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He rode through the outskirts of town noticing the new buildings that had sprung up since the previous winter, like mushrooms following big rains. There was even a small and simple church, its little wooden spire rising modestly toward the perpetually overcast sky.
He did not know this one Sunday would change everything.
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Thinking of nothing but the barter he hoped to make for his pelts, he watched the townsfolk go about their business from under the brim of his hat, indifferent to their lives.
With one hand on his thigh and the other resting loosely over the saddle's pommel, he had looked into the door of the church, at the parishioners filing out into the morning light.
His lip had twitched in silent amusement at the good Christians who sang praises to an omnipresent God while sitting in neat rows inside a dark building, instead of thanking him for his creation outdoors on a fine morning such as this.
Scornful and scowling, he had almost turned away when his quick eye happened onto something white, snapping out of the church doorway like the sail of a boat on a frisky breeze.
There was nothing white in his world on the mountain.
There was only the brown of the rich soil and the lush green of the forest. The flash of white was unexpected, glaring.
He looked intently at the flapping fabric until it revealed boot-clad feet.
Heavy black boots, laced up tight.
Obscured by shadows under the brim of his hat, he observed a woman with braided, sable hair walking out into the rare Forks sunlight, surrounded by a gleaming halo of white skirts.
The monochromatic contrast drew him and he couldn't help but follow the movement of the skirt with curious eyes, to see the woman who would pair the crisp white skirt of a lady with the plain heavy boots of practicality.
When he saw her, everything else became as ash on the wind; insubstantial.
"Whoa, old boy. Easy now, Henry," he murmured to the horse, keeping him steady with even strokes of his hand, his eyes studying her every move.
With one arm around the waist of an elderly man and her other hand under his elbow, she walked slowly out of the little church, supporting him as though he was precious.
Her arms were so pale against the man's dark suit, the tilt of her wrist so delicate at the cuff of her sleeve, that he fought an inexplicable urge to assist her, to take the weight from her arms.
Instead, he had watched her surreptitiously as she slowly made her way out of the church, guiding and leading the infirm man down the wooden steps and onto the dirt of the road.
Unlike most women he had noticed, which admittedly were not that many, she was unadorned save for a knitted shawl around her shoulders.
The simple white skirt sat lightly on narrow hips and tucked in neatly under a little jacket, the shawl obscuring her torso in a most modest way.
She was obviously not the type of woman to draw attention to herself.
This was confirmed when he noticed that unlike most women coming out of the church, she was not wearing a silly little bonnet, and there were no pins, nor colorful fancies to draw a fickle eye to an intricate coiffure.
All he saw was the uncomplicated and completely unpretentious braid, thick and dark like a serpent coiling down her back and disappearing under the shawl.
Little wisps of dark hair had escaped the braid and followed the direction of the breeze to whip across her face like breaths of smoke.
The simplicity of this alone had made his sun-warmed skin tingle with an unexpected and incomprehensible happiness.
He didn't understand it, and rode on past the church and into town, with her image engraved onto the inside of his skull long after she had disappeared from view.
Her skirts had flapped and thrashed around her, the noise so different from the earthy stillness and quiet of his mountain home.
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It was several days before he admitted to himself that he was, indeed, unable to stop thinking about her, wondering what kind of woman she really was to wear those work boots instead of the fanciful heeled contraptions preferred by other ladies.
The contradiction doesn't make any sense, he thought, as he chopped wood for his fire.
She left him confused.
It seemed to him that the practical boots belonged on a practical woman made of tougher stuff than others he had met.
He liked the idea of a tenacious woman.
God knew, he liked it a whole lot.
He'd dropped his axe, walked away from his home and into the woods tugging viciously on his beard, needing to deliberate some more.
The idea of a tenacious woman made his weather-beaten, toughened body feel weak with hunger and need.
Berating himself, he wondered if it had indeed been too long since he had had a woman (as Shĩ-Pa often jested); he found the painted whores of Port Angeles repulsed him, while the idea of taking a nagging, flighty woman to wife left him completely cold.
So much so, that when Shĩ-Pa suggested a woman from his own tribe, he had left the tent of his Quileute friend without a word, followed by sounds of jeering laughter at his expense, Shĩ-Pa's guffaw loudest among them.
Since then, they had all called him The Cold One, but thankfully all talk of making him a match had ceased.
It took months before he accepted another invitation to sit and smoke with a contrite Shĩ-Pa at his fire.
It was several weeks after that before he gave in to his unflagging fascination and rode back to town, having convinced his friend to let him take some seal skins to sell on behalf of the Quileute tribe.
He took the same route at the same time of day but did not see her, and after offloading the skins to John Banner, he sat gloomy and listless in the saddle while Henry, as though sensing his master's dampened mood, trudged slowly home, both of them with their heads hanging low.
The next trip, however, had been a small success, for although he didn't see her, he might have unwittingly found out her name.
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*Shĩ-Pa - pronounced Shih-Pa, Quileute, meaning 'Black'. I have used this word as a name for you-know-who, though traditionally I have no way of knowing about traditional Quileute names. No offence is intended.