Winter Fire

by Elizabeth Lowell

  She came to him like fire, and like fire she burned, consuming the winter that surrounded them.

  Whipped by a cold wind, Sarah watched Ute and Case ride away into the seamless darkness. Hunter had already gone ahead into the night. He would take up a position that would let him cover Case’s retreat.

  If there is one, Sarah thought. Then, quickly, He’s still alive. Don’t think any other away. He’s alive!

  A thin sheet of wind-packed snow crunched beneath the feet of two packhorses. Their hooves bit through snow and cut deeply into the dry soil beneath.

  Rocks, she thought, looking at the bulging packs. Only rocks, except for one of the bags.

  Just like a salted mine.

  Her own saddlebags were fat with silver. The newly polished reales would shine like pieces of heaven in the dawn.

  Along with provisions for a hard ride, the remaining bars of silver bullion were divided among six mustangs. The women would ride two other horses.

  Sarah didn’t want to think about why they were setting off into the darkest part of the night, carrying everything that they needed to survive and build a new life; but Case’s last words to her kept echoing in her mind.

  If we don’t come back, you two run for the Ruby Mountains. Elyssa and the baby will need some of that silver.

  In the end, Sarah had agreed even as she refused to accept the underlying meaning of his words.

  She couldn’t imagine a world without Conner.

  Without Case.

  Shivering, she wrapped Ute’s jacket around herself. The smell of stale tobacco, sweat, goats, and years of campfires surrounded her.

  Case smelled of apples that night, she thought. My God, it seems like a thousand years ago.

  “You awake, gal?”

  Sarah turned to Lola. “I’m awake.”

  “You looked like you was dreaming.”

  “Just remembering…Case smelled of apples the first time I met him.”

  The other woman laughed.

  “Ute smelled like gunsmoke, whiskey, and horseshit,” Lola said. “He was sitting in a pile of road apples, skunk-drunk and shooting at flies. Lordy, lordy, that was a long time ago.”

  Despite her fears, Sarah smiled.

  “Lot of years I been with that man,” Lola said. “Lot of years. Too many to let him go and get killed by hisself.”

  Starlight turned the older woman’s eyes into glittering black stone.

  “You take them four ponies and run for Nevada right now,” she said to Sarah. “If there’s need, someone can catch up to you quick enough and bring you back.”

  “No.”

  “Listen, gal, you—”

  “No,” Sarah interrupted calmly.

  Lola sighed and bit off a chunk of tobacco.

  “Any chance of changing your mind?” she asked.

  “No.”

  For a time Lola chewed reflectively on the wad of tobacco. Then she spat through a gap in her teeth.

  “I suppose you got a plan,” she said.

  “I know Spring Canyon better than anyone.”

  Lola grunted.

  “Ab Culpepper might be mean as a snake, but he isn’t blind,” Sarah said. “He won’t be fooled by Ute for long.”

  “Don’t have to be. Bullets ain’t slow.”

  “Flesh is,” she retorted. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”

  Quickly Sarah mounted Shaker.

  Swearing through her mouthful of tobacco, Lola climbed aboard her mount. The chunky mustang looked like it was part plow horse.

  “What about them pack animals?” Lola asked.

  “Bring them. I have a plan for that bullion.”

  “That’s what I feared. Fool things, plans.”

  It was Lola’s last complaint. Without another word she followed the trail through cold darkness and even colder moonlight.

  Sarah didn’t feel much like talking herself. The closer she got to Spring Canyon, the more foolish her plan seemed. The only part she was certain of was that her destination was nearer than the east rim of the canyon, where the men were going.

  No matter how foolish, anything is better than wringing my hands and waiting to see if Conner and Case are alive, she told herself firmly.

  Besides, they need me. No one else can reach that part of the canyon. From there I can shoot right down into the camp.

  I can make the difference between living and dying for Conner.

  For Case.

  It’s not a foolish plan. Not really. Not when you think about it from all directions.

  She kept telling herself that as Shaker began the climb out of the canyon up onto the large, windswept plateau. Lost River had eaten through the plateau’s solid stone to create the valley where grass and willows and cottonwoods thrived. Lost River Valley was the biggest canyon that water had gouged from the body of the plateau, but not the only one. There were hundreds of other, smaller side canyons.

  Spring Canyon was one of them.

  Before the raiders came, the canyon had been Sarah’s refuge, a place of mystery and peace and dreams. She had gone to it many, many times. Along the canyon’s south-facing wall there were ruins in a large alcove fifteen feet below the lip of the sheer stone cliff. The ancient rooms were slowly, silently dissolving back into time and dust. Only a few handmade stone walls stood as crumbling ramparts against an enemy long dead.

  Twenty feet farther down the sheer cliff were the springs that had allowed the ancient tribe to build their fortress. Ten feet below the mossy crack where stone wept cool, sweet water, the outlaws had set up their camp.

  Sarah never hesitated on the way to the ruins. Many times she and Conner had hidden among the ancient rooms when Hal had gone on a drunken frenzy, lashing out at everything in sight.

  No matter how hard her husband hunted her, he had never found her. Though slender for a man, he still had been too thick to squeeze through the hidden passage she had discovered leading from the plateau top down to the ruins.

  Conner is too big now, she thought. I’m the only one who can fit in that crack.

  There was no other way into the ruins except to climb down on a rope from the top. Hal had done that once, looking for silver. He found nothing but dust and broken pottery.

  Without hesitation Sarah reined her mustang onto a trail she hadn’t used since Hal’s death. This particular route up the plateau was too steep, too dangerous, to take under normal circumstances.

  Especially at night.

  But night was when Hal went crazy. Night was when the fastest way to get to a safe place was worth any risk.

  “Gal, where’n hell you going?” Lola asked.

  “Up on the plateau, then over to the rim of Spring Canyon.”

  “You’re plumb loco.”

  Sarah didn’t disagree. “Stay here, then.”

  “Like fiery hell I will.”

  The mustangs were blowing hard by the time they scrambled up the last steep pitch that led to the top of the plateau. No ranch-raised horse could have made the climb. Only an animal that had grown up running wild through the steep canyons had the uncanny sense of balance and hard hooves to stay with the trail.

  The wind whipped and snarled around them like a living thing, howling its strength.

  “Lola? You still here?” Sarah called.

  “I ain’t never speaking to you again, gal.”

  “Promise?”

  “Shee-it.”

  “Can you see that notch?” Sarah asked.

  Her arm made a solid black pointer against the stars and moonlight.

  Lola grunted.

  “That’s the start of an old foot trail to the springs,” Sarah said. “It’s not wide enough for a horse.”

  A stream of tobacco juice landed on the wind-scoured rock. It was Lola’s only comment.

  “You don’t have to go,” Sarah said.

  The old woman hissed a word and waited.

  “About a quarter-mile down,” Sarah said, “there’s a place where a man can lo
ok out over the canyon. If I were Ab or Moody, I’d have a guard there.”

  Lola grunted.

  “Take a pocket full of silver,” Sarah continued. “If you find a guard, tell him you’ve stolen the rest and want his help.”

  “Lead is cheaper.”

  “Noisier, too.”

  “Long as it’s done quiet like, you care what happens to that son of a bitch, supposing he’s there?” Lola asked.

  “No. I just don’t want anyone firing across the canyon at Case and Ute.”

  “I’ll be quiet as a knife.”

  Sarah reined her horse closer, gave the other woman a hug, and said, “Thank you.”

  “Hell, gal. No need. My man’s tail is stuck in the same crack as yours.”

  But Lola hugged her hard in turn before she dismounted and set off for the notch.

  After an anxious look at the eastern sky, Sarah sent her mustang at a trot toward the hidden trail down to the ruins.

  The land dipped where runoff water collected before it raced down and over the cliff in a seasonal waterfall. Now only a ragged veil of snow lay in the dip. Wind had peeled the land down to bare rock bones.

  The same wind went through Sarah’s jacket as though the wool was little more than muslin. Shivering without realizing it, she dismounted and unfastened the saddlebags. They hit the ground with a thump and jingle.

  Wind overwhelmed the sound and swept it behind her, away from the canyon, burying everything in a howling kind of silence. The wind would do the same for any noise short of that made by gunfire.

  She glanced at the sky again. Her stomach clenched.

  The eastern horizon was a lighter shade of black.

  Hurry!

  Teeth set against the cold, she half-carried and half-dragged the saddlebags down the runoff channel. Moving in the dark over rough land with the heavy saddlebags took so long that she wanted to scream with frustration.

  Then the land dipped steeply beneath her feet. She gave up trying to control the bags and simply let them bump and tumble in her wake. More quickly than she had expected, less quickly than she had hoped, she found herself in a narrow crevice that rapidly deepened until it rose over her head, all but shutting out the stars.

  Without the wind, the sound of her own panting seemed loud enough to raise the dead. She looked up only once, just long enough to tell her that time was running out for her. The faintest of the stars directly overhead were already fading.

  The men will be on the other rim soon.

  Hurry!

  Panting, yanking at the stubborn saddlebags, trying to keep her shotgun and rifle from banging against the stone that was closing in on either side, Sarah fought for every inch of progress she made. None would have been possible but for the long dead hands that had chiseled parts of the passage from solid stone, and the footsteps that had worn sharp edges into smooth ripples.

  Just a few more feet.

  Sweat ran down between her breasts as she jerked and heaved, yanking the saddlebags of silver closer and closer to the entrance of the ruins.

  Forerunners of daybreak spread across the sky in shades of pale yellow and faint peach. Night began to slide down the sides of the plateau and gather in the canyon bottom.

  But there was no place to hide from the sun. Even the canyon floor would know the weightless caress of light.

  Tumbled by the wind, voices drifted up from the canyon floor forty feet below the east rim.

  Angry voices.

  “Dammit, it’s dawn and I don’t see no silver, dammit. Don’t see no woman, neither, dammit.”

  Moody’s complaint was echoed by several other men.

  “No sun,” Kester said.

  “Dammit, Ab told me dawn, not daybreak, dammit! I say kill the kid and go after the silver.”

  A ragged chorus of agreement came from Moody’s men.

  “No sun, no dawn,” Kester said.

  “Dam—”

  “No dawn,” Kester interrupted.

  The fact that he was holding a shotgun meant more than any logic. Moody and his men subsided into curses that grew louder as the sky grew brighter.

  Case and Ute merged their outlines with the piñon growing near the east rim of the canyon. Behind them, dawn was spreading tongues of red and gold over the wild, windswept land at the top of the plateau.

  “Them boys is getting short of patience,” Ute muttered.

  Case glanced to the east. The sun wasn’t above the edge of the plateau yet.

  “They’ll have to wait,” he said.

  “Is Ab still in them willows with Conner, just beneath the spring?”

  Case nodded.

  “You see Morgan?” Ute asked after a time.

  “No. But he’s down there. Somewhere.”

  “Hunter?”

  “He’s on the south rim, at that lookout you told him about.”

  Ute grunted. “Probably a guard there.”

  “Probably was. Now Hunter is there.”

  The old outlaw chuckled.

  Silently, inevitably, the burning arc of the sun ate through darkness at the eastern rim of the canyon. As the arc swelled into a half-circle, Case stepped out of the shadows into the shaft of light. The heavy saddlebags hanging from his shoulders transformed his long shadow into that of a black angel sweeping across the canyon.

  “Look!” called one of the men below. “Up on the east rim!”

  “Ab!” Kester called.

  “I see him!”

  Another, smaller shadow appeared beside Case. The hat and jacket belonged to Sarah. The rest, including the badly braided hair jammed beneath the hat, belonged to Ute.

  “We’re here,” Case called. “Let the boy go.”

  Weapons lifted to cover the two people on the canyon rim.

  “We’ve got men with rifles along the rim,” Case said. “You start shooting and there won’t be anyone left to bury the dead.”

  Kester melted back into the brush. So did another long, lean Culpepper.

  “Them Culpeppers is real coyotes,” Ute muttered.

  Moody’s men didn’t even notice that they were now alone, exposed to rifle fire. Their eyes saw only the saddlebags hanging over Case’s shoulders.

  “Lower your rifles, boys,” Ab called. “Time enough to sort things out later.”

  A curt order from Moody sent the rifle barrels pointing slightly away from the east rim.

  “Let’s see that silver,” Ab yelled from the willows.

  “Not until I’m sure Conner is walking and talking,” Case said. “Let him go.”

  After a few moments Conner stumbled forward out of the willows. He was moving his arms and legs as though they were stiff. Loops of recently cut rope dangled from his ankles and wrists. His face was bruised. Yet with each step he took, strength visibly returned to him.

  “There he be,” Ab called. “Show me that silver!”

  Case shrugged off the saddlebags that were slung over each shoulder. They hit the ground at his feet.

  The clang and clatter of silver bars knocking against one another went through the men gathered below like a swig of raw whiskey. If any man noticed that only one of the saddlebags gave off the sweet sound of metal wealth, he didn’t show it.

  “It’s here,” Case called. “As soon as Conner walks out of the canyon, we’ll throw the saddlebags down to you.”

  Silence answered him.

  “Hope Conner is looking for a hole,” Ute said calmly. “Sure as sin, it’ll be a turkey shoot.”

  Conner kept walking, ducking and weaving through the gathered raiders. The closest cover was thirty feet away, in the piles of rubble at the base of the east side of the canyon.

  “Ain’t her,” Kester called to Ab.

  “What?” Ab demanded.

  “Ain’t her.”

  “What are you yammering about?”

  “You dumb egg-sucking son of a bitch,” Kester yelled distinctly. “It ain’t her up there!”

  The willows thrashed as Ab made his way cl
oser to the edge of the thicket.

  Conner’s movements quickened.

  Rifle barrels gleamed and shifted like mercury in the shadows.

  “Gonna get lively right soon,” Ute muttered.

  “We have to give Conner every second we can.”

  “What if Ab has a spyglass?”

  “It will give Morgan a dandy target.”

  Apparently Ab thought so, too. The willow thicket shifted again, but there was no flash of glass lens throwing back the light of the sun.

  “You up there,” Ab yelled. “Take off your hat and let down your hair!”

  “On three,” Case murmured.

  Slowly he lifted his hat.

  “Shee-it!” Ab snarled.

  “One,” Case said softly.

  “Not you!” Ab yelled.

  “Two.”

  “The other one!”

  “Over here,” Sarah yelled. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

  The raiders spun around and looked up toward the south wall of the canyon. Sarah’s hair burned like a second sunrise among the ancient ruins.

  But even more compelling were the polished reales pouring like a musical silver waterfall into the canyon from her upended saddlebags.

  Moody’s raiders ran toward the coins.

  Case and Ute hit the ground, grabbing for their rifles as they fell.

  Conner jumped the nearest raider, grabbed his six-gun, and started firing.

  The Culpeppers began shooting from cover.

  Rifle fire exploded from all directions in the canyon. The first to die were Moody’s men, shot in the back by Culpeppers before they even reached the dazzling waterfall of silver that had blinded them to danger.

  Bullets whined wildly off the east rim as Culpeppers turned their fire on Case and Ute. Chips of rock and grit stung both men while they snaked along on their bellies, trying to find both cover and a good place to fire back at the raiders.

  “Damn,” Ute said, spitting out rock dust. “Them boys is good shooters.”

  Another rifle opened up. The shots were spaced, methodical, as cold as the wind.

  “Hunter,” Case said. “Probably covering Conner.”

  Counting shots, Case eased up to the canyon rim. When he knew his brother had only a few rounds left, he started shooting. As Hunter had, Case swept the valley with systematic fire, pinning Culpeppers down while Conner retreated.