Thomas left.
Six days later, someone arrived at the ranch with his horse.
The animal was exhausted.
Its saddle damaged.
There was dried blood on the leather.
The messenger said Thomas had died during an encounter with cattle thieves near the northern quarry.
According to the account, the survey party had surprised a group of rustlers.
A fight followed.
Thomas was caught in it.
His body was recovered from a ravine.
Caleb remembered almost nothing clearly about the next two days.
Only the cold.
The terrible journey.
And the moment he saw his younger brother lying beneath a blanket.
Thomas's face had been badly injured.
His coat was torn.
And the laughter Caleb remembered seemed suddenly impossible.
The men responsible, according to the surviving witnesses, had fled into the mountains.
Caleb pursued them.
For months, he rode across Wyoming and into neighboring territories following rumors of rustlers.
He found men who had stolen cattle.
Men who had threatened families.
Men who made a living by using violence against isolated ranchers.
He brought several back alive.
Others fought.
A few died in confrontations that left permanent scars on Caleb's body and reputation.
People began calling him a hunter of men.
Sheriffs sometimes sought his help.
Ranchers trusted him to find missing livestock.
And strangers learned to avoid provoking him.
But he never discovered exactly what happened to Thomas.
The official account remained unchanged.
A rustler fight.
A fall.
A death in the ravine.
Yet Caleb couldn't reconcile all the details.
Thomas had been working with surveyors.
His equipment disappeared.
The surviving men gave inconsistent descriptions of the attackers.
And the foreman refused to explain why the party had been traveling near an abandoned quarry instead of the approved route.
Eventually, Caleb stopped pursuing the matter.
Not because he believed the explanation.
Because the search was consuming his life.
He returned to the ranch.
Worked.
And tried to bury his grief beneath the weight of ordinary responsibilities.
But he never forgot the northern trail.
And when Clara Whitmore mentioned it beside the schoolhouse, the old questions returned with an intensity that frightened him.
Who was she?
Why did she want the boundary markers?
And why had she looked so desperate when she asked?
That evening, he sat beside the fire with Trouble sleeping at his feet.
The dog had recovered enough to limp around the cabin and investigate everything that smelled interesting.
Caleb watched him.
Then stared toward the northern window.
Clara's face remained in his thoughts.
Her thick brown hair.
Her serious eyes.
The way she lifted her chin when he told her no.
He had known beautiful women before.
Some had smiled at him.
Others had approached him out of curiosity.
But Clara was different.
She seemed to look beyond his size, scars, and reputation.
She asked questions he didn't expect.
And when he spoke, she listened as though the answer mattered.
That unsettled him.
He didn't want another person close enough to lose.
He had buried his parents.
His brother.
And several friends whose lives ended before they'd had a chance to grow old.
He had learned to survive by keeping the world at a distance.
Clara Whitmore was beginning to make that distance difficult.