Chapter 3
He crawled toward the shattered window, levering a cartridge into the chamber. Through the whirling snow, he counted two horses tied by the hitching post and two men crouched behind the timber woodpile. One of them was clutching his shoulder, cursing through gritted teeth—peppered by the buckshot that had torn through the door. The other was tall, gaunt, wrapped in a buffalo coat, holding a smoking Colt.
“Silas Finch,” Emmett muttered under his breath, recognizing the long, wolfish silhouette.
Finch was an opportunistic scoundrel who worked the freight lines between Bozeman and Helena—a scavenger who bought stolen stock and cheated emigrants. If Finch was here, it wasn't about an orphan girl’s chores. It was about money.
“Cade!” Finch shouted over the screech of the wind. “You don’t know what you’re sitting on! The girl’s father had four thousand dollars in gold certificates tucked into his belongings before that wagon took the river! Prather found the paper, and the fool tried to cash it in town! We just want what’s ours! Throw the girl’s sack out the door and we’re gone!”
Inside the bedroom, beneath the bed, Ruthie curled tighter into herself, hugging the flour sack against her chest.
A faded ribbon. A wooden horse missing an ear. A water-stained Bible.
Emmett didn’t care about the gold. He cared about the trembling six-year-old girl who had asked him, with broken tears, if he was going to abandon her in the cold. Two years ago, he had buried his world beneath a frozen cottonwood because nature had been cruel. Tonight, men had brought cruelty to his doorstep, and Emmett Cade was done losing things he was meant to protect.
He slipped through the back kitchen door, entering the biting, sub-zero gale without his coat. The icy needles bit into his skin, but his hands were rock steady.
He skirted the perimeter of the log barn, keeping low beneath the drift lines. The wind covered the sound of his boots. Finch and his wounded partner were focused entirely on the front door, waiting for an answer, revolvers cocked and shivering in the lethal cold.
Emmett stepped out from the corner of the woodpile, five paces behind them.
“Drop ‘em,” Emmett said.
The wounded man turned instinctively, raising his pistol. Emmett’s rifle roared once. The bullet caught the man in the thigh, dropping him into the snowbank with a howl of agony, his pistol spinning away into the dark.