Meg was right. Her words had been in anger and through tears, but she correctly predicted that he would achieve nothing here. Perhaps he should have listened to her and not to God, when she insisted he stay in Edinburgh, ministering to the souls as much in need there as here. But if she loved him she must have known how it was suffocating him, killing the spirit in him a little more every day, with the smothering middle-class indifference his parishioners had to the word of God and His purpose.

She had refused to come with him. A chance to do missionary work in the new world and she had refused. James thought of Meg, forever taking tea in Jenner’s on Princes Street with the ladies of the parish, gossiping over fine china and fresh cream confections, and admitted to himself for the first time that she did not love God in the way he did. He was quite certain now she did not love him either. If he were honest, he’d always known she had married him because he ministered in a fine part of the city, to people who had money and what Meg constantly referred to as ‘respectability’. She kept three servants busy maintaining their respectability, putting a strain on James’s church stipend, but she regarded it as a major part of being a minister’s wife. No wonder her world had been shattered when he had rushed home that breezy April day, cheeks burning with fervour, to hold both her hands in his and tell her of his plans to work for God and Canadian Pacific Railways. She pulled her hands out from his large fists and put them to her cheeks in horror. He had looked at her for the first time then. Really looked at her. Dressed in her heavy expensive skirts, her hair tied in a fashionable twist, her face lightly powdered and rouged, she was in every way a model of those hideous Edinburgh women who loved nothing but themselves and their position in some imagined pecking order of that ‘respectability’ James was not privy to.

So he had left without her. And now here he was, squatting on a mountain with six Indians, who not only refused to accept Christ as their saviour, but also harboured some insane superstition that was bound to result in violence. He had lost the love of Meg, and now it seemed he had lost the love of God.

Hunting Wolf spoke first, breaking the silence above the soul-chilling howl of the blizzard.

‘You should go now, Henderson. Night is falling. There is nothing you can do.’

Henderson looked tragic. ‘You pray with I?’

The chief smiled and looked to his warriors. They returned his gaze impassively. He looked back at the minister, huddling in the snow. He was like a crow that had been broken and smashed against the rock, the dark fabric of his big coat spread crazily around him.