Chapter 2
Jonas Numa knew Fergus Dalrymple was going to get his family killed before the man even admitted he didn’t know how to build a chimney.
They had been traveling since dawn, though the snow had swallowed the light so completely that morning and afternoon looked much the same.
Jonas rode ahead, studying the trail where it narrowed between the trees.
His mare placed each hoof carefully. Behind him, the Dalrymples’ wagon groaned over frozen ground.
The weather had worsened during the last hour. Snow gathered on Jonas’s shoulders and clung to the braid down his back. He brushed it from his eyelashes and looked over his shoulder.
Fergus walked beside the oxen, pulling at one of their lead ropes as though force could make the animal surer on the ice. His coat was too thin. The brim of his hat sagged beneath the snow.
His wife, Nell, sat on the wagon bench with their daughter bundled in her arms. Two-year-old Annie had stopped crying some time ago.
Jonas wasn’t certain whether that was a good sign. He reined in his horse.
“We should turn toward Willow Crossing,” he said.
Fergus kept his attention on the oxen. “You said the land was less than two miles from here.”
“It is.”
“Then we’re nearly there.”
“The storm is getting worse,” Jonas argued.
“We’ve seen snow before,” Fergus snapped through blue lips. “Enough of the back and forth… let’s finish this.”
Jonas looked at the wagon. One rear wheel had begun leaning inward.
The canvas cover snapped whenever the wind cut across the trail.
Fergus had packed a plow, two chairs, a polished walnut chest, and what appeared to be every cooking pot his wife had ever owned, but not enough winter blankets, nothing to see them safely through a cold night like this one.
There was a difference between seeing snow and understanding what it could do.
“Willow Crossing has rooms,” Jonas said. “You can settle in together and wait there until the ground begins to thaw. You won’t be able to build in this weather.”
“With what money?” Fergus snapped. His face was raw from the wind, but his eyes were clear and stubborn.
Jonas had seen that expression before. Men arrived in the territory believing stubbornness alone would see them through. The land corrected them eventually.
Sometimes the lesson cost more than they could afford.
“The inn may let you work against the cost,” Jonas said.
Fergus laughed once. There was no humor in it. “You know that for a fact?”
“No.”
“Then we keep going.”
Nell shifted on the wagon seat. “Fergus, please.”
“We’ve come too far to stop now.”
Jonas dismounted. His boots sank through the fresh snow to the older crust beneath.
“No one is asking you to stop forever,” he said. “Only until you can build without losing your fingers.”
“I paid you to take us to the claim.”
“You paid me to guide you safely.”
“And we’re almost there.”
Fergus turned away before Jonas could answer.
The man had hired him in a settlement east of Willow Crossing. Fergus had been so eager to begin that he wanted to leave before Jonas finished studying the claim papers.
The parcel sat north of the river on land that had already been measured and opened, away from the seasonal hunting routes his father had taught him to recognize.
Jonas had walked part of it during the autumn.
He knew where the ground rose, where water pooled, and which trees would take the least work to clear.
His uncle would still say Jonas had no business helping settlers claim any part of the country.
The argument had become familiar enough that Jonas could hear it without his uncle being present.
Every new roof brought another fence. Every fence closed a path someone else had used.
Jonas didn’t disagree. That was the trouble.
But settlers came whether he guided them or not. Men in town would sell them maps drawn from nothing but feelings and rumor and point them toward any empty-looking stretch of land. A family could build across a trail, foul a stream, or settle too close to a place his father’s people still used.
Jonas could not stop them from coming, but he could keep them from taking the wrong ground.
Most days, that reasoning held.
Today, however, it was feeling terribly thin.
Nell climbed down from the wagon, keeping Annie tucked beneath her shawl. “How far is the town from here?”
“Less than an hour if we turn south now.” He pointed, and she followed his finger, her pale eyes worried.
“And the claim?”
Jonas pointed through the trees. “Beyond that ridge.”
Fergus spread his hands. “There. You see?”
“What I see is snow,” Nell said.
Her husband’s jaw tightened.
Jonas stepped closer to the wagon and looked inside. Annie’s eyes were open, but only barely.
“Your daughter needs warmth.”
“She’ll have it,” Fergus said. “We have a stove.”
“You have a stove packed beneath two crates and a bedframe. You don’t have a cabin.”
“I’ll build a shelter.”
“In this? Tonight?”
“If I have to.”
Nell closed her eyes.
Jonas had expected anger from Fergus. He had not expected desperation. There was a difference, and it made the man’s foolishness harder to dismiss.
“What happened?” Jonas asked, his voice sharpening. “Why are you being so stubborn?”
Fergus stared at him.
“You said you have no money for rooms. You came west with enough supplies to start a farm. What happened?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
“It becomes my concern when your wife and child are freezing behind me.”
Nell placed one hand on her husband’s arm.
Fergus’ shoulders dropped. “We lost one of the horses crossing a river. Had to sell the other to replace a broken axle and buy feed. There was sickness on the trail. A doctor took most of what remained.”
Jonas looked at Annie again.
The child’s cheeks were pale above the edge of the blanket.
“We have the land,” Fergus said. “It’s the only thing left that belongs to us. I’m not taking my family into town so people can watch us spend our last dollar and then turn us out. Then what? We’ll be even worse off than we are now.”
“No one is taking the land from you if you wait.”
“You don’t know that.”
Jonas did not answer immediately.
He understood more than Fergus realized.
Land papers did not always protect a man. Neither did promises, work, or history. Jonas’s father had learned that. His people had learned it long before.
“We go to the claim,” Jonas said at last. “But you do exactly what I tell you.”
Fergus nodded too quickly.
“I mean it. If I tell you to leave something, you leave it. If I tell you the shelter is unsafe, we go to town.”
“We won’t need to.”
Jonas held his gaze. “Agree. I’m not taking another step until you do.”
Fergus’ mouth pressed into a line. “I agree.”
Jonas returned to his mare, still worried.
The ridge took them nearly an hour, Jonas looking behind him every few minutes at Fergus’ wife and little girl.
It didn’t help that the wagon slid twice. Both times Jonas wedged stones behind the wheels while Fergus fought the oxen. Nell walked the final stretch with Annie held close, placing her boots in Jonas’s tracks.
When they reached the parcel, Fergus stopped beside him.
The land sloped gently toward a creek hidden beneath ice. Pine and fir stood thick along the western edge, while the center opened into a small meadow. Snow softened everything, covering the uneven ground and the fallen branches Jonas remembered from autumn.
To Fergus, it probably looked untouched.
Jonas saw the work that lay ahead of the family.
There were trees to clear. Stumps to pull. Drainage to manage before spring. A roof to raise before the next storm. They would need enough firewood to last through weeks of cold, and the trees around them were wet through.
Fergus let out a breath of relief. “It’s good land.”
“It could be.” Jonas said, glancing at him.
Nell said nothing.
Jonas dismounted and walked toward the rise where he had marked the safest building site months before. The ground there would drain better once the snow melted. It was far enough from the creek to avoid spring flooding and close enough to the trees for shelter from the wind.
A wooden stake remained where he had driven it.
“Here,” he said.
Fergus looked around. “I thought closer to the water.”
Jonas did his best not to let his irritation show. They were all always the same, coming in with no knowledge and no experience, yet full of opinions and arguments. “The creek will rise.”
“How high?”
“High enough.”
Fergus seemed ready to argue, then glanced at his wife.
“What do we build first?” he asked.
“A fire,” Jonas said, before anything else could be said.
They unloaded the stove, two axes, blankets, food, and the canvas Fergus had packed beneath the bedframe. Jonas showed him how to stretch the canvas between the wagon and a line of trees to block the wind. They banked snow along the lower edges and laid fir boughs across the ground.
It was not a cabin. It could hardly even be called a shelter. But it might keep them alive for the night.
Fergus attacked the nearest fallen tree with his axe, swinging too high and wasting strength. Jonas watched three blows before taking the handle from him.
“You’ll split your foot.”
“I know how to use an axe.”
“Then stop trying to slice the sky.”
Fergus stepped back, offended.
Jonas shortened his grip and struck near the end of the log. The frozen wood split cleanly.
“Let the weight of it do the work,” he said, and he handed the axe back.
Fergus’s next strike landed better.
They worked like that until the light began to fade. Nell unpacked a pot and tried to coax dried beans into something they could eat before midnight. Jonas gave her strips of dried venison from his own pack.
“You’ll need it,” she said, though her hands closed around it immediately.
“I have more at home.” It was not entirely true. He had enough for the ride back and little beyond that.
She hesitated before accepting it. “Thank you.”
Fergus glanced over but said nothing.