Territory

Chapter 1

The Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico stand above the desert like cold ice over the warm sand. They are mirrored by the San Juan Mountains across the Rio Grande about fifty miles apart. Living in the mountains of New Mexico tends to be a lonely existence for anyone who settles there. There is perhaps one man per one hundred square miles. Pueblo Indians live in the valley but tended to shy away from the white man. Most of the settlers like the solitary life. Some live there with their families, but not many. It was still the Wild West in the truest sense of the word. Indians roam the hills and as long as the white man behave themselves and treat the natives with respect all went well. Settlers living in the area are always on the lookout for wolves, bears and mountain lions that would endanger their families and livestock. Most here have a horse, chickens and a couple of cows. Some have sheep as well. Many of the Pueblo Indians raise sheep in the valley.

The summers in the mountains are steamy warm and the winters are frigid. The pines that grow on the sides of the mountains keep it cooler in the summer and the snow from drifting too deep in the winter. It is beautiful country but a hard place to live, but people still move into the area to live the life they dream of.

Autumn arrived and the oaks and aspens that grow in these mountains begin to change. The fiery yellow hues of the aspens and the golden brown and cranberry red of the oaks give the area a wash of color against the dark green of the pines growing up the mountain sides. The air grows crisper and cooler as the days march on and to the few settlers who live here it's just a matter of time until the first snow flies.

Molly Reynolds knows all of this. She lives in a cabin up the mountain from an area that the Indians called Gods Fire. Every morning the sun comes up looking like a cauldron of fire, hence the name. Molly had just finished hauling fire wood to her cabin for the day. She'd do it again next week to keep the pile by the door, across the front and down the side of the cabin full to keep the cold at bay during the upcoming winter. There were other chores to do before this day closed.

The life of a homesteader is hard and for a widowed homesteader, even harder. Evan Reynolds, her husband, had died last year when a tree he was cutting fell on him. Molly buried him behind the cabin and still waited for a traveling preacher to come and say a few words over him. Molly came from Philadelphia with Evan who'd looked for a new life for them and their future family. That was two years ago and she'd spent the last year here alone. Molly had a good relationship with a Pueblo woman, Grey Wing, which staved off a deeper sense of loneliness. Grey Wing lives in the valley with her people. It seemed beneficial for both women. Grey Wing had married into the pueblo in the valley below from the pueblo further south. She had also felt alone so when the opportunity came for friendship arose both women jumped at it.

Molly spent the morning mixing up bread dough and stoking the stove to bake it. She'd just put the first loaf in to bake when she heard a whinny of a horse outside her cabin door. She knew it wasn't Patsy, her horse, as she was up in the pasture up the hill, grazing. Maybe Grey Wing had come early for her visit. It didn't matter. She'd go to the door with her rifle. She reached down to wipe the flour from her hands on her apron, picked up the rifle and opened the cabin door with the rifle to her shoulder. What stood there made her drop her rifle from her shoulder.

A black stallion stood across the yard, stamping his foot and whinnying. He looked like he'd been ridden hard and long between being cared for. He wore a beautiful saddle with a rifle scabbard and a very nice Indian horse blanket. Behind the saddle sat a bedroll and a set of saddlebags. All of the items were nicely tooled leather and Molly was sure it had cost a small fortune. There was a canteen that hung from the saddle horn with the stopper hanging from it, empty. Molly scanned the yard for sign of the rider but there was no one there. The horse belonged to someone and it definitely was not the Pueblos, this horse was a fine horse, an expensive one, not one of the wild mustangs.

Molly took a moment to go back inside and check on her bread. It was done cooking so she took it out and placed it on the table to cool and went back out to the yard to corral the stallion and take his saddle off. She curried him and took his equipment to the barn. She felt whoever had lost the horse would be back to look for him.

Running a farm, even a primitive one like Molly's, took a lot of work. Moving hay in for the cow and her calf, oats for the horse, not to mention feeding the chickens took time. Now she had two horses to feed for however long the owner took to come and claim him. She placed two other loaves in the oven and began to clean up after the baking. Molly had just put a kettle over to heat water for dishwashing when a thought came to her; if there was a scabbard for a rifle, where was it? The kettle came off the stove and Molly waited impatiently for the two loaves to finish baking and then walked back out to the yard where she'd found the horse. The way the horse had stood implied that the horse had come down the mountain so Molly then walked up the hill. Since it was afternoon and Patsy had been here since early morning Molly, being practical, decided to bring her down. No sense coming back up here again later. As she walked she scoured the hillside for a sign of the rifle. She didn't like the idea of a firearm misplaced.

Patsy grazed at the far side of the pasture where good green grass grew. As Molly made her way through the meadow to her horse, she noticed an area where the grass was disturbed, matted down. She marched by it to Patsy. She knew that deer, elk and sometimes bear bedded down up here. She'd spooked deer and elk here often enough. Patsy walked toward Molly and Patsy nuzzled her cheek as the woman reached up to caress the horses face. She turned to walk her horse back down to the barn when she noticed something in the disturbed area. There was something blue lying there in a heap. That heap was a blue shirt and in the shirt was the body of a man. Molly had found the owner of the horse.