Elias’s cabin stood less than four miles away, but four miles in a mountain blizzard might as well have been forty.

Snow rose to his knees.

Branches cracked in the forest.

Once, he heard wolves somewhere beyond the timber.

Twice, he stumbled and nearly fell.

Each time he turned his body so the woman took none of the impact.

The babies remained against his chest.

After nearly an hour, one finally made a tiny sound.

Elias almost laughed.

“That’s right.”

The infant whimpered again.

“Get angry.”

The second baby stirred.

“Both of you. Get mad at the world.”

By the time his cabin appeared through the snow, Elias’s hands had gone numb.

He kicked open the door.

The room was dark and cold.

He hadn’t expected to return before sunset, so the fire had nearly died.

Elias laid the woman on his bed, then fed pine kindling into the coals with shaking hands.

Flame caught.

He added split cedar.

The cabin filled slowly with heat.

Only then did he remove the twins from beneath his coat.

The first baby’s eyes opened.

Dark eyes.

Alert despite her weakness.

The other released an outraged little cry.

Elias stared at them.

“Good.”

He placed them inside a wooden crate lined with wool beside the hearth.

Then he turned toward their mother.

She was bleeding.

Not heavily, but enough.

He had patched bullets, axe wounds, and broken bones during eighteen years alone in the mountains.

Childbirth injuries were different.

But Elias knew enough to clean her wounds, stop what bleeding he could, warm her gradually, and give her water a spoonful at a time.

He kept her covered completely.

Not because her injuries made him uncomfortable, but because he understood dignity.

Whoever had hurt this woman had already taken enough from her.

Elias wouldn’t take anything else.

Near midnight, her fever began.

She fought people who weren’t there.

“No.”

Her hands clawed at the blankets.

“Please.”

Elias sat beside her.

“You’re safe.”

She didn’t hear him.

“No more.”

“Nobody’s touching you.”

Then she screamed.

“Caleb!”

Elias froze.

The name cut through him strangely.

Not because he recognized it.

Because of the terror in her voice.

Her eyes opened without seeing him.

“He wanted a boy.”

Elias leaned closer.

“Who?”

“Caleb.”

Her breathing became frantic.

“I couldn’t…couldn’t make a boy.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

She shook her head.

“He said girls were useless.”

The babies stirred beside the hearth.

The woman heard them.

Her body went suddenly still.

“My babies?”

“Alive.”

She began crying without waking fully.

Elias had witnessed men die without making a sound.

He had seen a grizzly tear open a horse.

He had dug graves in frozen soil.

But there was something about the silent tears running down this woman’s bruised face that unsettled him more than any of those memories.

He remained beside her until sunrise.

Her name was Ara Bell.

That was what she told him three days later.

By then the fever had broken.

She could sit against the headboard for short periods.

The twins were stronger too.

Elias had traded half a winter’s supply of cured elk meat to a widow named Margaret Pike for goat milk and feeding bottles.

Margaret had asked questions.

Elias had answered exactly none.

Ara woke to find him sitting beside the window repairing a saddle strap.