My Mountain Mule Led Me To A Frozen Woman — Then Her Brother Came Looking For The Body
Part 1
My mule smelled the blood long before I did.
She stopped dead at the edge of the abandoned logging relay station.
Mules do not spook the way horses do.
They just go completely still and assess the danger.
I pulled up the reins and sat there in the freezing wind.
The sky above the Montana peaks was a sick gray-green color.
A massive blizzard was rolling in fast.
The relay station was an absolute wreck.
The front door hung off a single broken hinge.
A wooden traveling trunk had been dragged off the porch and smashed open.
Dresses, papers, and an empty tin lockbox were scattered everywhere.
The snow around the trunk was stained a deep, terrible crimson.
I stepped down from the saddle and read the tracks.
Four sets of heavy boots had come from the main road and left toward the northern treeline.
They had left in a hurry.
But the drag marks were what caught my attention.
Two shallow parallel lines in the snow.
Something light had been dragged into the woods.
I have spent ten years alone on this mountain.
I know better than to make other people’s problems my own.
I tied the mule to the porch post anyway.
The wind was dead silent under the heavy canopy of old pines.
I almost missed her in the fading light.
She was shoved underneath a massive fallen tree.
Her chest was barely moving in shallow, irregular hitches.
She was curled on her side in a thin wool dress.
Her heavy winter coat was gone.
Dark hair was matted with frozen blood on the side of her head.
Her lips were the color of a dark bruise.
I crouched down and pushed a heavy branch out of the way.
Speaking the same way I address my stubborn mule, I demanded she open her eyes.
A single dark brown eye fluttered open, struggling to focus on my scarred face.
Though her pale lips moved, the plea was barely a whisper of freezing air.
“Cold,” she finally managed to rasp.
My only response was a grim nod as I began pulling off my heavy coat.
There was no point trying to lie about the dropping temperature.
Her stockinged feet were waxy and yellow.
Frostbite was already setting in hard.
I looked up through the branches at the sky.
We had maybe two hours before the whiteout blinded us entirely.
Asking if she could walk was clearly pointless.
The exhaustion had already pulled her eye shut again.
“I’m picking you up,” I warned her softly.
Sliding my arms under her limp frame drew an awful, ragged sound from her throat.
A weak fist immediately clamped around my coat lapel like a vice.
The terrible grinding of bone against bone told me her ribs and collarbone were shattered.
Rigging a crude rope harness, I finally managed to haul her onto the mule’s broad back.
My own heavy coat went over her freezing shoulders to lock in whatever heat remained.
The cold hit my chest like a physical blow.
I took the reins and started the long walk back to my cabin.
The snow started falling twenty minutes later.
It took us four hours to navigate the treacherous switchbacks.
I talked to her the entire time.
I just kept telling her to stay awake.
I did not know if she could hear me.
We reached the cabin just as the storm swallowed the mountain completely.
I carried her inside and laid her by the stone hearth.
My hands were so numb I could barely strike a flint.
I got the fire blazing and pulled her frozen shoes off.
She was somewhere between conscious and dead.
I spent the night cleaning her head wound and wrapping her ribs.
The bruising on her face was from a closed fist.
Someone had beaten her with intent before dragging her into the cold.
The fever hit her the next day.
She shook violently under the heavy blankets.
She started muttering a name in her delirium.
It sounded like a curse.
I sat by the fire for three days and poured willow bark tea down her throat.
I did not sleep.
I watched her breathe and waited to see if she would survive.
On the fourth morning, her fever finally broke.
I was sitting at the table eating cold cornbread when she tried to sit up.
I told her to stay still.
Her eyes were finally clear and focused.
She looked around the rough log walls of my cabin.
She looked at my scarred face and overgrown beard.
I introduced myself as Craig Miller.
She said she knew exactly who I was.
I pushed a piece of cornbread toward her.
She ate it with shaking hands.
I told her the extent of her injuries.
I told her the collarbone was broken and her toes were frostbitten.
She stared into the roaring fire.
She thanked me for not riding past her.
I told her the snow was not going to stop for weeks.
I asked her who the men were.
She looked at me with clear, steady eyes and told me the name of the man who had left her out there to die.
