was dry. After that, she would gather it all over one shoulder, brush it until it was as dark and shiny as the pelt of a mink, then braid it back up. He would watch her do that at night as she sat on the stool by the hearth. It often occurred to him that a man could die happy from that sight alone. But he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life isolating himself and Letty from the rest of the world. Decisions would have to be made soon, and they would do it together, just as they’d done all along.
What concerned him most was where would they go from there. He wasn’t of a mind to go back to panning for bits and pieces of gold, and living in a tent, and it wasn’t fair to subject Letty to that hardship again. They still had most of the small poke of gold nuggets that they’d panned from Cherry Creek last fall, but it was hardly enough money to set them up for life. What he needed was a plan.
Before he’d been a drunk he’d been a soldier, and before that, and only briefly, his father had tried to farm. But being orphaned at such an early age had shortened any apprenticeship he might have experienced. Like Letty, all he knew how to do was survive.
Unaware of Eulis’s concerns, Letty went from day to day without thinking too far ahead. It was how she’d kept from going insane while sleeping with men for money and habit was a hard thing to break.
What had changed most for her was her self-esteem. It didn’t make sense and it shouldn’t have mattered, but symbolically burying herself had made a marked changed in Letty’s attitude. She held her head up higher when she walked, and she moved with a confidence and pride that she’d never had before. But she wasn’t the only one who’d changed.
If Eulis could grow wings, he would be flying. He woke up smiling, and went through the hard winter days with gusto. Cutting wood was a blessing, and bringing in a brace of rabbits now and then as a change to their diet gave him joy. Once in a while they talked about the future and where they might go, but not often. Until the spring thaw, they were just marking time.
On this particular day, the sun had come up to reveal a clear sky. For the time being, the sunshine was melting snow from the roof. In some places it splattered, in others it ran in rivulets onto the snow and ice at the base of the cabin. Eulis had taken the mules out of the valley and up into the tree line to haul back some wood, while Letty decided to make good use of his absence by giving the cabin a thorough cleaning. After wiping ash from all the flat surfaces inside the cabin, she set a bucket of snow by the hearth to melt for mop water. While it was melting, she took the broom to the far corner of the room where they’d been stacking the firewood, and began sweeping up the leaves and wood chips with a passion.
Soon, the air in the room was swirling with dry ash and dust motes. When she began to make herself cough, she decided a little air on the subject wouldn’t be amiss and opened the door just a crack.
The air was cold, but it smelled fresh and clean, and as she leaned outside, she took a deep cleansing breath before returning to her task. It wasn’t until she went back to the dirt she was sweeping that she saw something odd. The addition of light into the room was highlighting the tiny bits of dust still floating in the air. Only the bits were no longer floating. Something was pulling them toward the back wall.
If it had been toward the chimney, it would have made sense. After all, there would be a natural draft from the doorway to the flue, but there was no reason this should be happening—at least not from the door to the corner of the room.
Curious, she moved toward the wall and laid her hands against the rough-hewn wood, tracing the path of the chinking between the logs. To her surprise, she felt a rush of cold air, which didn’t make sense. The cabin had been built flush up against the mountain. There shouldn’t be anything back there to make