Lily Walkingstick stood on top of one Unaka recycling bin, staring into the snow. She’d stayed awake all night, huddled under her space blanket, listening for either Bryan or the Rifleman. At one point she thought she heard a rough, rasping cough. She bolted up, awake, ready to swing her axe with both hands, but again, it was just the monster lurking inside her own head. Now, in the dim morning light, she saw no tracks of any kind in the snow. Rifleman had not come, but neither had Bryan. She was alone. Suddenly, she felt like an idiot for calling Mary Crow. She wasn’t going to come up here and bring her a gun. What had she been thinking? She shook her head, embarrassed by her own panic. She only hoped that their connection last night had been so garbled that the woman had heard only static.
“She probably chalked it up to a scam call, anyway,” Lily told herself.
Forgetting about Mary Crow, she pulled out her phone and texted Bryan. When the message still would not go through she began to wonder if he had ever really planned to come, or if he was safe at home, laughing at the stupid fool who thought he would really drive through a snowstorm for her. No, she told herself, willing her tears away. Bryan loved her, called her beautiful. The snow had simply delayed him. Then a new thought assailed her. What if he’d had a wreck? What if Bryan was lying in the snow somewhere, hurt, in just as much danger as Edoda? She felt as if her life was breaking into pieces, just like the snowflakes falling from the sky.
She took a deep breath, trying to quell all thoughts of death and disaster. Bryan was fine, he would be here soon. And when he finally showed up, his uncle could drive her to Murphy and they could get the police to see about her father. But she needed to wait somewhere more hidden than the top of a garbage bin—the Rifleman could still be out there, tracking her.
She looked at the area around the trash bins. They stood at a wide spot in the road, placed there to accommodate the people who had summer homes in these woods. Behind them rose a small overhang. If she could stake out a place on the overhang, she could keep watch on the road. When Bryan came she could flag him down. If the Rifleman came back, she would at least see him first. And if the Snow Men drove by with her father, she would know that Edoda was on his way to jail.
She decided to build a campsite, partly to keep her ankle limber and partly to take her mind off Bryan. Climbing gingerly to the overhang, she found two white pine trees growing so close together that their soft-fronded branches formed a mostly snow-free island between them. They afforded cover from the Rifleman, but were near enough to the road so she could hear anyone approaching.
After pitching her tent beneath the trees, she emptied her backpack and headed to the nearby creek she’d forded last night. She filled her backpack with the smooth creek stones that lined the bank and returned to her little camp. Four long trips later, as her ankle began to throb again, she was ready to build a fire. All she had to do now was find something to burn.
The woods offered nothing— rime ice coated all the trees and even the underbrush was soggy with snow. Cursing as she realized she might have lugged all those rocks up here for nothing, she remembered the garbage bins. If one of them held anything dry enough to burn, she might be able to pull this off.
She picked her way down the little ridge and pushed up the lid of one bin. An eye-watering array of odors came forth, neglected garbage from the summer people who’d returned for Thanksgiving. She found decaying turkey carcasses, empty wine bottles, mashed down cartons of organic chicken stock. Slamming the lid back down, she moved to the next bin. This time she turned her head as she lifted the lid, but this bin emitted no odors–all the garbage inside was tied up in black plastic bags.
“Damn,” she whispered. “Doesn’t anybody up here read a newspaper?”
She moved down to the last bin and lifted the heavy lid. She held her breath, dreading more Thanksgiving trash, but to her great joy, the bin was full of torn Christmas wrapping paper and discarded gift boxes. Someone had even topped off the junk with an old oak rocking chair, broken into pieces. She took off a glove and felt the thing. It was cold, but dry. “Thank you, Santa Claus,” she said, laughing. She could light quite a bonfire with all the stuff in here.
Freshly energized, she dragged the rocking chair and a backpack full of paper up to her little camp between the trees. She laid the creek stones out flat, covered them with crinkled silver wrapping paper and lit it with her emergency lighter. She fed that fire to a nice blaze, then added the woven seat of the old rocker. She knew if she got the fire hot enough, the pieces of the chair would burn and heat the stones for hours.
She sat at the edge of her tent, nursing the fire, listening both for the boy she loved and the tracker she feared. As she watched the small orange flames dance, she thought about her father. Yesterday she wanted nothing more than to escape his care. Today, all she could think about was how fast he’d grabbed his knife and how loudly that gunshot had rung out. But worse was that the Snow Men might be taking him to jail. That would kill him. Not the guards or the inmates, but the iron bars that would cage him like an animal. Edoda was Cherokee, too proud to live confined. Tearing up at the image of her father languishing in a prison cell, she realized she was stuck. If Bryan did show up and drove her to the sheriff in Murphy, it would do no good. The Snowmen would have papers, warrants for her father’s arrest. Suddenly, she realized it was up to her. She was the only one who could free her father.
“I’m sorry, Edoda,” she whispered. “But I cannot keep my Atli promise like you wanted. I cannot go away and leave you alone.”
While Lily tended her fire, Mary was driving up a state road that twisted into the game lands beloved by hunters and fishermen. No sportsmen ventured forth today, though. The snow kept pummeling down, and with every switchback she climbed, the air grew colder, the road icier.
For miles, she had seen no one, passed no other traffic. She felt as if the world had been drained of color; the gold and russet trees of three months earlier were now lifeless black limbs, being slowly shrouded by white snow. She checked the atlas, wondering if she had taken a wrong turn, but the map and the compass on her dashboard read WNW–the right direction.
She drove higher, her windshield wipers doing double-time. As she crested a rise the road widened a bit, before leading even further up the mountain. Praying that this might be the elusive Unaka, she slowed to a crawl when a sudden movement caught her eye. A figure in a dark green coat lurched out from behind what looked like some snow-covered garbage bins. Remembering that this was Teo country, she reached for her Glock.
“Bryan?” she heard a young female voice call eagerly. “Is that you?”
Mary stopped her car. As the figure edged closer, she pulled back the hood of her coat. Though the features were now more of a teenager than a child, Mary immediately recognized the striking blend of Jonathan Walkingstick and Ruth Moon.
She rolled down her window. “Hello, Lily.”
“Oh.” Lily’s tone was disappointment mixed with surprise. “It’s you.”
Mary didn’t know what to say. When they parted so long ago, Lily had despised her. From the look on her face now, it seemed she still did. It wouldn’t have surprised her if every snowflake that fell on Lily sizzled into a hot little bit of angry steam.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” the girl said flatly.
“I only heard pieces of your call. I took a guess you were talking about this Unaka.” Mary stashed the Glock behind the driver’s seat. “What’s going on?”
For a moment, Lily’s hard look of hate waivered. “Men with guns broke into our cabin. Bounty hunters, probably. My father pulled his knife and told me to leave. Then I heard a gunshot and one man chased me with a rifle.”
“Up here?” asked Mary.
The girl nodded so matter-of-factly that Mary wondered if she was in shock.
“Did they shoot your father?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I ran away.”
“Come get in the car,” said Mary. “You can warm up and we can talk.”
For a moment Lily did not move, then she limped over and flopped into the passenger seat. Mary left the motor running as Lily removed rabbit skin gloves and blew on her hands. The gesture was so Jonathan, Mary felt as if she were sitting with a ghost.
“Are you okay?” asked Mary. “Why are you limping?”
“The Rifleman tackled me. He grabbed my ankle but I got loose.”
“Here.” Mary offered her a PayDay candy bar. “Eat this and tell me exactly what’s happened.”
Between bites of candy, Lily fleshed out her story, beginning with their year at the fishing camp, ending with her terror at being chased by the man with the rifle.“That’s when I called you.”
“Why me?” asked Mary, wondering how her lucky number had turned up.
Lily held up an older model iPhone. “Every year Edoda makes me promise that if I ever get in real trouble, I’ll call you. But when I called last night I was just freaking out with the snow and the cold. I really don’t need you.”
Mary gazed at her windshield, fast becoming a field of white. After all this time, after all the silence and the distance and the not knowing, Jonathan still trusted her with Lily. She didn’t know whether to feel flattered or furious. She decided not to feel anything and just deal with the problem at hand.
“Okay,” she said, shifting the little Subaru into reverse. “We’ll beat it back to Murphy and call Sheriff Ray.”
“No!” Lily grabbed her hand. “Those men will have warrants. The sheriff will read them and let those men take Edoda back to Oklahoma. They’ll send him to prison.”
Mary snatched her hand out of Lily’s grasp. “What do you want me to do, then?”
“Did you bring your gun? Just give it to me and I’ll take care of everything,” she said, her chin quivering.
“I didn’t bring a gun, Lily,” Mary lied, looking into eyes as dark as Jonathan’s. “Even if I had I wouldn’t give it to you.”
“Then just go home,” Lily said, her mouth curling in an ugly snarl. “I only called you because Edoda made me promise.” She grabbed her gloves and flung open the car door. “Sorry you came up here for nothing.”
She slammed the door so hard the Subaru rocked. Before Mary could say another word, Lily was a dark blur, quickly vanishing into the wind and snow.
“Wait, Lily! ” she called. “This is crazy dangerous!”
The girl flung an inaudible curse over her shoulder. Her words were hot with anger, but they came softly, from a distance, muffled by the snow.
“What the hell does she want?” Mary cried. Going back to town and calling Pete Ray was the sensible thing. But she barely knew where she was, much less the location of Jonathan’s fishing camp. She grabbed her cell phone and punched in 911. The only thing that came on the screen was a “No Service Available” message.
“Damn it,” she whispered. “Damn the Walkingsticks and damn this snow.” Clenching the steering wheel, she tried to calm down with several deep breaths. “You’re the adult here,” she told herself. “Figure this out.”
She considered what Lily had told her. Two skip chasers had apparently tracked Jonathan up here and grabbed him in the middle of a blizzard. Both were armed and one had pursued Lily. Had they shot Jonathan? If so, what were they doing now? Trying to drive out of the mountains?
“Or maybe waiting for Lily to come back,” she whispered, remembering Fred Moon’s fierce determination to win custody of his grandchild. “Maybe they’ve baited a trap for Lily with Jonathan.”
Of course the girl would want to go back and free her father. Lily was smart and brave. The forest held no terror for her. But a teenaged girl with a bow and arrows going up against at least two men with rifles? It was madness, without question.
Mary got out of the car and started walking in the direction Lily had taken. If she could catch up with the girl, she would drag her back to the car if she had to. Saving Lily came first. Jonathan would have to take care of himself.
All at once, a boom like a cannon thundered through the forest. Mary plunged to the ground, thinking that the bounty hunter must now be firing at her. But after the single, bone-jarring report, the woods returned to snowy silence. Trembling, she looked around and gasped. Thirty feet away a massive pine tree had fallen, its trunk crushing her Subaru like a tin can. Had she lingered in her car a moment longer, she would be dead.
She lay there stunned, gazing at the tree and the snow—deep now, and growing deeper. As fingers of icy cold plunged down the collar of her coat, she realized she was alone, miles deep in a strange forest, her shelter gone and no way to call out. For the first time in her life, Mary Crow felt helpless in the woods.