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The Sheriff Forced Her Off the Farm—Then Winter Drove Him to Her Hidden Mountain Home — Transcript

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0:00The Wyoming sky bleeds indigo over the
0:02Blackspine range. October 1888 and a
0:05thin ribbon of woodsmoke curls from a
0:07single stone chimney lost in a fold of
0:09the foothills.
0:11Down through the pines past a leaning
0:13barn and a garden bedded for winter, the
0:15rhythmic strike of an axe cuts the
0:17silence like a clock counting something
0:19down.
0:20>> [clears throat]
0:20>> On the porch a young woman in canvas
0:22trousers pauses mid-swing.
0:24Her hair is the color of dark honey.
0:26Her hands are steady. Her eyes are
0:29already scanning the county road.
0:31Somewhere out there a dust cloud is
0:33rising too fast for a neighbor. A wagon.
0:37A star pinned to a heavy wool coat.
0:39A folded sheaf of papers with a
0:41signature no dead man could have
0:43written.
0:43>> [clears throat]
0:44>> She sets the axe into the block. She
0:46wipes her palms on her thighs. The
0:48mountain behind her draws in a slow
0:50patient breath and waits. The letter had
0:53been folded so many times the creases
0:54had begun to fray the paper thin as
0:56onion skin where her thumb had worried
0:58the same corner for 7 months. Hattie
1:01Ashcroft stood on the warped pine boards
1:03of the porch and read it again in the
1:05last honest light of an October evening
1:08in 1888 though she knew every word by
1:10heart. Her father's hand made shaky by
1:13the fever that had taken him in March
1:14still carried the ghost of its old
1:16strength. If ever you find yourself
1:18alone remember the warm breath of the
1:20mountain. It will keep you living when
1:22everything else has walked away.
1:25She had not understood then. She was not
1:27sure she understood now.
1:29But she folded the letter along its old
1:31creases, tucked it into the inside
1:33pocket of her canvas coat and lifted her
1:35gaze to the Blackspine range where the
1:37peaks were bruising toward indigo under
1:39a sky the color of a dying ember. The
1:41Ashcroft place was not much to look at
1:43from the county road and that was part
1:45of what had kept it hers as long as it
1:47had been.
1:48A single room cabin of square hewn logs
1:51chinked with clay her father had mixed
1:53himself from the creek bank.
1:55A leaning barn that had been leaning
1:57since she was nine.
1:58A stone-lined well that sweet water even
2:01in August.
2:02A vegetable garden already put down for
2:04the season under a heavy mulch of straw,
2:07the last of the winter squash cured in
2:08the root cellar.
2:10There was nothing about the homestead
2:12that spoke of ambition, only of the
2:14quiet arithmetic of people who counted
2:16every nail,
2:17and knew the weight of every cord of
2:19wood in relation to the length of a
2:21Wyoming winter. She was 21 years old,
2:24tall for a woman with the kind of hands
2:25that would never again be mistaken for a
2:27lady's.
2:28Her hair was the color of dark honey
2:30when it caught the sun, though the sun
2:32was rare in October, and she kept it
2:34braided close at the nape of her neck
2:35under a wool cap. She wore canvas
2:38trousers, which had scandalized the
2:40wives of Copper Hollow the first time
2:42she rode into town in them at 19, and
2:44had ceased to be remarkable by 20.
2:47Her mother Elspeth had died the winter
2:49Hattie turned 12, birthing a boy child
2:52who lived 4 hours and never opened his
2:54eyes.
2:54After that, there had only been the two
2:56of them, Hattie and her father, and the
2:58mountain that filled every window of the
3:00cabin like a fifth wall. She took up the
3:02axe from where it was buried in the
3:03chopping block and set to the last of
3:06the cured pine working the way her
3:07father had taught her, letting the
3:09weight of the tool do the labor instead
3:11of her shoulders.
3:12The rhythm of the strike was the only
3:14sound in the whole valley, and it seemed
3:16to press outward against the silence
3:18rather than break it.
3:20She was not splitting for warmth so much
3:22as for the discipline of it. There was a
3:24kind of grief that could be worked out
3:26through the arms, and there was another
3:28kind that could not be worked out at
3:30all, and she had learned by now to tell
3:32which was which. She saw the dust cloud
3:34from a mile out, somebody moving too
3:37fast for a neighbor and too heavy for a
3:39rider alone.
3:41By the time she heard the harness
3:42clatter and the grumble of iron-rimmed
3:44wheels, she had already set the axe into
3:46the block and wiped her palms on her
3:48trouser legs.
3:50She knew who it would be.
3:52She had been waiting for him for a week.
3:55Sheriff Thaddeus Crane pulled up short
3:56in the yard and did not dismount right
3:58away.
3:59He was a thick man, broad through the
4:01chest with a mustache the color of wet
4:04iron and a coat of heavy wool that had
4:06cost him more than any deputy could
4:07afford on honest wages.
4:09The star on his lapel caught the last of
4:11the light.
4:12Beside him on a smaller horse sat Deputy
4:14Silas Marsh, who could not have been
4:16more than 24 with the kind of face that
4:19had not yet learned how to hide what it
4:21was thinking.
4:22His eyes kept sliding away from Hattie
4:24down to the packed earth, back up to the
4:26barn roof, anywhere but her face. Crane
4:28pulled a folded sheaf of papers from his
4:30coat and let them ride between his
4:32gloved fingers a moment before he spoke.
4:35"There is an issue, Hattie, with the
4:36title to this land."
4:38The words came out flat as though he had
4:40been rehearsing them on the ride up and
4:42no longer trusted them to carry weight
4:44without a certain flatness.
4:46He swung down from the saddle, crossed
4:48the yard in three strides, spread the
4:50papers on the porch rail. She stepped
4:52closer.
4:53The porch had been her father's last
4:54carpentry, uneven in the way of a man
4:56working through pain, and she knew every
4:58warp of it under her boots.
5:00The top document was a notice of seizure
5:03signed by a territorial judge whose name
5:05she had never heard citing delinquent
5:07tax payments dating back five years.
5:10The second was a deed transfer assigning
5:12the property to something called the
5:13Cheyenne Land and Cattle Syndicate.
5:15The third, and the one her eyes went to
5:17before the others, was a bill of sale in
5:19her father's name. Her stomach did not
5:21turn because she had been expecting the
5:23trick.
5:24What turned in her instead was a colder
5:26thing, closer to satisfaction than to
5:28fear.
5:29She had them. She looked at the
5:31signature at the bottom, at the
5:32confident sweeping loops of Emmett
5:34Ashcroft, and she almost smiled.
5:36"My father," she said, "kept his taxes
5:38current every year of his life. I have
5:40the receipts in the ledger inside."
5:43Crane waved a gloved hand as if brushing
5:45a fly.
5:46"The court says otherwise. The ledger in
5:48the county seat is the one that
5:50matters."
5:51"Vacate to where?" she asked. Her voice
5:53did not rise. It was not a plea. It was
5:56a question a surveyor might ask about a
5:57boundary line. Crane looked past her up
6:00at the mountains where the first
6:01high-altitude snows had already dusted
6:03the peaks a bone white. "That he said is
6:05not my concern. The syndicate will want
6:07the place cleared before the pass snows
6:09in.
6:10You have until the first heavy storm.
6:13After that, you'll be trespassing on
6:15land that isn't yours. She let him
6:17finish. She let the silence sit between
6:19them a moment longer than was
6:21comfortable because she wanted him to
6:23hear how little of her he had actually
6:25taken with the papers. Sheriff, she said
6:27at last, and her tone was so mild, it
6:30might have been a comment on the
6:31weather. You and I both know that
6:33signature is forged. For a heartbeat,
6:35something flickered behind Crane's eyes
6:37that was neither anger nor surprise, but
6:40a kind of dull recognition, the look of
6:42a man who has been told a thing he
6:44already knew.
6:45Deputy Marsh's head snapped up. His
6:47mouth opened closed. Crane rolled his
6:50shoulders inside his coat. You are
6:51welcome, he said, to go tell the
6:53mountain about it.
6:55He set the papers on the porch rail as
6:57though weighting them with a stone.
6:59Then he mounted, wheeled the horse, and
7:00rode out of the yard without looking
7:02back.
7:03Marsh lingered a beat too long, and when
7:04he finally turned his horse to follow,
7:06he did it with the reluctance of a man
7:08who has forgotten where he lives. Hattie
7:10stood on the porch until the dust of
7:11them was gone.
7:13Only then did she pick up the papers,
7:14carry them inside, and lay them flat on
7:17the table beside her father's ledger.
7:19She lit the lamp.
7:21She unrolled the ledger.
7:23She turned to the page where Emmett
7:24Ashcroft had signed his name a hundred
7:26times over the past three years, and she
7:28set the forgery beside it, and she
7:30looked at them side by side for a long
7:32time. Her father's right hand had been
7:35useless since the spring of 1885.
7:37A rock fall in the abandoned Cassiar cut
7:40had crushed the nerves in his wrist, and
7:42after that, he had signed everything
7:44with his left in a cramped deliberate
7:46hand that leaned the wrong way and shook
7:48at the ends of the strokes.
7:50There were three years of that spidery
7:52careful wrong-handed script in the
7:54ledger.
7:55And there on the deed of sale was the
7:57old signature, the confident
7:59right-handed sweep from before the
8:00accident, laid down by someone who had
8:03known Emmett Ashcroft's name but not his
8:04injury. Whoever had forged it had used a
8:07signature that was more than 3 years
8:08dead. She sat with that a long time
8:11listening to the pine logs settle in the
8:13stove.
8:14The problem was not the evidence. The
8:16evidence was clean. The problem was who
8:19in this territory would take the word of
8:20a 21-year-old orphan against the seal of
8:23a judge in Cheyenne.
8:25Copper Hollow would not.
8:27Copper Hollow had already made its
8:28choice and she had felt the shape of it
8:30in the way people crossed the street
8:31when they saw her coming even before the
8:33sheriff had ever come up her road. She
8:35rode into town 3 days later for supplies
8:38because she needed to see the shape of
8:39the thing with her own eyes.
8:41The morning was clear and knife cold,
8:43the air smelling of pinewood smoke in
8:46the first hard frost, and the road ran
8:48beside the Little Fork Creek where a
8:50skin of ice was already forming along
8:52the shallows.
8:53Copper Hollow sat in a bowl of low
8:55hills, one main street of false front
8:57buildings, a whitewashed church, a
9:00livery, a bank, and the Silver Spur
9:02Saloon at the far end where the miners
9:04drank on Saturdays.
9:06She tied her mule to the rail outside
9:08Grady's General Store and went inside.
9:11Ophelia Grady had held Hattie in her
9:12arms the day she was born.
9:14Ophelia Grady had put a peppermint stick
9:16in Hattie's small fist every Christmas
9:19from age 4 to age 14.
9:22Ophelia Grady looked up from her ledger
9:23when the bell rang and her face did a
9:25small exhausted thing that was not quite
9:27a smile. "Oh, Hattie," she said, and the
9:30hands that had held her went to fussing
9:31at the papers on the counter.
9:33"It's the books, dear. Mr. Grady's very
9:36particular this time of year.
9:38We just can't extend any more credit.
9:40Not this season, you understand?" Hattie
9:43understood perfectly. She placed two
9:45silver dollars on the counter coins she
9:47had earned selling eggs the summer
9:48before and had not touched since. And
9:51she watched Ophelia Grady's face color
9:53at the sight of them because credit had
9:55never been the reason and both women
9:57knew it.
9:58"I have cash today," Hattie said. "10 lb
10:01of flour, if you please. Salt, a tin of
10:04coffee." Ophelia weighed the flour. Her
10:06fingers trembled at the scale.
10:09When she turned to fetch the salt, her
10:10back was very stiff, and Hattie saw with
10:12a kind of distant pity that the older
10:15woman was fighting not to cry. Across
10:17the street at the smithy, the
10:18blacksmith, Cormac Whitfield, was
10:20suddenly too occupied with a broken plow
10:22blade to shoe her mule for the winter.
10:25He would not meet her eyes. He kept his
10:27big shoulders turned toward the forge
10:29and spoke to the wall behind her.
10:31"Two weeks, maybe three," he said, and
10:33both of them knew what he meant was
10:35never. At the church, the Reverend
10:37Bracken was pruning a dead rose from the
10:39vestry beds.
10:40He looked up at her as she passed, and
10:42he did not tip his hat.
10:44Instead, he began in a voice pitched
10:46just loud enough to carry a small
10:48extemporaneous sermon about the wisdom
10:50of women who knew their proper place
10:52delivered ostensibly to the empty air,
10:55but aimed like a rifle at her back.
10:57She kept walking. She did not give him
10:59the satisfaction of a quickened step.
11:02She was crossing back to the mule when a
11:04hand caught her elbow in the narrow
11:06shadow between the boardinghouse and the
11:07saloon.
11:09She turned ready to shake it off and
11:10found herself looking into the face of
11:12Winnie Doyle.
11:13Winnie worked upstairs at the Silver
11:15Spur, had done since she came out from a
11:17mill town in the east 8 years ago,
11:19and had a mouth like a mule driver and
11:21eyes that missed nothing.
11:23She was pressing a small cloth-wrapped
11:25bundle into Hattie's palm. "Bread,"
11:27Winnie said low and quick. "There's a
11:29hard sausage in there.
11:31Take it."
11:32Hattie tried to refuse. Winnie's fingers
11:34closed around her wrist. "Listen to me,
11:36girl.
11:38Winnie's eyes cut past Hattie's shoulder
11:40down the boardwalk back again.
11:42Somebody's paying Crane
11:44a lot.
11:46There was a man in the Spur on Tuesday
11:48back booth.
11:49Eastern suit, silver watch chain that
11:51cost more than my year.
11:53He was drinking with Crane and drawing
11:55lines on a map of your father's land.
11:58I couldn't hear the words, but I saw the
11:59money change hands. You watch yourself.
12:02Whatever you think this is, it's bigger
12:05than that pig of a sheriff." Then she
12:07was gone back through the saloon side
12:08door, and Hattie was left standing in
12:11the alley with the bundle warm against
12:12her ribs and a new cold spreading under
12:15her collar.
12:16Not just Crane, not just a corrupt judge
12:18in Cheyenne.
12:20Somebody with a silver watch chain and
12:22an Eastern suit was drawing lines on a
12:24map of her father's ground. She rode
12:26home slower than she had come, letting
12:29the mule pick its own pace, turning the
12:30thing over in her mind.
12:32That night, after she had put the
12:34animals in for the evening, she sat at
12:35the kitchen table and opened the small
12:37leather notebook her father had pressed
12:39into her hands on the day he died. The
12:41one he had told her to keep close to her
12:42always and not open until she was alone.
12:45She had opened it once, the day of the
12:47burial, and had not been able to bear it
12:49and had closed it again.
12:51Now she opened it and she read. The book
12:53was half journal, half field guide in
12:55the same careful left-handed script as
12:57the last years of the ledger.
12:59Sketches of rock formations, notations
13:01on ore samples, a pressed piece of moss
13:04between two pages brown now, but still
13:07faintly green at the edges, labeled in
13:09her father's hand.
13:10Grows only above thermal vent Widow's
13:12Crown south face.
13:14There were diagrams of dugout shelters,
13:16cross-sections of hillside excavations,
13:19calculations of soil depth and heat
13:21retention.
13:22There were pages on the behavior of the
13:24earth below the frost line.
13:26There were maps. At the very back of the
13:28book on a page that had been marked with
13:29a small feather from a red-tailed hawk
13:32was a diagram of a hidden valley on the
13:34south flank of Widow's Crown with a hot
13:37spring marked in her father's careful
13:38hand and a location for a shelter marked
13:41with an X.
13:43Beside the X in the margin was a note
13:45written in a hand that had been shaking
13:46harder than the rest near the end.
13:48Rosie, it read. She stopped and looked
13:51at the word.
13:52He had called her Rosie sometimes when
13:53she was small from her middle name
13:55Roslyn.
13:56He had never written it in the ledger.
13:58Only she would know that.
14:00Rosie, if men come for the land, do not
14:03ride east.
14:04The mountain will hold you.
14:06Everything you need is where I showed
14:07you.
14:08Trust the deep warmth. Trust nothing
14:11that wears a nice coat.
14:12She sat back. The lamp guttered.
14:15Everything you need is where I showed
14:17you." The kitchen was very quiet.
14:19Outside the wind was working at the
14:21eaves, and beyond the wind, deeper in
14:24the darkness, was the mountain humming
14:26its low, unheard note under the stars.
14:30"Trust nothing that wears a nice coat."
14:32Her father had known.
14:34Before the fever, before the letter,
14:36before he had put down his pen for the
14:38last time, he had known that someone in
14:41a silver watch chain was coming for what
14:44was his.
14:45And he had not run.
14:47He had left her a map instead. She sat
14:49with the notebook open in her lap and
14:51thought about what it meant.
14:53A man could take a long time dying of
14:55pneumonia. Or a man could take a very
14:57quick time dying of something that
14:59looked like pneumonia if the doctor was
15:01paid to say so.
15:03There was no way to know.
15:05Not tonight.
15:06Perhaps not ever.
15:08But she had the diagram.
15:10And she had the moss. And she had a
15:12father who had spent the last quiet year
15:14of his life making sure his daughter had
15:17somewhere to go when the men came. The
15:19summer she was 14, he had taken her up.
15:21She let herself remember it now because
15:23she needed to remember it exactly. He
15:25had told her mother they were checking a
15:27trap line, and Elspeth, still alive that
15:29summer, still laughing, had packed them
15:31cornbread and hard cheese and kissed
15:33them both at the gate.
15:35They had climbed for 2 days into the
15:36high country, into a wind that grew
15:38thinner and colder the higher they went.
15:40And on the third morning he had brought
15:42her out onto a windy ridge where the
15:44granite was cracked open in a hundred
15:46small fissures, and the stunted pines
15:48grew twisted like old men. He had knelt
15:51beside a crack no wider than his two
15:53fingers and told her to hold her palm
15:55above it.
15:56She had felt the warm, damp breath of
15:58the earth rise up against her skin
16:01smelling of wet stone and iron and
16:04something deeper, older, a smell that
16:06had no name in English.
16:08"The mountain is breathing," he had
16:10said.
16:11His voice had been so quiet she almost
16:13lost it in the wind.
16:15"Deep down the earth is always warm. It
16:17never freezes.
16:19Winter can take the surface. It cannot
16:21take the heart. He had sat her on a
16:24sun-warm boulder and taught her the
16:26word.
16:27Thermal mass. He had explained how the
16:29earth was a great reservoir of the sun's
16:31heat, absorbing it all summer, holding
16:34it below the frost line, giving it back
16:36all winter, a steady temperature around
16:3850°, no matter what the wind did up
16:40above.
16:41He had told her about the mine at
16:43Centralia in Pennsylvania, where he had
16:45worked as a young engineer before the
16:46West. He had told her about the cave-in
16:49in 1869.
16:51Three men had been trapped 6 days in the
16:52deep gallery, and they had come out
16:54alive because down there, where the air
16:56did not stir, the rock itself had kept
16:59them from freezing.
17:01Two men trapped in the upper gallery,
17:02closer to the surface, had died the
17:05first night.
17:06That was the lesson he had brought West
17:08with him.
17:08That was the lesson he wanted her to
17:10keep. You do not fight the mountain,
17:12Rosie. He had brushed the dirt from his
17:14hands. You never win. You ask it for
17:17help. You build with it. Use the slope
17:19for your roof and the earth for your
17:21walls, and let the deep warmth do the
17:23work. She had stored the lesson away
17:25without knowing why.
17:27The way a child stores everything a
17:29father says, filing it beside how to
17:31read a weather front off the clouds, and
17:33how to set a broken bone, and how to
17:35tell a good horse from a pretty one.
17:37It had not been an education. It had
17:39been an inheritance of competence.
17:42And now, sitting in the kitchen with a
17:43notebook open on her knee, she
17:45understood that her father had begun to
17:47prepare her that summer for a day he had
17:49already seen coming. She did not sleep
17:51that night. She sat by the stove, and
17:54she made a list. She would not ride to
17:56Cheyenne. She would not ride to Denver.
17:59She would not present her evidence to a
18:01court that had already been bought.
18:03She had thought about it, waited, and
18:05decided in the space of an hour that the
18:07paper trail led into a room whose door
18:09had been closed against her before she
18:11was born.
18:12What she had instead was a mountain in a
18:14diagram, in a small vein of gold coins
18:17her father had shown her once tucked in
18:18a hollow he had cut into the underside
18:21of a floor joist beneath the pantry $47
18:24in the year of our Lord 1888. She used
18:26the coins the next day. She did not
18:28spend them at Grady's.
18:30She rode 12 miles east to the smaller
18:32settlement of Finley's Crossing where
18:34nobody knew her face and she paid cash
18:36for 100 lb of flour, 40 lb of dried
18:39beans, a side of bacon,
18:42two 10 lb cones of loaf sugar, a tin of
18:45coffee,
18:46a small keg of salt pork, a bolt of
18:49muslin, three coils of lamp wick, and a
18:52gallon of coal oil.
18:54She loaded it onto a small handcart she
18:56had built out of the pieces of an old
18:58harrow, hitched the handcart behind her
19:00mule Wilbur, and drove home in the dark.
19:02She spent four days after that in
19:04careful, unhurried preparation.
19:07She sawed the last of the fall grass on
19:09the south meadow before the frost took
19:10its color and bundled it into tight
19:13sheaves that she stacked in the
19:14handcart.
19:15Enough hay, she calculated, to keep
19:17Josephine the milk cow and the two goats
19:19Pip and Barnaby through 5 months if she
19:21stretched it.
19:22She wrapped her father's tools in
19:24oilcloth, the pickaxe, the two shovels,
19:26the crosscut saw, the hand auger, the
19:29two-headed axe, the wedge and maul.
19:31She packed her mother's cast iron
19:33skillet and the Dutch oven and the tin
19:35plates.
19:36She took the wool blankets from every
19:37bed and beat them clean and rolled them
19:39tight. She took the Bible her mother had
19:41signed on the flyleaf in 1863
19:44and the small green cloth volume of
19:46Shakespeare that had been Elspeth's
19:47dowry from her father in Ohio.
19:50She took the leather notebook. She took
19:52the letter. On the fifth night she did
19:54something she had been putting off.
19:55She went through the cabin room by room
19:57and pulled out everything of value that
19:59she could not carry and she made a small
20:01pile of it in the yard.
20:03Her mother's rocking chair,
20:05the oak dining table her father had
20:07built the winter before he married,
20:09the framed lithograph of the Grand
20:11Tetons over the mantel. She looked at
20:13these things a long time.
20:15Then she poured coal oil on them and
20:17struck a match. Whatever else the
20:18syndicate meant to take from her
20:20father's ground, they would not sit in
20:22her mother's chair. They would not eat
20:24off her father's table.
20:26She stood back and watched the pile
20:28catch, felt the sudden heat on her face
20:30in the cold night, and she did not weep.
20:33She had done her weeping the day of the
20:34burial. Tonight was for arithmetic. By
20:37dawn she had the mule and the handcart
20:39and the cow and the two goats standing
20:41in the yard breathing steam into the
20:43pale air.
20:44She looked back once at the cabin. There
20:47was a lantern in an upstairs window that
20:49she had left burning because she did not
20:50want it to look from a distance like a
20:52house that had been abandoned.
20:54"Let them come," she thought. "Let them
20:56break the door in. Let them find nothing
20:59but ash in the yard and cold coffee on
21:01the stove." She led the small procession
21:03out through the gate and onto the county
21:05road. At the fork where the road bent
21:07east toward Cheyenne and rail and the
21:10safety of cities, she turned west uphill
21:12toward the timber and the game trail
21:14that her father had shown her when she
21:15was 14, and she did not look back.
21:19She was 3/4 of a mile up the slope in
21:21the first shadows of the pines before
21:23she noticed the man on the horse. He was
21:25on the ridge behind her watching. Not a
21:27townsman. Not Crane who did not sit a
21:30horse that well. This one sat like a man
21:32who had been born in the saddle back
21:34east and had never quite forgiven the
21:36west for the difference.
21:37His coat was long and dark and cut too
21:39fine for the country.
21:41Even at this distance she could see the
21:42flash of a watch chain against his vest.
21:45He held the horse still and watched her
21:47climb and when he was satisfied he had
21:49seen enough he turned the animal south
21:52and rode down out of her sight at an
21:54unhurried pace. She had never seen him
21:56before. She did not need to have seen
21:58him before.
21:59Winnie Doyle had described him
22:00precisely. Eastern suit. Silver watch
22:03chain that cost more than a year of
22:05Winnie's life. A map of her father's
22:07ground under his elbow at the back booth
22:09of the Silver Spur. The cold that spread
22:11under her collar this time was not fear.
22:14It was something worse.
22:16It was understanding. He had ridden out
22:18from town personally in the raw dawn of
22:20an October morning to watch her go.
22:22He wanted to see it with his own eyes.
22:25He wanted to know that she had turned
22:26uphill into the mountains and not east
22:28toward the rail because as long as she
22:30was in the mountains, he could count her
22:32as good as dead by New Year's and the
22:34syndicate's paper would harden into fact
22:36with the ground. She kept walking. She
22:38did not let the mules pace change. She
22:40did not let her shoulders lift. Let him
22:42watch. Let him take his report back to
22:45whatever back booth he owned.
22:47She had a map of her own sketched in her
22:48father's careful left-handed script and
22:51she had a valley he did not know
22:52existed. And she had coiled in her chest
22:55like a small hot spring under a
22:56snowfield, a fury so patient it did not
22:59need to burn. The trail climbed steadily
23:01through the pines, then through a stand
23:03of aspens that had already dropped their
23:05leaves, then above the aspens into the
23:07true high country where the wind picked
23:09up and the trees grew shorter and the
23:11sky opened into that vast indifferent
23:14blue that was the color of Wyoming in
23:16October.
23:17She camped the first night in a hollow
23:19below a granite outcrop that broke the
23:21wind.
23:22She built a small fire from deadfall.
23:24She fed the animals from the hay in the
23:26cart and rubbed Josephine's flanks with
23:28a piece of burlap to keep the
23:29circulation going.
23:31She melted snow in a tin cup for tea.
23:33She lay in her blankets that night and
23:35looked at the stars and tried to guess
23:37how many miles behind her the man in the
23:39fine coat was.
23:4110? 20?
23:43Riding back down to a warm hotel room in
23:45Copper Hollow or riding south already to
23:48some appointment in a paneled office in
23:50Cheyenne?
23:51She did not know his name. She thought
23:54that not knowing his name might be the
23:55most dangerous thing about him. She
23:57thought about her father. She thought
23:59about the way he had grown quieter in
24:01that last year, the way he had stopped
24:03taking her into the high country the way
24:06he used to, the way he had spent long
24:08evenings at the kitchen table with a
24:10leather notebook writing and rewriting
24:12the same diagrams.
24:13She had thought at the time that it was
24:15the pain in his wrist that kept him at
24:17the table.
24:18She wondered now if it had been
24:19something else.
24:21If he had been drafting her instructions
24:23for the day he already knew was coming.
24:24The second day she climbed harder. She
24:27was above the tree line for stretches
24:29now on a narrow trail cut by generations
24:31of elk. She had to lead the animals one
24:33at a time across a shale slope where the
24:35footing was bad.
24:37She lost an hour rebuilding a section of
24:39the trail with rocks she carried up in
24:40her apron.
24:42Snow began to fall in the afternoon, a
24:43light dry dusting that did not stick.
24:46She camped that night in a scoop of rock
24:48a hundred yards below a saddle and she
24:50did not build a fire because she did not
24:52want the smoke. The third day in the
24:54early afternoon she came around the
24:56shoulder of Widow's Crown and looked
24:58down into the valley her father had
24:59drawn. It was almost exactly the way he
25:01had sketched it. A shallow bowl of a
25:03place no more than three acres of open
25:05ground cupped on three sides by walls of
25:07pale granite that rose 60 feet or more
25:10sheltered from the northwesterly wind
25:13that would carry the worst of the
25:14winter.
25:15The south face of the bowl was open to
25:17the sun.
25:18At the bottom of it half hidden by a
25:20stand of stunted spruce, a small clear
25:23spring bubbled up from a fissure and
25:25sent a steady column of white steam into
25:27the crisp air.
25:29Around the spring the grass was still
25:31green.
25:32Green in the last week of October at
25:338,000 feet. She could see it from where
25:36she stood. She led the animals down the
25:38last of the trail into the bowl.
25:40When she reached the spring she knelt
25:42and put her bare palm against the earth
25:44beside it.
25:45The ground was warm, not hot, not the
25:47boiling scald of a Yellowstone pool,
25:50just warm, the warmth of a stove three
25:52hours after the fire has gone out,
25:54steady and patient. She held her palm
25:56there a long time. She felt the tears
25:58rise and she let them because there was
26:01no one to see her and because they had
26:03been earned. The mountain is breathing,
26:04she thought. Her father had shown her
26:07this place once when she was very small.
26:09So small she had almost forgotten.
26:12He had brought her here on horseback
26:14wrapped in his coat against him and he
26:16had put her palm against the same ground
26:18and he had told her the same thing he
26:20would tell her again seven years later
26:22on the windy ridge. Winter can take the
26:25surface, it cannot take the heart.
26:27Somewhere behind her 30 miles east and
26:29downhill and behind a panel desk, a man
26:32in a silver watch chain was already
26:34drafting the paperwork that would follow
26:36her death.
26:37He did not know what she was kneeling
26:38on.
26:39He did not know what her father had left
26:41her.
26:42He thought he had sent a girl into a
26:43mountain that would swallow her by
26:44Christmas. She stood up. She wiped her
26:47face with the back of her wrist. She
26:49untied Josephine from the cart and led
26:51her to a patch of the green grass, and
26:53the cow who had not seen green grass in
26:553 weeks dropped her head and began to
26:57eat. Hattie turned to face the south
26:59wall of the bowl.
27:00She measured it with her eyes. She found
27:03the slope she wanted 30 yards up from
27:05the spring, the steepest section of good
27:07ground with the deepest soil above the
27:09granite. She walked up to it, took the
27:11pickax from the cart, and swung it into
27:14the earth. The first strike jarred her
27:16whole arm. The second bit deeper. The
27:18third began to open a small dark mouth
27:21in the hillside.
27:22She stood a moment looking at the place
27:24where the earth had begun to give way,
27:26at the darker soil under the pale skin
27:28of the surface, and she thought about
27:30how far down she would have to go before
27:32winter came, and how far down was far
27:35enough, and how many days she had before
27:36the sky went hard and white and closed
27:39on her for the season.
27:40Not many, perhaps 30, perhaps less. She
27:43swung the pickax again. Somewhere down
27:46in the town below her, the man in the
27:48silver watch chain was riding south with
27:49his report. Somewhere in a paneled
27:52office in Cheyenne, another man whose
27:54name she did not yet know was pouring
27:56himself a drink and toasting a piece of
27:58paper that would never survive her.
28:01Somewhere in the pines above her, a
28:02raven watched from a branch and did not
28:05call.
28:06And somewhere in her chest, in the space
28:08where she had carried her father since
28:10March, a small quiet voice she had
28:12almost forgotten was saying very calmly,
28:15"This is the place.
28:16This is the ground.
28:18Now you begin." She swung the pickax
28:20again.
28:21The mountain she thought was listening.
28:23She would find out very soon whether it
28:25would answer. The first week in the
28:27valley taught her that the diagrams in
28:29her father's notebook had lied to her,
28:31though the lie was not malicious.
28:33A drawing in a leather book made by
28:35lamplight in a warm kitchen could not
28:37tell you the way the ground under
28:38Widow's Crown gave 3 in of good black
28:40loam before hitting a shelf of frost
28:43cracked shale that turned every pickaxe
28:45strike into a ringing shock up the
28:47wrist. It could not tell you the way the
28:49wind funneled through the notch above
28:51the bowl would find the seam of a canvas
28:53tent and worry it open in a single
28:55night. It could not tell you the way the
28:57light left the valley at 4:00 in the
28:59afternoon an hour earlier than the ridge
29:01above because the granite wall on the
29:03west cut the sun off before it had
29:05finished its work. She revised. She had
29:07always been good at revising. Her father
29:10had said once that the mark of a
29:11competent person was not the plan but
29:14the willingness to change the plan the
29:16moment the ground told you a different
29:18truth.
29:19And now on the second morning of
29:20November with her palms already split at
29:22the base of the thumbs from the shovel
29:24she changed the plan.
29:26She would not dig the 12-ft chamber
29:28first. She would dig a small burrow no
29:31more than 6 ft by 4 into the base of the
29:33slope deep enough to sleep in deep
29:36enough to keep the wind off deep enough
29:37to survive her first storm.
29:39Everything larger, everything grander
29:41could grow outward from that small first
29:44cell in the weeks the mountain gave her.
29:46Sometimes her father had told her the
29:48whole life of a mine was decided by the
29:50shape of the first 10 ft of tunnel.
29:52She would begin small. She would begin
29:55honest. She worked from the moment the
29:57sun cleared the eastern ridge until it
29:58fell behind the western wall six hours
30:01of light stolen from a 9-hour day. She
30:04had never in her life been so hungry as
30:06she was in those first weeks.
30:08She burned 4,000 calories a day and ate
30:11perhaps two because the food had to last
30:14and every night she lay in her blankets
30:15under the half finished burrow with her
30:17stomach clenched around itself and
30:19Josephine's warm bulk breathing 5 ft
30:21away. And she felt the strange
30:24disciplined satisfaction of a body being
30:26spent well. She was not wasting. She was
30:29converting. Flour and beans were being
30:31transformed by way of her shoulders into
30:34a shelter that would outlast the winter.
30:36By the ninth day, she had the small
30:38burrow deep enough to sit up in.
30:40She laid three pine logs across the top,
30:42weighted them with sod, pulled her
30:44canvas across as a door flap, and slept
30:47the first night inside the earth.
30:49She woke at 3:00 in the morning to the
30:51sound of her own breath and understood
30:53with a small clean shock that the
30:55temperature under 3 ft of dirt did not
30:57care what the wind was doing.
30:59She had walked all her life on a skin
31:01over the world. She was inside the world
31:04now. The world was warm. The problem
31:06with the small burrow was that it forced
31:08her into a physical intimacy with her
31:09animals that she had not planned on. She
31:12had meant to build the beast chamber
31:14later, a proper separate room connected
31:16by a passage. Instead, for the first 11
31:19nights, Josephine slept in a rough
31:21lean-to of pine boughs against the
31:23outside of the burrow entrance with Pip
31:25and Barnaby. The goats curled between
31:27her front legs, and Hattie inside the
31:29burrow could hear the cow chewing her
31:31cud through the earthen wall, and could
31:33feel, if she pressed her palm to the
31:35packed soil, the low patient heat of a
31:37thousand pounds of animal on the other
31:39side of it.
31:40She spoke to Josephine at night through
31:42the wall. She said things she would not
31:44have said to a person.
31:45It was the first winter since her mother
31:47died that she had lived in a room where
31:49another warm creature slept, and she had
31:51not known how much she had missed it
31:53until she had it back in this half form.
31:55On the 12th day, the light changed. She
31:57had learned already to read the sky
31:59above the valley the way she had once
32:01read her father's face, and by
32:03mid-afternoon, she knew a storm was
32:05coming. Not the storm, not yet, but a
32:07first testing edge of one.
32:10She spent the last hours of light
32:12cutting extra pine boughs, doubling the
32:14roof, banking snow at the base of the
32:16entry mound.
32:17The snow came at dusk, heavy and dry,
32:20and it came for a day and a half without
32:21pause. And when it stopped, there were
32:2316 in on the valley floor, and drifts to
32:26her waist against the west wall, and her
32:28burrow was invisible from 20 ft away,
32:31buried under a smooth white swell that
32:33looked like an accident of terrain.
32:35Inside, she was warm. She had not lit
32:38the small sheet iron stove she had
32:40hauled up in pieces. She had not needed
32:42to.
32:43Her own body heat and the two lamps she
32:45kept burning for light had raised the
32:47little chamber's temperature to 48°.
32:50And she had sat cross-legged on her
32:51blanket with a leather notebook open in
32:54her lap and read her father's diagrams
32:56again by the pale yellow light and
32:58understood in a way she had not before.
33:01Why he had underlined the phrase south
33:02face, high mass, low ceiling three
33:05separate times on the page.
33:07Low ceiling. A small volume was easier
33:09to warm than a large one.
33:11The book she had read as a girl had
33:12shown people building great vaulted
33:14halls to be proud of.
33:16Her father had drawn her a shelter that
33:17was small on purpose.
33:19A burrow, not a hall.
33:21Pride killed people in winter.
33:23Humility kept them alive. The storm
33:25cleared on the 14th morning to a sky so
33:28hard and blue it hurt to look at. She
33:30dug herself out through two feet of
33:31settled snow blinking in the light and
33:34found the world transformed.
33:36The spring at the bottom of the bowl
33:37still ran and the air above it was full
33:39of a column of steam that rose 30 feet
33:42into the still air before it feathered
33:44out a beacon visible from any high ridge
33:46for miles.
33:47She stood a long moment looking at it.
33:49She had not thought about the plume. It
33:52had not occurred to her that the very
33:54thing that made the valley a sanctuary
33:56would also announce her presence to
33:58anyone who happened to be on the peaks
33:59above. She began that afternoon the next
34:02phase. She widened the burrow. She dug
34:05outward and downward following the plan
34:07in the notebook.
34:08Now that she had the small anchor of her
34:10first cell and every foot of soil she
34:13moved was piled forward to build the
34:15front wall of the larger chamber.
34:17She began to work the pine logs for the
34:19ventilation and this was the labor she
34:21had dreaded most because the hand auger
34:24her father had left her with six feet
34:25long and required a boring passage down
34:28the pith of a 12-foot log and it took
34:30her three days to hollow the first pipe
34:33working the auger a quarter turn at a
34:34time resting when her arms cramped
34:37cursing quietly in the language she had
34:39learned from her father when nobody but
34:41her mother was listening.
34:42When she had the first pipe done, she
34:44buried it in a shallow trench running
34:46from the low side of the chamber down to
34:48the edge of the hot spring, so that the
34:50intake mouth of the pipe hung just above
34:52the steaming water, and every breath she
34:54drew into the shelter would come to her
34:56already warm to the temperature of the
34:58earth's slow exhalation.
35:00The second pipe was easier because by
35:02then she had learned the trick of the
35:03auger, and she set it as an exhaust vent
35:06running from the ceiling of the chamber
35:07up through the sod roof capped with a
35:09small stone cowl to keep out snow. She
35:11was tightening the sod around the
35:13exhaust pipe on the 18th afternoon when
35:16she heard the whistle. It was not a
35:17bird. She had learned all the winter
35:19birds of the range by the time she was
35:21seven, and no bird made a two-note
35:23falling whistle like that in November.
35:26She froze mallet raised and let her eyes
35:28travel the ridge above the west wall of
35:29the valley. Nothing moved for a long
35:31minute.
35:32Then at the very lip of the granite a
35:34man-shape stepped up into her sky and
35:36stood there against the pale blue taking
35:38her measure. He was tall, lean under a
35:40fur-collared coat with a rifle balanced
35:43easy across the crook of his elbow.
35:45He did not shout down at her. He did not
35:47wave.
35:48He stood a moment longer, evidently
35:50satisfied that she had seen him, then
35:52began to work his way down the goat
35:54trail at the west end of the bowl with
35:57the easy stride of a man who had come
35:59down that trail a thousand times. By the
36:01time he reached the valley floor, she
36:02had climbed down off the sod roof, wiped
36:05her hands, and taken up her father's
36:06Winchester from where it leaned against
36:08the doorframe. She did not raise it. She
36:10held it loose in her right hand muzzle
36:12down in the way that said only that she
36:14had one and knew how to use it, and she
36:17stood in front of the entry to her
36:18shelter and waited. He stopped 10 paces
36:20off.
36:21He was older than the coat had
36:23suggested, perhaps 50, with a face
36:25weathered to the color of a saddle, and
36:28pale eyes set deep under a heavy brow.
36:31His beard was iron and rust. When he
36:33spoke his voice had the soft burr of the
36:35mountain west, but underneath it lay
36:37something older, a rolled consonant here
36:40or there that spoke of a childhood spent
36:43listening to Scotland Irish parents in
36:45some sod house on a plane. You would be
36:47Emmet Ashcroft's girl.
36:49The words came out flat, not a question.
36:52His eyes moved past her to the shelter,
36:53took it in, moved back.
36:56I thought maybe I dreamed the smoke.
36:58Hattie did not lower the rifle. She did
37:00not raise it either.
37:02Who is asking? Elias Barrow. He shifted
37:05his weight slowly the way a man does
37:07when he is aware of another person's
37:09gun.
37:10I ran a trap line through this drainage
37:11before you were born.
37:13Your daddy and I split a bottle of
37:14Kentucky in '83 up on the shoulder of
37:16the Crown.
37:17He drew me the shape of this valley on a
37:19piece of tar paper. Told me if I ever
37:21saw a light down here, it would be his
37:24blood, not a stranger's, and to leave
37:25the blood alone. She thought about it.
37:28She thought about the leather notebook,
37:30the diagram, the way her father had
37:31spoken of no other man in her hearing
37:34all the years she had known him.
37:36She thought about the phrase trust
37:37nothing that wears a nice coat, and she
37:39looked at Elias Barrow's coat, which was
37:41made of the pelts of animals he had
37:43almost certainly killed himself, and she
37:45made a decision.
37:47"I have coffee," she said. "It's the
37:48last of it until spring. You can have a
37:51cup if you have news." He came in low
37:53through the entry, ducking under the
37:54pine log lintel, and he stood inside the
37:57half-finished chamber a long moment with
37:59his hat in his hands looking.
38:01He looked at the sloped earth and
38:02ceiling, the packed stone and sod front
38:04wall, the shelf she had carved into the
38:06raw earth for her father's thermometer.
38:09The neat coil of the second ventilation
38:11pipe waiting to be set.
38:12He looked at Josephine visible through
38:14the passage in her beast room, and at
38:16the two goats curled together in the
38:17straw beside the cow.
38:19He did not speak for a while. When he
38:21did, his voice had gone quieter. "Your
38:23daddy told me he was teaching you. I did
38:25not know he had taught you this well."
38:28She poured him coffee in a tin cup. She
38:30poured herself half a cup because she
38:32was rationing.
38:33"You said you had news."
38:35Barrow blew across the top of the
38:36coffee. He drank. He set the cup on his
38:39knee. "Copper Hollow has three stories
38:41running about you right now. One says
38:43you froze on the trail the second week,
38:45and the wolves clean the bones.
38:47One says you rode east under a false
38:49name and are working a laundry in
38:51Denver. Neither of those matter.
38:53The third one is the one you want to
38:55hear.
38:56A man come up from Cheyenne on the stage
38:58last Thursday. Silver watch chain.
39:01Not the same one you already know about.
39:04A different one. Younger, harder.
39:06He has been asking after you in every
39:08saloon between here and Fenley's
39:10Crossing. He has money. Hattie set her
39:12cup down.
39:13What name?
39:15Barrow watched her face.
39:17Cornelius Thorn. Says he represents the
39:20Cheyenne Land and Cattle Syndicate,
39:22though I do not think that is the whole
39:24of it.
39:25I made some acquaintance of him in the
39:26Silver Spur two nights ago, which is to
39:28say I sat where he could not see me and
39:31I listened.
39:32He is not here to serve papers. He is
39:35here to make sure the papers he already
39:37served are not undone. She turned that
39:39over in her mind. Something in her, some
39:42cold small thing she had been carrying
39:44since she opened her father's leather
39:46notebook, went colder still. He asked
39:48Barrow.
39:50Went on whether anyone in town
39:51remembered your daddy taking any long
39:53trips before he died.
39:54He asked whether your daddy had ever
39:56been seen writing anything down.
39:58He asked whether your daddy had any
40:00friends who might have kept his papers
40:02for him. He was buying whiskey for the
40:04answers and buying it generous. Hattie's
40:06hand had gone still on the cup. Did
40:08anyone answer him?
40:10Barrow's pale eyes met hers.
40:12Winnie Doyle told him she never saw your
40:13daddy do anything but drink at the far
40:15end of the bar.
40:16Winnie is a better liar than most men
40:18are honest. Ophelia Grady told him she
40:20did not remember. The reverend told him
40:23he did not concern himself with the
40:24private habits of the deceased. He got
40:27nothing, but he is going to keep buying.
40:29Sooner or later, he is going to buy the
40:31right man. She looked down at the packed
40:33earth floor.
40:35She had not yet laid the flat river
40:36stones. That was work for December if
40:39she had December.
40:40Barrow finished his coffee. He turned
40:42the tin cup slowly in his hands. I am
40:45going to tell you something and then I
40:47am going to go because I do not want to
40:49be seen coming out of here in daylight.
40:52Your father was a careful man. In the
40:54summer of '83, he showed me a sample of
40:56ore he had chipped out of a seam on the
40:58north face of the Crown.
41:00It was silver, not the trash grade that
41:02runs through this country, but the real
41:04thing, a vein maybe 2 ft wide from what
41:06he could tell.
41:07He never filed on it. He never told a
41:09soul but me. He said if it was known
41:12there was silver on this ground, the men
41:14who came for it would not stop at his
41:16door.
41:17He said he would rather die owning a
41:19cabin than live rich in a house with
41:20wolves at the fence.
41:22I did not understand him at the time. I
41:24understand him now.
41:26Cornelius Thorne is not here about a
41:28homestead. He is here about a mountain.
41:31He set the cup down. He tipped his hat
41:33to her.
41:34He went back out through the low entry
41:35into the cold blue afternoon and worked
41:38his way up the goat trail without
41:39looking back. And by dusk, there was no
41:41sign anywhere on the ridge that he had
41:44ever stood there. Only the tracks in the
41:46snow, which the next wind would take.
41:48She sat inside the shelter a long time
41:51after he was gone. She had known there
41:53was money behind this. She had not known
41:55there was a mountain. She lit a second
41:57lamp and opened her father's notebook to
41:59the pages she had passed over quickly
42:01the first time the ones full of
42:02geological notation she had not
42:04understood.
42:05She read them slowly now. She read them
42:08until the light was gone from the valley
42:09outside and only her lamps remained.
42:12The notations were dense, technical, the
42:14shorthand of a man writing for himself.
42:17But she had grown up beside him and she
42:19had absorbed enough of the language to
42:20read what she needed.
42:22Assays, grade estimates, depth of
42:25overburden.
42:26A crude sketch of a seam that ran under
42:28the north face of Widow's Crown, not far
42:30from where she now sat.
42:32He had known. He had spent the last
42:34decade of his life knowing and he had
42:36never filed a claim because he had
42:38understood exactly what her mother's
42:39death by a poorly attended childbirth in
42:42a mining camp had taught him about what
42:44happened to families that stood between
42:46wealth and the men who wanted it. Her
42:48father had died for a mountain he had
42:49refused to sell. And she was living in a
42:52hole in that same mountain, and the man
42:54who had killed him one way or another
42:56was in a saloon 30 miles downhill buying
42:59whiskey for the answer to a question
43:00that was now written under her hand in a
43:02small leather book she kept wrapped in
43:04oilcloth beneath her pillow. She closed
43:06the book. She put out one of the lamps.
43:09She lay in the half dark, and she made
43:11herself go through her list again.
43:13She had food. She had shelter. She had a
43:16rifle and 40 rounds. She had a mountain
43:18that was already silently, patiently
43:20doing the work of hiding her.
43:22She had above all the one thing
43:23Cornelius Thorne could not buy in a
43:25saloon, which was time.
43:27Winter was falling. The pass would close
43:29within the month. Whatever Thorne wanted
43:31to do to her, he had a narrow window in
43:33which to do it. And after that window
43:35closed, the mountain itself would be her
43:37lawyer and her sheriff until spring. She
43:39slept eventually. She dreamed of her
43:42father's left hand moving slowly across
43:44the ledger in the last summer of his
43:46life writing her name over and over in
43:48the margins in a script she had thought
43:51at the time was only the wandering of a
43:53bored man. Though she saw now dreaming
43:56that it had been practice.
43:58He had been teaching himself to write
44:00her name again in the new hand so that
44:02she would know it was really him. The
44:04morning of December 8th broke gray and
44:06still.
44:07She had been in the valley 38 days. She
44:09had the main chamber roofed and half
44:11finished the beast room sealed and warm
44:13the vent pipes running. She had not yet
44:15laid the stone floor. She had not yet
44:17dug the diverted channel for the
44:19geothermal water to run beneath the
44:21flags.
44:22She still cooked over a small pit
44:23outside the entry using the sheet iron
44:26stove indoors only when the wind was
44:28already too high to allow an outside
44:29fire.
44:30The morning of December 8th, she looked
44:32at the sky and knew she would not cook
44:34outside again for a long time.
44:36There was a hardness to the light that
44:38had not been there the day before.
44:40The pines above the valley had stopped
44:42moving all together in the way of trees
44:44before a heavy fall.
44:45The birds had gone quiet.
44:47Somewhere on the ridge a coyote gave one
44:49short bark, and then even that was
44:52swallowed by the thick pressing silence
44:54of an air that had made up its mind.
44:56She spent the morning dragging every
44:58last piece of loose gear inside the
45:00chamber.
45:01She led Josephine and the goats into the
45:03room and packed the passage door with
45:05straw.
45:06She checked the ventilation pipes twice.
45:08The first flakes came at noon. Not the
45:10dry sifting flakes of the earlier storm.
45:13These were fat and heavy and fell so
45:15densely that within an hour she could
45:17not see the granite wall on the far side
45:19of the bowl.
45:20By mid-afternoon the wind rose and it
45:22did not rise gradually.
45:24It came in a single sudden lift as
45:26though someone had opened a door
45:27somewhere above the range and it began
45:30to scream over the notch above the
45:31valley in a note that did not change for
45:332 days and 3 nights. Inside the shelter
45:36the world reduced itself to sensations.
45:38The muffled distant howl of the wind
45:40above.
45:41The click of Josephine's shifting weight
45:43in her room.
45:44The tiny hiss of the wick in her lamp.
45:47The occasional shift and settle of
45:49packed snow on the sod roof so subtle
45:51that a person who had not lived close to
45:53the earth would not have noticed it. She
45:55kept her father's mercury thermometer on
45:57the shelf.
45:58She read it hourly the first day, then
46:00every 3 hours, then only when she
46:02remembered.
46:03The mercury did not move. It hung at 52°
46:06when she was still and rose to 66° for
46:09the 2 hours a day she ran the small
46:11stove to boil beans and melt water for
46:14tea.
46:15When the stove went out the mercury slid
46:17back to 50 and hung there like a promise
46:19being kept. Outside she guessed the
46:21temperature had fallen to 20 below or
46:23lower. She could hear it in the way the
46:25pines cracked when the sap in them froze
46:27a rifle shot sound at random intervals
46:29through the night.
46:30She had once as a girl of eight walked
46:32across the yard at her grandparents
46:34place in a cold like this and had felt
46:36her lashes freeze together on the blink.
46:39She thought about that now lying on her
46:41back in the burrow with her cheek turned
46:42toward the earthen wall and her palm
46:44resting on it because she had grown into
46:46a habit of touching the earth for
46:48reassurance the way another woman might
46:49have touched a rosary. On the second
46:51night of the storm she woke to the sound
46:53of a voice. She sat up so fast her head
46:55struck the low ceiling and she saw
46:57stars. The voice was gone.
47:00She held her breath.
47:01The wind was still howling above.
47:04Josephine shifted in the beast room.
47:06Nothing. Nothing.
47:08She lay back slowly palm pressed flat to
47:11the wall and told herself she had
47:12dreamed it.
47:13But she had not been asleep. She had
47:15been in that thin state before sleep and
47:18the voice had been her father's and it
47:20had said very quietly, very clearly
47:22close to her ear.
47:24Well done, Rosie. She wept for the first
47:26time since the fire in the yard. She
47:28wept without noise because she had not
47:30lost the habit of quiet even now and she
47:32wept until her chest ached and then she
47:34slept again and did not dream at all.
47:36The storm broke on the fourth morning to
47:38a valley entirely remade.
47:40The sod roof of her shelter was buried
47:42under 4 ft of powder.
47:44The spring at the bottom of the bowl was
47:45still open, still steaming a black eye
47:48in a white face. She spent two days
47:50digging paths, one to the spring, one to
47:52a small trench she had cut for a latrine
47:54well downwind of the entry one to the
47:56tarp-covered stack of firewood.
47:59Her arms hurt in places she had not
48:01known could hurt.
48:02But she was warm, she was fed, she had
48:05come through her first serious storm.
48:07The days after the storm settled into a
48:09rhythm she began cautiously to enjoy.
48:12She rose in the dark, she fed and milked
48:14Josephine which yielded a scant three
48:16cups now but real milk still and she
48:18made a small hard cheese in cloth by
48:20hanging it from the ceiling.
48:22She worked on the stone floor which she
48:24was laying section by section with flat
48:26river rocks she had hauled up in the
48:28fall from the creek a quarter mile
48:29below.
48:31She had diverted a thread of the hot
48:32spring water into a narrow channel that
48:34ran beneath the flags of the main living
48:36area and the stones held the warmth for
48:38hours after the channel had done its
48:40work.
48:41She read Shakespeare aloud in the
48:42evenings because her father had believed
48:44that a person who did not use language
48:46would eventually stop being able to
48:48think and she had inherited the belief
48:50along with the books. She read the
48:52histories aloud most nights because they
48:54were the least gentle and required the
48:56most attention. The Chinook came in the
48:58middle of January. She had read about
49:00the winds in a copy of Harper's Weekly
49:02her father had brought home once when
49:04she was 12, but she had never felt one.
49:07And when the temperature outside her
49:08shelter rose 40° in a single afternoon,
49:11she came up out of the burrow blinking
49:13like an animal from a den.
49:15The snow on the south-facing slopes was
49:18going to gray slush before her eyes.
49:20Water was running everywhere.
49:22Josephine led out into the open air for
49:24the first time in 5 weeks, stood
49:25knee-deep in melt, and closed her eyes
49:28against the sudden sun. Which was when
49:30Jedediah Hollis came into the valley for
49:32the first time. She saw him at the top
49:34of the west trail. He carried a rifle in
49:36one hand and a coil of wire snares in
49:39the other, and he was staring down into
49:40her bowl with the fixed uncomprehending
49:43expression of a man who has just seen a
49:45candle burning on the bottom of a lake.
49:48He was younger than Elias Barrow by 10
49:50years, wiry with the sharp reddened
49:52cheekbones of a man who lived outdoors
49:5410 months of the year.
49:55When he began to work his way down
49:57toward her, he moved like a man
49:59expecting a bear. He stopped at 15
50:01paces. He looked at Josephine. He looked
50:04at the goats who had come out to nibble
50:05at the newly exposed grass around the
50:07spring.
50:08He looked at the entry mound of her
50:10shelter, at the pipe of smoke rising
50:12thin from the exhaust vent, at Hattie
50:13herself in her canvas trousers with a
50:16scrap of muslin tied over her hair
50:18against the sudden thaw.
50:20"You are alive." She almost laughed. "So
50:23it appears." Hollis rubbed the back of
50:25his neck. He shifted the rifle to his
50:27other hand. He was working through
50:29something. "I have been hunting this
50:31range 22 years. I have been over this
50:34ridge maybe 50 times. I have never seen
50:37a plume off this valley."
50:39He looked back toward the spring.
50:41"That has been running the whole time."
50:44"The steam is worse in cold air." She
50:46said it flatly. "In summer you would not
50:48see it from the ridge unless the wind
50:50was right."
50:51"My father showed me the place. Emmett
50:53Ashcroft." Hollis pronounced her
50:55father's name carefully the way a man
50:57does when he is thinking about a debt.
50:59"Your daddy pulled me out of a snowbank
51:01on the north face in '79.
51:04I would not have known him from any
51:05other man except that he made me stand
51:07up and walk on a bad ankle for 2 miles
51:09instead of leaving me to freeze.
51:12He said if I sat down I would die. He
51:14said the sitting down was more dangerous
51:15than the walking. Hattie felt a warmth
51:18in her chest that had nothing to do with
51:19the Chinook.
51:21That is the same thing he told me every
51:23time I fell off a horse.
51:25Hollis, without asking, sat down on the
51:27mound of earth at the entry of her
51:28shelter.
51:30He looked at her a long moment. Miss
51:32Ashcroft, Copper Hollow thinks you are
51:34dead or gone. I am not sure it matters
51:38which. If I tell them what I have seen
51:40up here, half of them will not believe
51:42me. And the other half will come up to
51:44look, and one of the ones that comes up
51:47to look will be a man with a silver
51:49watch chain who has been asking after
51:51you in every saloon in three counties.
51:54She met his eyes.
51:56I know about Thorne.
51:58Hollis nodded slowly.
51:59Then you know what I am asking.
52:02What do I tell them? She thought a long
52:04moment. She looked at the steam rising
52:06off the spring at the sudden green of
52:08the exposed grass at Josephine, whose
52:11thin flanks had begun in the last month
52:13to fill out again on the grass around
52:15the vent.
52:16She thought about Elias Barrow who had
52:18chosen not to be seen coming out of her
52:20valley in daylight.
52:22She thought about her father who had
52:24built a life on the principle that a
52:26thing worth having was worth not talking
52:28about. Tell them she said at last that
52:30you saw a ghost.
52:32She let a small smile touch the corner
52:34of her mouth.
52:35Tell them she waved. Tell them you did
52:38not stop.
52:40Hollis considered that.
52:41Then slowly he began to laugh. It was a
52:44rusty laugh, not much used, but it
52:45warmed him, and it warmed her, too. And
52:48when he stood up to go, he touched the
52:50brim of his hat in a way that had
52:51nothing to do with the empty courtesies
52:53of Copper Hollow. I will bring you the
52:55news when I have it, he said. I owe your
52:58daddy that walk.
53:00He went back up the west trail. He did
53:02not look back.
53:03She watched him until he was gone over
53:05the ridge. Then she went inside her
53:07shelter and sat down at her small work
53:10table and wrote in her father's notebook
53:12in her own careful hand on the first
53:15blank page, first friend, Jed Hollis.
53:19She had not, she realized, allowed
53:21herself to use that word since her
53:22father died. The Chinook lasted 5 days.
53:26It ended as suddenly as it had begun,
53:28the temperature dropping 30° in a night,
53:31re-freezing the slush into a sheet of
53:33glassy ice that made every path in the
53:36valley treacherous.
53:38She spent an afternoon breaking the ice
53:40off her shelter's entry and re-banking
53:42the snow, and it was on that afternoon
53:45with her back to the west trail and her
53:47attention fixed on the shovel that she
53:49heard the horses. She turned. Two riders
53:52were coming down into the bowl.
53:54She recognized the shape of the lead
53:56rider before she saw the face.
53:58Thaddeus Crane. Behind him on the
54:00smaller horse, Silas Marsh, the same
54:02reluctant deputy she had watched ride
54:04away from her yard in October. Though
54:06something in his posture was different
54:07now, a stiffness that had not been there
54:10before. Crane drew up 10 paces from her.
54:13His face was modeled with cold and
54:15something else, an anger that had been
54:17building all the way up the mountain and
54:19was now looking for a target.
54:21"You are still here." She leaned on the
54:23shovel. "I am still here." He looked at
54:26the shelter. He did not understand what
54:28he was looking at, and she saw the
54:30incomprehension work its way across his
54:32face and turn into something worse.
54:35He had come expecting to find her
54:37broken, and instead he had found her fed
54:39and standing, and the fact that he could
54:41not see the mechanism of her survival
54:44made him hate her more than her survival
54:46itself. "The syndicate wants this land
54:48cleared by spring."
54:50Crane's voice was tight.
54:52"This little burrow will not hold in a
54:53real winter.
54:55You have had luck. Luck runs. The
54:57mountain hat," he said quietly, "does
54:58not run out. Only men do." Crane's hand
55:01moved toward his side arm then away. He
55:04was not going to shoot her here in the
55:05open with his deputy behind him.
55:07He knew it and she knew it. He wheeled
55:10his horse to leave muttering something
55:12she did not catch and he began to trot
55:14back up the trail without waiting for
55:16Marsh. Marsh did not follow him at once.
55:19He held his horse still for three
55:21heartbeats watching Hattie and then he
55:23leaned down as if to check his stirrup
55:25and let a small folded square paper drop
55:28from his gloved hand into the trampled
55:30snow between his horses hooves.
55:33His eyes met hers for one full second
55:35and there was in them a thing she had
55:37not expected to see in the face of any
55:39man from Copper Hollow which was fear on
55:42her behalf.
55:43Then he straightened, touched his heels
55:45to the horse and rode after Crane. She
55:48waited until they were gone from the
55:49ridge. She walked over, knelt, brushed
55:52the snow away and picked up the paper.
55:54She unfolded it inside her shelter with
55:57the door flap closed against the wind
55:59though the wind could not read.
56:01The paper was a page torn from a small
56:03notebook.
56:04The writing was in pencil, hurried in a
56:06hand that had been trying not to be
56:07recognized. Your father did not die of
56:10pneumonia.
56:11There was a bottle in Crane's desk
56:13drawer for a month before Emmett got
56:14sick. I saw it when I was hunting for a
56:17set of writs.
56:18I know the smell of aconite. I did not
56:21know then what it meant.
56:23I know now.
56:25Crane is not the top of this.
56:27Thorn is.
56:29Thorn is coming for you before the thaw.
56:32He will not come alone.
56:33Burn this.
56:35She sat very still for a long time.
56:38Then she stood up. She lit the small
56:40stove. She held the paper over the flame
56:43until the corner caught and she watched
56:45the words disappear one letter at a time
56:48into ash because she had already in the
56:51reading made them a part of her body and
56:53did not need the paper anymore.
56:55When it was gone she scattered the ash
56:57in the flame pit and stirred it with a
56:59stick. She stood then in the middle of
57:01her small warm chamber. She looked at
57:04the shelf where her father's notebook
57:05lay.
57:06She looked at the mercury thermometer
57:08steady at 52.
57:10She looked at the earthen wall her palm
57:11had grown used to and she pressed her
57:13palm flat against it now and she felt
57:16the deep patient warmth answer. Her
57:17father had been murdered. She had
57:19suspected.
57:21Now she knew and knowing was not what
57:23she had expected knowing to be.
57:25It was not a fire in her chest. It was a
57:27stillness.
57:28It was the kind of stillness she had
57:30felt as a girl standing beside a rifle
57:32her father was teaching her to shoot in
57:35the moment between the setting of the
57:36sight and the pressure on the trigger
57:38when everything in the world had reduced
57:40to the small necessary act of not
57:41moving. Well, she said aloud to the
57:44empty room to Josephine on the other
57:46side of the wall to her father wherever
57:48he had gone to the mountain all right
57:49then. Outside the wind had begun to rise
57:52again. Somewhere on the ridges above the
57:54valley another storm was building itself
57:57out of the still air.
57:58She could feel it coming through the
58:00ground under her feet the way a person
58:02can feel a train approaching on a rail.
58:05This one she knew would not be like the
58:06last one.
58:08This one would be the storm the almanacs
58:10had promised.
58:11This one would be the storm that would
58:13break the towns down below that would
58:16take roofs and lives and the last
58:18certainties of men like Thaddeus Crane
58:20that would prove without argument which
58:22shelter had been built by pride and
58:25which had been built by listening. She
58:27banked the fire in the stove low.
58:29She checked the beast room. She refilled
58:32the lamps and trimmed the wicks.
58:34She sat down at her small table with a
58:36tin cup of tea in her hands and she
58:38waited. And outside the wind climbed one
58:41note higher in the darkening sky above
58:44Widow's Crown
58:45and the mountain patient as it had
58:46always been drew in its breath. The
58:49storm did not come the way weather
58:51usually comes to that country.
58:53Weather in the Black Spine arrived from
58:54the northwest in slow moving fronts you
58:57could watch build for a day banking
58:58against the peaks before it spilled over
59:00into the valleys.
59:02What came down out of the sky on the
59:04second night of February was not weather
59:06at all in that ordinary sense. It was an
59:09Arctic clipper, a scythe of frozen air
59:11off the plains of the Canadian north
59:13that had traveled a thousand miles in 30
59:15hours and lost none of its edge in the
59:17crossing.
59:19Hattie felt it before she saw it.
59:22She was banking a low fire in the stove
59:23for the evening when the pressure in her
59:25ears changed a small clean pop and the
59:28flame in her lamp bent sideways for a
59:30heartbeat as if a door had been opened
59:32somewhere she could not see.
59:35She stood very still. She waited. When
59:38the first gust hit the notch above her
59:39valley 20 minutes later, it did not
59:41howl.
59:42It shrieked in a register she had not
59:44heard before. The sound of the wind
59:46being torn on the edge of the granite.
59:48She barred the entry flap. She banked
59:50the fire lower still. She lay awake most
59:53of the night listening to the shrieking
59:54climb and when she rose in the dark of
59:56morning, she could not open the entry
59:58door because two feet of hard driven
1:00:00snow had welded itself to the frame. She
1:00:02dug out. It took an hour. When she came
1:00:04up into the daylight, the valley was
1:00:06gone. Not buried. Erased. The granite
1:00:10walls had disappeared behind a moving
1:00:11wall of white that reduced her world to
1:00:14the 20 feet she could see.
1:00:16Her tracks filled in behind her as she
1:00:17made them. The plume from the spring
1:00:20which had been a beacon for weeks was
1:00:21gone, sheared off level with the ground
1:00:23by the shear of the wind.
1:00:25Somewhere above her, invisible in the
1:00:27murk, she knew the ridge line of Widow's
1:00:29Crown was being scoured down to bare
1:00:31rock, that any trapper on any trail was
1:00:33likely dead by now, that the pass to
1:00:35Copper Hollow was closed as absolutely
1:00:38as a stone rolled across the mouth of a
1:00:40tomb. She was thinking about the pass
1:00:42when she thought about the town. She had
1:00:44not in seven weeks allowed herself much
1:00:46thought for Copper Hollow.
1:00:48The town had made its choice and had
1:00:49folded her out of its columns like an
1:00:51error in a ledger.
1:00:53But the town had also, whether or not it
1:00:54had earned the right, a great many
1:00:56houses in it that had been built for a
1:00:58Wyoming that no longer existed. Roofs
1:01:00pitched too shallow, walls chinked too
1:01:02thin, wood piles built for an average
1:01:05winter.
1:01:06None of which was going to help anyone
1:01:07tonight. Down in Copper Hollow at the
1:01:09same hour, Thaddeus Crane was standing
1:01:11in the front room of his two-story frame
1:01:13house looking up at the ceiling and
1:01:15listening to it complain. His wife
1:01:17Marguerite lay in the parlor bed they
1:01:18had moved down from the upstairs room 3
1:01:20days ago when the wind had first begun
1:01:22to worry the shingles.
1:01:24Marguerite had been fragile in the chest
1:01:26since about a pleurisy the year of their
1:01:27marriage, and Crane had grown over 21
1:01:30years into the habit of watching her
1:01:32breath the way another man watched a
1:01:34barometer.
1:01:35It was too shallow tonight. It had been
1:01:37too shallow all day. She had barely
1:01:39eaten.
1:01:40The coal in the parlor stove was down to
1:01:42embers, and the last of the coal in the
1:01:44cellar bin was a scrape of dust in the
1:01:46corner.
1:01:47He had sent his boy out 3 hours ago to
1:01:49the woodshed. The boy had come back with
1:01:52an armload of green pine that spit and
1:01:54smoked and would not hold heat, and
1:01:56Crane had spoken to him more sharply
1:01:58than he intended, and the boy had taken
1:02:00his supper in the kitchen and would not
1:02:02look at him. The support beam above the
1:02:03parlor gave its warning at just past
1:02:059:00. It was not a snap. It was a long
1:02:08low complaint, the sound of old-growth
1:02:10pine deciding after 20 years of holding
1:02:13up more than it had been designed to
1:02:14hold up that tonight was going to be the
1:02:16night it stopped.
1:02:18Crane felt it in the floorboards before
1:02:19he heard it. He was on his feet moving
1:02:22toward Marguerite when the beam let go
1:02:24not all at once, but in a slow buckling
1:02:26that gave him time to reach her, time to
1:02:29drag her still in the blankets out of
1:02:30the parlor and into the narrow hall
1:02:32before the third of the roof over the
1:02:34northeast corner sagged inward under its
1:02:36load of accumulated snow and dumped a
1:02:38hundredweight of ice and shingles and
1:02:40framing timber onto the bed she had been
1:02:42lying in. Cold poured into the house
1:02:44through the wound in the ceiling as if
1:02:46it had been waiting. Crane sat
1:02:47[clears throat] in the hall with
1:02:48Marguerite in his arms and looked at
1:02:50what was left of his house, and for the
1:02:52first time in 20 years of being the
1:02:53sheriff of Copper Hollow, he did not
1:02:56know what to do next. He knew what was
1:02:58outside. He knew the temperature which
1:03:00the general store's thermometer had read
1:03:02at 32 below when he had walked past it
1:03:05at dusk. He knew that the church roof
1:03:07had come down two nights earlier, and
1:03:09the reverend was holding what was left
1:03:11of his congregation in the basement of
1:03:13the schoolhouse, and he knew that the
1:03:15schoolhouse basement had a cast-iron
1:03:17stove that would not last the week on
1:03:20what was left in the town's wood yard.
1:03:22He knew that the Miller family at the
1:03:24west edge of town had loaded themselves
1:03:26onto a sled 3 days ago and vanished up
1:03:29the mountain in a direction no sane man
1:03:31went in February. And he knew though he
1:03:34had told himself he did not know that
1:03:36they had gone to the girl. Marguerite
1:03:38coughed against his shoulder a thin dry
1:03:40sound with no strength behind it. Silas
1:03:42Marsh came through the front door
1:03:44without knocking.
1:03:45He had been on his way home from the
1:03:47schoolhouse when he had heard the beam
1:03:48give and he had turned and run the two
1:03:50blocks in a wind that took the breath
1:03:52out of him faster than he could draw it.
1:03:54He stood in the hallway looking at Crane
1:03:56and at Marguerite and he did not offer
1:03:59his help getting them into a coat
1:04:00because he understood immediately that
1:04:02they were past the point at which coats
1:04:04would matter. There is one warm room
1:04:06left in this county Silas said. The
1:04:08words had no inflection. You know where
1:04:10it is.
1:04:11Crane did not look up. She hates me for
1:04:14what I did. I do not blame her. She does
1:04:16not hate anyone.
1:04:18Silas crouched down so his face was
1:04:20level with the sheriff's.
1:04:22That is the whole trouble with her.
1:04:24If she hated you it would be simpler.
1:04:26She will take Marguerite in because
1:04:27Marguerite has done her no harm. She
1:04:29will take you in because you came with
1:04:31Marguerite. What happens after that is
1:04:33what it is. Crane looked at his wife.
1:04:36Marguerite's eyes were open and looking
1:04:38at nothing.
1:04:39He had been a hard man his whole life.
1:04:42Hard as a matter of professional bearing
1:04:44and then hard as a habit that had
1:04:46outgrown its purpose and he had without
1:04:49noticing become a man whose wife could
1:04:51look at nothing when the ceiling was
1:04:53falling in on her because she no longer
1:04:56expected him to be a place she could
1:04:57look for shelter.
1:04:59Something in him broke that he had not
1:05:01known was still whole enough to break.
1:05:03We will not make it up there tonight, he
1:05:06said.
1:05:07It was not an argument. It was
1:05:09arithmetic. We will not make it here
1:05:11tonight either.
1:05:13Silas stood.
1:05:15I have a sled ready. I have hot bricks
1:05:18wrapped in wool. I have Jed Hollis
1:05:20waiting at the head of the trail with a
1:05:22lantern.
1:05:23He knows the way and he owes the girl's
1:05:25father a walk.
1:05:27We are going now.
1:05:29Crane looked at him a long moment.
1:05:31When did you decide this? Silas met his
1:05:34eyes without flinching. The night your
1:05:36wife took the cough.
1:05:37Before that if I am honest. The night I
1:05:40saw the bottle in your desk drawer.
1:05:42Crane did not ask him what bottle. He
1:05:44knew what bottle. He had known for
1:05:46months that his deputy knew what bottle
1:05:49and he had waited in some cold interior
1:05:51room of himself for the day the knowing
1:05:53would come out.
1:05:54It had come out now and he found he was
1:05:55almost relieved by it the way a man is
1:05:57relieved when a long held breath is
1:05:59finally let go. He nodded once. He
1:06:02picked Margarita up. He carried her out
1:06:04into the wind. Up in the valley 3 hours
1:06:06before dawn, Hattie was standing
1:06:08[clears throat] in the entry of her
1:06:09shelter watching the storm begin at last
1:06:11to fray.
1:06:13It had been going for 31 hours.
1:06:16The wind was still bad but the wind was
1:06:17tiring. She could see the shape of the
1:06:20granite wall on the far side of the
1:06:21bowl, again blurred but there.
1:06:24She had spent the storm running a
1:06:25careful shuttle between the main chamber
1:06:28where Priscilla Miller and the three
1:06:29Miller children slept in a heap of every
1:06:32blanket in the shelter and the beast
1:06:34room where Josiah Miller was tending a
1:06:35small compress of hot cloth on
1:06:37Josephine's flank because the cow had
1:06:40strained a shoulder muscle during the
1:06:41last dig out and could not put weight on
1:06:44her right foreleg. The Millers had come
1:06:463 days before the clipper.
1:06:48Josiah had walked in front of the sled
1:06:49with a rope. Priscilla had walked behind
1:06:52holding little Tobias who had been
1:06:54fevered and coughing before the family
1:06:55left Copper Hollow and had been
1:06:57alarmingly quiet by the time they
1:06:59reached the valley.
1:07:00Hattie had put the boy in her own bed
1:07:02with a poultice of pine tar and rendered
1:07:04goose grease on his chest, the recipe
1:07:07her mother had used on her the winter of
1:07:09'95
1:07:10and she had sat up with him two nights
1:07:12until the fever broke and he had asked
1:07:15in a small clear voice if there were any
1:07:17biscuits.
1:07:19Priscilla had wept then in in she had
1:07:21not wept when they arrived.
1:07:23Josiah had gone outside and stood in the
1:07:25cold looking at the shelter for a long
1:07:27time, running his carpenter's hands over
1:07:30the pack of the front wall the way
1:07:32another man might have run them over the
1:07:33back of a horse. "I have built houses in
1:07:36this valley for 15 years," he had said
1:07:38when he came back in and his voice was
1:07:40low.
1:07:41"I have never built one right, not one."
1:07:45Hattie had not answered him.
1:07:47She had known that any answer she gave
1:07:48would be either a lie or a cruelty.
1:07:51Now in the graying hour before the sun
1:07:53would try to come up somewhere behind
1:07:54the clouds, Josiah came out to stand in
1:07:56the entry with her.
1:07:58He had a tin cup of coffee in each hand.
1:08:01He handed her one.
1:08:02"Something is coming up the trail." She
1:08:04had heard it, too. Not the wind. The
1:08:07wind did not sound like that. What she
1:08:09heard underneath the last shrieking of
1:08:11the storm was the low grind of sled
1:08:13runners on hard snow and a horse being
1:08:16pushed past what a horse should be asked
1:08:18to do. Jed Hollis came into the valley
1:08:20first on foot leading his horse by the
1:08:22bridle because the beast could no longer
1:08:24see through the ice caked over its eyes.
1:08:27Behind him, Silas Marsh drove the sled
1:08:30and on the sled, wrapped in a mound of
1:08:32blankets and quilts with a covered brick
1:08:34at her feet, lay Marguerite Crane.
1:08:37And walking behind the sled breaking a
1:08:40track through the drift with his own
1:08:42legs because there was no room on the
1:08:44sled for a man his size, came Thaddeus
1:08:46Crane. Hattie stood in the entry with
1:08:48the coffee going cold in her hand and
1:08:50watched them come. She had thought about
1:08:52this moment many times over the winter,
1:08:54though she had never expected it to come
1:08:56in this form.
1:08:57She had rehearsed it in the way a person
1:08:59rehearses answers to a letter they have
1:09:01not yet received.
1:09:02She had imagined Crane coming to her in
1:09:04humiliation and fury, in a courtroom in
1:09:07the town square, in a dozen
1:09:08configurations. And in most of the
1:09:10imagined versions she had spoken a line
1:09:13she had prepared some cutting summary of
1:09:15what he had done and what he was some
1:09:17final settling of the ledger.
1:09:19She had She realized now prepared to be
1:09:21a person who took satisfaction in this.
1:09:24She saw his face. He was crying not from
1:09:26grief, but from cold. His cheeks
1:09:28streaked with the thin ice of tears that
1:09:31had frozen as they fell.
1:09:32He had his wife in his eyes even from 30
1:09:35ft away.
1:09:36Hattie set her coffee down on the
1:09:38ground.
1:09:39"Bring her in." She said. They brought
1:09:41her in.
1:09:42Priscilla, who had been sleeping, was up
1:09:44before the outer door had closed, and
1:09:46she moved to Marguerite the way one
1:09:48nursing woman moves to another in a
1:09:49birthing room with no words wasted.
1:09:52They laid Marguerite on the fresh bed of
1:09:54pine boughs and blankets Hattie had
1:09:56already begun to set up because she had
1:09:58known when she heard the runners that
1:09:59whoever was on that sled was going to
1:10:01need it.
1:10:03Priscilla peeled the wet outer wrappings
1:10:04back and pressed her palm to
1:10:06Marguerite's forehead and shook her head
1:10:08once small and looked up at Hattie. "She
1:10:10is very far along. Not gone, but close."
1:10:12Hattie went to her small shelf and took
1:10:14down the last of her stock of dried
1:10:15yarrow and a small jar of honey and a
1:10:17twist of paper containing the powdered
1:10:19inner bark of a slippery elm she had
1:10:22traded a fresh cheese for with Elias
1:10:24Barrow in December.
1:10:26She began to build a poultice.
1:10:28She did not look at Crane, who was
1:10:29standing in the middle of her chamber
1:10:31with his hat crushed in his hands,
1:10:33taking in the fact that eight people
1:10:35were already living in her shelter,
1:10:37taking in the Miller children asleep in
1:10:39a pile,
1:10:40taking in the warm still air of a room
1:10:42that stood at 54° while the world
1:10:44outside stood at 30 below. He tried to
1:10:46speak. Nothing came out. She did not
1:10:49help him. She poured hot water from her
1:10:52kettle over the yarrow, stirred the
1:10:53honey, and waited for the steep spread
1:10:55the poultice on a scrap of clean muslin.
1:10:58Only when the muslin was ready and she
1:11:00had laid it across Marguerite's chest
1:11:02under the blankets, and Priscilla had
1:11:04begun to hum something low under her
1:11:05breath, did Hattie stand up and turn to
1:11:07face Crane. She looked at him a long
1:11:09moment. She saw him seeing her. She saw
1:11:12him understanding for the first time in
1:11:14his life that everything he had told
1:11:17himself about the shape of the world had
1:11:19been wrong in a specific way that could
1:11:21not be walked back.
1:11:23He reached into the inside pocket of his
1:11:24coat with a slow deliberate hand, the
1:11:27way a man reaches for a thing that has
1:11:29been burning him for a long time.
1:11:31He drew out a leather billfold, thick
1:11:33tied with a thong.
1:11:34He held it out to her. "I have kept this
1:11:36since October," he said. His voice was
1:11:39hoarse.
1:11:40"I told myself I was keeping it as a
1:11:42weapon.
1:11:43>> [clears throat]
1:11:43>> That was a lie. I was keeping it because
1:11:45I was afraid of what would happen when I
1:11:47stopped keeping it. I am done being
1:11:50afraid. Take it. It is all of it.
1:11:53The contract with Thorne, the receipts,
1:11:56the letter he wrote me the week your
1:11:58father took sick.
1:11:59There is a bottle in the bottom of my
1:12:01desk in the sheriff's office. Silas can
1:12:03bring it. It is the same one." She did
1:12:06not take the billfold. Not because she
1:12:08did not want it, because her hands were
1:12:10still full of the poultice cloth she had
1:12:12not yet cleaned. She jerked her chin at
1:12:15the small work table. "Set it there."
1:12:17He set it there. His hand shook once, a
1:12:20small betrayal his body could not hide.
1:12:23He stepped back. "I did not come here to
1:12:25bargain with you," Crane said. "I came
1:12:27here so my wife would not die in a
1:12:29hallway.
1:12:30If she lives because of you, I will owe
1:12:32you a debt I cannot pay.
1:12:34If she dies here, it will be my hand
1:12:36that killed her, not yours.
1:12:38I am not asking you to forgive me.
1:12:41I am asking you to let her be warm."
1:12:44Hattie looked at Marguerite.
1:12:45Marguerite's breath had already deepened
1:12:47a fraction, whether from the poultice or
1:12:49the warmth or Priscilla's low humming,
1:12:51Hattie could not say. "The mountain does
1:12:53not choose who it warms," she said. "I
1:12:56do not choose either.
1:12:58Sit down. There is coffee."
1:13:00He sat down. He put his face in his
1:13:02hands.
1:13:03He did not weep. It was past weeping.
1:13:07Silas Marsh stood by the entry and would
1:13:09not meet the sheriff's eyes.
1:13:11And Jed Hollis, who had come inside
1:13:12briefly to warm his hands, went back out
1:13:15to see to the horses because he was a
1:13:17man who had spent his life understanding
1:13:19that some things belong to the people
1:13:20they belong to and no one else. The wind
1:13:23died sometime before noon.
1:13:25The sun came out weak and pale over the
1:13:28eastern ridge and touched the valley
1:13:29with a light that had no warmth in it,
1:13:31but was at least a light. Hattie left
1:13:33the shelter in the early afternoon to
1:13:35bring in more wood from the stack.
1:13:38She was crossing the packed path to the
1:13:39wood pile when she saw Elias Barrow
1:13:42standing at the top of the west trail.
1:13:44He was too far to have heard the sled
1:13:46arrive.
1:13:47He had come for another reason.
1:13:49He raised a gloved hand palm out, and
1:13:52she understood without a word passing
1:13:54between them that he had news, and that
1:13:56the news was not good.
1:13:58She met him halfway up the trail. "Thorn
1:14:00came into Copper Hollow yesterday
1:14:02morning."
1:14:03Barrow's voice was flat. "He came before
1:14:05the storm. He is holed up at the
1:14:07boarding house with three men I have not
1:14:09seen before.
1:14:10Two of them wear guns like men who have
1:14:12used them.
1:14:13The third one is a lawyer out of
1:14:15Cheyenne with a stack of papers.
1:14:17Thorn knows the sheriff has run. He
1:14:19knows the sheriff came up to you. He is
1:14:21preparing to say the sheriff was
1:14:23kidnapped by a lunatic girl living in a
1:14:25hole in the mountain that the sledge
1:14:27tracks prove it, that he is riding up
1:14:29here with his three men to secure the
1:14:32return of a lawful officer of the
1:14:33territory.
1:14:34He means to arrive tomorrow morning at
1:14:36first light. He does not mean to leave
1:14:38you alive." Hattie did not answer for a
1:14:41moment. She looked past Barrow down
1:14:43toward the town she could not see.
1:14:45"He means to come here," she said.
1:14:48"He means to come here."
1:14:50She thought of Marguerite in the bed of
1:14:51the Miller children curled together, of
1:14:53Josephine with her strained leg.
1:14:56She thought of what Thorn would find if
1:14:57he arrived and pushed his way into her
1:14:59shelter at gunpoint.
1:15:01She thought of what the story would look
1:15:03like afterward told in his voice in a
1:15:04courtroom in Cheyenne. She turned her
1:15:06head. "Where is Jed?" "At the horses.
1:15:10Send him down for Ophelia Grady. Send
1:15:12him down for Cormac Whitfield. Send him
1:15:16down for the Reverend Bracken.
1:15:18Tell them there is a woman dying up here
1:15:21who is not me and who they baptized as a
1:15:24bride and prayed over as a mother and
1:15:27who they can look in the face by morning
1:15:30if they mean to keep any part of
1:15:32themselves that is worth keeping. Tell
1:15:34them to come up on foot if they have to
1:15:37and to come now. Tell them I am not
1:15:39asking them for their loyalty. I am
1:15:42asking them for their witness. Barrow
1:15:44watched her a moment.
1:15:46What are you doing?
1:15:47I am making sure Thorne walks into a
1:15:49room he cannot lie in.
1:15:51She met his eyes.
1:15:53He wants me alone in a hole for a
1:15:54reason. I am going to be the opposite of
1:15:56alone when he gets here.
1:15:58If he means to make a story out of me
1:16:00tomorrow, he is going to have to make it
1:16:02in front of the whole town. Barrow
1:16:03smiled small, cold, satisfied. He did
1:16:06not need her to explain it further.
1:16:09He turned and went down the trail at the
1:16:11long steady pace of a man who had walked
1:16:13further than that on worse days. She
1:16:15went back into the shelter. She did not
1:16:17tell the Millers or Crane what she was
1:16:19doing.
1:16:20She fed the fire. She made a fresh pot
1:16:22of coffee.
1:16:23She sat with Marguerite for an hour and
1:16:25changed the poultice twice and
1:16:27Marguerite's color began in that hour to
1:16:29shift from the waxy gray of the sled to
1:16:32something closer to human.
1:16:34Priscilla saw it and pressed her palm to
1:16:36her mouth. They came up in the last of
1:16:38the day's light. Jed Hollis had done the
1:16:40running.
1:16:41Ophelia Grady came first wrapped in
1:16:43three shawls, her breath tearing at her.
1:16:46Her old face set with a kind of appalled
1:16:48resolution.
1:16:50Cormac Whitfield followed her, still
1:16:52smelling of coal smoke, his big smith's
1:16:55shoulders hunched against the cold.
1:16:57The Reverend Bracken came behind them
1:16:59and he had left his hat somewhere on the
1:17:01trail and did not know it. And his thin
1:17:04hair was frozen in points at his
1:17:05temples.
1:17:07Behind them a further gaggle, six more,
1:17:09seven, 10 people.
1:17:11Hattie had not seen in seven months,
1:17:13people who had crossed streets to avoid
1:17:15her, people who had refused her credit
1:17:17and turned their faces to walls when she
1:17:19passed.
1:17:20They came up because Jed Hollis had told
1:17:22them to come and because the storm had
1:17:25put a fear into them that had loosened
1:17:27whatever moorings had been holding them
1:17:28to their earlier positions.
1:17:30And because a woman was reported dying
1:17:33and they had most of them still enough
1:17:34of the old Wyoming in them to answer
1:17:36that particular call even when they did
1:17:38not want to. Hattie stood at the entry
1:17:40as they arrived. She did not welcome
1:17:42them. She did not thank them. She said
1:17:45only one after another as each one
1:17:47climbed down into the bowl, "Come in."
1:17:49"It is warm." By the time full dark
1:17:52fell, there were 22 people in her main
1:17:54chamber.
1:17:55It should not have held them.
1:17:57It held them.
1:17:58The heat rose. The mercury climbed to 70
1:18:01for the first time all winter.
1:18:03Nobody spoke much. Ophelia Grady,
1:18:06without asking anyone, took over the
1:18:08stew pot from Priscilla and began to
1:18:10stretch the beans with two turnips she
1:18:12had brought in a sack under her shawl.
1:18:15Because Ophelia Grady, whatever else she
1:18:17had failed to do, had always known how
1:18:20to feed 22 people out of a pot meant for
1:18:23eight.
1:18:24Cormac Whitfield, without asking, went
1:18:26out with Jed Hollis to see to the horses
1:18:29and to reinforce the beast room door.
1:18:31Because a smith knows a hinge when he
1:18:33sees one, and the hinge was not going to
1:18:35hold another storm.
1:18:37The Reverend Bracken sat by Marguerite's
1:18:39bed and did not pray aloud but moved his
1:18:42lips and Crane across the room watched
1:18:44him and did not weep. Thorne came at
1:18:47first light as Barrow had said he would.
1:18:49He came on a horse that was too fine for
1:18:51the trail and had lost a shoe an hour
1:18:53up, and he came with only two of his
1:18:55three men. Because the lawyer from
1:18:57Cheyenne had refused past a certain
1:18:59point to leave the boarding house stove.
1:19:01The two men with him carried rifles
1:19:03across their pommels in the loose way
1:19:05that was supposed to look casual and did
1:19:07not. Thorne rode into the bowl at the
1:19:08head of the west trail and stopped
1:19:10short.
1:19:11He had been rehearsing his entry the
1:19:12whole way up. He had not rehearsed for
1:19:15what he saw. There were 22 people
1:19:17standing in the packed snow around the
1:19:18entry of the shelter. They were the
1:19:20people of Copper Hollow.
1:19:22They were not armed except in the
1:19:23ordinary way of Wyoming men, one rifle
1:19:26for every three of them held low.
1:19:28They were not shouting. They were
1:19:30standing.
1:19:31Jed Hollis was at the front with Elias
1:19:33Barrow beside him. Ophelia Grady was
1:19:36there in her three shawls.
1:19:38Cormac Whitfield, who was the largest
1:19:40man in the county and whose forearms
1:19:42were larger around than most men's
1:19:44thighs, was standing with his hand
1:19:46resting easy on the head of his
1:19:47blacksmith's hammer, which he had
1:19:49brought up because he had thought there
1:19:51might be work for it.
1:19:52The Reverend Bracken stood a little
1:19:54apart, hat in hand, having found the hat
1:19:56halfway down the trail on his way home
1:19:58the night before, and gone back for it.
1:20:01Thaddeus Crane stood at the entry to the
1:20:03shelter itself in a coat borrowed from
1:20:05Josiah Miller, and his face was the face
1:20:07of a man who had come to the end of one
1:20:09life and was standing in the doorway of
1:20:11another. Hattie stepped out from behind
1:20:13Crane.
1:20:14She did not have the rifle. She had the
1:20:16leather billfold in her hand.
1:20:18Cornelius Thorn. She said his name the
1:20:21way a person names a card being laid
1:20:23down.
1:20:24My name is [clears throat] Hattie
1:20:25Ashcroft. You have never met me. You
1:20:27have paid many men to know me. Get off
1:20:30your horse. He did not get off.
1:20:33He looked at the crowd. He looked at the
1:20:35two men behind him who were looking at
1:20:36each other. He looked at the shelter, at
1:20:38the trail behind him, at the trap he had
1:20:40ridden into without knowing. Miss
1:20:42Ashcroft. His voice, when he found it,
1:20:45was smooth as it had been in the back
1:20:47booth of the Silver Spur.
1:20:49He remembered his script.
1:20:51I am here to secure the return of a
1:20:53lawful officer of the Wyoming Territory
1:20:56who was taken from his home under duress
1:20:58two nights past.
1:21:00Sheriff Crane, sir, if you are able,
1:21:03step forward.
1:21:05These good people will let you pass.
1:21:08Crane did step forward. He walked past
1:21:11Hattie and past the crowd and stopped 10
1:21:13paces from Thorn's horse. "I was not
1:21:15taken," Crane said. His voice was quiet,
1:21:18but it carried in the still cold air.
1:21:20"I came here. My wife was dying. This
1:21:23woman took her in.
1:21:24I would like the record to note it, and
1:21:26I would like it noted in front of these
1:21:28witnesses, that on the night of the 3rd
1:21:30of February in the year 1889, I brought
1:21:33a signed contract and a bottle of
1:21:34aconite tincture from my own desk drawer
1:21:37to the shelter of Miss Ashcroft, and I
1:21:39placed these items in her possession as
1:21:41full confession of my part in the death
1:21:43of her father, Emmett Ashcroft, at the
1:21:46direction of Cornelius Thorn.
1:21:48I stand ready to give the same testimony
1:21:50to any territorial marshal you would
1:21:52like to summon. The two men behind Thorn
1:21:54looked at each other again.
1:21:56One of them let his hand drift slowly
1:21:58off the stock of his rifle. The other
1:22:00one did not. Thorn's face did not move
1:22:02much. He was too practiced for that.
1:22:05But something behind his eyes went out.
1:22:07He tried one more time.
1:22:09Sheriff, you are ill. This woman has
1:22:12clearly I am not ill. Crane took another
1:22:15step. I am cold and I am tired and I am
1:22:18done.
1:22:19There is a lawyer in the boarding house
1:22:21at Copper Hollow who came up with you.
1:22:23If you turn your horse now and you ride
1:22:25down and you and he and your two friends
1:22:28here take the noon stage south to Denver
1:22:31and you never set foot again in this
1:22:33territory, I will hold my testimony for
1:22:36a week to give you the road.
1:22:38If you are still in Wyoming after that
1:22:40or if you ever show your face north of
1:22:42Cheyenne again,
1:22:44I will ride to the federal marshal in
1:22:46Denver myself with what I have.
1:22:48I have people here who will ride with
1:22:50me. Some of them owe you nothing. Some
1:22:53of them owe you less than nothing.
1:22:56All of them will speak. Thorn looked at
1:22:58the crowd once more. He looked at Cormac
1:23:01Whitfield's hand on the head of the
1:23:02hammer. He looked at Ophelia Grady whom
1:23:05he had once bought a whiskey for and
1:23:06Ophelia Grady looked back at him with an
1:23:08ex- pression he had not paid enough
1:23:10attention to buy correctly. He turned
1:23:12his horse. He rode down. His two men
1:23:15rode down after him. They did not speak.
1:23:18The one who had let his hand drift off
1:23:19the rifle was the first to go and he did
1:23:22not look back and neither did the other
1:23:24one. The people of Copper Hollow stood
1:23:25in the snow and watched them go. Nobody
1:23:28cheered. Wyoming did not cheer at things
1:23:30like that. What they did instead was one
1:23:32by one over the next several minutes
1:23:34turn to Hattie and touch the brims of
1:23:36their hats.
1:23:37Ophelia Grady did not have a hat. She
1:23:40caught Hattie's hand in both of her own
1:23:41and pressed it and did not speak and her
1:23:44eyes were leaking, and she turned away
1:23:45before Hattie could answer. The federal
1:23:47marshal, when he came, came from Denver
1:23:493 weeks later with two deputies and a
1:23:52stenographer. His name was Buford Cain,
1:23:55and he had in fact known Emmett Ashcroft
1:23:58in the coal country of Pennsylvania when
1:24:00both of them were younger, and Hattie's
1:24:02letter sent down with Jed Hollis in
1:24:04January, before she had known anything
1:24:07but the shape of her suspicion had
1:24:09reached him at his office in the first
1:24:11week of February.
1:24:13He had already been on the road when
1:24:14Thorne arrived at the head of her
1:24:16valley.
1:24:17He had not, therefore, been the bluff
1:24:18she had thought he was when she wrote
1:24:20about him in her mind. He had been a
1:24:22fact. Cain took the depositions. Crane
1:24:25gave his. Silas Marsh gave his. Winny
1:24:29Doyle came up from the Silver Spur with
1:24:31a small ledger she had been keeping of
1:24:32the men who bought her drinks and the
1:24:34questions they asked her, and her ledger
1:24:36was more damning than most of the sworn
1:24:38statements. Ophelia Grady gave a
1:24:41deposition, and Cormac Whitfield, and
1:24:43the Reverend Bracken. Though the
1:24:45Reverend's took the longest because he
1:24:47kept trying to work in an apology, and
1:24:49Cain kept telling him gently that
1:24:50apologies were not admissible.
1:24:53The bottle from Crane's desk was tested
1:24:55by a doctor in Cheyenne and found to be
1:24:58a Silas had known from the smell of it,
1:25:00aconite tincture strong enough to kill
1:25:02three men.
1:25:03The signature on the deed of sale was
1:25:05compared with the ledger Hattie had kept
1:25:07in her father's cabin, which had somehow
1:25:09miraculously survived the winter
1:25:11untouched in the abandoned house,
1:25:13because nobody from the syndicate had
1:25:15actually come up to occupy it, since
1:25:17occupying it in February would have
1:25:19required the same shelter knowledge her
1:25:21father had left her. The forgery was
1:25:23declared exactly what it was. The deed
1:25:25to the Ashcroft homestead was returned
1:25:27to her in the last week of March on a
1:25:29morning when the first melt was running
1:25:31off the eaves in Copper Hollow, and the
1:25:33road east was passable again to a fast
1:25:35rider. Thorne was found 4 months later
1:25:37in a hotel in Kansas City by two of
1:25:40Marshal Cain's men.
1:25:41He did not resist. He had been drinking
1:25:44heavily and had lost most of the
1:25:46syndicate's money at faro.
1:25:48He was tried in Cheyenne in the fall of
1:25:491889 and convicted of conspiracy to
1:25:53murder and land fraud, and he died of a
1:25:55heart attack in the third year of a
1:25:5715-year sentence at the territorial
1:25:59prison in Laramie.
1:26:01Crane served eight years in the same
1:26:03prison in a separate wing, and the two
1:26:05men never saw each other.
1:26:07Marguerite lived. She lived in fact to
1:26:09be 71,
1:26:10and after Crane's release, she took him
1:26:12back in a small way in a small cottage
1:26:14her sister lent them in the town of
1:26:16North Platte, and the two of them ran a
1:26:18chicken yard and were not much spoken of
1:26:20again by anyone. Silas Marsh was made
1:26:23sheriff of Copper Hollow that spring.
1:26:25He served 31 years in the office, and he
1:26:28was by every account exactly the sort of
1:26:30sheriff Copper Hollow needed and had
1:26:32never before been fortunate enough to
1:26:34have.
1:26:35In the summer of his second year, he
1:26:36rode up to the valley with a bunch of
1:26:38wildflowers in his saddlebag and asked
1:26:40Hattie in the awkward manner of a man
1:26:42who has practiced a speech many times
1:26:44without improving it, if she might
1:26:46consider becoming his wife. She thanked
1:26:48him. She was gentle. She said, and this
1:26:51was one of the sentences he would
1:26:52remember all his life,
1:26:54"Silas, you are a good man, and you will
1:26:57make some woman a fine husband, and I
1:26:59hope with all my heart that you will.
1:27:01But I have already married the mountain.
1:27:04It is not a marriage that will let me
1:27:05take another."
1:27:07He rode down.
1:27:09He did marry 3 years later a school
1:27:11teacher named Cordelia Hooper, and they
1:27:13had four children, and one of the
1:27:14children, a girl, was named Hattie. She
1:27:17did not come down, not that spring, not
1:27:19any spring.
1:27:21The Ashcroft cabin at the foot of the
1:27:22range she let at first to Josiah Miller,
1:27:25who took her instruction and rebuilt it
1:27:27as an earth-banked house against the
1:27:29south face of the hill, the first of
1:27:32many he would build across the territory
1:27:34in the next 20 years.
1:27:36Later, when Josiah's children were
1:27:37grown, the cabin became a kind of way
1:27:40station for people coming up to learn
1:27:41from her.
1:27:43A journalist from the Denver Post named
1:27:44Winston Holloway wrote up in the summer
1:27:46of 1893 and spent 3 days with her and
1:27:49wrote a long feature that ran on the
1:27:51front page and was reprinted in 17
1:27:54papers between Chicago and San
1:27:55Francisco. And after that, people wrote
1:27:57to her from as far away as Vermont with
1:28:00questions about ventilation and thermal
1:28:02mass and the pitch of a sod roof. She
1:28:05answered every letter.
1:28:06She was not a rapid writer, but she was
1:28:08a thorough one. She lived in her valley
1:28:10for another 67 years. She expanded the
1:28:12shelter into something that was no
1:28:14longer a shelter, but a home with a
1:28:16proper stone-lined main hall, a small
1:28:20library carved into the eastern earth
1:28:22wall, a greenhouse built against the
1:28:25granite of the south face where the
1:28:27thermal wall gave her fresh greens 10
1:28:29months of the year.
1:28:31She kept goats always.
1:28:33She kept a cow always, though never
1:28:35again a Josephine because that name was
1:28:37retired.
1:28:38Elias Barrow lived until 1907
1:28:41and came up every fall for coffee.
1:28:44Jed Hollis married and moved to Montana
1:28:47and wrote her twice a year for the rest
1:28:48of his life.
1:28:50The Miller children grew up and had
1:28:51children who grew up and had children,
1:28:54and every generation of them called her
1:28:56Aunt Hattie, though she was not their
1:28:58aunt and she did not correct them. She
1:29:00died in her sleep on the 17th of March
1:29:021955,
1:29:044 months short of her 88th birthday in
1:29:07the same bed she had been sleeping in
1:29:09for 40 years in a room that held its
1:29:11temperature at 54° on the raw night she
1:29:13left it. Three years later in the July
1:29:16of 1958, a team of geological surveyors
1:29:19from the federal government was mapping
1:29:21the Black Spine Range for a proposed
1:29:23watershed study.
1:29:24The team leader was a young geologist
1:29:26named Meredith Voss, who had earned her
1:29:28doctorate at Colorado School of Mines
1:29:30the year before and was at 29 the only
1:29:33woman on the survey team.
1:29:34Voss had been told the range was mostly
1:29:36empty, that any old homesteads had been
1:29:38abandoned decades ago and were long
1:29:41since reclaimed by the pines.
1:29:43She was working her way down the south
1:29:44face of a peak called Widow's Crown on a
1:29:47hot afternoon when she came around a
1:29:49shoulder of granite and looked down into
1:29:51a small bowl-shaped valley she had not
1:29:53seen marked on any map. She saw the
1:29:55spring first. It was still steaming
1:29:57faintly even in July, the way it had
1:30:00steamed the day Hattie Ashcroft had
1:30:02first knelt beside it 70 years before.
1:30:05Voss made her way down.
1:30:07She found the remains of a barn's
1:30:08silvered timbers half buried in
1:30:10wildflowers.
1:30:12She found the outlines of a greenhouse
1:30:14against the south wall of the bowl, the
1:30:16glass long shattered, the frame still
1:30:18standing.
1:30:19And she found tucked into the hillside,
1:30:21its front wall a courseway of packed
1:30:23stone and sod, almost invisible under a
1:30:26mantle of grass and lupine, an entryway.
1:30:28She stopped. She stood a long moment
1:30:31looking at it. Then she took a
1:30:32flashlight from her pack and she went
1:30:34in. The air inside was cool and still
1:30:37and smelled of dry earth and old paper.
1:30:39Voss played the beam of her flashlight
1:30:41around a room that had been swept, she
1:30:43realized, not many years ago.
1:30:46Somebody had died in this room. Somebody
1:30:49had loved this room.
1:30:50The stove was rust red, but whole.
1:30:53The shelves cut into the wall still held
1:30:55small objects, a tin cup, a candle stub,
1:30:59a folded square of muslin.
1:31:02She crouched. She took a thermometer
1:31:05from her pack, a matter of professional
1:31:07habit, and set it on the flagstones of
1:31:09the floor.
1:31:10Outside the temperature was 93.
1:31:13She waited.
1:31:15She let it settle. The mercury climbed
1:31:17to 56° and stopped. Voss looked at it a
1:31:20long time.
1:31:21She was a scientist, and she understood
1:31:23on a technical level exactly what the
1:31:25reading meant.
1:31:26But she was also a woman 29 years old
1:31:29standing in a chamber built by another
1:31:31woman who had understood the same thing
1:31:34before her own grandmother was born.
1:31:36And she felt along her spine the small
1:31:39clean shock of recognition that only
1:31:40ever passes between people who are being
1:31:43asked the same question by the same
1:31:45silence. On the shelf above the stove,
1:31:47wrapped carefully in oilcloth and
1:31:49beeswax, she found a leather notebook.
1:31:51She lifted it down. She opened it. The
1:31:54first pages were in a man's careful
1:31:56left-handed script. The later pages were
1:31:58in a woman's tighter, faster patient.
1:32:00Voss read the last entry dated the 17th
1:32:03of March, 1955. Father, I have been
1:32:05asking the mountain for 67 years now,
1:32:08and it has never once failed to answer
1:32:10me.
1:32:11I think it will keep answering after I
1:32:13am gone.
1:32:14That is the whole gift of what you left
1:32:16me.
1:32:17I am leaving it for whoever comes next.
1:32:20Do not fight the mountain. Ask it for
1:32:23help.
1:32:24It is enough.
1:32:26Voss closed the book. She sat down on
1:32:28the flagstones.
1:32:30She sat for a very long time. When she
1:32:33rose to leave, she left the notebook
1:32:34where she had found it.
1:32:36She did not tell her team about the
1:32:37valley. She marked it on her private
1:32:40map, not [clears throat] the federal
1:32:41one, and she came back three times over
1:32:44the next 30 years, always alone, and
1:32:47every time the mercury climbed to 56°
1:32:50and stopped. And every time she sat on
1:32:52the flagstones for a while, and every
1:32:54time she left the notebook where it lay.
1:32:57Somewhere below Widow's Crown in a small
1:32:59bowl-shaped valley that does not appear
1:33:01on any government map, a thin plume of
1:33:03steam still rises from a spring into the
1:33:06cold air on winter mornings.
1:33:08If you knew where to look for it, and if
1:33:10you knew what it meant, you would find
1:33:12that the mountain is still breathing,
1:33:13patient, unhurried, alive.
1:33:15It has been breathing for a very long
1:33:17time. It intends to go on.

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