Early in the morning out back of the Delign store in the town of Saint Anthony she broke up the kindling for the stove and the sky above her was the province of some ice god with an evil streak to him and malice in his ways and in the bone and iron greyworld of the Idaho Territory that winter she chewed on some hard new thoughts about fate and destiny and love and death and all of that horseshit and the way it had all turned out.
