“You Cook and Stay Out of My Way,” the Mountain Trapper Said — Until Her Hidden Scars Changed Eve…

Chapter 9

March brought the melt, and the melt brought the mud.

The snow went off the lower slopes in sheets, and the trail down to the valley turned to a boot-sucking bog, and the creek rose and ran brown and angry under the ice that was still rotting on its edges. Gideon had been waiting for the weather to break before he made the supply run, and the first week the roads were passable, he took her to town.

It was the first time Nora had left the cabin since December.

The trading post at Deer Gap sat at the bottom of the mountain where the road forked, a low building of warped boards with a false front and a hitching rail worn smooth by a thousand horses. There was a general store run by a man named Tully Breck, a livery, a blacksmith, and not much else. The noise of it hit her like a wave — men’s voices, the clang of the farrier’s hammer, a dog fight down by the feed lot.

She stayed close to Gideon without being obvious about it, the way she managed most things — by calculation rather than nerves. She kept her right hand at her side with the sleeve down, and she moved through the crowd of men and barrels and stacked goods the way she had learned to move through a room full of Martin’s business associates: present, pleasant, and impossible to pin down.

Flour. Salt. Cartridges. New rope. Gideon moved down his list with the economy of a man who knew exactly what he needed and did not intend to spend a minute longer among people than he had to.

Nora was standing between two bolts of canvas fabric, trying to remember whether the cabin had enough thread, when she heard the voice at the counter.

It was a smooth voice. Educated. The voice of someone who had spent his life indoors, among papers and clerks and the soft machinery of money.

“I’m looking for a woman. Goes by the name of Nora Hale. Widow woman, about thirty, dark eyes. Carries her right hand at an odd angle.”

She went still between the bolts of canvas.

The man speaking was in a frock coat that had not been made for this country. He had a leather satchel, and he laid a folded paper on the counter for Tully to look at, smoothing it flat with the deliberate care of a man who was used to being read and believed.

“Preston Hale of Cincinnati is her late husband’s brother and legal next of kin,” the man said. “She left without notifying the family, and there are concerns about her stability of mind. Mr. Hale would like her brought home safely. There’s a fifty-dollar consideration for anyone who can help locate her.”

Fifty dollars.

In Deer Gap, that was more than most men made in three months. It was a winter’s worth of wages, a year’s worth of hope, held out in the palm of a man in a city coat.

Gideon was six feet away at the hardware counter. He had been testing the weight of a coil of rope. He turned his head very slightly, without moving his body, and located her — rigid between the bolts of canvas, white-faced, not breathing, both hands gripping a bolt of fabric she was not going to buy.

He turned back to the counter.

He looked at the man in the frock coat for a long moment.

“Haven’t seen her,” Gideon said. His voice came out flat and unremarkable, the voice of a man who had been asked about the weather.

Tully squinted at the paper. “Women don’t come through here much outside of summer. Could ask over at the—”

“I’ll be asking around,” the man in the frock coat said pleasantly, folding the paper back into his satchel. “I understand there’s a trapper up on the north ridge who takes in hired help. I may ride up and have a word.”

“Roads are bad with the melt,” Gideon said. “Dangerous for a man who doesn’t know them.”

The man in the frock coat smiled. The smile did not touch his eyes.

“I appreciate the concern.”

He turned and walked out.

Gideon waited the count of ten. Then he picked up the coil of rope he had selected, and walked calmly to the back of the store, and stopped in front of Nora Hale.

She was clutching the bolt of canvas with both hands — left and right alike, no thought now to hiding anything. Her face was the color of the bleached boards under her feet.

“He’ll hire someone who knows the mountain,” she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “He’ll wait until he has the sheriff on his side. Preston doesn’t move until he has every piece, and then he doesn’t lose. I have to go. I can’t stay here and let him bring this to your door.”

Gideon looked at her. He was not a man who made speeches. He looked at her with the same steady attention he gave everything that mattered — the trap line, the weather, the mountain he had lived on for nine years — and he said what needed to be said.

“You know where every supply is in that kitchen. You know which log on the south wall needs re-chinking before next winter. You kept my horses calm in a lion scare, and you held that place together for three months without once asking me for a single thing you didn’t earn.”

He stopped. He picked up his rope.

“You’re not running,” he said. “You’ve already got a place to stand. Nobody gets to tell you otherwise.”

She stared at him.

“Get your flour,” Gideon said. “We’re heading back before the light goes.”