Chapter 5 - Blood in the Snow
The crack of a twelve-gauge shotgun obliterated the silence of the cabin.
The buckshot tore through the open doorway, splintering the oak doorframe and shredding the hanging coats into ribbons. Nathaniel had already dropped to one knee, the Winchester barking twice in savage succession.
Outside, a man shrieked. One of Bell’s enforcers flew backward off his horse, landing hard in the deep red-stained drift, his shotgun tumbling into the snow. The second horse reared wildly, whinnying in panic as the rider struggled to draw his Winchester while fighting the terrified beast.
Nathaniel rolled across the pine floor, kicking the cabin door shut and dropping the heavy crossbar into place just as a hail of bullets thudded into the exterior logs.
Beneath the floorboards, Clara didn't wait to be rescued. The sheer instinct that had kept her alive through her mother’s long illness took command.
"Stay behind me, Willa," she whispered fiercely.
Clara crawled toward the rear of the root cellar, locating the rough-hewn timbers Nathaniel had spoken of. She pushed with her shoulder, grunting with effort against the packed earth. With a scraping thud, a hidden exterior hatch gave way, spilling blinding sunlight and a cascade of snow into the cellar.
Clara boosted Willa up through the opening first. "Run to the timberline! Don't stop!"
Above them, the cabin was a war zone. Vance was back on his feet inside, bellowing like a wounded bull, tackling Nathaniel from behind. The two large men crashed into the floor, the wood groaning under their combined weight. Clara, climbing out into the freezing air, saw through the cabin’s low window: Vance had a bowie knife pressed against Nathaniel’s throat, his bloodied face twisted in homicidal triumph.
Clara didn't run.
She grabbed a heavy iron maul leaning against the cabin’s foundation—a tool Nathaniel used for splitting cedar fence posts. With two hands, she dragged the ten-pound iron head through the snow, stepped up to the shattered front window, and swung it with everything she possessed.
The iron maul smashed through the glass and struck Vance directly across the shoulder blade.
The sheriff howled, the knife slipping from his grasp. That half-second was all Nathaniel needed. He surged upward, driving an elbow into Vance’s temple, knocking the lawman senseless onto the hearth stones.
Nathaniel leaped to his feet, chest heaving, his face spattered with woodchips and soot. He stared through the broken window at Clara, whose hands were still locked onto the iron maul, her chest rising and falling in fierce defiance.
"I thought I told you to run," Nathaniel rasped.
"I don't leave people behind," Clara retorted, her chin lifted high. "We need to move. That other rider is circling around the barn!"
Nathaniel grabbed his rifle and a leather saddlebag packed with cartridges from the wall. He kicked the door open, stepped over the wreckage, and grabbed Clara’s arm. "To the horses. Now!"
They sprinted toward the corral where Barnaby and Nathaniel’s chestnut mare were stamping nervously in their stalls. The remaining gunman burst around the corner of the hay shed, raising his rifle.
Nathaniel fired from the hip.
The bullet caught the enforcer in the shoulder, spinning him into the frozen dirt. Nathaniel vaulted into the paddock, tossing Willa onto the saddle in front of his horn, then hauled Clara up behind him on the chestnut mare.
"Hold on to my waist!" he shouted.
Clara locked her arms around Nathaniel’s broad torso as he dug his heels into the mare’s flanks. The horse surged forward, leaping the low rail fence and bursting into the dense pine forest just as Vance staggered out of the cabin, firing his revolver wildly into the trees.
The bullets zipped harmlessly through the evergreen boughs, snapping twigs and showering them in pine needles.
They rode hard for two hours, sticking to the rocky ridges where the wind swept the snow clean, leaving no tracks for Bell’s hounds to follow. The air grew thinner and colder as they ascended into the jagged teeth of the Garnet Range.
When Nathaniel finally pulled the mare to a halt beneath an overhanging granite bluff, the valley lay stretched out below them like a map painted in white and lead.
In the center of the valley, smoking chimneys marked the sprawling, iron-fenced estate of Bell Manor—a fortress of red brick and cut stone that looked down upon the humble clapboard shacks of the miners like a feudal castle.
"Where are we going?" Clara asked, her breath catching as she stared down at the empire built on her mother’s stolen name.
Nathaniel reined the horse around, his face set in hard, merciless lines. "We aren't running anymore, Miss Clara."
"Then what are we doing?"
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"We're going to see Agnes," Nathaniel said grimly. "Because the dress hanging back in that cabin was only half the proof Eleanor left behind. And Agnes has been keeping the other half hidden inside her floor safe for twenty years."
***
