Silas didn’t hesitate.
He carried her toward the line shack he’d built years ago, tucked between two bluffs that blocked the worst of the wind. The path was one he could have walked blind. Even with the storm clawing at his face, his feet found it.
Inside the shack, the air smelled of pine resin and old smoke. Silas laid her on his narrow bed, stripped her wet shawl away, and built a fire with hands that had done it a thousand times. Flame caught fast, licking up dry logs until the room warmed in fierce, protective breaths.
He boiled snow in a pot. He found blankets. He pressed a tin cup into her hands when her eyelids fluttered open.
She stared at him like he was the wolf in a story her mother warned her about.
Silas kept still. Respect meant moving like you didn’t want to spook a wounded thing.
“Drink,” he said. “Willow bark. It’ll help the chill.”
Her fingers trembled around the cup, but she didn’t lift it yet. Her eyes tracked the buckskin shirt he wore, the beadwork along his cuffs, the dark braid, the shape of his face that spoke of two bloodlines and neither fully welcomed by town folk.
“Why?” she rasped.
Silas sat on a stool by the fire. The flames made his shadow stretch long along the wall like a guardian standing watch.
