The Hearth at Granger Ridge
Wyoming Territory, late January 1877.
On the high ribs of the Snowhorns, the wind hunted the ridgelines like a wounded beast. But the first sound Silas Granger heard wasn’t the gale—it was a thin, bright cry piercing the pines.
He reined in. Snow squeaked under iron. Another cry followed, then a second, then a third—small, urgent, alive. Silas swung off the saddle and led his horse up a narrow track cutting the timber like a scar. Each step sank him ankle-deep. Breath steamed, ears pricked. The wind muttered; the babies didn’t.
He found the clearing by an old fence post, half-rotted, half-buried under drift. A woman was lashed to it with barbed wire, arms pinned behind her, flesh torn where rust bit. Snow frosted her lashes; her hair had frozen in ragged strands. At her boots lay three bundled infants wrapped in a shredded nightgown—one mewling weakly, two silent.’
