“Just Make It Quick” She Whispered. Three Mountain Men Drew Her Into Silent Lodge, Kept Her Warm

Chapter 6

She called out before she was fully on her feet, and all three men were moving within seconds. Gideon grabbed the water pail from the kitchen. Elias went for the second one by the back door. Tate pulled on his boots and went out first.

Willa helped carry water back and forth between the shed and the well, which was harder than it sounded when the ground was ice. The fire hadn’t reached the main food stores yet — whoever started it had gotten the corner of the shed where they kept the extra firewood. They stopped it before it spread.

When it was out, they stood in the dark and the cold and caught their breath. Gideon looked at the scorch marks, at the ground near the shed, at the tree line.

Tate wasn’t there.

Willa looked around. She’d seen him a moment ago, near the fence. Elias looked too. Neither of them spoke immediately.

Then, from the dark, somewhere beyond the north fence, there was movement in the trees. A scuffle. Then silence.

Tate did not come back.

They found the blood at first light. A dark trail of it starting at the fence post and heading north into the trees. Not dragged — the footprints were upright, uneven, someone moving fast and hurt but moving on his own.

Gideon crouched over the prints and read them the way he’d read snow his whole life. “He went in himself,” he said. “He wasn’t carried.”

“Someone hit him first,” Elias said. He was looking at the place near the fence where the snow was disturbed, churned up — two sets of boot prints that had gotten close together fast.

Willa had come out with them. She stood a few feet back and looked at the trail leading into the trees.

“Crane uses old freight buildings out here,” she said. “Scattered along the old logging trails. He stores tools in them sometimes. Supplies. If Tate was hurt and needed shelter fast, he’d look for a roof.”

Both men looked at her.

“I saw the maps in Crane’s office once. He showed me the operation, back when he was still being polite about things.” She paused. “There’s an abandoned shack about a mile north of this fence. Maybe a mile and a half.”

Gideon stood. “You’re staying here.”

“No,” she said. “I’m not going to shoot anyone. I know that, and you know that. But I can carry blankets, and I can help Elias when he needs a second pair of hands.”

“Willa —”

“You left me at the lodge, and something happened anyway.” She met his eyes. “Tate is out there because of the fire. The fire started because of me. I’m going.”

It wasn’t a long argument. Gideon looked at Elias, who had already turned back toward the house to get his medical bag.

They moved out twenty minutes later, all three of them.

The trail north was hard going. The snow was thigh-deep off the path, and the cold had a bite that got into the lungs and stayed there. Willa kept pace. Her ankle ached, but it held. She carried a rolled blanket under each arm and kept her eyes on the ground in front of her.

They found Tate in the abandoned shack.

He had made it to the door, gotten it open, gotten himself inside — and then run out of whatever had been keeping him upright. He was on the floor against the far wall, his shoulder packed with cloth he’d cut from his own shirt, his face the color of old ash.

Elias was beside him before the door had stopped swinging. “Shoulder,” Tate said, his voice rough. “Virgil came out of nowhere. I followed him into the trees when the fire started. I got the worst of it.”

“You walked a mile with a bullet in your shoulder,” Elias said, already cutting away the makeshift bandage.

“A mile and a half.” Tate tried to smile. It came out crooked.

Willa knelt and pressed one of the blankets against his side, below the wound, to get some warmth back into him. Elias worked quickly, without wasted motion. Gideon stood near the door, watching the tree line.

The bullet had to come out. Elias did it efficiently, with Tate’s hand gripping the floorboards and Willa holding the lamp steady so Elias could see. When it was done, Tate sat very still for a long moment with his eyes closed.

Then he opened them and looked at Willa. “You didn’t have to come.”

“The rule is nobody leaves alone,” she said. “It applies in both directions.”

He was quiet. Then, in a voice low enough that Gideon might not have caught it from the doorway: “I always figure I’m going to get left, whenever I’m not useful anymore.”

Willa kept her hand where it was, flat against the blanket on his good side. “You belong to this household,” she said. “That’s not something that changes when you get hurt.”

He looked at her for a moment, then away, like the words needed a second to find the right place to land.

Elias tied off the bandage and sat back. He caught Willa’s eye and held it for a moment, and she saw something in his face — tenderness, the kind a man carries carefully when he has learned the cost of losing people.

Near the door, something on the floor caught Gideon’s eye. He crouched. A small book, dropped in the rush, half covered by snow that had blown in under the doorframe.

He picked it up and opened it.

It was an account book. Columns of names and numbers. Pages of them. He turned through slowly, stopped, turned back.

“These are wages,” he said. “Workers’ names, and what they earned.” He moved to the next section. “And here’s what Crane says they owe him. Rent on their housing. Food from his store. Debts.”

“He invented the debts,” Willa said, coming to look. She recognized the format. Crane had shown her the operation carefully, back when he’d been trying to impress her.

Tate raised his head. He was still pale, but his eyes were focused. “Let me see the names.”

Gideon brought the book over and held it where Tate could read without sitting up. Tate went through it slowly, his finger moving down the page.

“I know some of these men. Good workers. Been at the camp for years.” He stopped. His finger held on a line near the bottom. “Look at this.”

There was a note in the margin, in Crane’s tight, deliberate hand:

Tell men more woman took the missing wages. Confirm story with Virgil before town run.

Willa read it twice. “He told them I stole it,” she said. “He turned men who have nothing against me so they’d help him bring me back.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then Gideon turned to the last page of the book. He read it once, then held it toward the light so they could all see.

At the bottom of the final page, in the same tight handwriting:

Attack Stillwater on the full moon. Two nights.