“They Mocked A Mountain Man For Asking For A Wife — Then A Woman’s Question Shut The Whole Town Up”
Chapter 3
Gideon dismounted and tested the current with a long pine branch. The water tore at the wood, nearly ripping it from his grip. He watched a chunk of ice the size of a barrel smash against the bank, and when he turned to Cora, his face was grim.
“We cross here,” he said. “The water is freezing. If your horse loses its footing, don’t stay in the saddle. Slide off on the upstream side and hold the horn. If you go under, the current will drag you beneath the ice shelf downstream, and there will be nothing I can do. Trust the horse. Keep your feet ready.”
Cora’s heart hammered against her ribs. The gray water looked like a living thing, hungry and patient, eager to swallow her whole. She looked at the river. Then she looked at the man sitting calm on his horse, solid as bedrock, radiating a confidence she desperately needed to borrow.
She swallowed, squeezed her eyes shut for one brief second, and nodded. “Lead the way. I’m right behind you.”
Gideon guided his bay into the swirling current. The horse groaned, legs trembling against the force of the water, but pressed on with its rider’s steady hand. Cora urged her mare forward, and the moment the hooves hit the water, the cold rose up through her stirrups like liquid needles, biting through leather and wool in seconds. Her teeth began to chatter before she was a third of the way across.
Halfway over, disaster struck.
A massive chunk of ice slammed into the second pack mule. The animal screamed and reared, yanking its lead line taut. The violent tension jerked Cora’s mare sideways; the gray slipped on the slick stones, lost her footing, and plunged to her knees. Cora pitched forward with a gasp. The icy water surged over her waist, stealing the breath from her lungs in a paralyzing shock. Her heavy wool skirts soaked up the river like a sponge, dragging her down toward the churning depths. She lost a stirrup. The water rose to her chest. Her fingers slipped off the leather saddle horn.
“HOLD ON!”
Gideon’s roar cut through the deafening rush. He didn’t hesitate — he wrenched his bay back into the deepest part of the current, fighting upstream against the push of the ice, leaning out dangerously far from his saddle until his massive gloved hand locked onto the collar of Cora’s coat. His grip was iron, unyielding, absolute. With a burst of raw strength he hauled her up, steadied her mount, and kept her head above the freezing water.
Somehow — she never fully understood how — they made the far bank. Gideon drove both horses and the panicked mules up the slick mud into a small clearing, and the moment they reached dry ground, he vaulted from his saddle. He didn’t offer soft words of comfort. Sympathy, Cora would learn, didn’t keep a person alive in the wilderness. Action did.
He dragged dry cedar from a rocky overhang, shaved kindling with his hunting knife, and struck flint against steel. Within minutes a roaring fire crackled to life, and he wrapped Cora in a dry wool blanket from his waterproof pack, seating her so close to the flames she could feel her eyelashes begin to thaw.
“Strip off that wet coat and shawl,” he ordered, turning his back to her with his eyes fixed respectfully on the treeline as he tended the shivering horses. “The mountain doesn’t give second chances, Cora. The cold kills faster than the water. Get dry before the sun drops.”
She huddled by the fire, watching his broad back through the rising steam of her drying clothes. In Dunmore, they called him a beast, a heartless monster who belonged in a cave. But here, in the raw wilderness, she saw something else entirely. She saw a guardian — a man bound to a quiet code of survival that the town folk could never comprehend. He had risked his life to pull a stranger out of a river without a moment’s hesitation.
That night, as the fire crackled and the mountain settled into its cold dark breathing, Cora lay awake listening to the wind. And somewhere deep in the timber above them, a low, mournful howl rose into the black air.
It was joined by another.
Then another.
Until the whole canyon was full of it — a chorus of wolves, and they were close enough that Cora could hear the snapping of twigs and the soft, rhythmic panting just beyond the firelight.