“That’s what I’m worried about. She thought I was joking when I said it has snowed in July before.” Gideon looked to the right, where the main road headed into the mountains north of his spread. “But I don’t know that she’d go that way, even in sunny weather. She’s more of a city girl.” At least, he thought she was. Who knew where she’d really grown up? Everything she told him could have been a lie.
“We’ve gotta choose a direction.” He looked at the ground, circling it with his horse. There were a lot of hoof prints, mixed in with the tracks of wagons and buggies. “There, those prints look freshest. Let’s go this way. You’re probably right, the Pruetts’ should be our first stop.”
They turned left onto the main road, heading toward the Pruetts’ lane.
Chapter 30
Elinor’s horse galloped at full speed down the main road. Hot tears coursed down her cheeks, turning icy before they even dripped off her chin. The wind against her face was frigid, and she realized too late that the weather had become too cold for the way she was dressed.
No matter, she thought. The brisk air would clear her mind. She was so furious, humiliated, and heartbroken from Gideon’s attack. She had known he’d be mad—she should have told him the truth long ago—but to be berated in front of the Porters, and worse, to hear such vitriol coming from the mouth of a man who had always been so compassionate? Elinor’s heart ached as her mind replayed his words over and over again.
She hadn’t decided where she was going, only that she had to get as far away as she could. Perhaps she’d ride into town and see the pastor. He’d know what to do.
As the minutes went by, snowflakes began to fall from the sky. Soon, they whirled in a vigorous dance, and fat white flakes that coated her hair, then melted into frigid drops that seeped through her clothing. It wasn’t long before she could scarcely see the road in front of her.
How is this possible? It’s only October! It wasn’t unheard of to have a rare light snowfall in Massachusetts in late October, but this was shaping up to be a very heavy snowfall, at the least.
Gideon warned me. I didn’t listen. I thought he was joking. The wind blew harder, and her hands were freezing, curled over the reins. She pulled the horse up short.
This is madness. Can’t you see what you’re doing? You’re just running away from your problems again, as Gideon said. This won’t solve anything, and you could get lost if this gets any worse.
She looked around. She wasn’t even sure how far she’d gone toward town, but she didn’t think it was far. Then again, her horse was panting from the hard ride she’d given him in such a short time.
She wasn’t going to freeze to death for the sake of her pride. But she couldn’t face Gideon yet. I’ll go to Constance’s house. She’ll understand. She’ll forgive me for lying, and we’ll have a long talk. She could almost taste the hot tea with honey, and the cinnamon apple muffins that she knew still sat in a basket on Constance’s sideboard. A warm drink by the woodstove and a nice long talk with Constance—that’s what I need.
She tugged on the reins, turning the horse around. At least…she thought she was. The snow was melting not long after it touched the ground, but beyond her the world was nearly obliterated by a curtain of white.
“Oh dear. I hope you know the way. Go to Constance’s house, Pepper. The Pruett farm. Go!”
She’d read that horses could find their way home in a snowstorm, but didn’t know if they could find their way, on cue, to a different, though familiar, location. She supposed she’d find out.
She didn’t want to overwork the horse in the cold weather—a cold, sweaty horse could end up being a sick one—so she slowed him to a trot. The wind was less harsh at the slower pace, but it still seemed even colder. That was when she remembered the saddlebags Gideon had packed for her, with a blanket. Perhaps there would be gloves, too. She reached back behind her, only to feel nothing but horse hide.
It’s gone! Oh no…Emmett. She groaned as she realized Emmett must have already removed the saddlebags when she absconded with the horse. I suppose I should have turned back when he yelled to me—he was probably calling me back for the saddlebags.
She decided to hold the reins one-handed, switching so she could warm each hand for a while. Slipping her hand into one pocket of the sacque, her fingers found soft leather. Gloves! She pulled them out, her heart warming at the sight of the kidskin gloves that Gideon must have stealthily placed in her pocket. Then an ache spread through her when she realized it might be the last considerate gesture her husband would ever extend to her.
She slipped her hands into the gloves nevertheless, waiting endless minutes for the gloves to warm her icy fingers.
The wind whipped her skirts, exposing the bottom of her legs. Her calves were ice cold, and her fingers weren’t getting any warmer. That can’t be good, she thought. The snow was finally beginning to stick to the ground, and just as it was being obscured from view, she realized they weren’t on the road anymore—dry grass and flat, two-inch-tall cactus plants passed by as she leaned to look at the ground “Oh no, no, no, Pepper, you’re going the wrong way!”
Now Elinor truly felt fear—she was lost. She had no idea how far from home she had wandered, or how far from the road they were. She wasn’t even sure that she and the horse were going in the right direction.
Tears blurred her vision once again, but it didn’t matter—she couldn’t see anything but her horse and the curtain of snow. She drew the lapel of the sacque around her neck as tightly as she could, but with the wind pulling at it, it made little difference. All she could hear was the crunching of snow beneath the horse’s hooves, and the sound of labored breathing—both her own and Pepper’s. Do horses freeze to death as fast as humans? Pepper was old…if he gave out sooner than she did, she had little chance of survival.
Gideon’s words no longer seemed as cruel as her mind replayed them. She heard the hurt, the betrayal in them. Yes, anger, too. But didn’t he have a right to be angry? After what she’d done, didn’t he have the right to express that anger, without her running off? Didn’t he deserve to hear the truth, for once?
Guilt wracked her as she leaned further and further forward in the saddle. She was so tired. Tired of lying, tired of hiding who she was. Tired of trying to sit, twisted upright, in the stupid side saddle. Tired of trying to keep her eyes open.
“Home, Pepper,” she murmured to the horse. “Let’s just go home. Take me home.” She would have patted his side as encouragement, but she could barely pry her hands off the reins. She let them fall limp on the upper pommel, signaling to the horse that he was in charge now, and she leaned forward, clinging to him as best she could. She knew that she wasn’t going to make it. She only hoped she could hold on, so that if the horse made it back, at least Gideon would know what happened to her. If she wasn’t home soon, he’d go looking for her, angry or not. She loved him so much, it pained her to think that he might come to harm, looking for her in the storm. “Please, keep him safe,” she prayed silently. “Let someone find me—or my body—before he gets lost in the storm, too.”
Chapter 31
Gideon and Emmett reached the main road again, at the end of the Pruetts lane. Mrs. Pruett hadn’t seen Elinor, but she had asked if they had blankets, mittens, or scarves with them. When she found out he only had blankets, she insisted he wait while she found a hat, scarf, and heavy woolen mittens.
“She might have frostbite, and there’s no telling how far away you’ll find her. Be careful.”
Gideon tucked them into his saddlebag and thanked her.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to get my husband from the barn? Elinor’s far more important than a cold cow who was stupid enough to knock the trough over and stumble into the wet muck.”
“No, thank you. We don’t have time to wait, and I know if the cow dies, it’s a fair piece of money lost. If we don’t find her soon, we’ll circle back and ask for help.”
“When you find her, and get ba
ck to the barn, fire twice in the air, so we know. As soon as the storm is over, we’ll come see her. And we’ll be praying for you all.”
“Thank you.” He had hoisted himself up into the saddle as Mrs. Pruett pulled her shawl tight around herself and went inside. They weren’t more than twenty feet from the house when Gideon looked over his shoulder and saw the farmhouse swallowed up by the falling snow.
At the crossroad, they both circled, checking for prints.
“No one has passed here since the snow started to stick,” Emmett said. “But at least when we cross her trail, we’ll be able to see it.”
“If we don’t cross it too long after she goes by. Otherwise, more snow will cover the tracks in short order.” Gideon tried to calm his heart as it beat against his chest. He imagined every sort of terrible scenario—visions of his wife, pale and frozen, curled up in the snow.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. She could be back at the house already, warm and toasty in front of the woodstove.”
“She’s not,” Gideon shook his head. “I can feel it—she’s not. She’s in danger. She could be dead already, and it’s all because of me. Because I had to lose my temper and yell at her, instead of giving her a chance—”
“That’s enough,” Emmett snapped. “We’re wasting time. We’re going to find her. I have a sister-in-law who cooks a heck of a lot better’n you do, and I’m not going to give that up so easily.”
Gideon laughed hollowly, in spite of the situation. “Well then, that settles it. You’ll find her in no time, now that your stomach is at risk. Alright, let’s go.”
The wind changed direction, roaring out of the west now, trying to tear the men’s hats from their heads. They both pushed their hats down firmly, until the brims were level with their eyebrows, and tilted their heads against the wind.
Despite wearing two coats, plus heavy gloves, the frigid air sank through every layer of clothing, settling into Gideon’s bones. They’d had autumn snowstorms before, but nothing like this, not since the winter of ’86 to ’87, when it felt like spring would never come. He remembered working at the ranch, and late into the winter, going out with the other ranch hands to find starved cattle—their bones showing through their hides like the bars of a jail cell—the poor creatures’ heads frozen to the ground. They died as they stood, trying desperately to get through the thick layer of ice that had been caused by a thaw, which had been followed by a fast, hard freeze. Other cattle had lain on the grown beneath animal-shaped snowdrifts, where they had collapsed from starvation. It had been a terrible sight, one they saw day after day throughout that winter. The idea that he might find his wife’s body beneath a similar, corpse-shaped drift, shook him to his core.
They traveled on, searching for any sign of Elinor’s horse. While they searched, they tried to stay warm by talking, but it was hard to be heard over the whistling wind. The large fluffy flakes gave way to biting, grainy, sand-like flakes that hurt their faces as it blew against their left sides.
Gideon gave Emmett the short version of what had happened with Adelaide—Elinor—and why she had run off. Emmett was shocked, but sympathetic to Gideon’s reaction.
“I’d have been fired up too, brother. But here’s the thing,” he yelled over the wind, “she’s not Pa. She’s a woman who made a mistake. She never abandoned you, never turned her back on you. She’s been by your side every day and every night, learning how to cook and clean and sew, so she could measure up to the girl she thought you wanted her to be. She did wrong, yeah, and she’ll have to earn your trust back, no doubt about that. But it’s a long way from what Pa did. And even Pa did his best…it just wasn’t good enough.”
“Pa didn’t do a darn thing. He never tried!” Tears stung Gideon’s eyes, but he blinked them back. “I don’t want to go over the same ground again, Emmett. There are things…things you don’t know about, because you were the younger brother, and everything didn’t fall on your shoulders…”
“So tell me!” Emmett held his arms out, as if in supplication, dropping the reins as he rode. “Tell me what I don’t know, what got you so hot and bothered and hating your own Pa so much. Yeah, he took off, and yeah, in that way he was a rotten father. But he was trying to make our life better. He meant well.”
“He meant nothing—we meant nothing, to him. He forgot about us. He forgot about Ma. And she died of a broken heart. And that ain’t even the half of it.”
Emmett took up his reins again. “Gideon, you can’t keep dropping cryptic hints like that and not tell me. Just tell me or shut up about it.”
“You don’t want to know. Be glad you don’t know.” Gideon dropped the reins for a moment to work his fingers, opening and closing them to keep the blood moving. “I know, you’re right about Ad—” He shook his head. “—Elinor. To be honest, I don’t even care anymore. All that stuff…it just doesn’t matter. I drove her away—wanted her to go, really. Wanted her to prove to me that she was no better’n Pa, just like I thought. Now she’s out there alone, and all I can think about is…I love her. I love her Emmett, and she’s never going to know it, because I’ve never—”
“Wait—there!” Emmett pulled his horse up short, and leapt off. He walked along, leading his horse while he examined the tracks, half-covered with new snow. “This has got to be her. She went this way.”
He swung himself up in the saddle and turned away from Gideon. “Come on brother, we need to hurry.”
Gideon didn’t need to see Emmett’s face to know something was amiss. “What’s wrong?”
“I said let’s go.” Emmett nudged his horse into a trot, and tipped his head to watch the trail carefully.
Gideon followed, but didn’t let up. “What’s wrong, Emmett?” he called. “I can hear it in your voice. What do you know?”
He couldn’t hear the sigh over the wind, but he saw his brother’s shoulders heave as he stopped his horse, turning it around. “The tracks are close together. Really close together. I’d say her horse is barely plodding along.”
“And that means…?”
“It might mean nothing.”
“Emmett!”
“Alright, alright.”
He turned back and continued onward, following the trail. Gideon followed along the other side of the hoof prints, listening.
“Last year, there was a bunch of us who got together and decided it was just too cold in the mountains to stay through the winter. We were planning on toughing it out, but things were looking mighty fierce, so we packed up and headed toward town as a group. One man, he got separated as snow started moving in on us, and we didn’t notice right away. The person assigned to the back end of the group was drinking instead of doing his job. By the time we realized we were down a man, we’d already hunkered down against the storm. Some of us got together and made up a search party. When we caught his trail…it looked a lot like this. Not long after, we found him. It…it didn’t turn out well.”
“What happened?”
“Let’s just focus on—”
“What happened?!”
“He died, alright!” Emmett turned away and cussed, pulling up short. His chest heaved with frustration as he struggled to get ahold of himself. “The horse was struggling, and finally stopped. Just refused to go on. It was on its knees, near dead, when we found it.”
“And?”
“And…and the miner had slipped off.” Emmett flipped the reins, and his horse continued. “Found him dead on the ground, beside the horse, covered in a light blanket of snow.”
A pang of agony seared Gideon’s chest, as if a giant had just punched the air right out of his lungs. The vision of Elinor, cold and dead under a snowdrift, filled his mind, and he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t talk, he couldn’t think of anything else…
“Gideon! Keep it together!” hollered Emmett. “If we don’t find her quick, the two of us are going to end up lost. And if we don’t make it, she doesn’t make it. Got it?”
Gideon nodded, his teeth chatt
ering.
They continued the trail, following the prints as they wended back and forth, meandering uphill, toward the mountains.
“You don’t think the horse would make the mistake of heading up there, do you?” Emmett asked, pointing in the direction of where the sparely-treed foothills of the mountain would most likely be, if they could see them. “Seems like a dumb mistake for it to make—the one thing it should feel is whether it’s climbing or not, and it should know that home isn’t uphill.”
Sighing, Gideon endured another wave of guilt. “She’s riding Pepper, remember? He’s the most sedate. I thought it would be safer for her. He, uh…” Gideon fought back the anxiety that wanted to rear its ugly head. “He’s a lot more worn out than you probably would remember, back when Nina was riding him. He can get confused sometimes. He’s still pretty strong for his age, but…he’s old.”
Emmett grimaced. “We keep moving. If we don’t find her soon, Gideon—”
“Don’t say it.”
“We can’t stay out here forever.”
“I’m not going back.”
“She could already be home.”
“She’s not! You said yourself, these tracks are hers. Unless they lead us right to my door, I’m not going back.”
Emmett shook his head. “Then we’ll just have to find her.”
Chapter 32
Clay stomped the snow off his feet and shook it from his coat, then stepped inside and wiped his feet on the rug. “It’s a bear out there. I really wish you would have listened to me about staying home today.”
“You’re right, but how could we have known? There were only a few clouds when we left. And you worry about everything.”
“Now Herman will be worried about us.”
She walked over to her husband and kissed him on the cheek. “He will, but he’ll know you’d have me and Grace tucked away somewhere warm and safe long before a single snowflake fell.”
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