Chapter 4 - The Shadows on the Snow
Gideon set the quarter of venison down on the butcher block in the corner with a heavy, dull thud.
He took off his gloves, unbuckled his heavy gun belt, and hung it on the wooden peg near the door. He didn't yell. He didn't raise his hand. But the stillness in his massive frame was far more terrifying than any shout.
"You shouldn't have opened that," Gideon said, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling growl.
Samuel pulled Toby behind him near the fireplace, his small hand instinctively reaching for his pocket.
Christa didn't run. She stood behind the table, her dark eyes looking directly into Gideon’s face.
"Jebediah Rooker was the sergeant who shot you in the back," Christa said, her voice steady despite the beating of her heart.
Gideon’s face hardened into a mask of gray granite. His jaw twitched beneath his thick beard. "It's an old war. It doesn't concern you."
"It does concern me!" Christa stepped around the table, taking two steps toward him. "He starved my father with forged debts! He tried to sell me like cattle! He threatened to send my brothers to the orphan house in Deer Lodge! Rooker is a monster, Mr. Sullivan, and he owns the whole valley!"
"Rooker is a snake with fifty paid guns behind him," Gideon snapped, turning his back on her to stir the fire. "I didn't bring you up here to start a war. I brought you up here so I wouldn't have to look at another broken family on a wet street."
"Then why did you keep the ledger?" Christa demanded, pointing at the book. "Why did you keep his name written down for twelve years if you didn't intend to make him pay?"
Gideon froze, the iron poker suspended in his grip over the roaring flames.
He didn't answer.
He couldn't answer. Because inside his leather pouch, beneath the remaining gold coins, lay a folded piece of paper he had pulled from his pack three days ago—a land claim survey filed with the territorial office in Helena, showing that the timber rights on Black Ridge, including the land beneath his cabin, had been fraudulently acquired by the Black Creek Land & Cattle Company.
Owned by Jebediah Rooker.
Rooker wasn't going to leave Gideon alone on his mountain. He had allowed Gideon to trap and trade because it was convenient, but now that the timber company was expanding, Rooker was coming for the ridge.
The auction on the whiskey barrels hadn't been a chance meeting. It had been the spark that lit a fire twelve years in the making.
Before Gideon could speak, a sharp, metallic sound echoed from the treeline outside the cabin.
CRACK.
A high-powered rifle shot shattered the quiet of the mountain.
The bullet tore through the small glass window of the cabin, passing six inches from Gideon’s head, and embedded itself deep into the log wall behind him, showering the room with splinters and glass shards.
Christa screamed, dropping to the floor, pulling Samuel and Toby down beneath the heavy oak table.
"Stay down!" Gideon bellowed.
He moved with terrifying, practiced speed. He grabbed his Winchester rifle from the corner, kicked the heavy wooden table onto its side to form a barricade for Christa and the boys, and extinguished the kerosene lamp on the counter with a single blow.
The cabin plunged into dark shadow, illuminated only by the red embers of the fireplace.
Outside, through the shattered window, a harsh, nasal voice boomed across the snow-covered clearing:
"Sullivan! Come out with your hands up!"
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It was Virgil Higgins—the sour-mash miner from the saloon—flanked by four heavy-set men holding rifles, standing behind the cover of the Douglas firs fifty yards away.
"Rooker holds the warrant for this land!" Higgins shouted through the wind. "You're squatting on private timber property, Sullivan! And you got stolen property inside that cabin! Hand over the girl and the boys, and we might let you walk out of these mountains alive!"
