The snow was deep and heavy. Every step was a battle. She waded toward the tree line, dragging the heavy iron bar behind her. By the time she reached the creek, she was weeping silently. Not from sadness, but from pure exhausting pain.
She fell to her knees at the edge of the frozen water. She raised the iron bar with both hands. Searing heat tore through her right side. She brought the bar down. It chipped the ice, doing nothing to break through.
She hit it again and again. Her breath came in ragged white plumes. Back at the cabin, Hiram watched from the porch. He held his coat closed around his neck, taking another swig from the bottle. He watched her struggle.
It made him feel tall again. "Put your back into it, you useless cow! " he yelled across the white expanse. Cora swung the bar again. This time the ice gave way, cracking and plunging into the dark, freezing water beneath. But the momentum carried her forward.
Her boots slipped on the icy bank. She pitched forward, crying out as her injured ribs slammed against the hard, frozen earth. The iron bar clattered away into the brush. She lay there, curled in a ball, unable to pull air into her lungs. The pain was blinding.
Hiram scoffed in disgust. He tossed the empty bottle into the snow and marched down the hill. His heavy boots tore through the drifts. He was furious. She was making a fool of him, putting on a show of weakness.
He reached the creek bank and grabbed her by the back of her coat, hauling her to her knees. "Get up. " he snarled. "I swear to God, Cora, you are the most worthless. " He raised his open hand to slap her across the face. The blow never landed. Something immense slammed into Hiram from the side.
It wasn't a push. It was the devastating impact of a man who moved like a falling boulder. Hiram was lifted off his feet and thrown backward into the snowbank. He hit the ground hard, the breath exploding from his lungs. Cora looked up, gasping.
Gideon stood over Hiram. He hadn't bothered to put on his coat. He stood in the freezing wind in his buckskin shirt, the muscles in his arms tense. Hiram scrambled, spitting snow and panic. He reached into his coat pocket for his skinning knife.
Gideon didn't give him the chance to draw it. He stepped forward and drove his boot into Hiram's ribs. There was a sickening crack, far louder than the click in Cora's chest. Hiram screamed, curling into a fetal position in the bloody snow. Gideon crouched down.
He grabbed Hiram by the collar of his coat and hauled him halfway up, bringing their faces close. "You raise a hand to her again. " Gideon said, his voice barely louder than the wind rattling the bare branches above them. "I'll skin you alive and leave you for the wolves. You understand? " Hiram could only whimper, clutching his side. Gideon dropped him back into the snow in disgust.
He turned to Cora. The terrifying violence that had just possessed him vanished in an instant, replaced by that same cold, grounded calm. He didn't offer a hand to help her up. He knew she wouldn't take it. Instead, he reached down, picked up the iron bar, and then grabbed the wooden bucket.
He dunked the bucket into the freezing water, pulling it up full, and set it on the bank next to her. "I'm leaving at first light. " Gideon said, looking down at her. "The snow's deep, but it's walkable. " Cora stared at him, clutching her side, shivering violently in the cold. "He's going to kill you eventually. " Gideon stated. It wasn't dramatic.
It was a simple observation of fact. "You can stay here and let him bury you in the spring. " He turned and started walking back up the hill toward the cabin, carrying the heavy iron bar as if it weighed nothing. He stopped after a few yards and looked back over his shoulder. "Or you can walk out. " Hiram didn't walk back to the cabin. He crawled.
He dragged himself through the heavy snow, clutching his right side, leaving a ragged, dark trail behind him. Every few feet, he stopped to spit pink froth into the white powder. Cora walked 10 paces behind him, carrying the wooden bucket of freezing water. Her own ribs burned with a dull, sickening heat, but she kept her back straight. When they finally breached the cabin door, the warmth of the stove hit them like a physical wall.
Hiram collapsed onto the floorboards, groaning, curling into a tight ball of misery. Gideon was sitting on his bedroll. He hadn't moved to help Hiram in, and he didn't move now. He watched the man writhe on the floor with the detached interest of a man watching a crushed beetle. Cora set the bucket by the washbasin.
She didn't go to her husband. She didn't kneel beside him to assess the damage. For 3 years, her survival had depended on tending to his moods, his hangovers, his injuries. She had patched his knuckles after bar fights and iced his head after benders. Now, she just looked at him.
He looked small, a pathetic, dirty man clutching his chest on a filthy floor. Slowly, painfully, Hiram managed to drag himself up onto the mattress. He lay there, his breath hitching, his face pale and slick with a cold sweat. The silence returned to the cabin, but the texture of it had changed. It was no longer the suffocating, tense quiet of a predator stalking prey.
It was the hollow, final quiet of a ruined house. Night fell hard. The wind picked up, howling through the pines and rattling the loose chinking in the walls. The temperature inside the cabin plummeted.
Cora sat on her stool by the dying fire, staring into the orange embers. She thought about her father's house in Missouri. The smell of pipe tobacco and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the parlor. She thought of