Chapter 15
Too late.
The rope snapped.
I drove backward.
My head struck the hired man’s face.
His nose broke with a wet crunch.
He screamed.
I dropped.
Elias fired.
The shot passed over me.
Cora threw herself sideways and raised the Winchester.
The hired man grabbed me around the throat.
We rolled through snow.
My bad leg twisted.
Pain tore through me so violently my vision went white.
I stabbed backward with the small knife.
Not at his throat.
Not at his chest.
At his hand.
He released me with a howl.
I crawled toward the porch.
Another shot cracked.
Wood splintered beside me.
Cora fired back.
Elias dove behind the water barrel.
The clearing erupted into smoke, snow, and shouting.
Then silence.
Not complete silence.
The hired man was whimpering.
Fire popped.
My breath came hard.
But no one fired.
I reached the porch.
Cora seized my coat and pulled me behind the stacked logs.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
“Your head.”
“I noticed.”
“Can you move your leg?”
“Unfortunately.”
She looked at me.
Despite everything, I nearly laughed.
“Later,” she said.
“That was my line.”
A bullet punched through the top log.
We ducked.
Elias called from behind the barrel.
“This is madness!”
Cora shouted back.
“No. This is what no sounds like.”
I looked at her.
Her hands shook now.
Not when she aimed.
After.
I understood suddenly that courage was not the absence of fear.
Cora was terrified.
She was simply doing things while terrified.
That made her braver than anyone I had known.
The hired man staggered toward the trees, clutching his bleeding hand.
Elias shouted at him.
“Stay where you are!”
The man kept going.
“You didn’t pay me enough for this!”
He disappeared into the snow.
Elias was alone.
For the first time that night, he sounded uncertain.
“Cora.”
She closed her eyes.
I leaned toward her.
“What does he do when he loses control?”
“Gets cruel.”
“Then expect cruelty.”
“He’ll burn the cabin.”
“He already tried.”
“He’ll burn it properly.”
I looked at the shed.
Then at the rear wall.
There were traps hanging beneath the porch roof.
A coil of line.
An iron jaw trap large enough for wolf.
An idea formed.
Not a good one.
Good ideas are rare when someone is trying to kill you.
But it was an idea.
I touched Cora’s arm.
“Can you keep him looking at the front?”