Ashes Of The Frontier

She had known men died. She had seen it in camps, on roads, in the faces of strangers who had mistaken her for easy prey. But Jake had been the one thing in this country that belonged to her. The house, the land, the horses - all of it could be burned or stolen. He had been flesh and breath and a voice calling her name from the yard.

Now there was only the wind.

A horse screamed outside.

Sadie flinched hard enough to nearly fall. The sound carried through the trees, followed by a man’s shout. One of them had come back.

She snatched the iron poker from beside the hearth and forced herself upright. Her knees trembled. Blood slid warm beneath her shirt, then cooled against her skin.

The back door stood half open. Beyond it, the pines crowded close, their branches bowed beneath new snow. They offered no promise but distance.

Sadie stepped over Jake.

Her boot touched his wrist.

She stopped.

For one breath she thought of staying. Letting the cold take her beside him. It would be simple. Almost kind.

Then another shout rose from the front of the house.

She opened the back door and went into the trees.

Snow swallowed her to the ankles. The first step tore something inside her side, but she kept moving. Behind her, men crashed through the house. A shot cracked. Another. The homestead answered with splintering wood.

Sadie did not look back.

The forest closed around her. Pine needles scratched her face. Branches snatched at her coat. She stumbled down a slope and struck her shoulder against a trunk, then slid into a drift so deep it reached her waist. For a while she could not move.

The cold pressed through her clothes with patient cruelty.

She thought of Jake’s face. Thought of his hand reaching.

Then she dug her fingers into the snow and pulled herself free.

She knew the country around the homestead. Not well enough to call it friendly, but well enough to know the creek ran east, and beyond the creek lay an old logging trail that led toward the settlements. People lived there. People with lamps, food, and doors that locked.

People who might kill her.

The thought did not slow her. It gave her something solid to hate.

By nightfall, the wound had soaked through her shirt. She tied a strip of cloth around her middle, using her teeth when her fingers failed. The knot held badly. So did she.

She found shelter beneath a fallen pine and crawled into the hollow beneath its roots. Snow sifted down through the branches. Her hands shook as she struck a match, shielding the tiny flame inside her fist. The kindling was damp. She tried again. And again.

On the fourth match, smoke curled upward.

“Come on,” she muttered. “Don’t you quit on me now.”

The fire caught in a weak orange tongue.

Sadie crouched over it until her face burned and her back froze. She had no food. No gun. No horse. Only a knife at her belt and Jake’s wedding ring clenched in her fist.

She slept in pieces.

Each time she woke, she heard boots in the snow.

Once, she heard Jake call her name.

She came awake with the knife raised, striking at empty darkness. The movement opened the wound again. She folded over herself, one hand pressed hard against her side, the other covering her mouth to keep the scream inside.

Morning came pale and thin.

A rabbit crossed the snow twenty yards away.

Sadie watched it disappear between the trees. Her stomach twisted. She followed its tracks until they vanished beneath a tangle of brush, then dug with her knife. Nothing. She moved on.

By midday, she found a frozen stream. The ice groaned beneath her weight. She crawled across it, spreading her body flat, and reached the opposite bank with her coat soaked from the knees down.

A rifle cracked somewhere behind her.

The bullet struck the ice where her hand had been.

Sadie rolled behind a stump.

“Come on out!” a man called. “Ain’t no use running!”

She held her breath.

Three men moved between the pines. She could see their boots, their horses, the dark barrels of their rifles. The same men, perhaps. Or others like them. In the wilderness, every voice wore the same shape.

One dismounted.

Sadie’s fingers closed around the knife.

The man came nearer, stepping carefully over the snow. He was young enough to still have softness in his face. That softness made her hate him more.

She waited until he passed the stump.

Then she drove the knife into the meat above his knee.

He screamed and fell. Sadie seized his rifle before he could reach it, swung the stock into his jaw, and ran.

Bullets tore bark from the trees around her. She plunged downhill, branches whipping her eyes. The stolen rifle dragged at her shoulder. Behind her, the men shouted and crashed through the brush.

She reached the creek again and threw herself into a narrow cleft between two rocks. Her breath came in ragged bursts. Blood dripped from her sleeve. The rifle lay across her knees.

The men passed without seeing her.

One stopped close enough that she could hear him spit.

“She’s done,” he said. “Bleeding like a hog.”

Another laughed. “Cold’ll finish it.”

Their footsteps faded.

Sadie waited until the forest went quiet. Then she climbed from the rocks and kept east.

She walked for two days.

Hunger made the world narrow. There was only the next step, the next breath, the next place to hide. She chewed pine resin when her mouth grew dry. She drank from the creek with her lips pressed to the ice. At night she slept beneath roots or inside abandoned sheds, clutching the rifle against her chest.

On the third morning, smoke rose beyond the trees.

Sadie stopped.

The sight of it struck her harder than the wound. Smoke meant a fire. A fire meant people. People meant food, shelter, and hands that might close around her throat.

She lay in the snow and watched the smoke for nearly an hour.

No riders came. No gunshots sounded.

Her body made the decision before her mind did. She crawled toward it.

The camp sat in a shallow valley, half-hidden among the pines. Bedrolls lay near a low fire. Horses stood tethered beneath the trees. Men moved around them, armed and watchful.

Outlaws.

Sadie knew that much before she saw the black hat, the long coat, the guarded faces. She had heard of the Van der Linde gang. Everybody had. Their name traveled ahead of them like thunder.

A man spotted her first.

He raised his pistol.

“Hold it!” another voice snapped.

Sadie lifted the rifle, though the barrel shook in her hands.

The man who had spoken stepped into view. He was broad through the shoulders, his face weathered, his eyes measuring her without pity. He kept one hand near his holster but did not draw.

“You lost?” he asked.

Sadie laughed once. It came out cracked and ugly.

“My husband’s dead,” she said. “Men burned my house. I been walking three days.”

“That ain’t what I asked.”

“I know where I am.”

The man glanced at the blood beneath her coat. “You gonna shoot us?”

“If you give me cause.”

A few of the others shifted. One muttered that she was trouble. Another looked toward the trees.

The broad man studied her a moment longer.

“What’s your name?”

“Sadie Adler.”

“And what do you want, Sadie Adler?”

Her grip tightened on the rifle.

“Food,” she said. “A place by that fire. Then I want a horse.”

A thin man near the bedrolls snorted. “She wants a damn lot.”

Sadie turned the rifle toward him.

The broad man’s hand dropped to his gun.

“Easy,” he said.

“Tell him to keep his mouth shut.”

The thin man smiled without humor. “There she is.”

The broad man did not look away from Sadie. “You got somewhere else to go?”

She thought of the homestead. Jake beneath the snow. The men behind her. The empty miles ahead.

“No.”

“Then lower the rifle.”

Sadie did not.

The fire popped. A horse stamped, shaking snow from its mane. Somewhere high in the pines, a crow called once and fell silent.

The broad man’s voice softened, but there was no kindness in it. Only calculation.

“You can stand there until you fall down, or you can come sit by the fire. Nobody here’s promising you anything.”

That was the first honest thing anybody had said to her in days.

Sadie lowered the rifle.

Her legs gave out before she reached the camp.

Two men caught her. She fought them on instinct, elbowing one in the throat. He cursed and struck her across the face. The world lurched sideways.

“Enough!” the broad man shouted.

They dragged her toward the fire. Sadie clawed at the dirt, trying to keep hold of the rifle.

“Leave it,” the broad man said.

“It’s mine.”

“You stole it.”

“Then I earned it.”

He looked at her bloodied face. For a moment, something like respect crossed his eyes.

“Give it back,” he told the man holding it.

The rifle was placed beside her.

Sadie curled near the flames. Heat stabbed her frozen legs. Someone handed her a tin cup. She smelled coffee, bitter and strong. Her hands were too numb to hold it, so the broad man crouched and steadied it while she drank.

The first swallow burned. The second made her stomach cramp.

“Slow,” he said.

“Don’t tell me how to drink.”

His mouth twitched. “Ain’t telling. Watching.”

She ate a heel of bread, then another. The food sat heavy in her gut. She kept one hand on the rifle.

That night, they gave her a blanket and space beside the fire. No one asked her to pray. No one spoke Jake’s name. The gang had room for the wounded, so long as the wounded could still be useful.

At dawn, the broad man approached with a saddled horse.

“You said you wanted one.”

Sadie stood slowly. Her wound throbbed beneath the bandage. “What’s the price?”

“You ride with us.”

“For how long?”

“Until you find somewhere better.”

She looked past him at the camp. Men packing bedrolls. Horses breathing steam. Guns being checked and loaded. A family built from fugitives and bad decisions.

“Where are you headed?”

“West.”

“That tells me nothing.”

“It tells you enough.”

Sadie placed one boot in the stirrup.

The broad man caught her arm. “You understand what we are?”

She looked at his hand until he released her.

“I understand what I am.”

She mounted. Pain flared through her side, but she stayed upright.

The camp began to move. Wheels creaked. Hooves struck frozen ground. The pines opened ahead into a pale road cut through the wilderness.

Sadie rode at the edge of them, rifle across her lap, Jake’s ring hidden beneath her glove.

She had wanted people who might not kill her.

She had found them.

That would have to be enough.

For now.

End of chapter one. 18 more chapters in the full book.