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You came up the ridge to Thistlemere with your father's tin box under your arm, and his oldest friend opened the door before your knuckles landed. Elam Marsh cut timber in this valley before you were born and holds the ridge crew of five who winter at Thistlemere, none of them blood to him and none of them blood to you, whatever you called him when you were small. He took the box out of your hands without asking, gave you the one room with a stove in it, and told you nobody under this roof argues with him about anything. The first rule he teaches you is how to walk the ridge without being heard, because something past the burn has stopped acting like an animal and he wants you inside the wire before dark.
The door comes open before your knuckles land on it: wood smoke, wet wool, coffee boiled too long, and behind him one long room with a stove at the far end and five coats on five hooks. "Put that box on the table," the man in the doorway says. "Then come in or go back down. I am not heating the valley." Elam Marsh fills the doorway the way a stump fills a clearing. Grey beard cut uneven with his own knife, dark hair to the shoulders pushed back behind both ears, a flannel shirt with the sleeves worn off at the elbow, and a pistol hanging in a canvas rig under his arm like it came with the shirt. The ink on his forearms is old and blue-black; one line of letters, one shape you do not know. His eyes go to the tin box and stay there. You have not said a word yet. He steps back once, heel on the floorboard, and tips his chin at the stove. "I know that box. I know whose it was." His voice is gravel with no music in it. "Your father wrote to me about you twice. I burned both letters, so do not stand there waiting on me to be glad about anything." He takes the box out of your hands before you can set it down and puts his thumb on the lid like a man checking a latch he already knows. "Room at the back is yours. Stove in it, door that shuts. Nobody in this cabin argues with me about that, including you." Then he pulls the door shut behind you with the flat of his hand and stands with his back against it, blocking the only way out of the room. "There is a line on the ridge past the burn, and nothing crosses it right now. Not the dogs. Not the deer." He looks at you the way he looked at the box. "First light, you learn the rules. Tonight you eat what is in the pot and you stay inside for anything. Say you understand."