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They Called Her Red Clay Dugout Crazy—Until It Stayed 58°F While Outside Fell Below 40°F — Transcript

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0:00The wind cuts down through the sage
0:02brush at 40 below, driving snow sideways
0:05across a moonlit basin where a single
0:07threat of chimney smoke rises straight
0:09from a hillside that should not be
0:10smoking at all. A rifle cracks somewhere
0:13in the dark. A yellow dog runs flat out
0:15through kneedeep drifts with a folded
0:17paper tied to his collar. Behind him,
0:20three horses cross a ridge that no one
0:22has crossed in daylight for weeks. Coal
0:24oil slushes in a tin lashed to the
0:26center saddle. The riders do not speak.
0:29They do not need to. At the base of the
0:31red clay bank inside walls, a woman
0:34shaped with her own hands, a rifle is
0:36being reloaded. The lever works once,
0:39twice. A pale gray green eye finds the
0:42firing loop cut low in the packed earth.
0:44The chimney smoke is not a signal of
0:46surrender. It is a warning, and the men
0:48on the ridge have not read it yet. The
0:50wind that swept down from the Absuroka
0:52range in October of 1883 carried the
0:55first bite of a Wyoming winter, and it
0:58found Hazel Winthrop standing alone at
1:00the base of a red clay bank taller than
1:02any barn in the territory. She had
1:04ridden two days from the railhead at
1:06Rollins with a wagon full of tools, a
1:08canvas tent, and a promise she had made
1:10to no one but herself. The bank rose
1:13before her like the flank of some
1:15sleeping animal stre with iron and ochre
1:17veined with pale seams where the water
1:19had run for a thousand seasons before
1:21her boots ever touched the soil. Behind
1:24her the small settlement of Vermillion
1:26Bluffs sat huddled against the wind, its
1:29plank storefronts leaning toward one
1:30another as though sharing a secret. That
1:33secret she already knew was her. Word
1:36had traveled ahead of her as it always
1:38did in a country where news moved faster
1:40than horses. The widow from Denver, they
1:42called her, in the general store, the
1:44one with the strange notions about
1:46digging into hillsides. They had watched
1:48her ride in three days earlier, her
1:50daughter beside her on the wagon seat,
1:52and they had watched her hand over the
1:54last of her husband's savings for a
1:56parcel of land that no one else had
1:57wanted. The bank was too steep for
1:59grazing too far from the creek for easy
2:01water, too exposed for a log cabin of
2:04the ordinary kind. Silas Thorne had set
2:06it plain over his coffee at the boarding
2:08house, loud enough that Hazel heard him
2:10through the open window as she passed. A
2:12woman with sense would have bought
2:14pasture. A woman without sense was about
2:16to freeze her child to death before
2:18Christmas. Her child was not going to
2:20freeze. Hazel had seen to that before
2:23her boots ever touched the clay. June
2:25Winthrup, 14 years old and quicker than
2:28her mother in every way that mattered,
2:29had been settled into the upstairs room
2:31of Adelaide Me's boarding house with a
2:33stack of school books, a small
2:35allowance, a promise to write every
2:37third day. Adelaide had taken the girl's
2:39hand without hesitation, and pressed a
2:41folded quilt into her arms as though the
2:43arrangement had been agreed upon years
2:44before. Some kindnesses arrived that
2:47way, unearned and unquestioned, and
2:49Hazel had learned in the two years since
2:51Thomas died to accept them without
2:53pride. Pride was for women whose
2:55husbands still came home in the evening.
2:57She was no longer one of those. The bank
3:00itself was what mattered now. She had
3:02walked its length twice already, running
3:04her palm along the cool face of it,
3:06feeling for the places where the clay
3:08grew dense and the places where it
3:10crumbled at a touch. Thomas had taught
3:12her to read the ground the way other men
3:14read scripture. And though he had never
3:16seen this particular hillside, he had
3:18left her with eyes that knew what to
3:20look for. The seam that ran horizontally
3:23about 6 ft above the base was the one
3:25she wanted. Below it, the clay was pure
3:28and packed hard enough that a shovel
3:29rang against it like iron. Above it,
3:31sandstone and shale, heavy enough to
3:34hold a roof if she braced it right. The
3:36seam itself was her doorway drawn there
3:38by a hand older than any surveyors. The
3:41wind rose again, dry and cold, carrying
3:43the smell of sage from somewhere past
3:45the ridge. Hazel pulled her coat tighter
3:47and set her shovel against the clay. The
3:50first strike rang up her arm to her
3:51shoulder, jarring loose a memory she had
3:53not asked for. Thomas at the kitchen
3:56table in Leadville, his sketchbook open
3:58drawing. The strange half- buried
4:00dwellings he had seen on a survey trip
4:02through the New Mexico territory the
4:04summer before his death. PBlo houses, he
4:07had called them, dug into cliff faces in
4:09warm as bread ovens, even in January. He
4:12had spoken of them the way another man
4:14might have spoken of a woman he loved.
4:16Hazel had listened then, only half
4:18hearing, occupied with the mending in
4:20her lap, never dreaming she would one
4:22day be standing alone at a clay bank in
4:24Wyoming, with his sketches folded into
4:26the pocket over her heart. She struck
4:28the clay a second time. A third, the
4:31rhythm found her before the ache did. By
4:34midm morning, the mockery had come to
4:36see her. It arrived in the person of
4:38Silus Thorne, 65 years old, weathered
4:41like a fence post, riding a mule that
4:43looked at her with more curiosity than
4:44its writer bothered to show. He drew up
4:47at a distance he considered polite, and
4:49spat into the sage before offering any
4:51greeting at all. His eyes traveled the
4:54length of the bank took in the pitiful
4:55pile of clay she had scraped loose. The
4:58tent behind her sagging in the wind, the
5:00single ax leaning against the stump. His
5:03mouth twisted into something that was
5:05not quite a smile. Widow Winthrop. His
5:08voice carried the flat gravel of a man
5:10who had spoken to more horses than women
5:12in his life. You aim to be under that
5:14hill by Thanksgiving, or you aim to be
5:17under it after the first blizzard buries
5:19you where you stand. Hazel did not stop
5:22working. She had learned in Leadville
5:23that men of a certain age preferred to
5:25be answered slowly, if at all. She set
5:28the shovel down, wiped her palms on her
5:30apron, and looked at him with the same
5:32directness she had once used on mine.
5:34Foreman, who thought a widow could be
5:36shortchanged on a survivor's payment.
5:38Mr. Thorne, I do not recall inviting
5:41company today, but since you are here,
5:43you may as well know that I intend to be
5:45under this hill before the first hard
5:46freeze, and I intend to be warmer than
5:49you are in that drafty shack of yours by
5:51Christmas morning. If you find that
5:53amusing laugh where I cannot hear you, I
5:56have work to do." He blinked. Then he
5:58laughed anyway, but the laugh was
6:00shorter than he had planned, cut off by
6:02something in her face that he had not
6:03expected. He wheeled the mule around
6:05without another word and rode back
6:07toward town at a pace that suggested he
6:09had a story to carry and wanted to be
6:11first to tell it. She watched him go.
6:14Then she picked up the shovel again. By
6:16the end of that first day, she had
6:18opened a wound in the bank about the
6:19size of a coffin, and the comparison did
6:22not escape her. Every homesteader in the
6:24territory had made a joke of that kind
6:26at one time or another, and every one of
6:28them had also known that the joke sat
6:31close to the truth. She built a small
6:33fire in the mouth of the cutate cold
6:35biscuits and salt pork slept in the tent
6:38with her rifle beside her hip. The stars
6:40over the big horn basin were closer than
6:42they had any right to be, and the
6:44coyotes sang from three directions at
6:46once. She thought of June in the warm
6:48room above Adelaide's kitchen, and she
6:50slept. The next morning, Cyrus Blackwood
6:53came to see her. He did not come
6:55himself. Men like Blackwood rarely
6:57troubled themselves to ride out into the
6:59sage for a first conversation. He sent
7:02his foreman, a thick-necked man named
7:04Puitit, whose coat was better than any
7:06Hazel had seen in the general store, and
7:08Prewit came with a leather folio under
7:10his arm and a manner practiced on softer
7:13women than the one he was about to meet.
7:15He tipped his hat. He admired the view.
7:18He spoke at some length of the
7:20difficulties a woman alone might face in
7:22a country such as this one, and of the
7:24generosity of his employer, who had
7:26authorized him to offer a sum for her
7:28parcel that would allow her to purchase
7:30a proper house in town, and see her
7:32daughter educated as a lady ought to be.
7:35The sum was insulting. It was less than
7:37half of what she had paid for the land,
7:39and Puit knew it, and he knew she knew
7:41it. And the offer was less a proposal
7:43than a message. Blackwood wanted the
7:46bank. Blackwood was accustomed to
7:48getting what he wanted. Hazel did not
7:50sit down. She did not invite him into
7:52the tent. She let him finish his speech,
7:54and then she folded her arms across her
7:56chest and told him in a voice pitched to
7:58carry across the sage to any ranch hand
8:01who might be lingering out of sight that
8:03she was not selling. Not today, not next
8:06month, not for the sum he had named, nor
8:08for twice it. She thanked him for the
8:11visit. She suggested that his employer
8:13might find better uses for his time than
8:15sending men to bother widows who had
8:17already made their intentions plain at
8:18the land office. She watched Puitit's
8:20mouth tighten in a way that told her the
8:22conversation was going to have a second
8:24act and a third and that she had made an
8:27enemy without ever meeting him face to
8:28face. Pwit rode away. The sage stood
8:32where it had stood. The bank waited.
8:35Three nights later, the tent burned. She
8:37had gone into town that afternoon to see
8:39June to buy a keg of nails, to eat a hot
8:41supper at Adelaide's table, and be
8:44reminded that there were still places in
8:45the world where the plates matched. She
8:48had ridden back to the claim in the last
8:49hour of daylight, expecting the tent,
8:51the fire ring, the pile of tools she had
8:53covered with an oil cloth against the
8:55frost. What she found instead was a
8:57black smear on the ground and a smell
8:59that she recognized from too many mine
9:01fires in Colorado. Kerosene. Someone had
9:04soaked the canvas and set a match to it,
9:06and whoever it was had not lingered to
9:09see whether she came back before morning
9:11or after. She stood at the edge of the
9:13ruin for a long time. She did not cry.
9:16She had done her crying 2 years earlier
9:18in a Denver hotel room with a telegram
9:20in her hand, and there was none left in
9:23her for a canvas tent. What rose in her
9:25instead was slower and colder and more
9:27useful. She walked the perimeter of the
9:30burn in the last of the light. She found
9:32the bootprints, two sets coming from the
9:34north and returning the same way. She
9:36found the empty tin that had held the
9:38kerosene tossed carelessly into the
9:39sage. As though the men who left it did
9:42not expect anyone to be looking, she
9:44picked it up and turned it over in her
9:46hands. It bore the stamp of the
9:48Blackwood Lumber Company painted in
9:50white letters that had not yet faded.
9:52She put the tin in her wagon. She did
9:55not build a fire that night. She slept
9:57in the wagon bed under three wool
9:59blankets with the rifle across her
10:01knees. And she watched the stars wheel
10:03over the bank. And somewhere in the dark
10:05hours before dawn, she made the decision
10:08that would carry her through the next
10:09four months. She was not going to buy
10:11lumber from any mill in the territory
10:13because every mill in the territory sold
10:15to Blackwood or was owned by him, and
10:18every board she laid would be a board he
10:20could refuse to sell her or price beyond
10:22her reach. She was going to build with
10:25what the bank itself gave her. Clay,
10:27stone, the scrub cedar, she could cut
10:30from her own quarter section. What
10:32Thomas had drawn in his sketchbook, she
10:34would make with her hands in a shape
10:36that no man in Vermillion Bluffs had
10:37ever seen before. And by the time
10:39Blackwood understood what she was doing,
10:41it would be too late for him to stop
10:43her. The wind fell before dawn. She rose
10:46in the gray light and began. For the
10:48first week she worked alone from sun up
10:50to full dark, and the mockery from town
10:52grew louder in proportion to the depth
10:54of her cut. Silus Thornne came back
10:57twice each time on the mule each time
10:59with a fresh insult sharpened on the wet
11:01stone of the boarding house parlor.
11:03Others came too singly and in pairs
11:05drawn by the peculiar pleasure that men
11:07take in watching a stubborn woman make a
11:09fool of herself. A rancher named Howerin
11:12predicted the whole bank would slump
11:13onto her head before she had a proper
11:15doorway. A German blacksmith named Stro,
11:18more sympathetic but no more
11:19encouraging, offered to sell her a load
11:21of proper lumber on credit if she would
11:23only see reason. She thanked him and
11:26refused. She had seen his prices at the
11:28shop, and she knew Black would own the
11:30note on his forge. The cut deepened. By
11:33the end of the first week, she had a
11:34chamber the length of a wagon and the
11:36width of two, and the far wall was so
11:39hard packed that her shovel skidded from
11:41it rather than biting. That was the sign
11:43she had been waiting for. Below the
11:45loose surface, the clay was dense enough
11:47to hold a shape. She began to smooth the
11:49walls with the back of her spade,
11:51working in long arcs, feeling the earth
11:53firm under her palm like the flank of a
11:56mare. The floor she leveled with a hoe
11:58and tamped with a length of hickory she
12:00had cut from the creek bottom. The mouth
12:02she framed roughly with two cedar posts
12:04she had felled and dragged herself, and
12:06she stood a moment in the opening at
12:08dusk, and looked out at the sage, and
12:10she thought that no roof yet built could
12:12feel more like her own than the sky
12:14above her did just then. That was the
12:16night she found the tracks. She had gone
12:19to the creek to wash before sleeping,
12:21and on her way back in the last light,
12:22she saw them plain in the soft ground at
12:24the edge of the sage, where a man had
12:26stood watching her from perhaps 40 yards
12:28away. The boot was distinctive, healed
12:31sharp, the sole worn at the outer edge,
12:33in a way that suggested a rider who
12:35spent long hours in the stirrup. Whoever
12:37he was, he had come from the east
12:39watched her for some time and gone back
12:41the way he came. He had not approached.
12:44He had not called out. He had simply
12:46watched, and the watching was worse than
12:48any shouted threat, because it meant
12:50that someone had been sent to see what
12:52she was doing, and that someone would be
12:54sent again. She slept in the mouth of
12:56the cut that night with a small fire
12:58between her and the opening, and she
13:00woke twice before dawn to add wood.
13:03June's first letter arrived on the
13:05eighth day, carried out by Adelaide's
13:07oldest boy on the sorrel pony. The girl
13:09wrote in the careful, upright hand her
13:11father had taught her before he died,
13:13and she reported on her schoolwork on
13:15the kindness of Mrs. Meade on the price
13:17of eggs at the general store. At the
13:20bottom of the page, she had added a
13:21single line that made Hazel sit down on
13:23the wagon tongue and read it three
13:24times. Mama Mrs. Me says, "A man came
13:27asking about you yesterday. He would not
13:29give his name," she sent him away. "Do
13:32not worry about me. Come Sunday if you
13:34can." Hazel folded the letter and put it
13:37in the pocket over her heart where
13:38Thomas's sketches also lived. She did
13:41not go into town that Sunday. She wrote
13:43a reply and sent it back with the sorrel
13:45pony, and she added an hour to her work
13:48each morning, and she did not sleep with
13:50the fire between her and the opening any
13:52longer. She slept with the rifle. The
13:54fire she moved outside. By the end of
13:57the second week, she had begun the roof.
13:59This was the part that Thomas's sketches
14:01did not fully answer, and this was the
14:03part where she had to invent. She had
14:06cut and dragged 18 cedar posts to the
14:08site, each about the thickness of her
14:10forearm and 8 ft long. and she had laid
14:13them across the top of the cut in a row.
14:15Their ends bedded into notches she had
14:17chiseled into the sandstone shelf that
14:19ran above the clay. Over the post she
14:22laid a mat of willow branches from the
14:23creek and over the willow she began to
14:25pack clay from the diggings wet and
14:28worked to the consistency of stiff bread
14:30dough. It was slow, brutal labor. She
14:32hauled the clay in a bucket one bucket
14:34full at a time up a ramp of tamped earth
14:37she had built against the outside of the
14:39bank. Her shoulders burned, her hands
14:41cracked and bled at the knuckles. She
14:43wrapped them in strips of flower sacking
14:45and kept working. On the 15th day, Silas
14:49Thorne rode out to see her again, and
14:51this time he did not laugh. He drew up
14:53the mule at his usual distance and
14:55looked at the cut at the framed doorway
14:57at the beginning of the roof, at the
14:59woman standing in front of it all, with
15:01clay to her elbows and her hair coming
15:03loose from its pins. He worked a chaw of
15:06tobacco from one cheek to the other. he
15:08spat. His voice when it came was almost
15:11gentle in the way that a very old man's
15:13voice grows gentle when he has finally
15:15decided to say a hard thing plainly. You
15:18are going to freeze in there, widow. Not
15:20because the walls will not hold. I see
15:22now that they might. You are going to
15:24freeze because you have no stove and no
15:27proper chimney and because the first
15:28blizzard is coming inside of 3 weeks
15:30whether you are ready for it or not. I
15:32have seen this country do worse to
15:34better prepared than you. Hazel wiped
15:37her hands on her apron. She looked at
15:39him a long moment. Then she said the
15:41thing she had been waiting to say to
15:42someone who might actually hear it. Mr.
15:45Thorne, I have a stove ordered from the
15:47Montgomery Ward catalog and paid for. It
15:49is sitting at the depot in Rollins
15:51waiting for a freighter honest enough to
15:53haul it. Every freighter in this county
15:55owes money to Cyrus Blackwood. And Cyrus
15:58Blackwood has made it known that any man
16:00who hauls for me will find his notes
16:02called. If you know a freighter who does
16:04not owe Mr. Blackwood, you will have
16:06done me a greater kindness than any
16:08laugh you have swallowed on my behalf.
16:10If you do not, I would thank you to stop
16:12predicting my death and go home."
16:14[clears throat] Silus Thorne looked at
16:16her for a long time. He looked at the
16:18cut. He looked at his own hands on the
16:20res, which were the hands of a man who
16:23had lived alone in these hills for 40
16:24years and knew what it cost. He worked
16:27the chaw. He spat. Then he said so
16:30quietly that the wind almost took it, "I
16:32know a freighter." He rode away without
16:34saying more, and Hazel did not know
16:36whether to believe him or not. But 3
16:39days later, a wagon rolled up out of the
16:41north, driven by a lean man with a
16:42broken nose, who introduced himself as
16:45Micah Dune, and said that Silus Thorne
16:47had told him there was a stove in
16:49Rollins that needed hauling, that he was
16:51not a man who owed Cyrus Blackwood
16:53anything that he had heard the widow
16:54Winthrop paid in coin. She paid him in
16:57coin. He unloaded the stove himself,
16:59cursing at the weight of it, set it
17:01inside the cut where she pointed, took
17:03his money, rode away without asking a
17:05single question about what she was
17:06building or why she was building it in a
17:08hole in the ground. That night she wept
17:10for the first time in two years alone,
17:13quietly with her hand on the cold iron
17:14flank of the stove. She wept because a
17:17stranger had done a decent thing without
17:19asking to be praised for it, because it
17:21had been so long since anything decent
17:23had happened to her without a price
17:25attached that she had forgotten how to
17:27receive it. Then she wiped her face and
17:29set to work on the chimney. The chimney
17:31was the hardest thing yet. She built it
17:33of stone she gathered from the creek bed
17:35mortared with a paste of clay and wood
17:37ash rising up through a hole she had
17:39chiseled in the sandstone shelf above
17:40the roof. She built it too narrow the
17:43first time and had to tear it out and
17:44start again. She built it too wide the
17:46second time and watched the draft die
17:48and the smoke roll back into the
17:50chamber, coughing until her eyes
17:52streamed. On the third try, working from
17:54a diagram she had drawn in charcoal on
17:56the inside of the doorframe, she got the
17:58flu right in the first fire she lit in
18:00the little sheet iron stove drew clean
18:02and hot, and the smoke rose in a
18:05straight gray column into the October
18:06sky. And she stood in the doorway of her
18:09half-finished home and watched it rise.
18:12and she thought, "Thomas, you would not
18:13believe what your wife has done."
18:15October gave way to November. The
18:17mornings came harder. The frost lay on
18:19the sage until midm morning, and the
18:21water in her bucket froze solid
18:23overnight unless she brought it inside.
18:26She still had no door. She had a heavy
18:28canvas hung across the opening, waited
18:30at the bottom with a length of iron
18:31chain, and it kept most of the wind out,
18:34but not the cold. She worked on the door
18:36in the evenings by the light of the
18:38stove, shaping it from cedar planks. She
18:40had split herself, hinging it with rod
18:42iron. She had bought from the German
18:44blacksmith for cash and no note. Stro
18:47had looked at her a long time before he
18:49handed over the hinges, and he had said
18:51only, "You will need a bar as well." He
18:54had given her the bar for the price of
18:56the hinges, which was itself a small
18:58rebellion against the man they both knew
19:00owned his shop. On the 10th of November,
19:02the sky changed. She saw at first in the
19:04west a long low bank of cloud the color
19:06of old pewtor moving too fast for
19:09weather. That was only weather. Silas
19:11Thorne had ridden out that morning to
19:13bring her a hunch of analopee. And he
19:15had looked at the sky and worked the
19:16chaw and said, "Widow that is coming
19:18tonight. Get your daughter out of town
19:20if you can." Hazel had looked at the sky
19:23and known that she could not get to town
19:25and back before it hit. Known that June
19:28was safe with Adelaide behind a solid
19:29roof and a good stove. known also that
19:32she herself had no door, no finished
19:34roof, no choice but to meet what was
19:36coming with what she had. She spent the
19:39daylight hours in a fury of work she
19:41would later remember only in fragments.
19:43She dragged the last of her clay onto
19:45the roof and packed it with the flat of
19:46the shovel and prayed it would hold. She
19:49lashed the canvas across the doorway
19:50with every rope she had. She brought the
19:53horse into the chamber with her tied to
19:54a picket driven into the clay floor at
19:57the back, and she gave the mayor an
19:58extra measure of oats, and spoke to her
20:01in the low, steady voice she had used
20:02with Thomas in his last hours. She
20:04stacked her firewood inside. She filled
20:07every bucket and pot with water from the
20:09creek, and brought them in. She loaded
20:11the rifle and set it against the wall by
20:13the doorway. She sat down by the stove
20:15with June's letter in her lap and read
20:17it once, and then she put it back in her
20:19pocket, and she waited. The storm came
20:21at dusk. It came the way Wyoming storms
20:24come. Without preamble, without mercy, a
20:27wall of white driven on a wind that made
20:29the cedar posts of the roof groan
20:31against their notches. The temperature
20:33fell so fast she could feel it against
20:35her face like a hand. The canvas at the
20:37doorway snapped and shuddered and
20:39threatened to tear loose. She lashed it
20:41a second time with wire. The stove
20:44roared, the chimney sang, the clay walls
20:47packed and smoothed by her own hands
20:49over five weeks held. They held. She sat
20:52by the stove with the mayor breathing
20:54warm against the back of her neck, and
20:56she listened to the windclaw at a home
20:58that would not let it in, and she felt
21:00something she had not felt since the day
21:02the telegram came from Leadville. She
21:04felt safe. Not comfortable, not warm in
21:06the way a Denver parlor was warm, not
21:08fed or rested or free of fear, but safe,
21:12enclosed, held by the earth itself in a
21:14way that no board and batten shack in
21:16Vermillion Bluffs could hold anyone that
21:18night. The temperature inside the
21:20chamber measured against the small brass
21:22thermometer Thomas had given her on
21:24their first anniversary, held near 40°,
21:27while the wind outside cut the air to 20
21:29below. She did not know then how much
21:32colder it would grow before dawn. She
21:34only knew that the walls were not going
21:36to fall, that the roof was not going to
21:38lift, that whatever else might come to
21:40her in this country, it would not come
21:41tonight. She slept a little, sitting up
21:44the rifle across her knees. When the
21:46light came, it came gray and slow
21:48through the seams of the canvas, and the
21:50wind had fallen to a whisper, and the
21:52world outside was white to the horizon
21:54in every direction she could see. When
21:56she pulled the canvas back an inch and
21:58looked out, the bank above her chamber
22:00was drifted head high in snow. The sage
22:03had vanished. The creek was a pale
22:05ribbon frozen where it ran. Her wagon
22:08was a rounded lump, half a rifle shot
22:10from the doorway, buried to the axles.
22:12On the ridge above her, cut plain
22:14against the new snow, were the tracks of
22:16a single rider who had come in the hour
22:18before the storm broke, sat his horse,
22:20watching her chimney smoke, and turned
22:22back toward town. She let the canvas
22:25fall. She fed the mayor. She built the
22:27fire higher. She sat down at the stove
22:30with her hands wrapped around a cup of
22:31coffee. That was the first hot thing she
22:34had tasted in 12 hours, and she thought
22:36quite clearly. He came to see if I was
22:39dead. He is going back now to tell
22:41Blackwood that I am not. The writers
22:44from town came at midm morning. She
22:46heard them before she saw them, the
22:48crunch of hooves through crust, the low
22:50voices carrying farther than the men who
22:52owned them intended. Three horses. She
22:55knew before before the first face
22:56appeared over the ridge who they would
22:58be because she had watched Vermillion
23:00Bluffs for six weeks and she knew the
23:02shape of its opinion. Silus Thornne on
23:04the mule. The German blacksmith stro on
23:07a heavy sorrel behind them riding a
23:09horse better than any horse. A boarding
23:11housekeeper had a right to own Adelaide
23:13me herself wrapped in a buffalo coat and
23:16carrying a covered basket lashed to her
23:18saddle. They had come to see if she was
23:20dead. The whole town had sent them. When
23:23the canvas twitched aside, and Hazel
23:25stepped out into the snow in her
23:26father's old coat, with clay still under
23:28her fingernails and her hair pinned as
23:30neatly as she could manage in the dark,
23:33Silus Thorne pulled up the mule and
23:34looked at her for a long moment, and he
23:36said the thing she would remember all
23:38the rest of her days. Widow, I have
23:41lived in the hills 40 winters. I have
23:44never seen a house I did not build that
23:46I would rather have been inside of last
23:48night than this one. I owe you an
23:50apology. I owe you a debt. I do not know
23:53which I mean to pay first. Adelaide came
23:56down off her horse and put the basket in
23:58Hazel's arms, and inside the basket was
24:00a jar of soup, still warm from the
24:02stove, and a letter in June's careful
24:04hand, and a folded piece of paper that
24:06turned out to be a bankdraft made out to
24:08Hazel Winthrop in the amount of $40
24:11contributed by six households in town,
24:13whose names were listed on the back,
24:14none of whom Hazel had ever spoken to
24:16for more than a minute in her life.
24:18Blackwood Adelaide said quietly so that
24:20Stro and Thorne would not hear. Has been
24:22telling people you were dead by
24:24daybreak. He said it in the saloon last
24:26night before the storm hit. Some folks
24:29in town did not care for the way he said
24:31it. Hazel stood in the snow with the
24:33basket in her arms and the letter in her
24:35hand and the draft folded against her
24:37palm. She looked past the three of them
24:39at the ridge where the watcher had sat
24:41his horse in the dark. She looked at her
24:43chimney thin white smoke rising straight
24:46into a windless sky. She looked at the
24:48doorway of the home she had made with
24:50her own hands out of a hillside no one
24:52else had wanted. And she thought that
24:54she had come to Wyoming to disappear and
24:56that instead she had begun without
24:58meaning to to be seen. The reckoning
25:00with Cyrus Blackwood was still ahead of
25:02her. She knew that as surely as she knew
25:04the shape of her own hand. The tent had
25:07been the first message. The rider on the
25:09ridge had been the second. There would
25:11be a third, a fourth, each one worse
25:13than the one before because men like
25:15Blackwood did not accept the word no
25:18from a woman with clay under her
25:19fingernails. And they especially did not
25:21accept it once other people had begun to
25:24notice that she was still standing. What
25:26she had built at the bank was not a home
25:28only. It was going to have to be a
25:30fortress. She was going to have to
25:32finish it before the next storm, before
25:35the next messenger, before whatever
25:36Blackwood was going to do next. When he
25:39learned that his writer had brought back
25:40the wrong report, she invited them in.
25:43All three of them. She had never invited
25:45anyone in before because there had been
25:47nothing to invite them into. But there
25:49was now, and she did it. Silus Thorne
25:51ducked his head under the canvas and
25:53stood a moment in the warm chamber and
25:55looked around him at the stove, at the
25:57smooth clay walls, at the low ceiling of
25:59packed earth over cedar posts, at the
26:02mayor tied at the back, and he took off
26:04his hat, which was not a thing Silus
26:06Thorne had done for any roof in 20
26:08years. Stro stood in the doorway and did
26:11not come all the way in, and his eyes
26:13went to the hinges he had sold her for
26:14the price of the metal, and he nodded
26:16once satisfied. Adelaide sat down on the
26:19wooden crate Hazel used for a chair and
26:21pulled off her gloves and warmed her
26:22hands at the stove. And she looked at
26:24Hazel and she said so quietly that only
26:26Hazel heard, "Your daughter is safe. I
26:29would not have come out here if she was
26:30not." "But you need to know that man
26:32came to my door two nights ago and asked
26:34me what school she attended, and I lied
26:37to him, and I want you to think about
26:39what that means." Hazel thought about
26:41it. She sat down on the packed clay
26:43floor with her back against the warm
26:45iron of the stove, and she thought about
26:47it. Outside, the wind had died
26:49completely. The sun was breaking through
26:51the last of the storm clouds and long
26:52pale spears. Inside the chamber, the
26:55temperature had climbed to something
26:56near 60. Silas Thorne was still turning
26:59his hat in his hands and looking at the
27:01walls as though he had never seen walls
27:03before. Hazel Winthrop, 42-year old
27:06widow of Thomas Winthrop, mother of one,
27:09understood in that moment that what she
27:11had thought was a fight over a piece of
27:13land was going to become, before this
27:15winter was done, a fight over a great
27:17deal more. Blackwood had asked after her
27:20daughter. Blackwood had sent a man in
27:22the dark to watch her chimney and hope
27:23for no smoke. Blackwood had already
27:26decided how this was going to end. He
27:28had decided wrong. She stood up. She
27:31pulled the canvas aside and looked out
27:32at the white country, at the ridge, at
27:34the thin road that ran back toward
27:36Vermillion Bluffs, where her daughter
27:38was reading by Adelaide Stove, and a
27:40lumber baron was pouring himself a
27:42second glass of whiskey, and trying to
27:44understand why the smoke was still
27:45rising from a hillside where he had been
27:47promised it would not rise again. She
27:50thought of Thomas in his last hours in
27:52the Leadville boarding house, holding
27:54her hand and telling her that the mine
27:55had been unsafe, that they had all known
27:58it was unsafe, that the timbering had
28:00been cut to save costs, and the owners
28:02had known, and she had listened then,
28:04and believed him, and buried him, and
28:07thought the knowing was the end of it.
28:09It was not the end of it. She could feel
28:11that now with the cold air on her face,
28:13and the warm stove at her back, and she
28:15could not yet name why, but she could
28:17feel it. The door she was building for
28:19the front of her chamber was going to
28:21need to be thicker than she had planned.
28:23She let the canvas fall. She turned back
28:25to her guest to Silas Thorne with his
28:27hat in his hands and stro in the doorway
28:30and Adelaide warming herself at the
28:32stove. And she said the words that would
28:34begin the second month of her life at
28:36the Red Clay Bank and the second act of
28:38a story that no one in Vermillion
28:40Bluffs, least of all Cyrus Blackwood,
28:42had understood yet that they were inside
28:44of. I need help. I have not asked for it
28:47before. I am asking now. If any of you
28:50know a man who will work for wages and
28:53not talk about what he sees, send him to
28:55me. I need a proper door hung before the
28:57next storm. I need the roof sealed. I
29:00need a second chamber cut for winter
29:02stores. I need it done in 3 weeks. I
29:04will pay in coin. I will feed whoever
29:07comes. I will not forget the name of
29:09anyone who helps me now, nor the name of
29:12anyone who does not. Silus Thorne set
29:14his hat back on his head. He looked at
29:16Stro. He looked at Adelaide. He looked
29:18at Hazel. And he said in the same grally
29:21voice that had mocked her over coffee 6
29:23weeks earlier in the boarding house
29:25where he no longer took his meals, "I
29:27will be back tomorrow at first light. I
29:29will bring a man I trust. You will not
29:32pay him more than you pay me, and you
29:34will not pay me at all because I owe you
29:36a debt from last night that no coin is
29:38going to settle. Widow, you had best get
29:41some sleep. There is more country coming
29:43for you before this winter is done than
29:45you have seen yet. He went out. Stro
29:48nodded once and followed him. Adelaide
29:50stayed a long moment, her hand on
29:52Hazel's arm, and then she went, too. And
29:54the three of them rode away north
29:56through the snow toward the town that
29:57was already, though none of them yet
29:59knew it, choosing sides. Hazel Winthrop
30:01stood alone in the doorway of her
30:03half-finished home, and watched them go.
30:06The smoke from her chimney rose straight
30:08and white. Somewhere on the ridge, a
30:10raven called once and was answered from
30:13farther off. The mayor stamped inside
30:15the chamber. The stove ticked out beyond
30:18the sage where the light was beginning
30:19to turn from white to the pale gold of a
30:22Wyoming winter afternoon. The tracks of
30:24a single rider led back toward town
30:27toward a man in a warm office who was
30:29even now beginning to understand that
30:30his first move had failed and who was
30:32even now beginning to think about his
30:34second. She let the canvas fall behind
30:36her. She went to the stove. She put
30:39another length of cedar on the fire. She
30:41sat down with June's letter in her lap
30:43and read it slowly twice. And she folded
30:46it back into the pocket over her heart
30:48alongside Thomas's sketches. And she
30:50thought of the two of them, the dead man
30:52and the living girl. And she thought
30:55that she had built the walls of this
30:56place with her own hands for both of
30:58them, and that she was going to keep on
31:00building until the walls could hold
31:02anything the country or the men in it
31:04could send against her. Outside the wind
31:06rose again in the sage. Inside the fire
31:09held the red clay bank which had been
31:11laughed at in October and doubted in
31:13November began in the last hours of that
31:15first great storm of the winter of 1883
31:18to be spoken of in Vermillion Bluffs as
31:20something other than a widow's folly. It
31:23began quietly to be spoken of as a
31:25warning. Silas Thorne came back at first
31:27light as he had promised, but he did not
31:30come alone, and the man who rode in
31:32behind him on a lean bay geling was not
31:34the hired hand Hazel had expected. He
31:37was somewhere past 50, with a beard cut
31:39close to the jaw, in a fashion no
31:41Wyoming trapper would have bothered
31:42with, and his coat, though worn, had
31:44once been the coat of a man who kept
31:46accounts in ink and not in tallysticks.
31:49He carried a leather case strapped
31:50behind his saddle rather than the usual
31:52bed roll, and his eyes, when they found
31:54Hazel standing in the doorway of her
31:56chamber with a coffee cup in her hand,
31:57held the peculiar recognition of a
31:59stranger who was not quite a stranger,
32:02Widow Winthrop. His voice had the flat
32:05consonants of a man raised somewhere
32:06east of the Mississippi. My name is
32:09Elias Rooker. I worked with your husband
32:11on the Rio Grand Survey in the summer of
32:1380. He spoke of you often. I owe him a
32:16debt I never paid while he was living,
32:18and I have come to see if I might pay
32:20some part of it now." Hazel stood very
32:23still. The name meant nothing to her at
32:25first. Then it meant everything at once
32:27because Thomas had written it in the
32:29margin of one of his last letters from
32:30Leadville next to a phrase she had never
32:33understood at the time. Rooker knows
32:35what the timbering was. She set the cup
32:38down on the flat stone beside the door.
32:40She looked at this man, Elias Rooker,
32:42for a long moment while the wind moved
32:44the sage behind him, and Silas Thorne
32:46sat his mule at a polite distance,
32:49watching her face rather than either of
32:51theirs. Then she stepped back from the
32:53doorway and let the canvas swing wide.
32:55Come in, Mr. Rooker. There is coffee.
32:58There is also a great deal I have wanted
33:00to ask a man who knew my husband in his
33:02last year of life, and I would rather
33:05ask it inside than out here, where the
33:07whole basin can listen. He came in. He
33:10ducked under the low doorway with the
33:12trained care of a man who had lived in
33:13mining camps. And he stood a moment
33:15inside the chamber, taking its measure.
33:18The smooth clay walls, the cedar post
33:20ceiling, the small iron stove sending
33:23its clean column of heat upward, the
33:25packed floor swept that morning with a
33:27bundle of sage. His eyes narrowed in
33:30something like calculation. He set the
33:32leather case down carefully beside the
33:34stove and knelt to run his hand along
33:36the base of the wall where the clay met
33:39the floor and he pressed the pad of his
33:41thumb against it and studied the
33:42impression it left. And he said mostly
33:44to himself, "You have built better than
33:47any adobe I saw at Fort Windgate. This
33:49will hold 30 years if the roof holds
33:51five." Silus Thorne dismounted outside
33:54and did not come in. He tied the mule in
33:56the bay to the cedar post Hazel had
33:58driven for that purpose. And he set to
34:00work without instruction on the ramp of
34:02packed earth that led up to the roof,
34:04because he had seen from the doorway
34:06that the roof still wanted 3 in of clay
34:08along the northern edge. And Silas
34:10Thorne was not a man who could stand
34:12near unfinished work without laying a
34:14hand to it. Hazel let him work. She
34:16poured Elias Rooker a cup of coffee. She
34:19sat down across from him on the wooden
34:21crate that served her for a chair, and
34:23she did not offer any preamble. Tell me
34:25about the timbering, Mr. Rooker. He
34:28drank the coffee slowly. He looked at
34:30the fire. He looked at his own hands,
34:32which were the hands of a man who had
34:34once done fine drafting work, and had,
34:36in the intervening years, done
34:37considerably rougher labor. He set the
34:40cup down. When he spoke, his voice was
34:42lower than it had been outside pitched
34:44to travel no farther than the cedar post
34:46of the roof. Your husband and I were
34:48hired in the spring of ' 82 by the
34:49Silver Reef Consolidated to survey the
34:51timbering plan for the new shaft at the
34:54O of workings above Leadville. Thomas
34:56did the structural calculations. I did
34:59the material specifications. We
35:01submitted a report that called for
35:03square set framing and Douglas fur 12-in
35:05beams at 4ft intervals cross braced at
35:07every level. The company approved the
35:09plan on paper. Then they built the shaft
35:11with lodgepole pine at 8 in and 6 ft.
35:14and they used green wood that had not
35:16been seasoned. Your husband found out
35:18the week before the collapse. He wrote
35:20to the mine inspector at Denver. The
35:22letter never reached the inspector. It
35:24reached Cyrus Blackwood, who was the
35:26silent partner in Silver Reef
35:27Consolidated, who owned the pine mill
35:29that had supplied the substitute lumber,
35:31who had every reason to see that letter
35:33buried before it became evidence. Hazel
35:36did not move. The coffee in her own cup
35:38had gone cold. She set it aside without
35:41looking at it. The stove was silent for
35:43a moment. Outside, Silus Thornne shovel
35:46worked steadily on the ramp and
35:47somewhere on the ridge above a raven
35:49called once, twice, three times, "You
35:52are telling me." Her voice was steadier
35:54than she had any right to expect. You
35:57are telling me that my husband did not
35:58die in an accident. He died in a
36:00collapse that could have been prevented
36:02by any honest lumber contract in the
36:04state of Colorado. Whether that makes it
36:06an accident depends on what a court
36:08decides an accident is. I have spent two
36:10years trying to find a court that will
36:12hear the question. I have documents in
36:14that case beside your stove that would
36:16put Cyrus Blackwood in a federal cell
36:19for the rest of his natural life if I
36:21could deliver them to a marshall willing
36:23to serve the warrant. Every marshall
36:25within 3 days ride of Blackwood is a
36:27Marshall Blackwood has paid. I came
36:30north looking for one who was not, and I
36:33stopped in Vermillion Bluffs to buy
36:34grain for my horse, and I heard in the
36:37general store that a widow named
36:38Winthrop was building a house in a
36:40hillside outside town. And I asked the
36:43man behind the counter what her
36:44Christian name was, and he told me, "And
36:46I have been three days working up the
36:48courage to ride out here and speak to
36:50you." A long quiet settled over the
36:53chamber. Hazel found that she was
36:55holding the edge of the crate with both
36:56hands hard enough that her knuckles had
36:58gone white. She released it slowly. She
37:01stood up. She walked once around the
37:03small chamber, past the mayor, who had
37:05been put out that morning, to a picket
37:07in the sun, past the little shelf where
37:10she kept June's letters and Thomas's
37:12sketches in a tin box, past the stove
37:14where Elias Rooker sat waiting with the
37:16patience of a man who had rehearsed this
37:18conversation a 100 times in a 100 camps.
37:21She stopped in the doorway. She looked
37:23out at the ridge at the wagon tracks in
37:25the snow at the sky, which had cleared
37:27to a hard cold blue over the Big Horn
37:29Basin. Then she turned back. There was
37:32no tremor in her voice. Mr. Rooker, my
37:35husband was a good man. He was also a
37:37careful man, and if he wrote you into
37:39the margin of a letter to me, it was
37:41because he trusted you further than he
37:43trusted most of the men he worked with.
37:45I am going to trust you the same way
37:47because I have very little choice, and
37:49because the man who arranged my
37:50husband's death has now arranged for my
37:52tent to be burned, and for a stranger to
37:55watch my chimney in the dark. You are
37:57welcome at the stove for as long as you
37:59need it. You will earn your keep. The
38:01first thing you will earn it at is
38:03helping me finish the door because
38:05Blackwood's next messenger is not going
38:07to be content with a canvas flap. Elias
38:10Rooker inclined his head. There was no
38:12ceremony in it. Only the quiet
38:14acknowledgement of a bargain struck. He
38:16picked up his cup, drained the last of
38:18the coffee, and stood. Show me the door.
38:21The next fortnight moved with the speed
38:23of two people working against a calendar
38:25they could not see. Elias proved to be a
38:28better carpenter than his soft eastern
38:29hand suggested, and he proved also to be
38:32a draftsman of the old school, the kind
38:34who could look at a rough space and see
38:36six improvements. Hazel had not thought
38:38to want. He measured the doorframe. He
38:41shook his head. He built her a new one
38:43from four-seater posts, squared with an
38:45ads he borrowed from Strow, mortised at
38:48the corners rather than nailed set 6 in
38:50deeper into the clay than the first
38:52frame had been. The door itself, which
38:54she had been building of planks in the
38:56evenings, he redesigned into two
38:58thicknesses, laid crosswise with a layer
39:00of sheet iron between them, salvaged
39:02from an abandoned homesteader stove,
39:04silus thorn, located on a claim 10 mi
39:07east. The hinges Strow had solder for
39:09the price of the metal, were reinforced
39:11with iron straps that ran the full width
39:13of the door and bolted through to the
39:15inside. The bar that dropped into place
39:17across the interior was a length of oak
39:20Elias had brought with him tied to his
39:22saddle, which he admitted after some
39:24pressing he had cut for exactly this
39:26purpose in a livery yard in Rollins 3
39:28days before he had ever met her. "You
39:30expected to need this," Hazel said one
39:32evening, running her palm along the
39:33smooth wood of the bar. "Before you ever
39:36rode out here, I expected that any woman
39:38Thomas married would need it sooner or
39:40later. He did not look up from the joint
39:42he was fitting. I did not expect she
39:44would already have half the walls of a
39:46fortress built by the time I arrived.
39:49The joke was mild. Neither of them
39:51laughed, but something in the exchange
39:53settled between them that had not been
39:54settled before. And from that evening
39:56forward, Elias Rooker slept in a bed
39:59roll on the far side of the stove rather
40:01than in his tent outside. And Silas
40:03Thorne, when he wrote out most mornings
40:05now with a hunch of meat or a bag of
40:07oats for the mayor, no longer commented
40:09on the arrangement in any way that would
40:11have obliged either of them to explain
40:13it. There was nothing to explain. Elias
40:16was 55 years old. Hazel was 42. Both of
40:20them had buried more of their lives than
40:22they had left to live. What passed
40:25between them across the stove in the
40:27long evenings was less the beginning of
40:29anything than the recognition that
40:31certain kinds of loneliness could be
40:33laid down for a season without being
40:35mistaken for the end of grief. June's
40:38letters continued to arrive every third
40:40day by the sorrel pony. She wrote of her
40:43schoolwork of the arithmetic problems.
40:45Mrs. Me set her in the evenings of a
40:47book she was reading about a girl who
40:49lived on a farm in Massachusetts. She
40:51did not write of the man who had come to
40:53Adelaide's door asking after her school.
40:55Hazel had asked her not to in the reply
40:57she sent by the same pony because she
41:00did not want the letters to become a
41:01record that could be read by anyone but
41:03the girl who wrote them and the mother
41:05who received them. She trusted the
41:07sorrel pony's writer who was Adelaide's
41:09eldest son and a boy of 14 who had known
41:12his own father shot in a range dispute 3
41:14years earlier and who understood the
41:16value of a folded page kept close. But
41:18she did not trust the wind. The wind was
41:21the least of what she did not trust. On
41:23the 22nd of November, a second rider
41:25came to the ridge in daylight, and this
41:27one did not turn back. He rode down the
41:30slope at a pace that suggested he had
41:32been told to be seen, and he drew up his
41:34horse 50 yard from the doorway of the
41:36chamber, and sat there looking at the
41:38smoke from the chimney with the flat,
41:40expressionless attention of a man
41:41cataloging a room he intended to enter
41:43later. Hazel saw him from where she was
41:46working on the second chamber. Elias had
41:48begun to help her cut a smaller room off
41:50the main one that would serve as winter
41:52storage. She set down her spade. She
41:54walked out into the sun without hurry.
41:56She did not carry the rifle. The rifle
41:59was inside and Elias was inside, and the
42:01rider on the ridge had not yet seen
42:03Elias, and that arrangement for the
42:05moment was one Hazel wished to preserve.
42:07Something I can do for you. The man on
42:10the horse touched the brim of his hat.
42:12He was younger than Puit, harder in the
42:14shoulders, and the coat he wore did not
42:16have the well-tailored look of
42:17Blackwood's foreman. This was a
42:19different sort of man, and Hazel
42:21understood at once that Blackwood was
42:23escalating not just his messages, but
42:25the class of messenger he was willing to
42:27send. Mr. Blackwood extends his
42:29compliments. He has authorized me to
42:31raise the previous offer by 20%. He
42:34would like an answer by the end of the
42:36week. He would also like you to consider
42:38that a woman who lives this far from
42:39town with a daughter she cares for might
42:42find her situation improved by an
42:43arrangement that removes both of you
42:45from the reach of the weather. Hazel let
42:48him finish. She looked at his horse,
42:49which was a better animal than any she
42:51had seen in Vermillion Bluffs. She
42:53looked at his boots, which were the
42:54boots she had seen the print of weeks
42:56earlier at the edge of the sage. Her
42:58voice when she spoke carried the same
43:00directness she had used on pre-wit, but
43:02the underlying temperature was
43:04different, and any man with the wit to
43:06hear it would have heard it. You may
43:08tell Mr. Blackwood that his offer is
43:09refused. You may tell him also that if
43:12he sends another writer onto this claim
43:14after sundown, that writer will not ride
43:16off it. You may tell him finally that I
43:18have taken the trouble to write a full
43:20account of every visit I have received
43:22from his men and every offer and every
43:24threat. And that account is presently in
43:26the hands of a person in this territory
43:28who will see it delivered to the United
43:30States Marshall in Cheyenne if any harm
43:33comes to me or to my daughter. Ride out
43:36now. Do not come back at any hour." The
43:39man on the horse held her eyes for a
43:40long moment. Then he touched his hat
43:42again, wheeled the animal, rode back up
43:45the slope at the same measured pace with
43:46which he had come down. He did not look
43:48back. Hazel watched him until he crested
43:51the ridge, and she watched the ridge for
43:52some minutes after that, and only when
43:55she was sure he was gone did she allow
43:56her shoulders to lower, and her hand,
43:58which had been resting quite still at
44:00her side to open. Her palm was damp, she
44:03wiped it against her apron. Inside,
44:05Elias set down the rifle he had been
44:07holding out of sight of the doorway. You
44:09bluffed him. He had not written the
44:11account. She had not written any
44:13account. He knew this because he had
44:15been sitting three feet from her for two
44:17weeks and no such letter had crossed the
44:20stove. I did. She sat down heavily on
44:23the crate, which means I will need to
44:25write one tonight, and you will need to
44:27help me find a person to give it to
44:29because he will believe that bluff for
44:31one week, perhaps two. After that, he
44:33will start to test it, and by then it
44:35must be true. They wrote it that night
44:37by lamplight, working together at the
44:39low table. Elias had built from a plank
44:41he had split himself. Hazel dictated.
44:44Elias wrote in the fine draftsman's hand
44:46that had once specified 12-in beams for
44:49a mine that had been built with eight.
44:51They set down every visit, every offer
44:54the description of the bootprints, the
44:56empty kerosene tin with its white
44:58lettering, the burned tent, the rider on
45:00the ridge in the storm, the man who had
45:03come to Adelaide's door asking after
45:05June's school. They set down what Elias
45:07had told her about the Oir workings,
45:09about the intercepted letter, about the
45:11substitute lumber. They did not set down
45:14every name he had brought with him in
45:15the leather case, because those names
45:17were for the marshall to see, and for no
45:20one else, but they set down enough that
45:22any honest reader would understand that
45:24the account was only the visible edge of
45:26something much larger. When it was
45:28finished, Elias sealed it with wax from
45:30the candlestub, and Hazel addressed it
45:32to a man Elias named an attorney in
45:34Cheyenne, who had once represented a
45:36mine widow in a similar case, and who
45:38was Elias believed still uncorrupted by
45:41Blackwood's money. The next morning,
45:43Silus Thorne carried it out under his
45:45coat and delivered it by hand to Micah
45:47Dune the freighter with the broken nose
45:49who was hauling a load of hides north to
45:51the railhead and who agreed for the sum
45:53of $10 in coin to place the packet
45:56directly into the hands of the Cheyenne
45:57attorney and to bring back a written
45:59receipt. Dune was gone 11 days. When he
46:03returned, the receipt was folded inside
46:04his coat pocket. The attorney's reply
46:07was folded next to it and the reply
46:09consisted of a single sentence in a neat
46:11lawyerly hand. I have received your
46:14account. I have placed a copy with the
46:16deputy marshal. If anything happens to
46:18you both, copies will be opened.
46:20Otherwise, sit tight and prepare for a
46:23visit from a federal officer before the
46:24new year. Hazel read the sentence twice.
46:28She folded it into the tin box with
46:30June's letters and Thomas's sketches.
46:32She looked at Elias across the stove and
46:34Elias looked back at her and neither of
46:36them said anything because there was
46:38nothing to say that had not already been
46:40said in the writing of the account. The
46:42bluff was true now. What remained was to
46:45survive long enough for the truth to be
46:47useful. The letter from June that came
46:49at the end of that week was different.
46:51It arrived not by the sorrel pony, but
46:53by Adelaide me herself, who rode out
46:55through a light snow at midm morning,
46:57with her buffalo coat buttoned to the
46:59throat, and her face said in the
47:01particular expression that Hazel had
47:03come to recognize as the face of a woman
47:05who had made a decision, and did not
47:07intend to be argued out of it. She came
47:10into the chamber without waiting to be
47:11invited. She sat down at the low table.
47:14She said a letter in front of Hazel and
47:16did not remove her coat. She wrote it
47:18two nights ago. I read it. She asked me
47:20to read it. She wanted me to make sure I
47:23understood what she had heard. Read it.
47:26Hazel unfolded the paper. June's careful
47:29upright hand covered the page. Mama. Two
47:32nights ago, I was studying late in the
47:34front room of the boarding house. I had
47:36put out my lamp because my eyes were
47:37tired. There were men in the parlor a
47:40room away, and one of them was Mr.
47:42Blackwood. I know his voice from the
47:44general store. He was speaking with
47:46another man I did not know. Mr.
47:48Blackwood said that the widow at the
47:49claybank would be dealt with before the
47:51new year and that the daughter would be
47:53sent to relations back east whether the
47:55widow lived or not and he laughed. The
47:58other man asked what school the daughter
48:00attended. Mr. Blackwood said he had
48:02inquired and been given the wrong answer
48:04once but that he would have the right
48:06answer inside of a week. Mama, I am not
48:08afraid, but Mrs. Me says I am to go to
48:10Aunt Karen at Rock Springs on the
48:12morning stage tomorrow. and she says, "I
48:15am not to argue with her. And I have not
48:17argued. I will write you from Rock
48:19Springs when I arrive. Please do not
48:21come to town looking for me. Please do
48:23not come to town for any reason. Please
48:26finish what you are building. I love
48:28you, June." Hazel read the letter
48:32through once. She read it through a
48:34second time. She folded it carefully
48:36along the creases June had made and she
48:39placed it in her lap and she looked at
48:40Adelaide across the low table and she
48:43did not speak for a long moment. Then
48:45she said in a voice that had the
48:47particular flatness of a woman who has
48:49run out of ordinary feeling and moved
48:51into some colder country beyond it.
48:53Where is she now? On the morning stage
48:55as I told her to be. She left at 6. She
48:58is a full day out of Rock Springs by
48:59tonight. My sister Karen has her house
49:01and her husband and two grown sons in
49:03it. And there is no man in the territory
49:05who is going to walk into that house and
49:08take a 14-year-old girl out of it. Your
49:10daughter is safer today than she has
49:12been since you brought her to this
49:14country. I am telling you this so that
49:16you can put her out of your mind for the
49:18next month because you cannot help her
49:20by worrying about her and you can help
49:22her by finishing this fight. Hazel
49:25looked at Adelaide me for a long moment.
49:27Then she reached across the low table
49:29and took the older woman's hand and she
49:31held it. And she did not weep because
49:33she was past weeping by then. But she
49:35held the hand of the woman who had put
49:37her daughter on a stage without waiting
49:38to ask her permission. And she nodded
49:41once and she said, "Thank you." And
49:43Adelaide me, who had buried a husband of
49:44her own 20 years earlier, and had known
49:47then what it was to be alone in this
49:48country, squeezed her hand back, and did
49:50not answer because there was no answer
49:52required. Adelaide rode back to town
49:55within the hour. Elias came in from the
49:57wood pile and read the letter over
49:58Hazel's shoulder, and he did not speak,
50:01and Silas Thornne, who had been mending
50:02the mayor's harness in the corner of the
50:04chamber, sat down as all, and looked at
50:06Hazel with the flat considered attention
50:08he had been giving her for a fortnight
50:10now. And he said the thing that no one
50:12else had yet had the standing to say, "I
50:15going to come here. He is going to come
50:17himself, or he is going to send men who
50:19will come as himself. He is not going to
50:21wait for the marshall. He knows now that
50:23you have written something because that
50:25writer will have told him and he cannot
50:27afford for you to still be breathing
50:28when the marshall arrives. We have 3
50:30weeks, perhaps four. We are going to
50:33spend them making this chamber into
50:34something that will not fall when it is
50:36asked to stand. They spent them exactly
50:39that way. The door was already what it
50:41needed to be. The frame around it was
50:43reinforced with a second set of iron
50:45straps salvaged from the wagon
50:47Blackwood's men had left broken along
50:49the freight road two winters passed,
50:51which Silus Thorne dragged out on a
50:53sledge and butchered for its useful
50:55metal. The single window which Hazel had
50:58cut high in the western wall for morning
51:00light was reduced by half and fitted
51:02with a shutter of the same double
51:04thickness cedar and iron construction as
51:06the door hung on the inside and barred
51:08from within. A second smaller opening
51:11was cut low in the eastern wall at
51:13Elias's suggestion, angled downward
51:15through the clay in such a way that a
51:17rifle could be fired through it toward a
51:19man approaching from the ridge, but no
51:21ball from outside could travel back
51:22through the opening at a useful angle.
51:24Elias called it a firing loop and did
51:26not explain where he had learned to
51:28build such things. Hazel did not ask.
51:30There were parts of Elias Rooker's
51:32history that had not come into the light
51:34yet, and she was content to leave them
51:36there until they had a reason to emerge.
51:39The chimney was inspected daily. A spark
51:41screen was fitted at the top. A metal
51:44plate was set into the roof around the
51:45base of the flu so that no fire lit
51:48against the outer wall could travel up
51:50the chimney into the chamber. A second
51:52small chamber was cut off the main one
51:54and stocked with a month's worth of dry
51:56beans. salt pork, cornmeal, coffee, a
51:59keg of water refreshed weekly from the
52:01creek, a small barrel of coal oil, three
52:04boxes of rifle cartridges Elias had
52:06purchased in a single trip to Rollins
52:08under a false name, and a second rifle
52:10Silas Thorne had brought from his own
52:12cabin without saying whose it had
52:14originally been. By the middle of
52:16December, the chamber that had begun as
52:18a coffin-shaped cut in a red clay bank
52:20had become something else entirely. It
52:22had two rooms, a barred door, a barred
52:25window, a firing loop, a stove, a
52:28chimney with a spark screen, a month of
52:31provisions, two rifles, three people who
52:33had learned in the course of 6 weeks how
52:36to move around one another in a small
52:37space without wasting either words or
52:40motion. It also had, for the first time
52:42since Hazel had struck her first shovel
52:44into the bank in October, a name. Silas
52:46Thorne had begun to call it the redout.
52:49He used the word without irony in the
52:51tone of a man who had served once in a
52:53war he did not speak of otherwise. On
52:56the 14th of December, the second great
52:58storm of that winter came down from the
53:00Absuroka. It came without the pewtor
53:02warning cloud of the first storm. It
53:05came at midafter afternoon out of a
53:06clear sky. A sudden dropping of the
53:08temperature that Elias, who had a
53:10barometer in his leather case, measured
53:12falling at 3/10en of an inch in the
53:14space of 1 hour. He looked at the
53:16instrument. He looked at Hazel. He said,
53:18"Only close everything." And they closed
53:21everything. And by the time full dark
53:23had come, the wind was screaming across
53:25the ridge at a temperature the barometer
53:27suggested would fall below 40° under
53:29zero before dawn. They had never tested
53:31the redout at 40 below. They tested it
53:34now. The stove burned through the night
53:36on split cedar in a careful ration of
53:38coal. The chimney sang the high thin
53:41song. It sang in a hard wind. The spark
53:44screen held the smoke drew clean and
53:46rose into the shrieking dark. Inside the
53:48chamber, held at 58° by Elias's
53:51thermometer, warm enough that Hazel
53:53could work at the low table on a mending
53:55job she had put off for a week. The
53:57mayor stamped and settled in her corner.
54:00Silas Thorne sat by the fire reading of
54:02all things a bound copy of the poems of
54:04Longfellow that Adelaide Meade had
54:06pressed on him a month earlier, and
54:08which he had until that night not
54:09opened. Elias sharpened a knife.
54:13Sometime past midnight, Hazel set down
54:15the mending. She had heard something
54:17that was not the wind. She did not
54:19speak. She looked at Elias. Elias looked
54:23at Silas. Silas closed the long fellow
54:26and set it aside, picked up the second
54:28rifle from where it leaned against the
54:29wall by his elbow and stood. The knock
54:32at the door was weak. The knock was so
54:34weak that it took a moment for any of
54:35them to be certain they had heard it and
54:37not imagined it. Then it came again. A
54:40voice on the other side cracked and wind
54:42torn and barely a voice at all called
54:44out a single word that was almost lost
54:46in the wind. Help. Silus Thorne was at
54:49the door before either of the others. He
54:51did not lift the bar. He put his mouth
54:53close to the wood and he called back,
54:55"Name yourself." And the voice on the
54:57other side, weaker now, gave a name that
54:59made Silus Thornne swear under his
55:01breath and lift the bar in the same
55:02motion. The door swung inward on a blast
55:05of wind and driven snow and cold that
55:07struck the chamber like a physical blow.
55:09And a man fell through the opening onto
55:11the pack floor. And Silus Thorne had the
55:14door barred again behind him inside of 5
55:16seconds. The man on the floor was a
55:18trapper from a claim 8 mi north whose
55:21name Hazel had heard from Silus Thorne
55:24exactly twice. Once in a story about a
55:26lost dog and once in a story about a bad
55:28debt. His face was gray, his beard was
55:32frozen to his coat. He had been caught
55:34crossing the ridge in the drop of the
55:35storm, and had aimed himself at the only
55:38smoke he could see, which was Hazel's,
55:40and he had walked the last mile on hands
55:42and knees. They put him by the stove.
55:45Elias cut the frozen boots off his feet.
55:48Hazel warmed a pot of broth on the top
55:50plate. Silas Thorne, who had spoken
55:52perhaps 40 words to the man in eight
55:54years, and who now spoke to him in the
55:57low, steady voice of a man addressing a
55:59child, held his shoulders, and told him
56:01that he was in the widow's redoubt, and
56:03that he was going to live through the
56:04night, and that he had best drink what
56:06she gave him when she gave it to him.
56:08The trapper drank. He wept a little
56:11without noise. He slept in the small
56:13hours of that morning, with the wind
56:15still tearing at the roof and the
56:17chamber holding steady at 55°.
56:20Silus Thorne looked across the fire at
56:22Hazel and he said the thing that would
56:24travel through Vermillion Bluffs by the
56:25following week and would begin more than
56:27any storm survived or any door barred to
56:30shift the ground on which Cyrus
56:31Blackwood was standing. Widow, there is
56:34a man alive in this room tonight who
56:36would be a body in a drift by morning if
56:39you had listened to any advice this town
56:41gave you in October. I am one of the men
56:43who gave you that advice. I do not know
56:45how a person makes right or wrong of
56:47that size, but I mean to spend what
56:50remains of my winters trying. Hazel did
56:53not answer him. She did not have an
56:55answer that would not have diminished
56:56what he had said. She only nodded once
56:58slowly, and she reached across and put
57:00another length of cedar on the fire. The
57:03storm broke the following afternoon. The
57:05trapper walked out on his own feet 3
57:07days later, borrowed the mayor to reach
57:10his own claim, returned her the
57:12following week with a hunch of elk and a
57:14story he had already told by that point
57:16to every man in the county who would sit
57:18still for it. The story was not
57:19embellished. It did not need to be. A
57:22trapper had been dying in a blizzard,
57:23and the only smoke on the horizon had
57:25been the smoke from a widow's chimney at
57:27a clay bank outside town. And the widow
57:30had opened her door and saved his life,
57:32and the door she had opened was set into
57:33a wall. the storm could not touch. By
57:37the 22nd of December, six households in
57:39Vermillion Bluffs had sent word to
57:41Adelaide Meade that they would like to
57:43meet the widow Winthrop. By the 23rd, a
57:46delegation of three ranchers had written
57:48out to the Redout to ask very politely
57:51whether Hazel would consider drawing
57:52them a plan for a smaller structure of
57:55the same kind on their own claims. She
57:57had said she would consider it after the
57:59new year. They had thanked her and
58:01ridden away. On the morning of the 24th
58:04of December, Elias Rooker, who had grown
58:07restless with the waiting, saddled the
58:08Bay Geling and told Hazel that he was
58:11writing to Cheyenne to send a telegram
58:12directly to the deputy marshal there
58:14because the letter from the Cheyenne
58:15attorney had promised a visit before the
58:17new year, and no visit had come, and
58:19Elias had begun to fear that the letter
58:21itself had been intercepted somewhere
58:23along the mail route, and he did not
58:25intend to wait any longer to find out.
58:27He would be gone 4 days. He would be
58:29gone through Christmas. Hazel did not
58:32try to stop him. She knew that he was
58:34right. She knew also that Blackwood's
58:36writer had not come back for 3 weeks,
58:38that the silence itself was the message
58:40that whatever was coming was going to
58:42come in the interval when Elias was
58:43farthest away. She kissed him on the
58:46cheek at the door, which was a thing
58:47neither of them had planned, and neither
58:49of them acknowledged, and she watched
58:51him ride north until he disappeared over
58:53the ridge, and she went back inside and
58:56barred the door behind her. They came at
58:59dusk on Christmas Eve. Silas Thorne was
59:01not with her that night. She had sent
59:03him into town at midday with a package
59:05for Adelaide to forward to June in Rock
59:07Springs a small carved horse Elias had
59:10made from a scrap of cedar and a letter
59:12Hazel had written in her own hand, and
59:14she had told him to stay in town
59:16overnight because the sky was low again,
59:18and she did not want him caught out. He
59:20had gone reluctantly. He had promised to
59:22be back at first light. She was alone in
59:25the redout when the three horses crested
59:27the ridge. And she was alone when they
59:29came down the slope at an unhurried
59:31pace. And she was alone when they
59:33stopped 40 yards from the door and one
59:35of them called out her name in a voice
59:37she had not heard before. She did not
59:39answer. She did not go to the door. She
59:42went to the firing loop in the eastern
59:43wall and she looked through it at an
59:45angle that showed her all three of them
59:47without showing any of them her face.
59:49She saw three men on three horses. She
59:52saw the coats, which were not
59:53Blackwood's foreman's coat, but the
59:55rougher coats of hired men. She saw the
59:58rifles across their saddles. She saw,
1:00:00most importantly, the tin of coal oil
1:00:02lashed behind the saddle of the man in
1:00:04the center, and she understood at once
1:00:06that they had come to finish what had
1:00:08been begun with her tent in October. The
1:00:10man in the center called out again,
1:00:12"Widow Winthrop, Mr. Blackwood has sent
1:00:15us to inform you that his patience is at
1:00:17an end. You will open the door. You will
1:00:20come out. You will sign the paper we
1:00:22have brought. You will then be escorted
1:00:24to town where you will be reunited with
1:00:26your daughter and placed on the
1:00:28eastbound stage in the morning. If you
1:00:30do not open the door within 1 minute, we
1:00:32will open it for you. Hazel Winthrop, 42
1:00:36years old, alone in the chamber she had
1:00:38carved out of a hillside no one else had
1:00:41wanted, put her mouth close to the
1:00:42firing loop and spoke through it in a
1:00:44voice pitched to carry across the 40
1:00:46yards of frozen sage. Gentlemen, my
1:00:49daughter is not in this territory. She
1:00:51has not been in this territory for one
1:00:53month. If Mr. Blackwood has told you
1:00:55otherwise, he has lied to you. There is
1:00:58no paper I will sign. There is no door I
1:01:00will open. There is, however, a rifle at
1:01:03this loop, and there is a second at the
1:01:05shutter above your head, and there is a
1:01:07third leaning by the door which I can
1:01:09reach without moving my feet. I would
1:01:11prefer not to shoot any of you tonight.
1:01:13It is Christmas Eve. I would prefer you
1:01:16turn your horses around and ride back to
1:01:18Mr. Blackwood and tell him that his
1:01:20patience is not the only patience in the
1:01:22basin that is at an end. There was a
1:01:24silence. The wind moved in the sage.
1:01:27Somewhere on the ridge above an owl
1:01:28called once. The horses shifted. Then
1:01:31the man in the center gave a low order.
1:01:33Hazel could not quite hear and the three
1:01:35of them dismounted and unlashed the coal
1:01:37oil and they began to walk toward the
1:01:39door. She fired the first warning shot
1:01:41into the ground 3 ft in front of the
1:01:43lead man and the ball threw up a spray
1:01:45of frozen dirt that spattered against
1:01:47his coat and he stopped and the other
1:01:49two stopped behind him and the horses
1:01:51shied and began to walk backward. She
1:01:54worked the lever of the rifle. She
1:01:56chambered a second round. She spoke
1:01:58again through the loop. The next one
1:02:00will not be a warning. Ride out. The man
1:02:03in the center looked at the door. He
1:02:04looked at the loop. He could not see
1:02:06her. He could see only the small dark
1:02:09opening in the wall and behind it the
1:02:11flat certain voice of a woman who had
1:02:13already fired one round without
1:02:15hesitation. He turned to the man on his
1:02:17right. He gave another order. This one
1:02:20too, Hazel could not hear, but the man
1:02:22on his right retreated to the horses
1:02:24mounted and rode back up the ridge at a
1:02:26pace that was not a retreat, but a
1:02:28summons. And Hazel understood before the
1:02:31man had crested the ridge that he had
1:02:33been sent for reinforcements. She had
1:02:35until he came back with them to
1:02:37reconsider her situation. She
1:02:39reconsidered it. She did not change her
1:02:41mind. The two men who had remained
1:02:43pulled back to the horses. They did not
1:02:45leave. They took up positions at the
1:02:47base of the ridge out of the angle of
1:02:49the firing loop, and they built a small
1:02:51fire in the shelter of a boulder there,
1:02:53and they settled in to wait. Hazel
1:02:56understood the strategy. They were going
1:02:58to keep her pinned in the chamber until
1:02:59the reinforcements arrived. Then they
1:03:01were going to burn the door or the roof
1:03:03or both and take her out through the
1:03:05smoke. She had perhaps 2 hours, perhaps
1:03:08less. She did the only thing she could
1:03:10think of to do. She wrote on a scrap of
1:03:12paper in the largest letter she could
1:03:13form with a stub of pencil three words.
1:03:16Blackwood attacking. Come now. She tied
1:03:19the paper to the collar of the yellow
1:03:21dog Silus Thorne had left with her a
1:03:23week earlier for company on the nights
1:03:25he was in town. a rangy halfhound of no
1:03:28particular breeding whose loyalty had
1:03:30already been transferred to whoever fed
1:03:32him. She opened the shutter above the
1:03:34door 6 in. She pushed the dog through,
1:03:37pointed his nose toward town, and gave
1:03:39him the single word Silus Thorne had
1:03:41taught her to use on him. Home. The dog
1:03:43hit the snow running. He did not stop at
1:03:46the fire under the ridge. He did not
1:03:48stop at the horses. He crossed the sage
1:03:50at a gallop that no man on foot in a
1:03:52drift could have matched, and the two
1:03:54men at the fired one wild shot after him
1:03:56that struck nothing, and by the time the
1:03:59second man had reloaded, the dog was
1:04:01over the far rise and gone. Hazel barred
1:04:03the shutter. She sat down against the
1:04:05wall by the stove. She reloaded the
1:04:07rifle. She waited. She did not know then
1:04:10that Silas Thorne was already halfway
1:04:12back to the redout by that hour, having
1:04:15grown uneasy in town at dusk, and having
1:04:17ridden out early against Adelaide's
1:04:19advice. She did not know that he would
1:04:21meet the dog in the sage at the halfway
1:04:23mark, read the note by the light of a
1:04:25match cuped in his hand, turn the mule
1:04:27at a gallop back toward Vermillion
1:04:29Bluffs, and rouse every man in town who
1:04:31owed her a debt of any kind by the time
1:04:34the reinforcements from Blackwood were
1:04:35still saddling their horses at the
1:04:37lumber camp. She did not know that Elias
1:04:40Rooker, 4 days north in Cheyenne, was at
1:04:42that same hour sitting across a desk
1:04:44from a deputy United States Marshal
1:04:46named Franklin Hobbs, who had listened
1:04:48to his account without interruption for
1:04:502 hours, and who had at the end of it
1:04:52opened a locked drawer and produced a
1:04:54warrant that had been sitting there for
1:04:566 months, waiting only for a witness
1:04:58willing to swear to what Elias had just
1:05:00sworn. She did not know any of that.
1:05:03What she knew was that she was alone in
1:05:04the chamber, that the men outside were
1:05:06waiting for reinforcements, that the
1:05:08reinforcements would bring more coal oil
1:05:10than she could quench and more rifles
1:05:12than she could count. That the door she
1:05:14had built with Elias Rooker's help was
1:05:16going to be tested that night in a way
1:05:18no door had ever been tested since she
1:05:19had swung her first shovel into the
1:05:21bank. She looked at the tin box on the
1:05:23shelf, June's letters, Thomas's
1:05:26sketches, the lawyer's single sentence
1:05:28reply. She reached over and took the box
1:05:30down and set it beside her on the floor
1:05:32because if the roof came down, she
1:05:34wanted the box in her hand. Then she set
1:05:36the rifle across her knees and she
1:05:38watched the door and she waited for the
1:05:40sound of the reinforcements coming down
1:05:42the ridge and she thought quite clearly
1:05:44that she had built these walls with her
1:05:46own hands to hold against a country and
1:05:48against a winter, and that they were
1:05:50about to be asked to hold against
1:05:52something a great deal worse than
1:05:53either. They were going to hold. She
1:05:56could feel that in the clay under her
1:05:57palm where it pressed the floor. She
1:05:59could feel it in the steady breath of
1:06:00the fire and the steady breathing of the
1:06:02mayor and the steady beat of her own
1:06:04heart which had not in 8 weeks of steady
1:06:07work at a bank. No one had wanted
1:06:09learned to be afraid of anything the men
1:06:11in Vermillion Bluffs could send her
1:06:12away. Outside in the last hour before
1:06:14what was coming came, the fire at the
1:06:17base of the ridge burned small and low,
1:06:19and the men beside it warmed their
1:06:20hands, and the sky over the Big Horn
1:06:22Basin cleared to a hard black shot,
1:06:24through with stars, and somewhere far to
1:06:26the north over the Absuroka, the pale
1:06:29smear of light that meant another storm
1:06:30was beginning to move over the
1:06:32mountains. The storm was going to reach
1:06:34the basin by dawn. Hazel did not know
1:06:36that either. She only sat with the rifle
1:06:39across her knees and the tin box at her
1:06:41side and the fire steady beside her, and
1:06:43she waited for a knock she already knew
1:06:45was going to be the loudest sound of her
1:06:47life. The reinforcements crested the
1:06:49ridge at half midnight, five riders,
1:06:52where there had been three, and Hazel
1:06:54counted them through the firing loop by
1:06:56the way the horses broke the skyline
1:06:58against the stars. Two more coats, two
1:07:00more rifles. Another tin of coal oil
1:07:03lashed behind the saddle of a man who
1:07:04rode at the front now and was clearly in
1:07:07command of the party because the two who
1:07:09had been waiting at the base of the
1:07:10ridge rose from their fire the moment
1:07:12they saw him and walked their horses out
1:07:14to meet him. Hazel could not hear what
1:07:16passed between them. She did not need
1:07:18to. The new man dismounted, walked to
1:07:21within 30 yards of the door, and stood
1:07:23there for a long moment, studying the
1:07:25wall of the redout, as though he were
1:07:27reading a book he had been handed and
1:07:29had already in the first paragraph
1:07:31disagreed with. Widow. His voice was
1:07:34different from the earlier voices,
1:07:36slower, older, the consonants of a man
1:07:40who had learned English somewhere with
1:07:41hills in it, and had not lost the shape
1:07:43of them. My name is Rufus Kaine. I have
1:07:47been asked to bring this business to a
1:07:48close tonight. I would prefer to bring
1:07:50it to a close without anyone dying
1:07:52inside those walls, including yourself.
1:07:55You have half an hour to open the door
1:07:56and walk out. If you do, you will be
1:07:59taken to town under my protection, and I
1:08:01will personally guarantee that no harm
1:08:03comes to you between here and there. If
1:08:05you do not, I will burn the roof off
1:08:07that hillside, and I will drag you out
1:08:09through what remains, and I will not be
1:08:11in a position to guarantee anything at
1:08:13all. The choice is yours. half an hour.
1:08:17Hazel did not answer. She watched him
1:08:19walk back to his horse. She watched him
1:08:21give the order that sent two of his men
1:08:23circling wide around the chamber, one to
1:08:26the north and one to the south. And she
1:08:28understood that Cain had studied her
1:08:30fortification from the ridge, and had
1:08:32decided that a fire set against the
1:08:34sodcovered top of the roof would be more
1:08:36effective than a fire set against the
1:08:37iron strap door. He was correct in his
1:08:40reasoning. Elias had reinforced the door
1:08:42against exactly the assault Cain's
1:08:44predecessors had been prepared to mount.
1:08:47He had not reinforced the roof against a
1:08:49fire set from above, because a fire set
1:08:51from above required a man willing to
1:08:53climb the bank in the open under the
1:08:55guns of the chamber below, and no one
1:08:58had believed until this hour that
1:09:00Blackwood would find a man willing to do
1:09:01that. Cain evidently had found several.
1:09:04She had half an hour to think of an
1:09:06answer to that. She had, in fact, less.
1:09:08She heard the sound of an axe against
1:09:10the sandstone shelf above the roof
1:09:12within 10 minutes. And she understood at
1:09:14once that Cain's men were not going to
1:09:16bother with fire until they had first
1:09:18cleared a path to the chimney. If they
1:09:20could reach the chimney, they could drop
1:09:22something down it rags soaked in coal
1:09:24oil, a stick of dynamite, anything that
1:09:27would fill the chamber with smoke or
1:09:29worse and force her out through the door
1:09:31on their terms. She was going to have to
1:09:34stop them before they reached the
1:09:36chimney. and she was going to have to
1:09:38stop them without opening the door
1:09:39because the moment the door opened, the
1:09:41men below would rush it. She went to the
1:09:44firing loop in the eastern wall. She
1:09:46could not angle the rifle upward through
1:09:48the loop to reach a man on the roof. The
1:09:50loop had been designed for shooting
1:09:51outward at ground level. She went to the
1:09:54shutter above the door. She could open
1:09:56the shutter 6 in without exposing
1:09:58herself. And from that opening, she
1:10:00could see the two men who had remained
1:10:01below, but she could not see the roof.
1:10:04She went to the small ventilation shaft
1:10:06Elias had cut behind the stove, which
1:10:08ran up through the sandstone shelf at an
1:10:10angle and emerged near the chimney. She
1:10:13had never intended to shoot through it.
1:10:15She had not designed it for that, but it
1:10:17was open at the top, and it was the only
1:10:19opening in the chamber that pointed
1:10:20upward, and if she pressed her cheek
1:10:22against the clay, and looked up along
1:10:24the length of it, she could see dimly
1:10:26the sky and against the sky at the mouth
1:10:29of the shaft, the moving shadow of a
1:10:31man's boot. She could not shoot through
1:10:33the shaft without ricochet. The
1:10:35sandstone would send the ball back down
1:10:37at her. What she could do was speak
1:10:39through it, and she did in the loudest
1:10:41voice she could make carry up a narrow
1:10:43flu. The next sound I hear from that
1:10:45roof, I will fire this rifle up this
1:10:47shaft, and whoever is standing above it
1:10:50will lose a foot. You have been warned.
1:10:52The boot above her went still. She did
1:10:55not know whether the man had heard her
1:10:57clearly enough to believe her or whether
1:10:59he had simply paused to listen. She did
1:11:01not care. She worked the lever of the
1:11:03rifle loudly enough that the sound of it
1:11:05carried up the shaft. And she pressed
1:11:07the muzzle against the base of the flu
1:11:09where any ball fired would strike the
1:11:11sandstone in a way that would produce a
1:11:13great deal of noise and no useful
1:11:15projectile. And she fired. The report
1:11:18inside the chamber was deafening. The
1:11:20report as it emerged from the top of the
1:11:22shaft, amplified by the stone, was
1:11:24worse. The boot above her jerked
1:11:26backward out of sight, and she heard a
1:11:28shout, and then the scrape of two men
1:11:30scrambling back down the bank to the
1:11:32roof edge, and Cain's voice from below,
1:11:34cursing them and ordering them back up.
1:11:36They did not go back up immediately.
1:11:38They argued. Hazel heard fragments of it
1:11:41through the shaft in the shutter both.
1:11:43And what she heard told her that Cain
1:11:45had lost two minutes of his half hour,
1:11:47and that his men had begun for the first
1:11:49time to consider the possibility that
1:11:51the widow inside the chamber might kill
1:11:53one of them before the night was over.
1:11:55That was the moment the storm reached
1:11:57the basin. It came the way the second
1:11:59storm had come without a cloudbank
1:12:01warning, a sudden falling of the
1:12:03temperature that she felt through the
1:12:05walls of the redout as a change in the
1:12:08pressure against her ears. The wind rose
1:12:10in the sage. The horses at the base of
1:12:13the ridge shed and pulled at their
1:12:14pickets. The small fire the two original
1:12:17men had built went out in a single gust
1:12:19and did not relight. Cain looked up at
1:12:22the sky and Hazel could not see his
1:12:24face, but she could see the tilt of his
1:12:26hat. And she understood that Cain had
1:12:28lived long enough in this country to
1:12:30know what was coming and that he was
1:12:32calculating now whether he could finish
1:12:34his work before it arrived. He decided
1:12:36he could. He shouted the men on the roof
1:12:38back to their task. The axe began again
1:12:41against the sandstone. Silus Thorne
1:12:43reached the outskirts of Vermillion
1:12:45Bluffs a little before 1 in the morning,
1:12:47riding a mule that had been pushed
1:12:49harder than any mule of that age should
1:12:51have been pushed. And he did not stop at
1:12:53the boarding house. I rode directly to
1:12:55the livery and from the livery to the
1:12:57general store, and from the general
1:12:59store to the small frame house at the
1:13:01end of Front Street, where the German
1:13:03blacksmith Stro lived above his forge
1:13:06with his wife and his two grown
1:13:07apprentices. And in the space of 40
1:13:09minutes, he had roused 11 men from their
1:13:11beds by the simple expedient of pounding
1:13:14on their doors with the butt of his
1:13:15rifle and reading them the note from the
1:13:18yellow dog's collar by the light of a
1:13:19bullseye lantern. Six of the 11 saddled
1:13:22their horses without argument. Two of
1:13:24them argued and then saddled. Three of
1:13:27them refused, one because his wife would
1:13:28not permit it, and two because they had
1:13:30not in the end made up their minds which
1:13:32side of the widow's fight they intended
1:13:34to stand on. Silas did not press them.
1:13:37He led the eight men who had come with
1:13:39him out of Vermilion Bluffs at a pace
1:13:41the mule could barely maintain, and by
1:13:43the time they cleared the last house of
1:13:45the town, the temperature had dropped so
1:13:47far that the breath of the horses hung
1:13:49in the air like torn cloth. Elias Rooker
1:13:52at that same hour was still 42 mi to the
1:13:54south, riding a fresh horse rented from
1:13:57a livery at the Chugwater stage stop
1:13:59with Deputy Marshall Franklin Hobbs on a
1:14:01second horse beside him and two mounted
1:14:04deputies behind. Hobbs had refused to
1:14:06wait for morning. He had read Elias's
1:14:09account, and he had read the letter from
1:14:10the Cheyenne attorney, and he had at the
1:14:12end of both said only that any warrant
1:14:14that had been sitting in a locked drawer
1:14:16for 6 months was a warrant that had been
1:14:18sitting there too long, and he had
1:14:19written out of the Cheyenne federal
1:14:21office within the hour with three men
1:14:23and four horses and a written
1:14:25authorization to arrest Cyrus Blackwood
1:14:27on charges that would eventually run to
1:14:2811 pages of specification. They were
1:14:31going to be at least 6 hours reaching
1:14:33Vermillion Bluffs, even if the storm did
1:14:35not turn them back. Elias knew this. He
1:14:37wrote anyway. The axe on the sandstone
1:14:40above the redout struck through to the
1:14:42top of the roof at 10 minutes to one.
1:14:44Hazel heard the tumber of the blow
1:14:46change the sharp ring of steel on stone,
1:14:48giving way to the duller thud of steel
1:14:50on packed clay. And she knew that within
1:14:52another 5 minutes the men above her
1:14:54would be through to the cedar posts and
1:14:56that a fire lit against the exposed
1:14:58timber of the roof would burn regardless
1:15:00of how much snow fell on it because the
1:15:02men would feed it with coal oil until it
1:15:04took. She had one move left that she had
1:15:07not used. She had held it in reserve
1:15:09because using it meant abandoning the
1:15:11redout in a way she had promised herself
1:15:13she would not do. But the redoubt was
1:15:15about to be abandoned regardless, either
1:15:17by her walking out of it or by the roof
1:15:19coming down on her head. And there was a
1:15:21third possibility she had considered
1:15:23exactly twice in the past 8 weeks and
1:15:25had never let herself examine closely,
1:15:28and she examined it now. The second
1:15:30chamber Elias had helped her cut for
1:15:32winter storage, had at its far end a
1:15:34natural fissure in the sandstone that
1:15:36Elias had partially cleared during the
1:15:37excavation, and had then, at Hazel's own
1:15:40suggestion, left partially open rather
1:15:42than sealing it. It was not a passage.
1:15:44It was a crack in the rock, wide enough
1:15:46at its mouth for a person to squeeze
1:15:48through sideways, narrowing to nothing
1:15:50at its far end. Elias had judged it
1:15:53useless as an escape route because it
1:15:54went nowhere. But it went in fact about
1:15:5711 ft back into the sandstone before it
1:15:59closed, and 11 ft of solid rock between
1:16:02her and a fire on the roof was 11 ft
1:16:04more than the chamber itself would give
1:16:06her. Once the timbers began to burn, she
1:16:09could not escape. She could take
1:16:11shelter. She could also, if she moved
1:16:13fast enough, take the tin box with her
1:16:15and the second rifle in a canteen of
1:16:17water and a wool blanket, and she could
1:16:19seal the entrance to the second chamber
1:16:21behind her with the heavy door she had
1:16:23built for it 3 weeks earlier. At Elias's
1:16:26insistence, Elias had wanted the door
1:16:28because a bear could smell salt pork
1:16:30through 6 in of clay. Hazel was grateful
1:16:33now for reasons Elias had not
1:16:35anticipated. She gathered what she
1:16:37needed in 90 seconds. She left the mare
1:16:39where the mayor was, because the mayor
1:16:41could not fit through the fissure, and
1:16:43she spoke to the animal in the same low
1:16:45voice she had used on the night of the
1:16:46first storm, and she trusted that the
1:16:49men outside, whatever else they were,
1:16:51were not the sort of men who would shoot
1:16:53a picketed horse without cause. She
1:16:55hoped so. She had to hope so, because
1:16:57there was nothing else she could do for
1:16:59the mayor in the minutes she had left.
1:17:01She closed the door of the second
1:17:02chamber behind her. She barred it. She
1:17:05squeezed sideways into the fissure. She
1:17:07pulled the blanket in after her and drew
1:17:09it across the mouth of the crack as
1:17:11insulation against smoke. She sat down
1:17:14on the cold sandstone with the rifle
1:17:16across her lap and the tin box in her
1:17:18arms, and she pressed her back against
1:17:20the innermost wall of the fissure, and
1:17:23she waited. The fire started 3 minutes
1:17:25later. She heard it in the change of
1:17:27sound above her, the sudden roar of coal
1:17:29oil taking the wump of a rag lit and
1:17:32dropped through a hole punched in the
1:17:33roof. She smelled it in the same
1:17:35instant, the sweet oily wreak of the
1:17:37coal oil finding cedar. The men above
1:17:40her cheered briefly in the way that men
1:17:41cheer who have just done a thing they
1:17:43are not proud of and wish to drown the
1:17:45discomfort in noise. She heard Boots
1:17:47retreating down the bank. She heard
1:17:49Cain's voice from below calling out
1:17:51orders, calling out to her, calling her
1:17:54by name and telling her to come out now.
1:17:56Come out now or burn. She did not
1:17:59answer. She had promised herself she
1:18:01would not answer once the fire began
1:18:03because any sound from her would only
1:18:05encourage them to press the door. She
1:18:07wanted them to believe she was still
1:18:09inside the main chamber. She wanted them
1:18:11to keep their guns on the door and not
1:18:13think about the roof over the second
1:18:14chamber which had been built lower and
1:18:16thicker than the roof of the main
1:18:17chamber for exactly the reason she was
1:18:19now trusting her life to. The fire on
1:18:22the roof burned for 9 minutes before
1:18:24Silus Thorne's party crested the ridge
1:18:26above the redout. And in those nine
1:18:28minutes, the main chamber filled with
1:18:29smoke and the cedar post caught, and one
1:18:32of them cracked with a sound like a
1:18:34rifle shot and fell across the mayor's
1:18:36picket line. And the mayor wisely broke
1:18:38her line and drove her shoulder against
1:18:40the door and bursted outward into the
1:18:42yard in a rush of terror and smoke. She
1:18:45ran past the two men waiting at the door
1:18:47before either of them had the presence
1:18:48of mind to fire. And she ran past the
1:18:51fire on the ridge, and she ran into the
1:18:53sage and out of the story. and Hazel
1:18:55Winthrop, hearing the sound of it dimly
1:18:57through 11 ft of sandstone, thanked God
1:19:00for the wit of a horse she had not
1:19:01remembered to name. Cain's men, seeing
1:19:03the mayor come out, believed for perhaps
1:19:0590 seconds that Hazel had come out with
1:19:07her. They rushed the doorway. They found
1:19:10the main chamber empty and burning. They
1:19:12understood at once that she had gone
1:19:14somewhere else. And Cain, who was not a
1:19:16stupid man, understood at once that
1:19:18there was only one other place inside
1:19:20the redout she could have gone. He
1:19:22shouted the order to break down the door
1:19:24of the second chamber. Two of his men
1:19:26set their shoulders to it. The door
1:19:28held. Elias had built it well. That was
1:19:31the moment the first rifle shot came
1:19:33down from the ridge above. It came from
1:19:35Silus Thornne sharps and it struck the
1:19:37ground between Cain's boots, and it was
1:19:40followed by a voice Cain knew and did
1:19:42not want to hear calling out from a
1:19:43position of cover behind a boulder at
1:19:45the crest. Rufus Cain, you will drop the
1:19:48rifle. You will order your men out of
1:19:50that structure. You will do it in the
1:19:52next 10 seconds or the next ball goes
1:19:54through your knee. You know I do not
1:19:56miss at this distance. Cain looked up at
1:19:58the ridge. He could not see Silus
1:20:00Thorne. He could see spread along the
1:20:02crest above him the muzzles of at least
1:20:04six rifles pointed down into the yard.
1:20:07And he could see the shadows of the men
1:20:08behind them. And he could count. Two of
1:20:11his own men were still inside the second
1:20:13chamber's doorway trying to break down a
1:20:15door that was not going to break. Two
1:20:17more were at the ridge base with the
1:20:18horses. He himself was in the open. The
1:20:21math was very simple, and Rufus Cain had
1:20:24spent 30 years doing exactly this kind
1:20:26of math on exactly this kind of
1:20:27hillside. He set the rifle down. He
1:20:30raised his hands to shoulder height. He
1:20:32called the order to his men without
1:20:33turning his head in the flat, calm voice
1:20:35of a man who has decided that living to
1:20:37see morning is a preferable outcome to
1:20:40any other. Stand down, all of you. Stand
1:20:43down now. The two men at the second
1:20:46chamber's door stopped and turned. One
1:20:48of them started to raise his rifle. The
1:20:50other put a hand on his arm and shook
1:20:52his head. And the first man lowered the
1:20:54rifle again because he had also done the
1:20:56math and had reached the same answer.
1:20:58Silas Thornne's men came down off the
1:21:00ridge in a slow, careful skirmish line.
1:21:02Three of them keeping their rifles on
1:21:04Cain. Three of them fanning out to cover
1:21:07the two at the door. and Silas himself
1:21:09came down last, walking the mule at a
1:21:11pace so deliberate that Hazel, listening
1:21:13from the fissure, could not at first
1:21:15understand why he was moving so slowly.
1:21:18She understood a moment later he was
1:21:20giving the fire on the main roof time to
1:21:22be seen from the ridge by the second
1:21:24party of riders, now coming up from the
1:21:26south, whose torches she could not see
1:21:28from where she sat, but whose approach
1:21:30Silas had glimpsed from above 10 minutes
1:21:32earlier. The southern party was Elias
1:21:34Rooker, Marshall Hobbs, and the two
1:21:36deputies from Cheyenne riding through
1:21:38the leading edge of the storm at a pace
1:21:40that would kill a lesser horse. Silas
1:21:42wanted them to be able to find the
1:21:43redout through the smoke and the burning
1:21:45roof was doing that job better than any
1:21:47signal fire he could have built. Hobbes
1:21:50reached the yard 19 minutes later. By
1:21:52that time, Silas Thorne had Rufus Cain
1:21:54and four of his men disarmed and sitting
1:21:56in a row against the base of the ridge
1:21:58with their hands on their heads, and the
1:22:00fire on the roof had been beaten down
1:22:02with shovels of snow, and the door of
1:22:04the second chamber had been unbarred
1:22:06from the outside by Silas himself,
1:22:08calling through the wood in a voice
1:22:10Hazel recognized before he had finished
1:22:12her name. She came out of the fissure.
1:22:15She came out of the second chamber. She
1:22:17stood in the ruined doorway of the main
1:22:18chamber with the tin box still in her
1:22:20arms, and she looked at the smoke rising
1:22:23from the collapsed cedar posts. And she
1:22:25looked at the mayor gone into the sage,
1:22:27and she looked at Silus Thorne, who had
1:22:29put his hat on the ground beside him,
1:22:31and was on one knee beside a man she did
1:22:33not at first recognize as Rufus Cain,
1:22:36because Cain, now that she saw him
1:22:37closely for the first time, was older
1:22:40than his voice had suggested. He was
1:22:42perhaps 60. His face bore the pale ridge
1:22:45of an old scar from cheekbone to jaw
1:22:47that she had seen once before in a
1:22:49photograph her husband had shown her of
1:22:51a mining camp in the San Juan Mountains
1:22:53in the spring of 1879 in which Thomas
1:22:56had circled a face in the back row with
1:22:58a pencil and had written beneath it
1:23:00without further explanation. This one
1:23:02was there. She walked over to Cain.
1:23:05Silas Thorne stood up and stepped back.
1:23:07Cain looked up at her from where he sat
1:23:09in the snow, and his eyes, which were
1:23:11pale and tired, and no longer the eyes
1:23:13of the man who had called out to her
1:23:15from 30 yards, met hers without
1:23:17flinching. "You were at the Ofer shaft."
1:23:19His mouth moved. It took him a moment to
1:23:22answer. When he did, his voice had lost
1:23:24the careful command of the earlier hour,
1:23:26and become the voice of a man who has
1:23:28been carrying a weight for a long time,
1:23:30and has been asked unexpectedly to set
1:23:32it down. I was the shift foreman. I
1:23:35signed the timbering off. I signed off 8
1:23:38in on 6 foot when I had specifications
1:23:41for 12 on4 in my desk. I was paid $300
1:23:45in cash by Cyrus Blackwood the week
1:23:47before the collapse. I have carried this
1:23:50since June of 82. Ma'am, I did not know
1:23:52your husband was one of the men in that
1:23:54shaft when I signed the papers. I have
1:23:56learned since. I have taken work from
1:23:58Blackwood twice since then because he
1:24:01made it clear he would put me in the
1:24:02ground if I refused. Tonight was the
1:24:04third time. I would not have burned that
1:24:06roof if I had known you were the wife of
1:24:07the man who wrote the report. I did
1:24:10know. Blackwood told me. I burned it
1:24:12anyway. I want that written down.
1:24:14Whatever you decide to do with it. Hazel
1:24:17stood looking down at him for a long
1:24:18moment. The storm was still building.
1:24:21The wind was rising in the sage.
1:24:23Marshall Hobbs had dismounted at the
1:24:25edge of the yard and was walking toward
1:24:27them with Elias Rooker beside him. And
1:24:29Elias had not yet seen her clearly
1:24:31through the smoke, and she wanted the
1:24:33moment before he did to be a moment she
1:24:35used well. She spoke to Cain without
1:24:38raising her voice. You will testify. You
1:24:40will testify in Cheyenne, and you will
1:24:43testify against every man who paid you,
1:24:45and every man who paid the men who paid
1:24:47you. And you will do it because I am
1:24:50going to tell this marshall to let you
1:24:52live to do it. And because you are going
1:24:54to spend the rest of your life proving
1:24:55that the thing you did tonight was the
1:24:57last thing of that kind you will ever
1:24:59do. If you refuse, I will not stop the
1:25:01marshall from doing whatever the law
1:25:02permits him to do. If you agree, I will
1:25:04speak for you at your sentencing, and I
1:25:07will speak the truth, which is that you
1:25:09saved your own soul tonight by opening
1:25:10your mouth in this yard. Do you agree?
1:25:14Rufus Cain closed his eyes. He nodded
1:25:16once. I agree. Hazel turned. Elias was
1:25:20there. He had reached her without her
1:25:22seeing him come, and he did not embrace
1:25:24her because neither of them were the
1:25:26kind of people to embrace in front of
1:25:28eight men in a federal marshall in a
1:25:30burning yard. But he put his hand on her
1:25:32shoulder for the space of two breaths,
1:25:34and she put her own hand over his, and
1:25:36neither of them said anything because
1:25:38there was nothing that either of them
1:25:39needed to say in that particular minute.
1:25:42Marshall Hobbs cleared his throat. He
1:25:44was a broad man of perhaps 45 with a
1:25:46gray mustache trimmed neatly across his
1:25:48upper lip and the still watchful eyes of
1:25:51a man who had in the course of his
1:25:52professional life arrested a great many
1:25:55people and had learned not to be
1:25:57surprised by any of them. Widow Winthrup
1:26:00he touched the brim of his hat. I have a
1:26:02warrant here for the arrest of Cyrus
1:26:04Blackwood on charges of mail fraud,
1:26:06timber theft from federal lands and
1:26:08conspiracy in the deaths of 11 men at
1:26:10the Ofer Shaft. I intend to serve it
1:26:13within the hour. I would consider it a
1:26:15personal favor if you would consent to
1:26:17remain in the company of my deputies at
1:26:18the Vermillion Bluffs boarding house
1:26:20until Blackwood is in custody because I
1:26:23have no doubt he has men in this basin
1:26:25who have not yet been accounted for, and
1:26:27I would prefer not to add your name to
1:26:28any list I am obliged to write tomorrow.
1:26:30Will you agree to that?" Hazel looked at
1:26:33the ruined Redout. She looked at the
1:26:35smoke rising from the collapsed roof.
1:26:37She looked at Silas Thorne, who was
1:26:39already picking through the smoldering
1:26:41timbers to see what could be saved, and
1:26:43at Elias, who was watching her with an
1:26:45expression that suggested he already
1:26:46knew what her answer was going to be. I
1:26:48will agree, Marshall, on one condition.
1:26:51When you go to arrest Cyrus Blackwood,
1:26:53you will take Mr. Rooker with you as a
1:26:55witness, and you will bring Mr.
1:26:57Blackwood passed this claim on the way
1:26:59to Cheyenne, and you will stop him here
1:27:01for exactly the length of time it takes
1:27:03for him to see with his own eyes what he
1:27:05did not manage to destroy. That is the
1:27:08only condition I have. After that, I am
1:27:10the marshall's guest at Mrs. Me until it
1:27:12pleases him to release me." Hobbes
1:27:14considered this for a moment, then
1:27:16slowly he smiled. It was the first smile
1:27:19Hazel had seen from him, and it was a
1:27:21smile that suggested Marshall Franklin
1:27:23Hobbes had spent a great many years
1:27:24wishing he could grant exactly this kind
1:27:26of condition to exactly this kind of
1:27:28witness, and had rarely been given the
1:27:30opportunity. Widow Winthrop, that is a
1:27:33condition I will accept with pleasure.
1:27:35They rode into Vermillion Bluffs at
1:27:37first light. The storm had blown itself
1:27:40out an hour before dawn in a way Wyoming
1:27:42storm sometimes will its fury spent in
1:27:44the higher country before it could reach
1:27:46the basin floor with full force.
1:27:49Marshall Hobbs and his deputies took
1:27:50Cyrus Blackwood from his bed at the
1:27:52lumber camp headquarters without
1:27:53resistance. Because Blackwood, when he
1:27:56understood who was standing at his door,
1:27:58and what warrant they carried, had the
1:28:00wit to see that the game was up and did
1:28:02not compound his difficulties by drawing
1:28:04a pistol. He asked only as they walked
1:28:06him out to the waiting horses whether he
1:28:09might be permitted to put on a coat.
1:28:11Hobbs permitted him the coat. He did not
1:28:13permit him the horse he had asked for.
1:28:16Blackwood was mounted wrist bound in
1:28:18front of him on the same tired stage
1:28:20horse that had carried one of the
1:28:21deputies and he was ridden out of
1:28:23Vermilion Bluffs behind Silus Thornne's
1:28:25mule and he was taken past the ruined
1:28:27Redout at the Red Clay Bank exactly as
1:28:29Hazel had requested. She was standing in
1:28:32the yard when he came by. She had ridden
1:28:34out ahead of the Marshall's party on
1:28:35Adelaide Me's borrowed horse at Hobbs's
1:28:37own suggestion, and she was standing in
1:28:39front of the collapsed doorway of the
1:28:41main chamber with her father's old coat
1:28:42buttoned to the throat and her hair
1:28:44pinned neatly under her hat and no
1:28:46expression at all on her face. Blackwood
1:28:49riding passed between his guards looked
1:28:51at her for perhaps 3 seconds. She looked
1:28:53back. Neither of them spoke. There was
1:28:56nothing to say that would have been
1:28:57worth the saying, and both of them
1:28:59understood it, and the party rode on
1:29:01toward Cheyenne and Cyrus Blackwood,
1:29:03passed out of the visible portion of
1:29:05Hazel Winthrop's life, at the pace of a
1:29:07walked horse, exactly as she had wanted.
1:29:10June came home on the 16th of January on
1:29:13the eastbound stage with a small carpet
1:29:15bag and a book Aunt Karen had given her
1:29:17and a letter from Karen herself that
1:29:19thanked Hazel for the honor of the
1:29:21girl's company and offered in a
1:29:23postcript to have her back any summer
1:29:24she cared to send her. Hazel met the
1:29:26stage in front of the general store. She
1:29:28had not seen her daughter in 9 weeks.
1:29:31She had prepared herself for the sight
1:29:32of the girl, and she had prepared her
1:29:34voice, and she had prepared especially
1:29:37not to weep in front of the
1:29:38[clears throat] six people who had
1:29:39gathered on the boardwalk to watch the
1:29:40reunion. She managed all three
1:29:42preparations for approximately the
1:29:44length of time it took June to step down
1:29:46from the stage and set the carpet bag on
1:29:48the boards. Mama Hazel did not manage
1:29:52after that. She held her daughter for a
1:29:54long time in the middle of Front Street
1:29:55in Vermillion Bluffs while a light snow
1:29:58fell around them. And June, who had
1:30:00grown perhaps half an inch in nine weeks
1:30:02and had also grown in ways that were not
1:30:04measured in inches, held her mother back
1:30:07and did not say anything else for a
1:30:08while. Adelaide me, standing on the
1:30:10boardwalk with her arms folded, allowed
1:30:13one tear to travel the length of her
1:30:14cheek before she wiped it away with the
1:30:16back of a glove and pretended it had not
1:30:18happened. Silas Thornne at the corner of
1:30:21the general store turned his head aside
1:30:22and studied a fence post with sudden
1:30:24interest. They rebuilt the redout in the
1:30:26spring. Elias drew the plans. Silas
1:30:30Thorne and four of the men who had come
1:30:31out of Vermillion Bluffs that Christmas
1:30:33Eve did the framing. Stro forged the
1:30:36iron work on credit that Hazel paid off
1:30:38within 6 months from the sale of the
1:30:39plans themselves to other homesteaders
1:30:41in the basin. because by April the
1:30:43letters had begun to arrive from as far
1:30:45as the Powder River country asking
1:30:47whether the widow Winthrop would consent
1:30:49to sketch out a design for a similar
1:30:51structure on other claims and by June
1:30:53there were four such structures under
1:30:55construction within a day's ride of
1:30:57Vermillion Bluffs and by the end of that
1:30:59first summer there were 11. The new
1:31:02redout at Hazel's own claim was larger
1:31:04than the first three chambers rather
1:31:05than two with a proper glazed window in
1:31:08the western wall for the first time and
1:31:10a second stove installed for June's
1:31:12school room. Because June had decided
1:31:14over the winter in Rock Springs that she
1:31:16was going to be a teacher and had begun
1:31:18her preparation for that vocation by
1:31:20teaching Silas Thorne to read the poems
1:31:22of Longfellow with more comprehension
1:31:25than he had brought to them by his own
1:31:26lights. The trial of Cyrus Blackwood
1:31:29took place in Cheyenne in June of 1884.
1:31:32Elias testified for two full days. Rufus
1:31:35Kaine testified for one. Hazel testified
1:31:38for 3 hours on a Wednesday morning in
1:31:40the middle of the second week, wearing a
1:31:41black dress Adelaide had helped her make
1:31:43and speaking in a voice pitched to reach
1:31:45the last row of the courtroom and no
1:31:47farther. The jury deliberated for 4
1:31:50hours. Blackwood was convicted on nine
1:31:52of the 11 counts and sentenced to 22
1:31:55years in the federal penitentiary at
1:31:56Detroit. He served 11 of them before
1:31:59dying of a fever in the prison infirmary
1:32:01in the spring of 1895.
1:32:04Hazel did not attend the funeral. She
1:32:06was not in fact informed of the death
1:32:08for 6 months. And when she was informed,
1:32:10she read the letter through, once folded
1:32:12it, placed it in the stove, and returned
1:32:14to the work she had been doing, which
1:32:16was the design of a schoolhouse for the
1:32:18town of Vermillion Bluffs, to be built
1:32:20on a footing of red clay and sandstone,
1:32:22and to be at June's specific insistence,
1:32:24warm enough in January that the children
1:32:27would not be obliged to write with their
1:32:28gloves on. Elias Ruker did not go back
1:32:31to Colorado. He stayed at the claybank
1:32:33through the spring and the summer of
1:32:351884. And by the autumn of that year, he
1:32:37had built with Silus Thornne's help a
1:32:39small cabin of his own on a corner of
1:32:41Hazel's quarter section, roofed with sod
1:32:44and warmed by a stove he had brought up
1:32:46from Rollins on Micah Dunes freight
1:32:48wagon. He and Hazel married on the 21st
1:32:51of September of that year in a small
1:32:53ceremony conducted by a circuit judge at
1:32:55Adelaide Me's boarding house with June
1:32:58standing witness and Silas Thorne
1:33:00wearing a coat borrowed from Stro for
1:33:02the occasion giving the bride away.
1:33:04There was no honeymoon. There was
1:33:06instead a great deal of work to be done
1:33:08that season because the plans for other
1:33:10redouts had begun to come in from as far
1:33:12as Montana territory and Elias, who had
1:33:15rediscovered in the course of drafting
1:33:17them the pleasure he had once taken in
1:33:19fine drafting work, had accepted a small
1:33:21commission from the territorial
1:33:23government to prepare a pamphlet on
1:33:25earth sheltered construction for
1:33:27distribution to homesteaders throughout
1:33:29the Wyoming and Dakota territories.
1:33:31Hazel provided the sketches. Elias
1:33:34provided the specifications. The
1:33:36pamphlet, published in the spring of
1:33:381885, went through four printings and
1:33:41reached homesteaders as far east as the
1:33:43Nebraska Sand Hills and as far west as
1:33:45the Snake River plane. Hazel's name
1:33:47appeared on the title page alongside
1:33:49Elias's in the same size type at Elias's
1:33:52insistence and over Hazel's mild
1:33:54objection. The years that followed took
1:33:56the shape those years take. June went
1:33:59east to normal school in the autumn of
1:34:011887 and returned three years later with
1:34:03a certificate and a fiance. A young man
1:34:06from Cheyenne named Abselum Reer who ran
1:34:09a hardware business and who proved over
1:34:11the course of a long marriage to be
1:34:13exactly the kind of man Hazel had once
1:34:15hoped her daughter would find. They took
1:34:17over the Vermillion Bluff Schoolhouse
1:34:19together in the autumn of 1891 June,
1:34:22teaching in the classroom Hazel had
1:34:23designed in Absalom, serving on the
1:34:26school board and running his hardware
1:34:28business from a storefront two doors
1:34:30down from Stro's Forge. Their first
1:34:32child, a daughter, was born in the
1:34:34summer of 1893 and was named without any
1:34:37discussion Hazel had been permitted to
1:34:38witness Hazel June Reader. Hazel wept
1:34:41when she learned this quietly in the
1:34:43kitchen of her own redout at the clay
1:34:45bank with Elias's hand on her shoulder
1:34:47and the fire warm beside her. Silas
1:34:49Thorne died in the winter of 1898 at the
1:34:52age of 80 in his own bed in a small
1:34:54cabin he had built for himself on the
1:34:56far end of Hazel's claim 10 years
1:34:58earlier. He had refused all those years
1:35:00to live in the main redout with Hazel
1:35:02and Elias on the grounds that he had
1:35:04lived alone for 41 winters before he met
1:35:06the widow and did not intend to alter
1:35:08that arrangement now merely because he
1:35:10had grown fond of her cooking. He came
1:35:12to supper twice a week. He came to
1:35:14Christmas every year. He was buried at
1:35:16his own request on the ridge above the
1:35:18redout in a plot that Elias had marked
1:35:21out for him 3 years earlier and that
1:35:23overlooked the sage in the creek and the
1:35:25road that ran back toward town. His
1:35:27stone read only Silus Thorn friend to
1:35:29the Winthrops and it was cut by Stro's
1:35:32youngest son who by that time had
1:35:33inherited the forge. Adelaide me lived
1:35:36to see the turn of the century. She died
1:35:38in the spring of 1901 in the upstairs
1:35:41room of her own boarding house with June
1:35:43Reader holding one hand and Hazel
1:35:45holding the other. She had left in a
1:35:47small locked drawer of her writing desk
1:35:49a letter to Hazel that consisted of a
1:35:51single line. I am glad I opened my door
1:35:53to your girl. Hazel kept the letter in
1:35:56the tin box on the shelf beside Thomas's
1:35:58sketches and the lawyer's original
1:36:00single sentence reply, and she took it
1:36:02out and read it perhaps twice a year for
1:36:04the rest of her life. And each time she
1:36:06read it, she thought of a young reporter
1:36:08who had not yet come to see her, but who
1:36:10she had begun to suspect would come
1:36:12eventually. He came in the spring of
1:36:141905. His name was Howerin Beach, and he
1:36:18was 26 years old, and he wrote for a
1:36:20magazine called The Overland Monthly out
1:36:22of San Francisco. and he had ridden into
1:36:24Vermillion Bluffs on the eastbound stage
1:36:27with a leather notebook and a pencil and
1:36:29a letter of introduction from an editor
1:36:30whom Hazel had never heard of. He asked
1:36:33at the boarding house, which was still
1:36:35called ME, although Adelaide had been
1:36:37gone 4 years by then, and the young
1:36:39woman behind the desk had directed him
1:36:40to the claybank, and he had walked out
1:36:42through the sage in his city boots and
1:36:44had presented himself at the door of the
1:36:46redout at 4:00 on a Tuesday afternoon in
1:36:49the last week of April. Hazel was 64
1:36:52years old that spring. Her hair had gone
1:36:54entirely white in the year since Elias's
1:36:56death, which had come in the winter of
1:36:581903 of a chest complaint. Neither of
1:37:01them had seen coming, and which had left
1:37:03her for the first time since the summer
1:37:04she buried Thomas in Leadville, alone in
1:37:07a house she had built. She was not
1:37:09lonely. She had June and Absalom and
1:37:11Hazel June and the two younger reader
1:37:14children in town. And she had the plans
1:37:16on her drafting table, which now came
1:37:18from as far as Idaho and Utah. And she
1:37:20had Silas Thornne's dog, whose grandson
1:37:23she had inherited when Silas died, and
1:37:25who now lay by her fire, as his
1:37:27grandfather had once lain by the fire in
1:37:30his own cabin. The reporter, Howerin
1:37:32Beach, sat down across from her at the
1:37:34low table Elias had built 22 years
1:37:36earlier. He accepted a cup of coffee. He
1:37:39opened his notebook. He asked her in the
1:37:41careful voice of a young man conducting
1:37:43his first important interview whether
1:37:45she would tell him the story of how she
1:37:47had come to build the first earth
1:37:48sheltered dwelling in the state of
1:37:50Wyoming. Hazel Winthrop looked at him
1:37:52for a long moment. She looked past him
1:37:54at the walls of the chamber which had
1:37:56held for 22 winters and would hold for
1:37:58many more, and at the small tin box on
1:38:01the shelf, and at the window in the
1:38:03western wall through which the last
1:38:04light of a Wyoming spring afternoon was
1:38:06falling in a way she had watched it fall
1:38:08for two decades, and had never in all
1:38:10those years ceased to notice. Then she
1:38:13smiled. It was a small smile and it was
1:38:15not entirely for the reporter and it was
1:38:17the smile of a woman who had been asked
1:38:19a great many questions in her life and
1:38:21had learned that the most useful answer
1:38:23to almost any of them was very nearly
1:38:25the shortest. Young man, I did not build
1:38:28the first anything. I built a house I
1:38:31could afford in a country that would not
1:38:32sell me lumber out of the only material
1:38:34that was free. The earth did the work. I
1:38:36only listened to it. If you write down
1:38:38anything else, you will be writing down
1:38:40the version of the story that sells
1:38:42magazines and you are welcome to do it
1:38:44because I am too old to argue with a
1:38:46young man's editor. But you have asked
1:38:48me and I have told you. Howerin Beach
1:38:50wrote it down. He wrote it down exactly
1:38:53as she said it and he wrote a great deal
1:38:55more besides. And the article that
1:38:56appeared in the Overland Monthly in the
1:38:58autumn of 1905 under the title A Wyoming
1:39:02widow's redout ran to 11 pages and made
1:39:05Hazel Winthrop at the age of 64 briefly
1:39:08and against her will famous in the
1:39:09parlors of San Francisco and Chicago and
1:39:12Boston for the space of one publishing
1:39:14season. She did not read the article.
1:39:17Adelaide me would have read it to her.
1:39:19Elias would have read it to her. But
1:39:21Adelaide was four years gone, and Elias,
1:39:23too, and there was no one left in the
1:39:25redout to read it out loud. And Hazel,
1:39:27who had never much cared for reading
1:39:29about herself, in any voice, folded the
1:39:32copy the reporter sent her and placed it
1:39:34in the tin box on the shelf beside the
1:39:36other papers. It sat there for the rest
1:39:38of her life. She lived another 11 years.
1:39:41She died in the spring of 1916 at the
1:39:44age of 75 in her own bed in the chamber
1:39:46she had begun to dig with her own hands
1:39:48in October of 1883 with her daughter
1:39:51beside her and her granddaughter Hazel
1:39:53June who was by then 23 years old and a
1:39:56teacher in her own right holding her
1:39:57hand. The redoubt itself stood for many
1:40:00years after that. It stands, in fact,
1:40:02still on a hillside outside a small
1:40:04Wyoming town whose name has changed
1:40:06twice since the 1880s and whose current
1:40:09name is not the name Hazel would have
1:40:10used. The main chamber is preserved by
1:40:13the County Historical Society. The
1:40:15second chamber is used in the summers as
1:40:17a small museum in which a copy of the
1:40:19Overland monthly article is displayed
1:40:21under glass and in which a tin box
1:40:24containing three-folded letters and a
1:40:26stack of pencil sketches is displayed
1:40:28beside it on loan from the reader family
1:40:30who still live in the basin and who
1:40:32still on the anniversary of Hazel's
1:40:34death each spring walk out through the
1:40:36sage to lay a small bunch of prairie
1:40:38flowers at the base of the red clay
1:40:40bank. The stove has been removed. The
1:40:42chimney has been sealed against birds.
1:40:44The door Elias built has been replaced
1:40:46twice. Once in 1934 and once in 1978,
1:40:50but the frame he set with mortised
1:40:52corners into the clay in November of
1:40:541883 is still the frame that holds the
1:40:57current door and the iron straps he
1:40:58salvaged from a broken wagon on the
1:41:00freight road are still the straps that
1:41:02carry the hinges. The clay walls have
1:41:04not moved. They have not cracked. They
1:41:07have held as Elias Rooker predicted they
1:41:09would hold on. The first morning he set
1:41:11his hand against them for considerably
1:41:13more than 30 years. And they hold still,
1:41:15and they will hold, if the historical
1:41:17society is careful about the roof, for
1:41:19as many more years as anyone reading
1:41:21this account is likely to be alive to
1:41:23see. That is the whole of it. A widow
1:41:26built a house in a hillside. The house
1:41:28held. The country changed around it. The
1:41:31woman who built it lived long enough to
1:41:33see her grandchildren born and to bury
1:41:35two husbands and a great many friends.
1:41:38and to hear at the very end of her life
1:41:40a young reporter ask her a question she
1:41:42had already answered by the act of
1:41:44continuing to live in the answer for 22
1:41:46years. She did not build a monument. She
1:41:49built a place to be warm. The monument
1:41:51came later and it came without her
1:41:53permission and she never quite forgave
1:41:55the country for insisting on it. But the
1:41:57walls did not care. The walls only held.
1:42:00They are holding still.

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