Cassidy Miller, known as Crow to the folks back in the circuit, checked the bolt on her Winchester. The metal was so cold it tried to peel the skin off her thumb. She had five rounds left in the magazine and two in her pocket. That was it. Seven bullets to keep Gabe and Mona from becoming frozen statues in the Nevada high country. She looked at the door. She had piled the heavy oak table and three trunks against it. It wouldn’t stop a determined man, but it would slow him down.
Saul was out there in the white. He claimed to be her husband Mick’s brother, but Mick never talked about a brother with a jagged scar on his neck and eyes like dull pennies. Saul wanted the creek. Under the thick sheets of ice, the water ran over stones of solid gold. It was a fortune that could buy the kids a life in a city with brick walls and warm beds. To Saul, it was just booze and cards. To Crow, it was the only way her children wouldn’t end up like her: scarred, tired, and smelling of gun oil.
The wind screamed through the cracks in the cabin walls. It was a high, thin sound that set her teeth on edge. She felt the coldness in her chest: a heavy, sinking weight that told her time was running out. The woodpile was down to three logs. The flour was a gray dust at the bottom of the barrel. She looked at Gabe. He was six, huddled under a buffalo robe with four-year-old Mona. Their faces were pale. Their breath came out in small, puffing clouds.
“Stay under the blankets,” Crow said. Her voice was a dry rasp. “Don’t move. No matter what you hear, you stay small.”
“Is Uncle Saul coming back?” Gabe asked. His voice shook.
“He isn’t your uncle,” Crow snapped. She regretted the sharp tone immediately. She reached out and touched his matted hair with a hand that trembled. “He’s just a man who forgot his manners. I’m going to remind him.”
She moved to the small, square window. She had broken the glass out days ago to make a firing port. The Sierra Nevada mountains rose up around the cabin like the jagged teeth of a giant. Everything was white. Everything was sharp. The peaks were so high they seemed to hold up the heavy, gray belly of the sky. It was a terrifying kind of beauty. It made her feel like a grain of sand in a storm.
Movement flickered near the treeline. A dark shape against the blinding snow. Then another. Saul had brought four men with him this time. They were walking. Horses couldn’t make it up the pass anymore. The snow was waist-deep in the drifts. They moved slowly, like beetles crawling across a sheet.
Crow took a breath. She felt the air burn her lungs. She closed one eye and tucked the stock of the rifle into her shoulder. This was the only thing she was truly good at. In the Wild West show, she used to shoot coins out of the air while riding a galloping horse. People would cheer and throw hats. Now, the only audience was the wind and the kids.
She tracked the lead man. It was Saul. He was wearing a heavy bearskin coat that made him look like a monster. He stopped fifty yards out. He knew the range. He knew she didn’t miss.
“Cassidy!” Saul yelled. The wind tore at his words, but they reached her. “Give it up! You’re freezing those kids to death for a pile of rocks! Let us in and we’ll share the heat!”
“Go to hell, Saul!” she screamed back.
He didn’t argue. He signaled the men. They split up, two going left toward the creek, two going right to circle the cabin. Saul stayed in the center. He pulled a heavy revolver from his belt.
Crow didn’t waste a bullet on a long shot. She waited. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. She watched the man on the left. He was younger, wearing a bright red scarf. He tripped in a drift, his arms flailing. Crow squeezed the trigger.
The crack of the rifle was loud as a thunderclap. The man in the red scarf didn’t even scream. He just folded. He went down into the white and didn’t come back up. The snow around him turned a dark, sickening crimson.
“One,” she whispered.
The other men started shooting. Bullets thudded into the heavy logs of the cabin. One whistled through the window and smashed a ceramic jug on the shelf. Mona shrieked.
“Get down!” Crow yelled.
She shifted her aim to the right. The glare of the sun on the snow was making her eyes water. She blinked hard, forcing her focus. She saw a hat. She fired. The hat flew off, but the man kept moving. She had grazed him.
The frantic pace of the attack picked up. They were closing in. They weren’t afraid of dying anymore: they were just cold. The cold was a more honest enemy than the men. It didn’t care about gold. It just wanted to stop everything from moving.
She fired again. Another man went down, clutching his leg and howling. Saul was closer now. He was laughing. It was a wet, crazy sound. He was twenty yards away. He threw something.
A bottle hit the side of the cabin. It shattered. The smell of kerosene filled the air. A moment later, a flaming rag followed it. The dry logs caught instantly. The orange flames licked at the wood, hissing as they met the ice.
“Out!” Crow grabbed Gabe and Mona by their collars. “Out the back window! Now!”
She shoved the children through the tiny opening into the deep drift behind the house. She scrambled after them, her boots kicking the air. They landed in a bank of soft, freezing powder. The heat from the burning cabin was a roar at their backs.
They were trapped between the fire and the mountain.
Crow stood up. She saw Saul rounding the corner of the house. His face was red from the heat and his eyes were wide with a terrible joy. He raised his gun.
Crow didn’t have time to aim. She didn’t have time to breathe. She leveled the Winchester from the hip and pulled the trigger.
The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
She reached for her pocket. The two loose rounds were gone. They must have fallen out when she went through the window.
Saul grinned. He took his time, leveling the barrel of his pistol at her chest. “Told you, Cassidy. You should have shared.”
Crow looked past him. She didn’t look at the gun. She looked at the Great Sierra peak rising three thousand feet above them. The vibration of the rifle shots, the roar of the fire, and the crashing of the cabin roof had done something.
A high, cracking sound echoed from the summit. It sounded like the world was breaking in half.
Saul froze. He looked up.
A massive shelf of snow, miles wide and hundreds of feet thick, began to move. It didn’t fall. It flowed. It was a white ocean falling from the sky. It was the most majestic, terrifying thing Crow had ever seen. It looked like the hand of God reaching down to wipe the slate clean.
“Mona, Gabe, get under the ledge!” Crow screamed.
She grabbed the kids and threw them under a small granite overhang near the creek bed. She threw her own body over them, pinning them into the dirt.
The world went white.
It wasn’t a sound. It was a pressure. It felt like being buried under a mountain of feathers that weighed as much as lead. The air was sucked out of her lungs. Her ears popped. She gripped the children’s coats until her fingers went numb.
Then, silence.
It was a heavy, absolute silence. No wind. No fire. No Saul.
Crow pushed. Her shoulders burned. She shoved upward through the packed snow. It was like trying to move through wet cement. Finally, her hand broke the surface. She clawed her way out, gasping for air.
The cabin was gone. The creek was gone. Saul and his men were gone.
The world was a flat, shimmering plain of white. The sun broke through the clouds, hitting the fresh snow. The entire valley sparkled like it was paved in diamonds. It was so bright it hurt to look at. The mountains stood tall and indifferent, their peaks glowing with a soft, gold light.
She reached down and pulled Gabe out. Then Mona. They were shivering, their faces blue, but they were breathing.
Crow looked at the ground. Right where the creek used to be, the force of the avalanche had ripped the ice away from the bank. A jagged line of quartz was exposed. Tucked inside the stone, glowing in the new sun, were veins of gold as thick as a man’s finger.
She didn’t laugh. She didn’t cry. She just stood there in the middle of the wreckage, looking at the raw power of the earth. She felt small, but she felt alive. The mountain had taken everything, but it had given them the world.
She picked up Mona and took Gabe’s hand. They started walking down the pass. Behind them, the gold glowed in the silence, buried under a million tons of white. They were going to make it. They had to. The mountain was watching.