The three riders—with Glen's corpse—hurried over the frozen, snow laden plain. They rode single file with Jacob guiding the way. Cora followed close behind in the trail that Jacob's horse had broken through the foot of snow. Maude brought up the rear. Ahead of each rider paced long, dark shadows, cast by the morning sun at their backs.
Cora burrowed more deeply into the wolfskin coat. The garment kept the top of her reasonably warm, but her scantily clad legs and feet felt the bite of the immense cold. She would never complain to Jacob. She looked up from following her mimicking black shadow to the two hungry hunting hawks wheeling back and forth across the winter sky of pale blue. They were the only living things, except for her group, in all that cold, white world. As they glided back and forth on the wind, they seemed to her to be weaving an invisible cloth in the sky. She wondered wherever on the open, snow-cloaked prairie did sky hawks put themselves at night.
She lowered her sight to the earth, for she felt Jacob's eyes upon her. He was watching her with a man's look at a woman he had loved, who knew the many pleasures she offered. The look sent a thrill through Cora.
Jacob shifted his view past Cora to Maude. She was focused intently on him. An iron-headed woman, and she hated him, he knew. He had observed Cora watching Maude with a worried, almost fearful expression. Did Cora know something about Maude that Jacob didn't? He recalled Maude's attack upon him when he was fighting Pateman, after the two had discovered Cora and him together. She was a powerful woman and one to be reckoned with. He would be on guard, for he thought her capable of committing murder, and his death would not displease her, at the right time.
* * *
Jacob hastened the women onward toward the Big Horn Mountains until the blood-red sun vanished into the bottomless pit behind the rim of the world. As the gray, evening dusk swarmed over them, the temperature began to drop rapidly. A wind rose and started to run with the snow, swirling it about the legs of the horses.
A short time later, he halted the group in a range of low hills covered with pine. He quickly surveyed the area close around them. They were in a narrow, crooked valley where a fire could not be seen but a few yards. A fire was desperately needed with such intense cold and the wind whipping away their body heat. In the bottom of the narrow valley, the wind blew less strongly; however, above his head, it whistled in the tops of the pines.
"We camp here tonight," he called to Cora and Maude. "Spread the sleeping robes there." He pointed at the space beneath a pine with dense foliage where less snow had accumulated on the ground.
Jacob dismounted and quickly hobbled the horses. He took a leather pouch containing his fire-making tools and went to a down and dead pine near where the women were spreading the sleeping robes. He began to strike sparks from his flint and steel onto a piece of punk screwed into a nest of fine, dry grass. After a few attempts, the punk caught fire. He blew gently on the tiny embryo and extended the fire to the grass with a small flame curling up. He placed the nucleus of a fire under a pile of twigs broken from the pine. Upon this was piled a huge quantity of dry limbs. Soon tall yellow flames were leaping and driving back the dark and cold.
Cora waded through the snow to the fire and spread her stiff, frozen hands to the flaring flames. The flames shone like splinters of the sun. The radiated warmth striking her body was so grand she wanted to cry.
She looked across the fire at Jacob, silently squatting on his heels on a Little patch of snow he had tramped down. He was staring into the fire and his palms were turned outward like a penitent. What secret thoughts did he ponder? She knew with certainty that she felt safe with this young man of the plains and mountains. She still wondered why he had not reached out and touched her during the past night when they lay so close together under the robes. Tonight she would reach out to him. But it could go no farther than that, not with Maude under the same robe with them.
Jacob rose to his feet. "Cora, please find us some food in the pack behind Glen's saddle," he said.
"Yes, Jacob," Cora said.
He went into the dark to the horses. He came to Jubal and ran his hand along the horse's neck. Jubal nickered softly at Jacob's touch and its skin ran and quivered under his hand. The horse nuzzled Jacob while he checked the hobbles on its legs, until the man moved out of reach.
Jacob moved to Glen's horse, and the Indian horses Cora and Maude had ridden, feeling their hobbles. All were holding.
He checked the sky. The moon had broken free of the horizon and rode unbridled in the vast, clear sky.
Without cloud cover to retain what little heat the land had gathered from the sun, the night was going to be terribly cold.
He turned back to the camp where the fire made a small yellow bubble in the cave of the black night. In the light, Cora was visible sorting through Glen's pack. The big, hulking Maude was staring into the darkness in Jacob's direction as if she could see him.
In that unguarded moment, Maude's expression was villainous.
* * *
Cora extended her hand under the sleeping robe and found Jacob's. He started to draw her close, but she held back. He relented at once, understanding her reasoning, that Maude would feel the movement. He lay happily holding the soft hand.
Cora rested, contented. She looked out from under the robe and into the night. To her surprise, beyond the fire she saw several shiny, golden lights floating in the blackness. She quickly identified them. The horses had drawn near to the humans. The beasts' eyes were catching the fire and burned like gate lamps to another world.
A last yellow flame candled up from the dying fire, then all was black as the darkness of night raced in. Cora squeezed Jacob's hand and, still holding it, went to sleep at once.
* * *
Cora's breath smoked pale in the cold air, as if she burned with an inner fire. Jacob smiled at his imagination and leaned toward her. To his delight, she leaned to meet him.
They kissed, their cool lips crushing together, clinging, and their breath mingling in a small, white cloud about their faces. When they pulled apart, both were smiling, and they sat looking into each other's eyes.
Night was being shoved aside by morning dusk as they rested on the ground robe. To ward off the cold, the end of the top robe was wrapped around them. At Cora's back, Maude slept soundly. A moment existed for Cora and Jacob to steal a little love.
"Once more." Cora's lips silently coined the words.
Jacob willingly obliged her, tenderly cupping her face in his hands as their lips met. He held Cora for several seconds. Then Maude stirred, and Cora hastily withdrew from him.
Jacob looked at the awakening Maude. Damn bitch ruined a good thing. He climbed to his feet and walked off through the snow to the horses.
* * *
Cora's spirits lightened as the sun ballooned up above the horizon and took the world from darkness. However, the sun did nothing to lessen the arctic cold, so intense that it seemed like she was moving through liquid gravity.
Ahead of her, Jacob glanced at the rising sun, but did not alter course. He, like the Indians, Cora noted, seemed to have an excellent instinct for direction, day or night.
Jacob had begun the day's journey well before daylight. Cora knew he was worried about his friend Renne somewhere in the mountains. She hoped they would find him safe.
She looked at the mountains that Jacob had told her they would reach that day. The tall peaks were white from a deep blanket of snow, and blended into the clouds that hung over them so that it was nearly impossible to distinguish earth from sky. She would live the winter in one of those high valleys with Jacob and Maude—if they could escape from the Indians. She turned to the rear and anxiously looked for pursuers chasing across the land after them.
* * *
They climbed up a thousand-foot high ridge where the sky was an ocean of swift wind. The snow had been swept from the stony backbone of the ridge; still, it had been a heart-bursting climb for the horses. Jacob halted the labouring beasts in a partially sheltered place below the crown of the hill. The horses spread their weary legs and stood pulling breath with hoarse, sawing sounds. Jacob had driven them hard all day, yet he knew Wolf Voice and his braves could have beaten him to the valley that held his cabin.
Jacob had not approached the valley by his usual route. He had held north four or five miles and then had come up over the foothills that merged into the Big Horns. Should the Indians have reached the valley before him, he didn't want to be trapped by them in the narrow bottom.
He dismounted and waded the snow to the crest of the hill and warily surveyed the valley lying below him. A small herd of wintering deer were in a brushy draw downhill from him. They had not seen Jacob, and he was glad for that. Their flight would have warned anyone who saw them of his presence.
He scanned up and down the snowy valley. Nothing moved against the white background. He searched on, looking for stationary objects that could be enemies. Again he saw nothing that caused him concern.
He returned to the horses and spoke to Cora. "We may have gotten here before the Crows."
Cora nodded, showing her understanding. Jacob's face was strained and crinkled against the wind, and , snow, caught in his beard, now more than an inch long, had made it white. For that brief moment, Cora saw what he might look like when he was an old man. Should he live a long life in his dangerous world, he would be a striking old man.
Jacob mounted and led up and over the crown of the hill. The deer spooked away in front of them. As the riders neared the bottom, they encountered a broad trail of trampled snow where a herd of some half hundred buffalo had crossed the valley. Jacob fell in on the trail and followed it down out of the timber and onto the meadow floor of the valley.
* * *
"Damnation," Jacob cursed as he stared down at the tracks of more than half a dozen unshod horses in the snow.
"Could they have been made by wild horses?" Cora asked, knowing from Jacob's expression and words that they had not been.
"I wish to God they were the tracks of mustangs," Jacob replied, looking up the valley along the tracks. "But they're being ridden. See how straight they go? The Crows have beaten us. They passed here some time this morning."
"What can we do?"
"Nothing. I just hope Renne spots the Crows before they see him, so he can get into the timber. If he can do that, he'll give them a tough run."
"I told you we should have ridden after the Mormons," Maude said, her tone showing she was pleased at the discovery of the tracks of the Indians. "Now let us get on our way to Salt Lake City."
"What do we do, Jacob?" Cora asked. She was angry at Maude's words.
"First thing is to get back into the timber before the Crows come back down the valley and see us. Our tracks are mixed in with the buffalos', so the Crows won't notice we've been here. We'd better do it fast for they could be coming back any time."
"Then after they've passed, we can start for Salt Lake City," Maude said, obviously happy with the turn of events.
* * *
Snow was falling steadily when the seven mounted Crow warriors came into sight. They rode single file beside the frozen stream in the center of the valley. The last man led an extra horse with a saddle, and Jacob recognized it as Renne's mount. He gripped his rifle. Renne was most probably dead. If the women had not been with him, he would have trailed after the Crows and killed some of them in the night. Their lives would have been short, he would have seen to that. In the snow and darkness, he could have killed them one by one.
The Crows passed like ghosts in the snowfall a hundred yards from Jacob. He was certain the man that led was Wolf Voice. Jacob could do nothing except let them ride past. With his blood hot for revenge, he watched as the Crows quickly faded into the snowstorm.
* * *
Jacob found Renne crumpled against the log wall of the cabin near the door. He had been shot several times, and scalped. Jacob gently lifted Renne's cold, snow-covered body in his arms. "The sons-of-bitches! The sons-of-bitches!" he cursed.
Cora was with Maude near the horses. She saw the misery in Jacob's eyes. She started to move toward him to offer comfort. Then she halted; what could she say?
The cabin had been built in a grove of huge ponderosa pines growing beside the creek. Snow had drifted deeply around the trunk of the largest tree on the outside perimeter of the stand. Now Jacob carried Renne to the snowdrift and laid him down. He brought Glen's corpse and placed him beside Renne. He would bury them in the snow until the ground thawed in the spring and he could dig graves and have a proper burial.
Jacob stared down at the dead, frozen bodies of Glen and Renne. A cold wind blew through his young mind. Once he had thought a man who had no fear could do anything he wanted. How bitter was that thought today, with his two comrades dead. Glen had been correct. Man was not meant to live for very long, no matter how brave and strong he might be. He realized fully why a man took revenge for wrongs done against him or his friends. That was all there was.
He looked at Cora. No, there was something better than revenge—that was love for a woman.