“They Mocked A Mountain Man For Asking For A Wife — Then A Woman’s Question Shut The Whole Town Up”

Chapter 2

The journey began in silence — the heavy, watchful silence of two people who had forgotten how to fill air with words. Gideon rode with his eyes always on the ridgelines and the sky, reading weather the way other men read letters. Cora said nothing. She focused on the burn in her thighs, the creak of wet leather, and the cold that seeped through her boots like a slow poison.

By the second afternoon, the valley was far below them, and they reached the swollen gray belly of the Madison River. The bridge had been torn out by autumn floods, and the water ran churning and white-capped, jammed with floating ice that ground against itself with a sound like breaking bones. The roar filled the canyon, a wild and terrible music.