Charlotte (Wild Rose Ridge Historicals #13)

Prologue

Cecil Peterson learned a man could be ten steps from shelter and still not reach it.

The blizzard came down off the ridge without warning. One moment the men were shouting through wind and wet snow, trying to secure what could be secured before dark. The next, the world had gone white.

Not gray or stormy. White.

Snow swallowed the cut above camp, the skid road, the stacked logs, and every man fool enough to be outdoors when the ridge decided it had been patient long enough.

He could hear voices above the wind but only caught bits and pieces.

Someone yelled for Tucker Montgomery.

Someone else yelled for Jebediah Simms.

Peterson heard both names and could not see either man.

The tool shed stood somewhere ahead of him. He knew it did. He had stacked a coil of rope beside the door that morning and grumbled about the latch sticking.

The shed was close enough he ought to have reached it. Close enough he could imagine the wall under his hand, the door giving way, the dark, dry safety inside.

He lowered his head against the wind and pushed toward it.

Then he heard the sound.

It was louder than thunder and wrong in a way no storm could be. Timber was moving.

The dog pins must have broken.

The logs stacked above camp had been held in place all afternoon, waiting to be moved when the weather cleared. Now they were loose, rolling down the slope toward the shore with nothing but snow and gravity to guide them.

Peterson strained to hear where they were coming from, but the blizzard threw every sound back at him. A deep groan moved through the cut above him, followed by a crack which split the storm wide open. Men shouted somewhere in the white.

He looked up as the sound roared closer, trying to determine how much time he had and how far the shed was.

He turned hard, trying to reach the door when his boot slipped. His shoulder struck the shed wall. He shoved off the wall, took one more step, and saw the dark round shape of the first log break through the snow.

It hit the shed before it hit him.

The wall burst apart with a sound like a gunshot. Something slammed into Peterson high on the right side and threw him sideways into the snow. Pain flashed through his shoulder, sharp enough to empty his lungs. The rest thundered past him and splashed into the river below.

He tried to get up, but his right arm would not respond properly. His collarbone felt wrong beneath his coat, and every breath scraped sharply in his chest. He planted his left hand, shoved once, and slid back down.

“Up,” he told himself.

The storm took the words out of his mouth.

He tried again.

That was what he remembered later.

Trying again and again while the snow filled the seams of his coat and packed against his face. His hands went first from pain to fire, then from fire to something worse than pain. His cheek burned where the wind found it. One ear stopped feeling like part of him at all.

After a while, the world narrowed. The tool shed was gone. His shoulder was broken or near to it, and his hands had stiffened inside the snow. His gloves were gone, torn off, or lost when the impact threw him down.

No one knew where he was.

He waited for that truth to strike him properly. It did not. The cold had taken the sharp edge off everything, even fear. He curled around the arm that hurt least and worked his hands beneath him as best he could.

“Peterson!”

The shout came once, maybe twice. Or perhaps he only wanted badly enough to hear it that his mind supplied the sound.

He tried to answer.

Nothing came.

The white closed over everything.