Part 6
Chapter 6
Martha looked at the chair, then at the man kneeling beside the woodbox. The distance between them, once wider than the Wyoming prairie, had suddenly collapsed into the hearthlight.
She sat down heavily, the pain returning with a dull, throbbing vengeance now that the terror had faded. She closed her eyes as the warmth began to thaw her bones.
Jed returned with a tin of wolf tallow and fresh linen strips. He knelt before her without a word, his scarred fingers surprisingly gentle as he peeled back the wool.
"The other three," Martha asked quietly as he rubbed the cooling salve into her skin. "They didn't run because of the chores or the cold, did they?"
Jed paused, his head bowed over her injured leg, the firelight catching the gray threads in his dark hair. A long, heavy sigh escaped his barrel chest.
"Sarah saw men watching the clearing through the trees," he confessed softly. "She thought they were phantoms coming to slit our throats while we slept."
"And the second one?" Martha asked, watching his calloused hands work with careful precision.
"Clara heard them whispering outside the shutters on her third night," Jed said, his jaw tightening. "I told her it was the wind. I lied because I was ashamed."
"Ashamed of what?" Martha asked softly. "You didn't invite those thieves to your ridge."
"Ashamed that my mountain wasn't safe for a decent woman," he answered, meeting her gaze. "Ashamed that a man with a face like mine couldn't protect a home."
"Your face didn't invite those bullets through that door tonight, Jedodiah," Martha said firmly. "And a pretty face wouldn't have stood in that doorway with a Winchester."
Jed looked at her for a long moment, his scarred lip twitching with the ghost of a smile. "No, I reckon it wouldn't have. It took you, Martha."
He finished wrapping her knee and stood up, retreating to his cot across the room. Outside, the blizzard screamed like a wounded beast, battering the logs until morning.
For three days, the storm held them prisoner within the four spruce walls. The drifts piled high against the windows, blocking out the daylight and leaving them in amber twilight.
They lived in that tiny space like two soldiers sharing a trench in winter. Yet, the silence between them was no longer a cold, bitter war of endurance.
Martha took charge of the iron skillet, turning Jed’s salt pork and dried beans into thick, fragrant stews that filled the cabin with the scent of savory onions.
Jed mended her broken boot with thick rawhide, his broad hands working the awl beside the fire while she stitched the frayed hems of his heavy wool shirts.
They spoke of small things: the spring thaw, the apple trees he hoped to plant, and the relentless noise of Chicago that Martha never wished to hear again.
"They used to laugh when I walked to market," Martha said softly on the third evening, peeling a shriveled potato. "Boys would shout after me like I was a circus tent."
Jed looked up from his leatherwork, his eyes dark with an anger that was not directed at her. "Folks in towns are small-minded runts who hide behind clean glass windows."
He stood up, walking to the window and peering through a small hole melted into the frost. "Out here, mass matters. Strength matters. Heart matters. Nothing else survives the freeze."
"You don't think I'm too big for this place?" Martha asked, the question slipping out before she could stop the old, lingering shame from coloring her words.
Jed turned and looked at her, his gaze steady, open, and completely devoid of deceit. "I think this mountain was too big for anyone else until you climbed it."
The simple truth in his gravelly voice struck Martha deeper than any flowery courtship verse she had ever read in the matrimonial papers back in Illinois.
On the fourth morning, the wind finally died, leaving the mountain wrapped in an absolute, crystalline silence that seemed to hold its breath under the pale dawn sun.
Jed unbarred the heavy door and shoveled through a six-foot wall of powdery drift, carving a narrow trench out into the blinding white clearing of the ridge.
The air was fifty degrees below freezing, so cold it burned the nostrils like hot pepper. Across the snow lay the frozen body of the first outlaw.
"We need to hitch the mule and take this down to the sheriff," Jed said, looking at the grim shape. "And carry that gold down before the third brother returns."
"He won't return," Martha said, leaning against the doorframe wrapped in her heavy shawl. "He saw what happened to the men who crossed this threshold."
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They loaded the brass trunk and the outlaw onto the sturdy timber sledge behind the mule. Jed wrapped Martha in two thick buffalo robes, seating her securely atop the load.
—END OF Chapter 6, —
