They called her a ruined woman, a soiled dove who rode with outlaws and carried the devil’s stain.
In the unforgiving town of Bitter Creek, Wyoming territory, Claraara Montgomery was a pariah, condemned to freeze in the shadows of righteous, hypocritical men.
But up on the jagged, winded ridges of Widow’s Peak lived a man who cared nothing for prairie gossip.
Gideon Hayes was a scarred, silent mountain man who preferred the company of wolves to town folk.
When the town pushed Claraara into the freezing wilderness to die, they didn’t realize they were delivering her straight into the arms of the one man who would tear the world apart to keep her safe.
The October wind howling through Bitter Creek carried the bitter promise of an early winter, but it was nothing compared to the chill inside Ezekiel Cobb’s general store.
Claraara Montgomery stood near the flower barrels, her threadbear woolen shawl pulled tight across her slender shoulders.
She was a striking woman, 23, with hair the color of roasted chestnuts and eyes like bruised violets.
But her beauty was a curse in a town that had already decided her worth.
A year ago, the notorious Hol gang had been gunned down by a federal possey just outside of town.
Claraara had been found in their camp, battered and half starved.
But rather than see a captive, the pious folk of Bitter Creek saw a willing accomplice, the outlaw leaders rumored Paramore.
The label tainted had been stitched to her reputation as surely as a scarlet letter.
I have the money, Mr.
Cobb, Claraara said, her voice quiet but steady, pushing three silver dimes across the scarred wooden counter.
Just a small sack of cornmeal and a tin of coffee.
Ezekiel Cobb didn’t even look at the coins.
He continued wiping a glass jar with a dirty rag.
His jaw set in a line of righteous indignation.
Stores out of cornmeal, out of coffee, too.
Claraara glanced past him to the shelves, groaning under the weight of burlap sacks and colorful tins.
I can see them right behind you.
Reserved for decent folk.
A sneering voice echoed from the doorway.
Claraara stiffened.
Deputy Harlon Clemens sauntered into the store, the spurs on his boots jingling a sinister rhythm.
He was a cruel, opportunistic man who took immense pleasure in the town’s unified disdain for Claraara.
He stepped too close, the stench of stale whiskey and chewing tobacco rolling off him.
You ought to move along, Claraara, Clemens murmured, leaning in so his breath hot against her cheek.
Unless you’re looking for a different way to pay for your keep.
We all know how you earned your keep with the hols.
Claraara’s hands baldled into fists, her fingernails biting into her palms.
She refused to cry.
She had promised herself she would never let these people break her.
Leave me alone, Harlon.
Or what? Clemens chuckled, reaching out to grab a fistful of her shawl.
Who’s going to stop me? You ain’t got no outlaws to protect you no more.
The bell above the door chimed, but it wasn’t a delicate sound.
The heavy oak door was shoved open with such force it slammed against the interior wall, rattling the glass jars on Cobb’s counter.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop 10°.
A towering figure filled the door frame, eclipsing the gray afternoon light.
It was Gideon Hayes.
Gideon came down from Widow’s Peak only twice a year to trade furs, and his presence always brought the town to a nervous standstill.
He stood 6’3, broadshouldered, draped in a massive coat made of grizzly bear and wolf hide.
A thick dark beard obscured the lower half of his face, but a jagged pale scar slashed across his left cheekbone, disappearing into his hairline.
His eyes a startling glacial blue locked onto Deputy Clemens.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t have to.
Gideon moved into the room with the terrifying grace of an apex predator.
He carried a heavy Winchester 73 rifle in his right hand, the barrel resting casually against his shoulder.
He stepped up to the counter, towering over the deputy.
Clemens swallowed hard, immediately dropping Claraara’s shawl.
He took a stumbling step back, his hand nervously hovering near his holstered revolver, though everyone in the room knew he wouldn’t dare draw on the mountain man.
“Haze,” Clemens muttered, trying to salvage his pride.
“Just keeping the peace.
” Gideon stared at him until Clemens broke eye contact and scured out the door, the bravado evaporating like spit on a hot griddle.
Turning his attention to the counter, Gideon dropped a heavy bundle of prime beaver and martin pelts onto the wood.
Cobb jumped his eyes wide.
Need salt? Gideon’s voice was a deep grally rumble, unused and harsh.
ammunition, flour, and give the lady what she asked for.
Cobb sputtered.
Now listen here, Hayes.
She ain’t.
Gideon slammed a massive leather gloved hand flat onto the counter.
The wood groaned under the pressure.
Give her what she asked for.
Trembling, Cobb hurried to fill a sack with cornmeal and snatched a tin of coffee from the shelf, shoving them toward Claraara.
Claraara stared at the goods, then up at the mountain man.
She expected a learing gaze, the same expectant dirty look every man in Bitter Creek gave her.
But Gideon didn’t look at her like she was a prize or a piece of trash.
He looked at her with a profound, quiet understanding, acknowledging her presence without demanding a piece of her soul.
Thank you, Claraara whispered, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts.
But I can pay.
She offered her three dimes.
Gideon didn’t take them.
He swept his supplies into a burlap sack, tipped the brim of his weathered slouch hat a fraction of an inch, and walked out into the biting wind.
Claraara stood in the quiet store, her heart hammering against her ribs, feeling seen for the first time in a year.
By late November, the Wyoming winter did not just arrive.
It attacked.
The sky turned the color of bruised iron, and the temperature plummeted to a bone snapping cold.
Claraara’s situation had gone from miserable to desperate.
She had been renting a drafty single room shack on the edge of town from a widow who turned a blind eye to the gossip as long as the rent was paid.
But the widow had passed away and the property was quickly bought by Josiah Reed.
Josiah Reed was Bitter Creek’s wealthiest rancher and the head of the town council.
He was a man who wore expensive woolen suits and hid his cruelty behind a veneer of civilized respectability.
But Claraara knew the truth about him.
She had seen him out in the bad lands.
On a freezing Tuesday evening, Reed came to Claraara’s shack, accompanied by two of his rugged ranch hands.
He didn’t bother knocking.
He kicked the flimsy wooden door open.
You have 1 hour to vacate my property, Miss Montgomery.
Reed said his cold eyes sweeping over her meager belongings.
I don’t harbor sinners on my land.
Mr.
Reed, please.
Claraara begged, clutching a blanket to her chest.
Look at the sky.
There’s a blizzard coming.
If you put me out now, I’ll freeze.
Reed stepped closer, his voice dropping to a sinister hiss that his men couldn’t hear.
Then perhaps you should finally tell me where Silas Holloway buried the lockbox from the Denver train robbery.
I know you know Claraara.
Tell me and you can stay in my own manner.
Keep your mouth shut and the snow will take you tonight.
Claraara shuddered, staring into the black dead eyes of the man who had secretly funded the Hol gangs raids.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Reed’s face twisted in fury.
He backhanded her across the cheek, sending her crashing into the small table.
“Throw her out,” he snapped at his men.
and if she tries to sneak into any barns tonight, shoot her for trespassing.
” They tossed her into the freezing mud, throwing her small canvas bag of clothes after her.
As Reed rode away, the first heavy flakes of snow began to fall.
The town of Bitter Creek shuttered its windows and locked its doors.
Not a single lantern was left burning for her.
Claraara knew if she stayed in town, she would die of exposure or be murdered by Reed’s men.
Her only chance was to walk the 10 miles through the pass to the neighboring settlement of Hope’s Crossing.
It was a fool’s errand in a storm, but it was her only errand.
By midnight, the snow was a blinding, swirling wall of white.
The wind shrieked like a dying animal, tearing at Claraara’s thin coat and shawl.
Every step was an agony of effort.
The snow was up to her knees, dragging at her heavy, frozen skirts.
The cold was a physical entity biting through her boots, turning her toes into blocks of wood.
“Keep moving,” she chanted in her mind.
one more step, but the mountain trail leading up toward the pass was unforgiving.
She didn’t realize she had veered off the main road and onto the switchbacks of Widow’s Peak until the terrain grew impossibly steep.
Her lungs burned with the icy air.
Her vision narrowed to a dark, hazy tunnel.
Her legs finally gave out and she pitched forward into a deep snow drift.
The snow felt surprisingly warm.
It felt like a heavy soft blanket.
Claraara closed her eyes, the pain fading into a dangerous lethargic piece.
She thought of her brother who had died trying to protect her from the outlaws.
She was sorry she hadn’t been stronger.
The darkness closed in.
High above Gideon Hayes was fighting the gale.
He had been out securing his trap lines before the storm locked the mountain down.
His massive snowshoes kept him afloat, his wolf fur hood pulled low.
He was a man accustomed to the brutal extremes of nature, moving with practiced efficiency.
As he navigated a ridge, his sharp eyes caught an anomaly, a disturbance in a snowbank beneath a cluster of jagged pines.
It was barely visible, just a patch of dark wool showing through the accumulating white.
Gideon approached cautiously, his rifle ready, expecting a wounded mountain lion or a frozen deer.
When he swept the snow away with his gloved hand, his breath hitched.
It was the woman from the general store.
She was as pale as the snow around her, her lips a frightening shade of blue, her eyelashes caked with ice.
Gideon ripped off his heavy leather glove and pressed two fingers to her throat.
The pulse was there, but it was a faint, struggling flutter.
Damn it.
Gideon swore the word lost to the wind.
He didn’t hesitate.
He stripped off his massive bare skin coat and wrapped it tightly around her small freezing frame.
Lifting her effortlessly into his arms, he held her flush against his chest to share his body heat.
The cabin was a mile away.
A brutal uphill climb through a white out.
Gideon pushed his body to its absolute limits, his muscles screaming against the incline and the weight.
He didn’t stop.
He didn’t rest.
He focused entirely on the faint rise and fall of the bundle in his arms.
When he finally kicked open the heavy oak door of his cabin, the embers in his massive stone hearth were still glowing.
He laid Claraara gently on his large bed constructed of thick pine logs and covered in thick buffalo robes.
He knew the danger of warming her too quickly.
He built the fire up gradually, creating a steady, life-saving heat.
With awkward but entirely respectful hands, he removed her frozen boots and wet woolen stockings, wrapping her feet in warmed flannel.
He heated stones by the fire, wrapped them in cloth, and packed them around her shivering body under the furs.
For two days the blizzard raged outside, sealing the cabin in a tomb of white.
And for 2 days, Gideon did not sleep.
He sat in a heavy wooden rocking chair beside the bed, feeding the fire, forcing warm willow bark tea and rich venison broth past her lips when she woke in feverish delirium.
He watched her fight for life.
He saw the bruises on her cheek and arms marks made by men, not the mountain.
A slow, terrifying anger began to build in the mountain man’s chest.
He had retreated from the world to escape the cruelty of humanity, but it seemed the cruelty had followed him right to his doorstep.
On the morning of the third day, the wind finally stopped howling.
A harsh, brilliant sunlight pierced the frosted window panes of the cabin.
Claraara opened her eyes.
The fever had broken.
Her body achd with a bone deep weariness, but the terrifying numbness was gone.
She was warm, immensely warm.
She blinked, her vision slowly coming into focus.
She was staring at a ceiling of heavy hand huneed logs.
She turned her head.
The cabin was sparssely furnished, but immaculately clean.
A massive stone fireplace dominated one wall, a pot of something savory bubbling over the flames, and sitting at a sturdy wooden table, meticulously cleaning a hunting knife, was a giant from the general store.
Claraara gasped and tried to sit up, but her muscles betrayed her.
She winced, falling back against the pillows.
Gideon looked up his blue eyes, locking onto hers.
He set the knife down, wiped his hands on a rag, and poured a tin cup of water from a pitcher.
He walked over to the bed, his movements surprisingly quiet for a man of his size.
“Drink,” he said, holding the cup to her lips.
His voice was rough, like two stones grinding together.
Claraara drank greedily, the water soothing her parched throat.
When she finished, she looked up at him, fear and confusion roaring in her chest.
“Where am I? Widow’s Peak!” Gideon replied, stepping back to give her space.
“My cabin.
You were freezing to death in the snow.
” The memories came rushing back.
The eviction.
Josiah Reed’s violent blow.
The endless blinding white.
Claraara pulled the thick buffalo robes tighter around herself, suddenly painfully aware of her vulnerability.
“You saved me.
You have spirit,” Gideon noted, returning to the table.
“Most would have died at the bottom of the trail.
You made it a mile up the mountain.
” Claraara looked away, shame flushing her cheeks.
“You shouldn’t have brought me here.
I’ll bring you nothing but trouble.
Gideon scoffed quietly.
I ain’t afraid of trouble.
You don’t understand.
Claraara’s voice trembled.
The town.
They call me tainted.
I was with the Hol gang.
They think I’m a thief, a If they find out you’re harboring me, they’ll turn on you, too.
Gideon paused his hands resting on the table.
He looked at her, truly looked at her, seeing past the defensive posture and the terrified eyes.
I don’t care what the town thinks.
A town that leaves a woman to freeze in a blizzard ain’t got no moral high ground to judge anyone from.
He leaned forward slightly.
And I don’t believe him.
Claraara stared at him, stunned.
You don’t.
I know the look of a wild animal and I know the look of an animal in a trap.
Gideon said softly.
You got the look of a trap.
Tell me the truth.
The absolute lack of judgment in his voice broke the dam inside Claraara.
The story she had kept locked inside the truth that the sheriff and the town had refused to listen to finally spilled out.
She told him how she and her older brother Thomas had been traveling west when their wagon was ambushed by Silas Holay and his men.
Thomas had fought back and was shot dead in front of her.
Holay, cruel and sadistic, had taken Claraara as a prize, keeping her bound and guarded in their camps for six agonizing months.
She wasn’t his lover.
She was his prisoner, beaten and starved.
Then there was the Denver train job.
Claraara said, tears silently tracking down her cheeks.
They stole $40,000 in gold certificates and bearer bonds, but the federal marshals were hot on their trail.
Silas hid the lock box in a cave in the bad lands.
I was in the wagon.
I saw where he buried it.
Gideon frowned, his brow, furrowing.
If the marshalss killed the gang, why didn’t you show them the gold? Because of Josiah Reed.
Claraara whispered the name, tasting like ash in her mouth.
Gideon’s eyes narrowed.
The rancher.
Claraara nodded.
Reed was the inside man.
He funded Holay, told him which trains to hit, which cattle drives to ambush.
In return, he got a cut of the money to build his empire in Bitter Creek.
The marshals didn’t know.
When they brought me to town, Reed was there acting like a pillar of the community.
He cornered me.
He told me if I ever breathed a word about him or about where the gold was, he would make sure I hanged for my crimes with the gang.
He made sure the town thought I was a willing outlaw, so my word would mean nothing.
Gideon absorbed the information, his massive chest rising and falling slowly.
The puzzle pieces clicked into place, the eviction, the bruises.
He wants the gold, Gideon stated.
He bought my property to throw me out into the storm, trying to break me so I’d finally tell him,” Claraara said, scrubbing her face with her hands.
“I’m a dead woman,” Mr.
Hayes.
“As soon as the snow clears, he’ll send men to find my body.
When they find out I’m not dead, they’ll have to come through me.
” Gideon interrupted.
The absolute certainty in his voice made the air in the [clears throat] cabin feel heavy.
Claraara looked at him, her heart skipping a beat.
Why? Why would you risk your life for a stranger, for a ruined woman? Gideon walked over to the fireplace, staring into the flames.
He was silent for a long time.
When he finally spoke, his voice was tight with an old buried agony.
10 years ago, I had a wife, a son.
Kolera swept through our settlement in Kansas, the town, the people we thought were our friends.
They got scared.
They quarantined the sick in a barn outside of town, and refused to bring food or medicine.
They let him die.
my wife, my boy.
I couldn’t save them.
I buried them, walked away from mankind, and came up here.
He turned his head, looking over his shoulder at her.
The scar on his face seemed to stand out starkly against his pale skin.
I swore I’d never let the cruelty of cowards take innocent life in front of me again.
You ain’t ruined, Claraara.
You’re a survivor, and as long as you’re under my roof, you’re safe.
” Claraara felt a profound shift in her chest, a warmth that had nothing to do with the fire or the blankets.
It was hope.
It was the feeling of being protected by a man who possessed immense strength, but chose to use it for kindness.
For the next few days, as Claraara regained her strength, a quiet domestic rhythm settled over the cabin.
Gideon cooked chopped wood and checked his perimeter.
Claraara amended his torn clothing and helped prepare meals.
The silence between them, once filled with tension, grew comfortable, thick, with unspoken attraction.
Gideon would catch himself staring at the way the fire light danced in her chestnut hair.
Claraara found herself drawn to the rugged lines of his face, the gentle way his massive hands handled fragile things.
One evening, as Claraara was reaching for a high shelf to retrieve a tin of salt, her injured leg gave out.
She stumbled backward with a gasp.
Gideon crossed the room in two massive strides, catching her by the waist before she hit the floor.
His arm was like a band of iron around her solid and unbreakable.
Claraara clutched his forearms, her breathing shallow as she looked up into his face.
They were inches apart.
She could smell the scent of pine needles, woods, and clean male sweat on him.
His eyes darkened, dropping to her lips for a fraction of a second before meeting her gaze again.
For the first time since her brother died, Claraara felt completely, utterly safe.
She didn’t pull away.
She leaned into his strength, and slowly Gideon reached up his rough thumb, gently brushing a stray lock of hair behind [clears throat] her ear.
It was a moment suspended in time, fragile and beautiful.
Then the illusion shattered.
From far down the mountain trail, carrying clearly through the crisp, still mountain air, came the distinct baying howl of tracking hounds.
Gideon froze his hand, dropping from her face.
He stepped past her to the window, peering down the treacherous switchbacks.
The snow was beginning to melt in the sun, making the trails passable again.
They didn’t wait for the Thor.
Gideon growled his hand, instinctively, dropping to the heavy revolver on his hip.
Reed didn’t assume you were dead.
He sent a posy.
Claraara’s blood ran cold.
The hounds were getting closer.
The sanctuary of Widow’s Peak had just become a fortress under siege.
The baying of the hounds echoed off the granite walls of Widow’s Peak a chilling sound that tore through the fragile piece of the cabin.
Gideon did not panic.
He moved with a terrifying practiced efficiency.
He stroed to the heavy ironbound chest at the foot of his bed, throwing open the lid to reveal a cache of ammunition and weaponry that would make a cavalry outpost jealous.
He tossed a heavy bandelier of cartridges onto the wooden table, followed by a doublebarreled shotgun.
Then he turned to Claraara.
He reached into his holster and pulled out a sleek, welloiled colt single action army revolver.
He checked the cylinder, snapped it shut with a flick of his wrist, and held it out to her by the barrel.
“Take it,” Gideon commanded his voice devoid of its earlier softness.
It was the voice of a man preparing for war.
Claraara’s hands shook as she took the heavy iron.
Gideon, I’ve never shot a man.
You don’t shoot to kill Clara.
You shoot to stay alive.
He told her his piercing blue eyes locking onto hers, anchoring her in the rising tide of panic.
Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire.
Aim for the center of the chest.
The kick will be hard, so lock your wrists.
If they breach that door, you don’t hesitate.
You understand me.
Claraara swallowed the lump of terror in her throat and nodded.
She gripped the cold wood of the handle.
She was done being a victim.
She was done letting men like Josiah Reed dictate whether she lived or died.
I understand.
Gideon barred the heavy oak door with a thick timber beam and slammed the heavy wooden shutters over the windows, leaving only narrow slats open for his rifle barrel.
He grabbed his Winchester 73, chambering around with a sharp mechanical clack that sounded deafening in the quiet cabin.
Outside, the crunch of boots on the melting snow grew louder.
The hounds were silenced, likely tied to the trees at the edge of the clearing.
Through the slat, Claraara could see them.
There were six men, heavily armed, fanning out in a semicircle around the front of the cabin.
In the center stood Josiah Reed, wearing a thick buffalo coat, a smug, contemptuous sneer twisting his aristocratic features.
Beside him was Deputy Harlon Clemens, nervously chewing on a cigar.
Hayes Reed’s voice boomed across the clearing, carrying easily on the thin mountain air.
I know you’re in there, and I know you have the Montgomery woman I am the law in Bitter Creek, and I am ordering you to turn over the fugitive.
Gideon pressed his cheek against the wooden stock of his rifle.
You ain’t the law up here, Reed.
Gideon’s grally voice roared through the cracks in the shutters.
You’re trespassing on my claim.
Turn around and walk down that mountain or you’ll be carried down it in pine boxes.
Reed laughed a cold, humilous sound.
You’re a fool mountain man.
You think you can protect a soiled dove from the rope? She’s a thief.
She knows where the gang hid $40,000 in federal gold.
Send her out and maybe I’ll let you live to trap another winter.
She ain’t going nowhere, Gideon replied.
Then burn him out, Reed snapped to his men.
The clearing erupted in thunder.
Bullets slammed into the thick pine logs of the cabin, sending splinters of wood and chunks of chinking flying into the air.
Claraara dropped to her knees, covering her ears as the deafening roar of gunfire filled the small room.
The air instantly grew thick with the acrid sulfurous stench of black powder.
Gideon didn’t flinch.
He tracked his targets through the narrow slat.
He exhaled a long, steady breath and squeezed the trigger.
The Winchester cracked.
Outside, one of Reed’s hired guns let out a sharp cry and collapsed into the snow, clutching his thigh.
Gideon levered the rifle and fired again.
A second man’s hat flew off his head in a spray of crimson, and he dropped lifelessly to the dirt.
Panic rippled through the posy.
They hadn’t expected the recluse to be a crackshot.
They scrambled behind the thick trunks of the surrounding ponderosa pines, pinning the cabin down with [clears throat] blind, suppressive fire.
Clemens, Reed shouted, ducking behind a boulder.
Take two men and circle around the back.
He can’t watch all four walls.
Inside, Gideon heard the order.
He looked back at Claraara, who was crouched beside the stone hearth.
They’re moving to the rear.
The root cellar door is weak.
Watch it.
Claraara crawled across the floorboards, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
She positioned herself behind the heavy oak table, leveling the heavy colt at the reinforced door leading to the cold storage.
She could hear the crunch of snow outside.
She heard the scrape of metal against wood as someone tried to pry the cellar door open.
Her breath came in short, jagged gasps.
The memory of the outlaw camp, of being helpless in the dark, threatened to paralyze her.
But then she looked at Gideon, standing tall and immovable by the front window, bleeding from a superficial graze on his cheek, fighting a war that wasn’t his, just to keep her safe.
“I am a survivor,” she told herself.
The cellor splintered inward with a loud crash.
Deputy Harlon Clemens shoved his way into the dim light of the cabin, his revolver drawn a cruel, triumphant grin spreading across his face.
He saw Claraara crouched behind the table.
“Well, well,” Clemens sneered, raising his gun.
“Look what I Claraara didn’t scream.
She didn’t close her eyes.
She remembered Gideon’s words.
She locked her wrists, aimed for the center of his chest, and pulled the trigger.
The recoil was massive, throwing her arms upward and bruising her palm.
But the blast was devastating.
Clemens was thrown backward, his chest torn open, crashing through the splintered door and landing dead in the snow outside.
Gideon glanced back at the sound of the blast.
A grim smile touched the corner of his mouth.
Good girl, but the distraction cost him.
Outside, Reed had struck a match and lit a bundle of rags soaked in kerosene tied to a stick of dynamite.
He hurled it with all his might.
The explosive landed on the sloping cedarhic roof of the cabin.
“Dynamite!” Gideon roared.
He dropped his rifle, lunged across the room, and tackled Claraara to the floor, covering her body entirely with his massive frame.
The explosion was catastrophic.
The front quarter of the roof blew inward, raining, burning wood, ash, and heavy snow down upon them.
The shock wave shattered the remaining window shutters and blew the front door off its iron hinges.
Smoke instantly filled the cabin, thick and choking.
Claraara coughed, her ears ringing with a high-pitched wine.
She pushed against the heavy weight on top of her.
“Gideon,” she croked.
Gideon groaned, rolling off her, his left arm hung limply at his side, his shoulder severely mangled by a falling beam.
Blood poured down his arm, soaking his sleeve.
He tried to reach for his sidearm with his good hand, but his movements were sluggish, impaired by the concussion of the blast.
Through the smoke and the ruined doorway, Josiah Reed stepped into the cabin.
He held a repeating rifle leveled directly at Gideon’s chest.
Two of his remaining men flanked him.
“It’s over, Hayes.
” Reed coughed, waving the smoke away from his face.
He looked down at the bleeding giant and the terrified woman beside him.
You put up a hell of a fight for a piece of trash.
Now, Miss Montgomery, you are going to tell me exactly where that lockbox is buried, or I’m going to put a bullet in this mountain man’s head, and then I’m going to let my boys have their fun with you before we hang you from that pine tree.
” Claraara looked at Gideon.
He was pale, losing blood fast, but his eyes were still fierce, silently begging her not to give in.
But Claraara couldn’t watch him die.
She wouldn’t “Wait!” Claraara screamed, throwing herself over Gideon’s chest, shielding him from Reed’s rifle.
“Stop! I’ll tell you.
I’ll tell you where it is.
” Reed’s eyes gleamed with a sickening greed.
He lowered the rifle a fraction of an inch.
“Speak, girl.
It’s It’s in the Badlands.
the old Spanish silver mine at the bottom of Dead Man’s Gulch.
Claraara lied, her voice trembling, though her mind was racing.
She knew that mine.
It was filled with deadly pockets of black, damp gas and unstable shafts.
If Reed went down there, he would never come up.
He buried it in the lowest tunnel behind a wall of loose shale.
Reed smiled, a horrifying contortion of his face.
“You see, was that so hard?” He leveled the rifle back at Gideon’s head.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Claraara, but I can’t leave witnesses behind.
” He placed his finger on the trigger.
Claraara squeezed her eyes shut.
Crack! A gunshot rang out, but it didn’t come from Reed’s rifle.
Josiah Reed screamed a high reedy sound as his right kneecap shattered into a mist of blood and bone.
He dropped his rifle and collapsed to the floorboards, writhing in agony.
His two hired men spun around, raising their weapons, but they froze.
Stepping through the ruined doorway, surrounded by the swirling smoke, was a man wearing a long canvas duster and a wide-brimmed hat.
Pinned to his vest, was a gleaming silver star.
He held a smoking sharps buffalo rifle in his hands, perfectly steady.
Behind him, emerging from the treeine, were a dozen heavily armed deputies.
“Drop the iron, boys,” the lawman said.
His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried an authority that froze the blood in the hired guns veins.
Or my deputies will cut you down where you stand.
The two men looked at the army of lawmen outside and immediately dropped their guns, raising their hands in surrender.
The lawman stepped over the groaning, bleeding form of Josiah Reed, and looked down at Claraara and Gideon.
He tipped his hat.
Miss Montgomery, Mr.
Hayes, I apologize for the dramatic entrance.
Deputy United States Marshal Caleb Sterling out of Fort Smith reporting directly to Judge Isaac Parker.
Claraara stared at him, bewildered, her hands covered in Gideon’s blood.
How How did you know we were here? Marshall Sterling holstered his sidearm and knelt beside them, pulling a clean bandana from his pocket to press against Gideon’s bleeding shoulder.
We’ve been tracking Josiah Reed for 6 months.
The Pinkerton National Detective Agency noticed some glaring anomalies in his banking ledgers.
A lot of dirty money being washed through Bitter Creek.
While Reed was up here playing executioner, my men and I were tearing apart his office in town.
We found the ledgers.
Miss Montgomery.
We found the letters he wrote to the Holay gang organizing the train robbery.
Claraara felt the breath leave her lungs.
You know, he was the inside man.
We know everything, Sterling assured her gently.
We even found Holay’s personal journal among Reed’s blackmail material.
He detailed exactly how they kept you captive.
You aren’t a wanted woman anymore, Claraara.
You’re a free citizen, completely exonerated by Judge Parker’s court.
Claraara slumped against Gideon, a sob tearing from her throat.
The heavy suffocating weight of the word tainted the burden she had carried for a year finally shattered and fell away.
She was free.
Sterling’s deputies hauled the screaming Josiah Reed to his feet, binding his hands.
Take him down to the wagon, Sterling ordered.
Bind his leg tight so he doesn’t bleed out.
I want him alive to face the hangman in Fort Smith.
As the deputies cleared the cabin, Sterling looked at the ruined roof and the bullet riddled walls.
“We brought a doctor with us in the wagon down at the pass.
We can patch you up, Mr.
Hayes, and we can take you back to town, Miss Montgomery.
Get you a hot bath and a train ticket to anywhere you want to go.
” Claraara looked down at Gideon.
He was looking at her, his breathing shallow but steady.
The fierce mountain man, the recluse who hated the world had let himself be broken to protect her.
Claraara looked up at Marshall Sterling.
Send the doctor up here, Marshall, but I won’t be needing a train ticket.
Sterling offered a knowing smile, tipped his hat once more, and walked out into the crisp mountain air.
3 weeks later, the snows on Widow’s Peak began to melt in earnest, giving way to the brilliant emerald green of Wyoming spring.
The cabin had a new roof patched together by Gideon’s one good arm, and Claraara’s surprisingly capable hands.
Gideon was sitting in his heavy rocking chair on the front porch, a thick blanket draped over his healing shoulder.
He was whittling a piece of soft pine with his hunting knife, the silence of the mountain wrapping around him like a comforting cloak.
The door opened behind him, and Claraara stepped out.
She was wearing a simple, clean calico dress they had purchased from a catalog, her chestnut hair falling freely over her shoulders.
The bruised hunted look in her violet eyes, was entirely gone, replaced by a radiant, quiet strength.
She walked over and stood beside his chair, looking out over the vast, plunging valley below.
The town of Bitter Creek was a tiny insignificant speck in the distance.
Gideon stopped whittling.
He reached out with his good hand, his rough, calloused fingers gently taking her soft hand.
He didn’t look at the town.
He looked only at her.
“You sure you don’t want to go back?” Gideon asked, his voice a low rumble.
“You’re a free woman, Claraara.
You could have a life anywhere.
a proper life.
Claraara smiled a warm, genuine expression that made Gideon’s chest ache in the best possible way.
She threaded her fingers through his stepping closer until her hip rested against his arm.
“I have a proper life right here,” Claraara said softly, looking down into his striking blue eyes.
I spent my whole life looking for a place where I belonged, a place where I was safe.
She leaned down, pressing a tender, lingering kiss to the jagged scar on his cheek.
I found it on Widow’s Peak.
Gideon closed his eyes, leaning into her touch.
The ghost of his tragic past, the anger that had isolated him for a decade, finally dissolved into the mountain breeze.
He pulled her gently onto his lap, wrapping his good arm securely around her waist, burying his face in the sweet smelling curve of her neck.
They had both been broken by the cruelty of the world below.
But up here touching the sky, the outcast and the mountain man had built a fortress of love that no storm and no man could ever tear down.
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