A pause.
Then:
“Open up.”
Silas looked toward hatch.
Clara held breath.
The door burst inward.
Two men entered.
Not three.
Clara recognized one.
The man she struck.
Blood dried along his cheek.
“You.”
Silas said.
The man smiled.
“Boone.”
“You know me.”
“Everyone knows mountain freak.”
Silas’s face did not change.
The insult passed uselessly.
“Where is she?”
“Who?”
“Don’t.”
The second man searched cabin.
Clara remained below.
Her heart pounded so loudly she thought they would hear.
The first man said:
“She belongs to Mr. Price.”
Silas’s expression changed.
“No person belongs to him.”
“Her signature does.”
There.
Confirmation.
The second man kicked chair aside.
“Basement?”
“No.”
Silas’s eyes flicked.
Too late.
The man noticed bearskin rolled.
Then iron edge.
He smiled.
Clara backed down steps.
The hatch opened.
A face appeared through steam.
“There she is.”
Clara grabbed the hatchet.
The man descended.
“Come on, sweetheart.”
Clara raised it.
He laughed.
“You gonna hit me again?”
“Yes.”
He stepped.
She swung.
Not at him.
At lamp.
Glass shattered.
Darkness swallowed lower chamber.
The man cursed.
Steam thickened.
Clara knew steps now.
He did not.
She moved sideways.
He reached.
Missed.
Then screamed.
Silas had come down behind him.
Not attacking violently.
Just grabbed his coat and pulled him backward up stairs.
Clara heard struggling overhead.
Furniture crashed.
She climbed carefully.
At top, Silas had one man pinned against wall.
The other was reaching for pistol.
Clara picked up heavy iron poker.
She threw it across floor.
It struck his wrist.
Gun dropped.
Silas kicked it beneath table.
The man with bloody cheek stared at Clara.
“You fat bitch.”
Silas’s face changed.
Until then he had been controlled.
Now something dangerous appeared.
Clara saw.
“Silas.”
He stopped.
Just her voice.
The man laughed.
“Look at you.”
“Hiding behind him.”
Clara stepped forward.
Three hundred kilograms of frightened, furious woman in her dead mother’s oversized shirt and a wool blanket.
“I ran six miles through snow after hitting your friend with a rock.”
The man’s smile disappeared.
“I am not hiding.”
Silas almost smiled.
The second man lunged toward door.
Silas let him.