Wyatt jolted forward, slopping coffee across the stove. Fewer things had greater rule over Yellowstone than winter, but making sure your bridge was winched back of a night time was sure as hell one of them. Whenever the Dead came, they appeared suddenly and without warning, standing scattered across the boards like ghosts travelling up from below. Not that they took much interest in him or Daisy no more. Hell, they’d become all but invisible to them since they’d got bit. But others might, and in more recent weeks, had. Once word got round about how their kind could stop the Dead from attacking, the Escape Programme was hurried to an end. Most people passing through on their way down from the refuge at Glacier National Park brought joy and news of electricity in some town that was already set to welcome everyone home from the parks. But others rode in on troubled saddles to recall any so-called Pale Wanderers left out here, with instruction for them to play their part leading the defence against the Dead. Now he and Daisy were the only ones who’d decided to stay back, it was all they could do to stop one of them rangers from making it right up to their front door.

Wyatt stared at the little wooden winch. “Daisy, darlin’,” he called back. “Did I take a leak and forget to bring the bridge back in last night or did you?”

Daisy didn’t answer. Wyatt downed his coffee and made his way through to the bedroom. The crumpled bedsheets were empty. Most likely, she’d taken a couple of eggs and a pan out to boil on one of the park’s bubbling pools. Not that it was her turn. Wyatt glanced at the figurine of the silver bronco on the windowsill and sighed. He’d won more calf-roping contests than any other cowboy this side of the Tetons back in the day. And Daisy would’ve been Rodeo Queen too, flying the flag for them both with a thousand rhinestones blazoned across her chest like a night full of stars, given half a chance. She had what it took. Folks who thought that all it required was a vacant smile and a blouse full of boobs were wrong. It took real grit. She’d taught herself how to ride in the western style too and besides, she was unusual in her class in that she was seventeen years old back then, unmarried and without child, and you needed all those things to qualify under pageant rules. But it wasn’t to be. The Dead saw to that. They saw to a lot of things.