Chapter 4: Winter’s Teeth and Broken Fences
The rejection of the Mercy Society brought the wrath of the town down upon Cottonwood Creek. The next morning, Caleb found his northern perimeter fences cut cleanly with wire-clippers. His twenty head of breeding cattle had vanished into the jagged breaks of the upper valley just as the first true blizzard of November began to howl down from the peaks.
"They'll freeze if they get trapped in the draws," Caleb said, his face white as he buckled his winter coat. "If I lose those cows, the land-office takes the house by New Year."
"You can't go alone," Ruth said, checking the oil in the lanterns. "The wind is already turning the ridge white."
"I have to," he said stubbornly.
Three hours later, Caleb’s horse returned to the barn alone, its saddle twisted and covered in ice.
Clara screamed when she saw the empty mount. Ruth didn't scream. She tied a thick woolen scarf around her head, pulled on Caleb's spare oilskin coat, and turned to the nine-year-old girl.
"You keep the fire hot, Clara. You feed Eli every two hours from the potato pot. If the wind blows the door open, you bar it with the heavy oak bench. Do you hear me?"
Clara nodded, her small face fierce through her tears. "Bring Pa back."
Ruth walked into the white-out. She tracked the horse’s deep, filling prints back toward the rocky draws. It took her an hour of blind crawling through three-foot drifts before she found Caleb. He was pinned beneath a fallen cottonwood limb, his left ankle cracked and his breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps.
"Leave me, Ruth," he groaned, his eyelashes frosted over. "The cows are gone anyway."
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"I didn't bake winning bread just to watch a stubborn rancher freeze to death in a ditch," Ruth hissed, using her broad shoulders and a fence rail to lever the heavy log off his leg. She dragged him onto a fallen pine bough, tying him to her waist with a hemp rope, and pulled him through the blinding snow like a beast of burden.
When they broke through the kitchen door, covered in white ice and shivering to their bones, Clara and Eli were waiting with hot water and dry blankets. They had survived winter’s first bite, but Caleb’s leg was broken, and the cattle were still missing.
