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They could hear wailing outside, tormented grief and rage… tinged with madness. Her eyes met his uncertainly.

‘I’ve seen depictions of hell,’ said Ben, ‘painted by asylum inmates and great painters alike, and they are what I’ve seen outside.’

A distant piercing scream echoed from the woods.

‘If you stay here, Mrs Zimmerman, Preston’s madness will kill you and all the others. One way or another you will all die. He’s lost his mind.’ He placed a hand on her arm. ‘And I’ll need your help with her.’ Ben’s eyes met hers. ‘There’s nothing for you here, not any more.’

She looked around, still uncertain, biting her lip, agonising for the briefest moment. Then she nodded. ‘I’ll come.’

‘We must go now.’

Ben shuffled clumsily on his knees with the girl in his arms towards the entrance. He pushed the flap aside with his head and peered out. The fire in the middle was now beginning to dwindle and the circular barricade had collapsed in on itself, leaving a ring of glowing, sparking embers and languid flames. He could see silhouettes of people moving amongst the bodies. He hoped it was comfort being offered to those wounded or dying, but he suspected raw grief and rage was driving some to exact a cruel revenge on those not yet dead.

No one had drifted back towards the camp, just yet.

He scrambled to his feet with difficulty, encumbered by the dead weight of Emily, and loped across the space between shelters directly towards the nearest trees. Mrs Zimmerman followed, anxiously looking behind her at people she no longer recognised. She caught up with Ben kneeling down on the edge of the clearing, waiting for her.

‘We will freeze outside tonight,’ she whispered hoarsely.

‘We’ll keep moving tonight. That will save us from freezing. By daylight tomorrow we should be far enough away to consider our other needs and make a shelter.’

He wondered which way to head, having no idea where they were in the mountains or how far away, and in which direction, the nearest humble outpost of civilisation lay.

There might be other trappers out in these woods.

But he realised that coming across one was unlikely. They were going to have to find their own means of survival.

Mrs Zimmerman placed a hand on his arm. ‘Head west, Mr Lambert.. we should head west.’

She was right. He looked up at the clear night sky and made a rough calculation on where he recalled noticing the pale, milky sun rise and set these last few weeks.

‘West is that way, I think,’ he said, pointing across the clearing. ‘We’ll need to move quietly round the edge of the camp. Are you ready?’

She nodded.

‘Come on then,’ he whispered, scooping up Emily in his arms.

Keats struggled against the gradient of the gentle upward slope, winded and exhausted by the exertion of the last ten minutes, the desperate hand-to-hand fight and the ensuing escape. His tortured breath came in ragged gasps and wisps of steam rose from his hot body into the cold night air.

He stopped for a moment to catch his breath and turned round to look back the way he had come. The sky was mostly clear tonight, and in between the floating islands of dark cloud the full moon shone brightly, bathing the night with a quicksilver that made the snow’s glow almost luminescent.

A hunter’s light. A hunter’s moon.

He cursed. The tracks of dislodged powder snow in his wake were unmissable even without the aid of lamplight. The dark spatters of blood he was leaving beside them — black by the light of the moon — only served to further betray the way he had come. The gash down his forearm, caused by the vicious swinging impact of a hoe, was still bleeding, but the flow of blood had slowed from a gush to a viscous trickle. He needed to bandage the wound so that it wouldn’t get caught on something, tugged open, and the bleeding renewed.

But he also needed to keep moving.

Behind him, some way further down the hillside, he could hear someone’s laboured breathing, the cracking of branches and twigs being pushed desperately aside; someone rapidly approaching him. Further down the hill beyond, he could see the muted flicker of lamps and flaming torches moving swiftly between the trees.

The sound of panting breath and the cracking of hasty strides taken carelessly was almost upon him. Keats hadn’t time to mess with pouring powder and wadding a lead ball ready to fire. He dropped his rifle and pulled out his hunting knife. The panting quickly drew upon him, and by the pale glare of moonlight he saw a silhouette stagger out of the darkness and cross the clear, luminescent, snow-covered ground between them.

Keats sighed with relief when he recognised the outline and managed a dry and wheezy laugh.

‘Broken Wing,’ he said in Ute.

‘Ke-e-et, you live,’ the Indian replied in English.

They stared in silence for a few moments, both gasping hungrily for air.

Keats pointed downhill. ‘Others with you?’

Broken Wing nodded. ‘One Paiute brother, and the white-face with buffalo-skin squaw.’

‘No one else?’

‘They all dead.’