The woman looked back. Her bright eyes swept the valley once and she picked up her musket and moved forward.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There was snow lying in patches on the northwest side of the mountain. The shoulders of rock were scarred and barren except where earth had clung to sheltered places, nourishing moss and scraggly pines.
To the west the rugged land lay under their hands, pounded out by the dizzy height, going on across the miles until it met the sky. The branches of the distant trees, stripped bare by cold and wind, wove a feathery texture of browns and reds, deep violets interrupted by the dusky green of spruce and pine, tall enough, no doubt, to dwarf a man, but in the distance seeming no bigger than scraps of moss.
Red stood with his hands on his hips, his beard pointing toward the distant land, his face showing wonder and fear, as if God had taken him by the hand.
The woman was first to turn away. There was love in her face. “It was here I saw the last of Nate.”
Tim’s thought was so strong it almost said itself out loud. She knows he won’t come back.
The woman pointed in the direction they’d come. Just to the left of a slate-colored shadow on a hill far below they saw a curl of smoke. “Smoke from our cabin,” she said. “I left a fire on the hearth, remember?”
As they watched the smoke, snow began to fall. The flakes were small. They could almost be counted at first, little pinpoints of white. Then they filled the distance, and the hills and ridges all around were washed across with a milky haze. The flakes came faster. They were larger now, and one by one the landmarks were engulfed in a sea of white, leaving just the swirl of snow and silence everywhere.
The woman patted her sack of meal. “Time for food,” she said.