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

Chapter 7

Dawn didn’t break the next morning. It bled into the sky, gray and grudging, like the mountain was doing the world a favor it resented.

The wind had died around five in the morning, leaving behind a silence so absolute it rang in Wyatt’s ears like a struck bell. He kicked his way through the snowdrift at the cave entrance and stepped out.

The world was blindingly white. Two feet of fresh powder covered the mountain, transforming the jagged, treacherous trail into a smooth, deceptive slope. Underneath that powder was ice.

It was a beautiful morning to die.

Wyatt went back inside, kicked dirt over the dying coals, and got to work.

“Time to go, Clara.”

She was pale, her skin slick with a fresh coat of fever sweat. The infection was moving. He could see it in the flush across her cheekbones and in the glassy exhaustion behind her eyes. She didn’t speak as he hauled her upright. When she put an ounce of weight on her good leg, she nearly collapsed, biting through her lower lip to stifle a scream.

Wyatt didn’t offer empty comforts. He never had. It wasn’t in him.

“I know it hurts. But if we stay here, you die, and I didn’t climb this goddamn mountain to watch you die in it. I’m going to put you on the horse. You hold the horn. You don’t let go no matter what happens. Understand?”

She gave a tight, jerky nod.

Getting her into the saddle was an ugly, brutal process. Wyatt had to lift her entirely, dead weight, while Adrien stood like a statue, only the flicking of his ears betraying any awareness. When her broken leg brushed the leather fender of the saddle, Clara let out a sharp, choked sob and nearly blacked out. Wyatt strapped her good foot into the stirrup and used his lariat to tie her waist to the saddle horn. It wasn’t pretty, but it would keep her from pitching off into the abyss if she lost consciousness.

“All right, old man,” Wyatt said, taking the reins and stepping out into thigh-deep snow. “Easy does it. Find the bottom.”

The descent was an exercise in slow, grinding terror.

Wyatt walked ahead, using a heavy pine branch as a walking stick to probe the snow for hidden drops and sheets of ice. Every step was a calculation. Every shift in Adrien’s weight sent a jolt of adrenaline through Wyatt’s chest. They moved at a crawl. The cold seeped through Wyatt’s boots, turning his toes into useless blocks of wood. His lungs burned with every breath of frozen air.

Behind him, Clara rode in silence, slumped forward, her arms locked around Adrien’s neck.

The horse picked his way down the mountain with a terrifying precision, sliding on his haunches when the grade was too steep, digging his iron shoes through the snow to find the rock beneath, testing each hoofstep like a man testing ice. He had become something else entirely, not the stubborn red gelding that had raised hell in the corral all year, but a creature of perfect, patient purpose.

Two hours in, they hit a sheet of black ice buried under a fresh drift.

Wyatt’s boot went out from under him. He went down hard, slamming his knee into the granite with a crack that shot white light through his vision. He heard the sharp scrape of metal on stone behind him.

Adrien’s front left hoof gave way.

The massive animal pitched forward, slipping toward the sheer drop off the right side of the trail. Clara let out a weak cry, her arms convulsing around the horse’s neck.

Wyatt didn’t think. He didn’t have time to think. Still on his knees, he threw his entire body weight backward, hauling on the leather reins with everything he had left, the leather digging into his gloved hands and cutting off the circulation.

Adrien scrambled. Panic finally flared in his wide eyes. His back hooves scrabbled frantically against the rock, kicking up showers of ice and snow. For three agonizing seconds, twelve hundred pounds of horse and woman teetered on the brink of a fifty-foot drop onto jagged granite.

Then Adrien found purchase.

With a massive, grunting heave, the horse threw his weight back toward the mountain wall and regained his footing. He stood there, trembling, blowing hard, his head thrown up.

Wyatt stayed on his knees in the snow for a long time, his chest heaving, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

He looked back. Adrien was standing perfectly still now, trembling slightly, his ears pinned. Clara was unconscious, her head resting against the horse’s mane, her arms still locked around his neck. She hadn’t fallen. The lariat had held.

“Good boy,” Wyatt wheezed. He forced himself to his feet, ignoring the screaming protest of his battered knee. “Good boy. Let’s go home.”