Bounty of the HeartDedicated to…you know who.
The last of the sun’s dying rays stretched across the frozen land, tingeing the hard-packed snow a dusky rose. A few miles south of the small mining town called Aliak, the makings of a low campfire struggled to burn among the jagged foothills. A man sat hunched over the fire, his weathered face exposed to the elements beneath a fur-lined cap. He wore a black duster jacket, ragged and worn, over which was thrown the treated hide of a grizzly. When the wind blew in fitful gusts through the trees, the bear’s fur stood up along the man’s back, enhancing his already large bulk.
Nearby, twenty-two-year-old Emmett Ward stood on a rugged outcropping and peered through an old set of binoculars at the quiet town nestled in the snow-covered valley below
