Chapter 4 - THE HUNT BEGINS
The night did not remain peaceful for long.
By three o'clock in the morning, the winter storm had blown past, leaving the sky clear, ink-black, and studded with millions of sharp, icy stars. The moonlight reflected off the white snowfields with such intensity that the mountain pastures looked like they were lit by a silver sun.
Inside the cabin, Grace was sleeping deeply for the first time in weeks, tucked under three heavy quilts on the wooden bench, her arm draped protectively over Luna’s wicker basket.
Near the window, Cole stood in the dark, fully dressed in his old military trousers, heavy leather boots, and dark wool shirt. The twin Colt .44s sat strapped low on his thighs in oiled leather holsters, their ivory grips gleaming in the moonlight.
He was holding a pair of brass field binoculars, staring down the long, winding road that led up from the valley settlements.
His ears—trained by years of frontier warfare—had caught a sound that didn't belong to the mountains.
It wasn't the howl of a timber wolf or the crack of a frozen branch.
It was the steady, rhythmic crunch-crunch-crunch of multiple shod horses trotting through crusted snow.
Cole lowered the binoculars, his jaw tightening.
Down at the tree line, three hundred yards away, five riders had emerged from the shadow of the pines. They were dressed in heavy fur coats, wide-brimmed felt hats, and carried long Winchester repeating rifles slung across their saddles.
Leading the group was a broad, fat man riding a heavy grey mule. Even from this distance, Cole recognized the red silk scarf tied around the man's hat band.
It was Marcos "El Búho" Varela—a notorious bounty hunter and enforcer who did the dirty work for General Cárdenas’s timber company.
Cole felt a cold, familiar calm wash over his blood. He didn't panic. He didn't rush. He walked softly across the room to the table, picked up his Winchester lever-action rifle, checked the magazine tube to ensure all ten rounds were loaded, and cycled a cartridge into the chamber with a crisp, oily CLICK-CLACK.
He walked over to the bench and gently touched Grace’s shoulder.
She woke instantly, her hand darting out to grab Luna’s basket before her eyes were even fully open—a wild, instinctive reaction borne of four days of constant terror.
"Shh," Cole whispered, laying his palm over her mouth. "Don't make a sound."
Grace blinked, her dark eyes filling with instant awareness. "Are they here?"
"Five riders," Cole whispered into her ear. "Varela's men. They must have followed your tracks through the high drift before the storm cleared."
Grace’s face turned white as salt. "They... they came for us?"
"They don't know who you are yet," Cole said, his voice cool and calculating. "They probably think you're just an orphan girl who ran off from the timber camp. But if Varela sees that silver band on your wrist, he'll know instantly."
He reached down, picked up the wicker basket, and handed it to Grace.
"Listen to me carefully," Cole commanded softly. "Behind the kitchen stove, there’s a small trapdoor built into the floorboards. It leads to a root cellar under the stone foundations. It’s dry, warm, and stocked with cured meat. Take Luna down there. Put the hatch down, pull the rug over it, and don't open it for nobody except me."
"Mr. Cole..." Grace pleaded, her voice trembling. "There's five of them! You can't fight five men alone!"
Cole looked down at her, a small, dark smile touching the corner of his scarred mouth.
"Kid," Cole said softly, "five men in the open snow against a man holding a stone house ain't a fight. It's an arithmetic problem."
He gently guided her toward the back of the kitchen, lifted the small square wood hatch, and helped her lower herself and the basket into the dark, cool space below.
"Stay quiet," Cole whispered. "No matter what you hear up here. Do you hear me?"
"I hear you," Grace whispered back, her dark eyes shining in the cellar darkness. "Be careful, Captain."
Cole closed the trapdoor, kicked the braided rug over the wood seam, and walked back into the main room.
Outside, the heavy sound of horse hoofs crunched to a halt right in front of the porch steps.
"Peyton!" a loud, gravelly voice shouted from the yard. "Cole Peyton! Get out here!"
Cole stood near the fireplace, out of line with the front windows. He didn't answer.
"We know you're in there, old man!" Varela’s voice boomed again, accompanied by the wet sound of a man spitting tobacco into the snow. "The folks down at the timber station said a stray girl walked up this way yesterday evening! A little brat with a baby!"
Cole took a slow, deep breath, lifted his Winchester to his shoulder, and stepped into the center of the room, fully visible through the front glass window pane.
"You're trespassing, Varela!" Cole called out, his voice cutting through the thick glass with effortless power. "Turn those horses around and head back to El Cobre before you catch something you can't cure!"
Outside, Varela let out a loud, mocking laugh.
"Always the tough guy, ain't you, Peyton?" Varela yelled back. "Listen to me! General Cárdenas wants that girl! The mill boss said she belonged to old Mateo Morales—the deserter! The General’s offering fifty silver pesos for her, dead or alive! Hand her over, and I’ll leave ten pesos on your porch for your trouble!"
Inside the cabin, Cole’s eyes narrowed into slits of dark iron.
Cárdenas already knows Mateo is dead, Cole realized instantly. He's clearing the final loose ends before the court hearing in Mexico City.
"You got five seconds to clear my fence line, Marcos," Cole said quietly, raising his rifle sights until the brass front post aligned perfectly with Varela’s red silk scarf.
"Search the barn!" Varela suddenly barked to his men. "Burn the cabin if you have to! Kill the old man!"
Before the last word had fully left Varela's mouth, Cole pulled the trigger.
CRACK!
The heavy lead bullet shattered the glass window pane, slammed straight through Varela’s chest, and blew him clean off the back of his grey mule. The fat man hit the snow with a dull, heavy thud, dead before his hat hit the ground.
"Ambush!" one of the riders screamed, reaching frantically for his rifle holster.
Cole didn't give them a second.
Working the lever of his Winchester with terrifying, mechanical precision—CLICK-CLACK, CRACK! CLICK-CLACK, CRACK!—he pumped three rounds through the broken window frame in under four seconds.
The first round caught the second rider in the shoulder, knocking him sideways out of his saddle. The second round struck the third rider's horse in the neck; the beast reared up with a terrified squeal, throwing its rider hard against the stone porch steps.
The remaining two men frantically wheeled their horses around, firing blindly into the cabin walls with their revolvers—BANG! BANG! BANG!—the lead balls tearing through the pine siding and sending splinters flying across the room.
Cole didn't even flinch. He walked calmly out onto the porch, his long blue officer's cloak snapping in the mountain wind like a battle flag.
He levered his rifle twice more.
CRACK!
The fourth rider went down fifty yards down the trail, sliding across the crusted ice.
The fifth man dropped his reins, threw his rifle into the snow, and spurred his horse into a desperate, frantic gallop down the mountain path, screaming in terror as he fled into the pine forest.
Silence returned to the high ridge.
The gunsmoke drifted slowly across the white pasture, smelling sharply of sulfur and burnt powder. The grey mule stood near the fence, its breath rising in long, white clouds, completely unfazed by the noise.
Cole lowered his Winchester, his face entirely unreadable. He stepped off the porch, walked over to Varela’s body, and nudged the man's hip with his boot to ensure he was dead.
Then he leaned down, reached into Varela’s coat pocket, and pulled out a heavy leather dispatch case stamped with the official seal of the Chihuahua Territorial Court.
He flipped the case open.
Inside was a legal warrant—signed personally by General Hector Cárdenas—ordering the immediate execution of any surviving members of the Morales household and offering a five-thousand-peso reward to anyone who recovered the "stolen silver artifact" from the child's wrist.
Cole closed the dispatch case and tucked it inside his own tunic.
He looked down the trail where the lone survivor was currently fleeing toward the valley.
"He'll reach El Cobre by noon," Cole said softly to himself. "Cárdenas will have fifty riders on this trail by tomorrow morning."
He turned around, his long blue cloak trailing in the snow, and walked briskly back up the steps into the cabin.
He knelt by the kitchen stove, pulled back the braided rug, and lifted the wood hatch.
Grace was sitting in the dark below, holding Luna tight against her chest, her small face pale but her eyes completely steady.
"Is it over?" she whispered.
May you like
Cole reached down with his massive, calloused hand, offering her a firm, unyielding grip.
"No, kid," Cole said, his voice echoing with the absolute authority of a military commander leading his troops into battle. "It's just starting. Get your coat. We're riding for the capital."
