They found Ola May on the floor next to her bed. Her spine was curved so that her feet pointed back and up at an angle they had never seen in a human before. They rushed to her, kneeling beside her as the Old Man shook her, trying to revive her. Her eyes came open but rolled as if untethered, unable to focus.

“Ola May. Ola. You wake up now. You stop this foolishness. It's your daddy. Wake up.”

And her eyes did stop their rolling then, and she looked up at Jeff and held his gaze for a second. “Poison,” she said, just above a whisper. “Poison.”

They put her back up on the bed, and as soon as she lay flat, they knew she was dead.

A slow, dismal procession to the cabin began. Tom took the truck down the canyon to the nearest neighbors, the Boscos, and asked them to come help. He then went on down the canyon and over to Klondyke, where he reported Ola's death. When he made his way back to the cabin, the men—his father, brother, and Mr. Bosco—stood in the cold outside the door while Mrs. Bosco cleaned the body.

Mrs. Bosco was having a difficult time of it. The joints of Ola's body had already begun to stiffen as the joints of the dead do. She was unable to get Ola's unbuttoned dress over her arms, which were tightly crossed in front of her, so Mrs. Bosco found scissors in Granny Jane's sewing kit and began cutting the dress away.

Two things seemed particularly odd to Mrs. Bosco. Ola May wore nothing under her dress. It was odd enough that Ola, who favored britches and shirts, would be wearing a dress when she was not going to town, but to wear nothing under it in December, in the mountains, was most peculiar. And though the joints of Ola's arms, legs, hands, and feet were rigid in the death clench, Ola's head moved easily from side to side and back and forth as Mrs. Bosco moved her.

As the men waited, Sisson rode up from the mine. “I knew it was trouble. When you didn't come back, I knew it was trouble.”

“Ola May is dead,” Jeff said, his face a gray mask, his eyes distant as if figuring the loss the world had given him, or just trying to sort out what else he could possibly lose. First his wife, then his mother, now his daughter. The women of his life removed, one by one. He thought probably he would never again know the world of women.

“What happened?” Sisson asked.

“Rattlesnake,” John said simultaneously as Jeff said, “Poison.”

Sisson and Jeff both looked at John.

“Spooked her horse and throwed her,” John said.

“How do you know that? She said it was poison.”

“Rattlesnake is poison.”

“Kind of the wrong time of year for rattlesnakes,” Sisson said. “They sleep the winter.”