to reach the cabin through that storm. Jed quietly reached beneath the table and pulled out his rifle.
—END OF Chapter 3,
