Winter's Torment Read Online Free

wished she had stayed back at the ranch, inside the warm house, not lost out here on the prairie.
    She supposed that the best and smartest thing she could do for now would be to find some kind of shelter. She worried about the horse, but she imagined that if she let the mare loose, she would either find her way home or find her way into Dodge City on her own.
    Oh Lord.

Scene 5
    “Henry!”
    Henry Olson noticed movement in the half open doorway of his smithy and halted in between his swings of forming a horseshoe. He watched William Linder hurry inside with his wife Sarah close behind. The grave looks on their faces gave him pause.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    “One of your horses just wandered into town,” William said.
    Henry frowned. He glanced past their shoulders and looked outside, where heavy snow blew nearly sideways from the north. When he had ridden into town this morning on one of his horses, the sky had been overcast and heavy with humidity, but there had been no indication that they would get such a snowstorm so suddenly. Then again, it was between late fall and early winter, and the weather could change without a moment’s notice.
    How could one of his horses have gotten lose? He had left the other mare tethered in the barn. Had she somehow pulled herself loose? Had he forgotten to latch the barn door? He was sure he had. “Are you sure she’s mine?”
    William nodded. “She’s got your brand on her.”
    Henry shook his head in consternation. “I don’t know how she got loose, but we can put her in the stable out back and I’ll take her back to the ranch with me when I’m finished. I have another hour or two and then I’ll head home.”
    Sarah shook her head. “Henry, I don’t think the horse came alone. She extended a red neckerchief bundle filled with something toward him. “This was tied to the reins of her bridal.”
    Everyone around here wore neckerchiefs, mainly red or blue, but Henry recognized the small tear off the corner of this one. He reached for the bundle and untied the knot to open the bundle. Inside was a squashed cheese sandwich, an apple, and a piece of dried meat wrapped in a thin layer of cheesecloth. He glanced up at Sarah and William in surprise.
    “You don’t think that Winter was trying to come into town to bring you lunch, do you?” Sarah asked.
    Placing his hammer on the anvil and tugging the leather apron from around his neck, Henry frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know why she would.” He paused, embarrassed. “We’re getting off to a slow start,” he explained. “I know she’s got a lot of things from her past to deal with, and she seemed hesitant to have me in the house last night so I… I slept in the barn. I left early this morning before she got up.”
    Sarah looked at him a moment, and then gave a firm nod. “She probably felt bad,” she said, looking up at her own husband. “It least that’s how I probably would’ve felt.” She gestured with her chin toward the lunch. “Maybe this was her way of making amends.”
    “Well if it is, then where is she?” William asked.
    Henry stared between Sarah and William, and then couldn’t stop some of the worst-case scenarios from running through his thoughts. Maybe she’d been thrown and was now on foot. He looked outside at the snow. Maybe she’d fallen off the horse, hit her head, and now lay unconscious out there in the cold. He knew, with the temperature dropping, that it wouldn’t take long for frostbite to set in. Either way, she might still be caught out in the storm unless she’d managed to make her way back to the ranch on foot. It all depended on when, and where, she’d lost the horse.
    William sensed what he was thinking. “I’ll hitch up the buckboard. You get your horse and we’ll go looking for her.”
    “I’m coming along,” Sarah said.
    “Oh no you’re not,” William argued. “If we’re not back within two hours, I’ll need you to go to the sheriff and put