Part 4
Chapter 4
Martha's heart began pounding. The knocking came again, followed by a man's voice calling Jed's name. Jed's face lost all color. "Stay behind me," he whispered.
But Martha didn't move backward. She reached for the iron poker beside the fireplace instead. Whatever waited outside, she had already survived humiliation, hunger, exhaustion, and a mountain that wanted her dead.
The door suddenly shook under a heavy blow. Jed raised his rifle, while Martha tightened her grip on the poker. Then a voice shouted from outside, "Boon! We know you're hiding her!"
Martha looked at Jed in confusion. "Hiding who?" she whispered. Jed stared at her, and the fear in his eyes told her that the answer was something neither of them had expected.
The voice outside tore through the gale with the sharpness of a butcher knife. Jedodiah Boon stood frozen, his scarred lip pulled taut against his yellowed teeth.
The timber of the heavy cabin door creaked under the weight of an impatient, heavy shoulder. Frost crept between the warped spruce planks, glittering like powdered glass under the flickering lantern light.
Martha shifted her weight off her bruised knee, her knuckles turning white around the blackened iron poker. Her breath formed shallow, trembling plumes in the drafty air between them.
"Jedodiah," she hissed, her voice barely louder than the timber rattling in the storm. "Who in God's name are they shouting about? Who did you drag up here?"
Jed did not blink, his gray eyes fixed on the vibrating crossbar of the door. "I swear on my mother’s grave, Martha, I ain't hiding nobody. Not a soul."
A second voice joined the first, muffled by the howling squall but unmistakable in its venom. "Open up, Boon, or we burn this pine box down to the frozen bedrock!"
"Burn it?" Martha’s voice dropped to a razor’s edge, all panic consumed by cold indignation. "With what dry wood in this blizzard, you brainless pack of wolves?"
Jed gave her a look that was half horror and half frantic disbelief. He raised the Winchester, thumbing the hammer back with a heavy, metallic click that settled the room.
"Get behind the hearth," he muttered, keeping his sights pinned directly to the center latch. "Those aren't miners looking for shelter. Those are the Garrett brothers from the creek."
"The ones who stole the gold shipment three years back?" Martha asked, remembering tavern whispers from town. "The stage driver said they froze to death in the pass."
"Folks in Bitter Creek don't know a damn thing about what survives up here," Jed whispered back, his barrel shoulders tensing. "They’ve been living in the abandoned drift mine."
A heavy rifle butt slammed against the wood, splintering the exterior trim. "We tracked the fat one's wagon trunk from the depot, Boon! We know she carried it!"
Martha’s eyes darted down toward the brass-bound trunk sitting at the foot of her cot. Her stomach dropped like a stone into an icy well as realization struck.
"The trunk," she whispered, her voice trembling for the first time since she set foot on the mountain. "The boarding house owner in Chicago gave it to me for back wages."
Jed didn't turn his head, but his jaw clenched until the jagged white scar turned purple. "Mr. Vance? The fellow who ran the flop house by the stockyards?"
"He said his cousin died out west and left him old survey tools," Martha replied quickly. "He told me to sell the brass fittings if I went broke."
"Vance was Silas Garrett's brother," Jed said grimly, never lowering the rifle. "They didn't send a mail-order bride for me, Martha. They used you as an unsuspecting mule."
The voice outside laughed, a wet, rattling cough swallowed by the roaring wind. "Hand over Silas's lockbox, woman, and maybe we let Boon bury you in the spring thaw!"
Martha looked at the heavy brass-bound trunk she had hauled across four states. Anger, hot and blinding, surged through her limbs, completely burning away the lingering ache in her swollen knee.
All her life, men had looked at her heavy frame and saw an object of ridicule, a beast of burden, or a fool to be deceived without consequence.
"They think I'm a mule," she whispered, her voice dropping into a dangerous, quiet register. "They think a fat woman won't notice twenty pounds of stolen gold in her luggage."
"Martha, stay down," Jed commanded, his boots shifting on the dirt-caked floorboards. "There’s at least three of them out there. Rifles will punch right through these spruce logs."
Instead of ducking, Martha moved with deliberate, heavy purpose toward the iron stove. She grabbed the cast-iron kettle, its melted snow water still roiling with violent, spitting steam.
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"How many rounds in that lever-gun, Jedodiah?" she demanded, setting the kettle on the hearthstone. Her face was flushed, her gaze hard as mountain granite.
—END OF Chapter 4,
