Chapter 9: The Trapper’s Cabin**
They reached the cabin as the sun began to dip behind the jagged peaks, casting long, bloody shadows across the snow. The cabin was half-collapsed, its cedar logs rotting under decades of moss and mountain rain, but the stone hearth and thick oak door were still intact.
Jax barred the door with a heavy timber and set Toby down in the corner, piling old dry deer hides around him to keep out the freezing draft.
"Listen to me carefully," Jax said, kneeling before the boy. His breath plumed white in the freezing cabin air. "No matter what happens outside, you stay here. You don't make a sound. When it's quiet, you wait for morning, then you follow that river down the valley. It leads to the state highway."
"You're leaving again," Toby said, a tear finally cutting a clean path through the soot and dust on his cheek.
"I ain't running away this time, Toby," Jax said, pulling Sarah’s folded letter from his vest and placing it gently into the boy’s small hands. "This time, I'm standing right in front of you."
Outside, heavy footsteps crunched through the frozen crust of snow.
"Jax!" Cole bellowed, pounding the butt of his shotgun against the cabin door. "End of the line, old man! Step out, or I burn this shack down with both of you inside!"
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Jax took a slow, deep breath. For the first time in nine years, his hands didn't shake.
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