As he walked further towards the fireplace with a fresh supply of wood in his arms, a somber cloud of observation wafted from the area where the injured man stood.
Lyla was in the same cabin as these two men, but didn’t comprehend that weight of this moment.
She was blind to what was right in front of her eyes, while this Negro was not.
He knew that look.
Dancy Ruelaix had seen the look in a white man’s eyes more times than he could ever forget. Being a male of height and obvious presence, Dancy Ruelaix knew the feeling of seeming as tiny as the wisp of an eyelash in the denigrating eyes of a white man.
Without a word being said; that look of inhumanity, hatred, judgment, belittlement, and bypass settled onto the being of Dancy Ruelaix.
Rolling the pieces of lumber and twigs into a medium sized pile next to the right side of the fireplace he waited for the stranger in his home to speak first.
Out of the side of his left eye, Dancy saw that words were not the primary mode of communication by this injured man; for Coulton was slowly reaching for the branch next to that bed, which he was using as a crutch to assist in walking.
Dancy’s internal radar picked up on that twitch of fear radiating from Hollister, as that quaking hand began to cradle that branch.
Ruelaix wasn’t going to flinch or cower in his own home, for he had worked too long and too hard to establish himself on the trading post and in Callaway.
In the end, if there was one man leaving that cabin it sure as hell wasn’t going to be the person who put his blood, sweat, tears, and tenacity to survive the bitterest of nature’s elements over those many years.
Coulton Hollister’s mind wasn’t as clear as his eyesight in seeing this Negro before him.
Dancy decided to clear the air and the cobwebs of the man who he and Lyla had saved, “So, what’s your name, stranger?”
At the bottom of that ravine at Banyon Pass, it was Coulton Hollister who hadn’t a clue of who pulled him out of death’s jaws.
Kindle – https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07M6J7YQC
Paperback – https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Winter-Lyla-Strauss/dp/B098GT2XXW/
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