“What about no one left behind?”

“We won’t stop searching for Peyton, I promise. But this woman needs help now.”

“Yes. I know—I’m sorry.” Her eyes filled. “I just hoped . . .”

“It’s okay, E.” He grabbed her arm, squeezed. “Let’s get her back to the cabin.”

Around them, Goose was barking, rowdy in the snow.

Dodge picked up the woman and sat down on the sled. Then he draped her in front of him, put his arms around her, and negotiated the sled back to the cabin.

Echo pulled up beside him and helped him carry her inside. Echo spread her sleeping bag on the lower bunk, and he set the woman into it.

Goose came inside, too, and lay down, whining.

“I can take it from here. You need to go,” Echo said. She stood up.

He glanced at the woman, then Echo. “Are you sure? Maybe we should try the radio.”

“I will. But I know it doesn’t work this far out. Just go, Dodge. Take the lake south, and it will connect with Remington Road. It’ll be at least trekked by some of the big trucks. You’ll cut your time in half. Remington Mines recently got a de Havilland Beaver. Take that—you can land on the lake—”

“Okay, okay. I got this.” Then he reached out and pulled her to himself and gave her a hard kiss. “That’s so you don’t forget that I’m coming back.”

Her eyes were still wet. “I’m counting on it. Hurry.”

As the sun started to climb into the sky, he took off, the snow turning to spray in his wake.

eleven

By the time he reached Remington Mines, Dodge had his happy ending all mapped out.

Okay, sure, he’d take it slow with Echo, not propose for a few more weeks—okay, months—but there it was . . .

The life he’d come home to find. As he plowed through a drift, snow salting the crisp air, the sky endlessly blue, his father’s words fell upon him.

“I’ve been praying for ten years for you to come back. God has bigger plans for you. A destiny, if you’d just stop fighting it.”

Destiny. The word lit inside him. Maybe.

A sweat had formed under his parka, his teeth loose from the hum of the snow machine. He’d come out onto the road, just like Echo said, and followed it west until he came to the cutoff for Remington Mines, a rutted dirt road that jerked and fell and tried to topple him. He hurtled peaked drifts, found old ruts from a plow, and finally came out to the land owned by Remington Mines.

The old log buildings of the first stakeholder, Jack Remington, still stood, shuttered up for the winter. In the summer months, tourists came out to walk the pathways, peek inside the old sluicing huts, try their hand at panning.