A Cowboy Followed His Horse Into the Mountains—Then Discovered a Woman Everyone Thought Dead

Chapter 5

“I’m going to give you a little whiskey,” Wyatt said, unscrewing the cap. “Just a drop. Don’t choke.”

He brought the flask to her cracked lips, and she took a tiny sip, coughing weakly as the alcohol hit her throat. Color rushed back into her pale face, faint, but there. She blinked at him, and something in her eyes sharpened, came back from wherever it had been hiding.

The wind outside shifted, howling louder, and the first stinging flakes of snow came hissing into the cave mouth.

Wyatt looked out at the darkening sky, and his heart sank.

The trail they had just climbed had nearly killed him in bright daylight. In a blizzard, carrying an unconscious, injured woman, it wasn’t a descent. It was a suicide note. They couldn’t go down. Not tonight. Not even tomorrow, maybe. He looked at Clara, at the fever burning in her cheeks, at the leg that was slowly, quietly killing her, and he made his decision the way he made all his decisions, fast and final.

“All right, Clara,” he said, standing up and grabbing his heavy canvas saddlebags off Adrien. “Looks like you’re hosting company for the night. Let’s get a fire going before this mountain tries to freeze us both solid.”

Clara watched him, her hands still tangled in the roan’s mane, and for the first time in ninety days, Wyatt watched her eyes close without her having to force them.

The blizzard hit the mountain like a freight train.

Within twenty minutes, the entrance of the alcove was a solid, swirling wall of white. The temperature plunged so fast Wyatt could feel the moisture freezing in his own nasal passages with every breath. He moved with a frantic, methodical efficiency, because panic killed people out here and work kept them alive. He scoured the back of the cave, ripping up every dry piece of deadfall, old roots, and desiccated sagebrush he could find.

Clara had done a decent job hoarding fuel, but she was weak, and her pile wouldn’t last the night. Wyatt took his small hatchet from the saddlebags and demolished a thick, dead pine branch that had wedged itself into the rock fissures centuries ago, splitting it into arm-sized pieces. He built a tight tepee-style fire near the center of the shallow cave, his hands clumsy with the cold, fumbling with the waterproof matches from his kit. On the third strike, a flame caught the dry moss, and he breathed on it gently, coaxing the tiny orange ember until it grabbed the twigs and flared to life.

Smoke stung his eyes, swirling in the draft before pulling out along the cave ceiling. The heat was immediate, meager, glorious.

Wyatt turned his attention back to Clara. She had passed out again, her chin resting against her chest, and for a moment he was afraid she’d slipped away on him. Then he saw the shallow rise and fall of her chest. Still breathing. Still fighting.

He pulled his heavy wool blanket from the saddle roll and draped it over his sheepskin coat, cocooning her. Then he looked at Adrien.

The gelding was standing near the edge of the fire’s light, his head lowered, a thick layer of frost already dusting his red coat. He was tired. He had done the work of two horses today and asked nothing in return.

“Come here, old man,” Wyatt said softly, clicking his tongue.

Adrien stepped forward, and Wyatt didn’t tie him. He simply pressed his hand against the horse’s heavy shoulder, applying steady, downward pressure, the way he’d done a thousand times in a thousand cold corrals. Adrien understood. With a heavy groan that sounded almost human, the twelve-hundred-pound animal folded his front legs, then his back, and collapsed into the dirt with a soft thud.

Wyatt immediately began dragging Clara’s makeshift bed. He slid her across the frozen ground until she was wedged directly between the fire and the massive, radiating heat of the horse’s broad back. Adrien didn’t flinch. He just blew a long sigh through his nose and closed his eyes.

Wyatt filled a battered tin cup with snow and nestled it in the hot coals. While he waited for it to melt, he finally took a hard look at Clara’s leg. He didn’t remove the burlap. He didn’t need to. He pressed his fingers gently against the skin of her thigh just above the knee.

It was hot. Too hot. The skin felt tight as a drum, and the faint, sweet smell of decay was stronger up close.

The cold had likely slowed the infection, keeping the rot in a holding pattern. But she was dancing on the razor’s edge of sepsis, and he had one night, maybe two, to get her to help.

The snow in the tin cup boiled. Wyatt pulled it from the fire with a leather glove, sprinkled a heavy pinch of black coffee grounds into the water, let it steep, and added a generous pour of whiskey from his flask. He knelt beside Clara and shook her shoulder.

“Clara. Wake up.”

Her eyelids fluttered. She let out a dry, rattling moan.

“Drink this,” he said, supporting the back of her neck with one hand and guiding the hot rim to her lips with the other.

Slow, she drank. The heat hit her stomach and she gasped, her eyes flying open. For a moment, the fog of fever parted, and she looked at Wyatt, then at the fire, and finally at the massive red wall of fur pressing against her spine.

“I lost the truck,” she whispered. Her voice was raspy, broken. In the firelight there was something ancient and confessional about it, like a dying woman’s last words, or a survivor’s first.

“I know,” Wyatt said, feeding her another sip. “River took it.”

“The water came so fast.” She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting a phantom current. “One minute the road was there, and then it was just… moving. Everything was moving. It smashed through the windshield.”

Wyatt didn’t say anything. He just listened. Let her purge the terror.

“I got out through the window.” Her breathing was shallow now, fast. “Grabbed a root. It snapped my leg against a boulder. I heard it. I heard the bone go. I thought I was dead right there, Wyatt. I thought that was it.”