blowing snowflakes to the bend in the river. His gaze followed the line of the waterway as it snaked through the canyon.
As a member of the Thunder Horse family, Maddox had grown up living, breathing and protecting the land he and his ancestors were privileged enough to own. Over six thousand acres of canyon and grassland comprised the Thunder Horse Ranch where the Thunder Horse brothers raised cattle, buffalo and horses. They farmed what little tillable soil there was to provide hay and feed for the animals through the six months of wicked North Dakota winter. For the most part, the rest of the land remained as it was when his people roamed as nomads, following the great buffalo herds.
Maddox loved the solitude and isolation of the Badlands. He’d only been away during his college days and a four-year tour of duty in the military. The entire time away from Thunder Horse Ranch he longed to be home again. The Plains called to him like a siren to a sailor, or more like a wolf to his own territory.
Now it would take an extreme change in circumstance to budge him from the place he loved, no matter what sad memories plagued him in the harsh landscape. Time healed wounds, but time never diminished his love for this land.
As his gaze skimmed the banks of the river, he passed over a flash of apple red. Orange-red and blood red he’d expect, like the colors of Painted Rock Canyon, but not bright, apple red. He eased the binoculars to the right, backing over the spot. Squinting through the lenses, he tried adjusting the view to zoom in. A white bump near the river’s edge caught the blowing snow, creating a natural barrier quickly collecting more of the flakes. On the end of the drift, a red triangle stood out, but not for long. The snow thickened, dusting the red, burying it in a blanket of white.
Poised on the edge of a plateau, Maddox weighed his options. He hadn’t found the mares and he still had an hour’s ride back to the ranch house. If he dropped off the edge of the plateau to investigate the snowdrift and the red item buried in white powder beside it, he could add another hour to his journey home. In so doing, he risked getting stuck out in the weather and possibly freezing to death.
Instinct pulled at him, drawing him closer to the edge of the canyon, urging him to investigate. He rarely ignored his instinct, following his gut no matter how foolhardy it seemed. His army buddies called it uncanny, but it had saved his life on more than one occasion in Afghanistan.
No matter how cold and dangerous the weather got, if he didn’t go down and investigate, curiosity and worry would eat away at him. He might not get the opportunity to return to investigate for days, maybe months, depending on the depth of the snow and how long the ground remained frozen.
With gloved fingers, Maddox tugged the zipper on his parka up higher, arranging the fur-lined collar around his face to block out the stinging snow now blowing in sideways.
He nudged Bear toward the edge of the plateau.
As they neared the dropoff, Bear danced backward, rearing and turning.
Maddox smoothed a hand along Bear’s neck, speaking to him in a soothing tone, soft and steady over the roar of the prairie wind. “Easy, Mato cikala.” Little Bear.
Bear reared up and whinnied, his frightened call whipped away in the increasing wind. Then he dropped to all four hooves and let Maddox guide him down the steep slope into the valley below. With the wind and snow limiting his vision, Maddox eased the horse past boulders and rocky outcroppings devoid of vegetation until the ground leveled out on the narrow valley floor. He urged the horse into a canter, eager to check out the mysterious red object and get the heck back to the ranch and the warm fire sure to be blazing in the stone fireplace.
His gaze fixed on the lump on the ground, Maddox pulled Bear to a halt and slipped out of the saddle. His boots landed a foot deep in fresh powder, stirring the white stuff up into the air to swirl around his eyes.
As he neared the snowdrift, the red object took shape. It was the corner of a scarf.
His heart skipped a couple beats and then slammed into action, pumping blood and adrenalin through his veins, warming his body like nothing else could.
He bent to brush away the snow from the lump on the ground, his fingers coming into contact with denim and a parka. His hands worked faster, a wash of unbidden panic threatening his ability to breathe. The more snow he brushed away, the more he realized that what had created the snowdrift was, in fact, a woman, wrapped in a fur-lined parka, denim jeans and snow boots. Her face, protected somewhat from the wind had a light dusting of snowflakes across deathly pale cheeks, sooty brows and lashes.
Maddox grabbed his glove between his teeth and pulled it off, digging beneath the parka’s collar to find the woman’s neck. He prayed to the Great Spirit for a pulse.
An image of Susan lying in his arms, hunkered beneath a flimsy tarp, while gale-force winds pounded the life out of the Badlands, flashed through his mind. This woman couldn’t be dead. He wouldn’t let her die. Not again. Not like Susan.
With wind lashing at his back and the snow growing so thick he could barely see, he didn’t feel a pulse. He moved his fingers along her neck and bent his cheek to her nose. At last, a faint pulse brushed against his fingertips and a shallow breath warmed his cheek.
Relief overwhelmed him, bringing moisture to his stinging eyes. He blinked several times as he tightened the parka’s hood around the woman’s face and lifted her into his arms.
Too late to make it back to the ranch, he had to find a place to hole up until the storm passed. Being out in the open during a blizzard was a recipe for certain death. As he carried the woman toward his horse, he made a mental list of what he’d packed in his saddlebag.
This far into the winter season, he’d come prepared for the worst. Sleeping bag, tarp, two days of rations and a canteen. Trying to get the woman back to the ranch wasn’t an option. Just getting out of the canyon would take well over an hour. Two people on one horse climbing the steep slopes was risky enough in clear weather. He couldn’t expose the unconscious woman to the freezing wind. He had to get her warmed up soon or she’d die of exposure.
Maddox remembered playing along this riverbank one summer with his father and brothers. They swam in the icy water and explored the rock formations along the banks. If his memory served him well, there was a cave along the east bank in the river bend. He remembered because of the drawings of buffalo painted along the walls. He carried the woman along the river’s edge, clucking his tongue for Bear to follow.
The stallion didn’t look too pleased, tossing his head toward home as if to say he was ready to go back now.
The wind pushed Maddox from behind and for the most part he shielded the woman with his body. He crossed the river at a shallow spot, careful to step on the rocks and not into the frigid water. He couldn’t get wet, couldn’t afford to succumb to the cold.
The blizzard increased in intensity until he trudged through a foot and a half of snow in near-whiteout conditions. Maddox stuck close to the rocky bluffs rising upward to the east, afraid if he stepped too far from the painted cliffs, he’d lose his way. Bear occasionally nudged him from behind, reassuring him that the stallion was still there.
After several minutes stumbling around in the snow, Maddox thought he’d gone too far and might have missed the narrow slit in the wall of the bluff. A lull in the wind settled the snow around him, revealing a dark slash in the otherwise solid rock wall.
The entry gaped just wide enough for him to carry the woman through. Once the ceiling opened up and he could hear his breathing echo off the cavern walls, he inched forward into the darkness until he found the far wall.
