Every movement brought him closer to the edge.
He reached the chimney.
The iron cap was buried.
He took the poker from his belt and struck downward.
Nothing.
Again.
Ice cracked.
Again.
His shoulder screamed.
The poker punched through something softer beneath the ice.
The rancher frowned.
Cloth?
Before he could examine it, a violent pressure released inside the flue.
Smoke exploded upward.
The rancher jerked backward.
His boot lost purchase.
Suddenly he was sliding.
He dropped the poker.
His hands clawed uselessly at the snow.
“CLARA!”
He rarely used his wife’s name.
He almost never shouted it.
Tonight it tore from him instinctively.
He shot over the edge.
His chest struck the ladder.
His left arm hooked around one rail.
For a moment he hung there while the ladder bucked.
Below, his wife screamed.
Then she leaned into the base with everything she had.
The ladder stopped.
The rancher caught another rung.
Then another.
He descended so quickly he nearly fell the remaining distance.
His boots hit the ground.
He turned.
His wife swayed.
The color had vanished from her face.
“Inside.”
She blinked.
He stepped toward her.
“Inside. Now.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re blue.”
“So are you.”
She took one step.
Her knee buckled.
The rancher caught her arm.
Even with both hands he could not support her full weight.
She went down heavily into the snow.
“No.”
He dropped beside her.
Her eyes fluttered.
“Look at me.”
She tried.
“Clara.”
Her lips moved.
No sound came.
Panic entered him faster than the cold.
For three weeks he had told himself their marriage was an arrangement.
A sensible decision.
A winter contract blessed by a minister.
Nothing more.
He had chosen her because he needed another pair of capable hands and because she had written that she wanted land, security, and a household of her own.
Romance had never been discussed.
Love certainly had not.
Yet kneeling in the snow beside her, the rancher discovered there was nothing practical about the terror ripping through his chest.
He pressed his gloved palm against her cheek.
“Stay awake.”
Her eyes closed.
“No.”
He slapped her cheek lightly.
“Open your eyes.”
Nothing.
The rancher stood.
Dragging a four-hundred-kilogram woman through snow was not something strength alone could accomplish.
He needed leverage.
He ran to the porch and seized the buffalo hide.
Then he returned and worked one edge beneath her shoulders.
He rolled her only inches at a time.
Pulled.
Stopped.
Changed his grip.
Pulled again.
The hide slid over packed snow.
His back burned.
His breath tore through his throat.
He got her to the doorway.
The raised threshold became another obstacle.
He wedged a piece of firewood beneath the hide and used it as a crude lever.