Testament (25 page)

He crawled into the sleeping bag with Sarah, zipped it shut, and felt the soft insulation of the bag above him and beneath him and the harder saddle blankets under that and the snow at the bottom. He snuggled close to Sarah, trying to give her heat. It felt strange and awkward to have his big snow-stiffened boots pressing down against the bottom of the sleeping bag. Sarah’s own boots were hard against his knees whenever either of them shifted position, but he couldn’t take the chance of removing his boots or hers in the cold and never getting them on again, and the best he could do was loosen them, letting the blood circulate, hoping for as much comfort as he possible. Which wasn’t much. As the wind rose and fell, growing stronger, night gathering around them, they hunched down farther into the sleeping bag, their heads totally muffled against the cold. Their breath vapor collected damply along the top lining of the bag, the close suffocating dampness becoming so much for him that he put his head out into the air again, and the sharp bitter cold stung the inside of his nostrils, froze the mucus in there so that he needed to duck his head back in under the warm close folds of the sleeping bag again.

The wolves woke him, first a few, then what seemed a pack of them howling nearby. Then they didn’t sound very close at all, and he realized that the wind must be carrying their commotion to him, but the horses were skittering nervously just the same. He thought about crawling out and tying them more securely, but he had already done the best he could, and he couldn’t stay up all night out there with them.

“What is it?” Sarah asked, half asleep.

“The wind.”

“The other thing. What is it?”

“Wolves, but they’re far. There’s nothing to worry about.”

He had his gun out, though, and he kept it next to him all through the night, dozing, waking with a start, listening to the nervous snorting of the horses, dozing again. The snow had drifted up over the saddles onto the sleeping bag when he finally wakened. He felt the pressure on him before he knew what it was, and fumbling to get his head out from under the sleeping bag, he saw the several inches of snow weighing down on him. He kicked with his knees to get it off, rousing Sarah, crawling out over the saddles into the bitter cold morning air, still no sun, everything dull and gray, needing to squint anyhow as he looked to see if the drift of snow on the sleeping bag meant another storm in the night. Turning to check the horses, he saw that the pinto was gone. He didn’t know when or how. The thick branch of fallen timber he had tied the pinto to wasn’t broken, and he knew that his knot had been good enough that it should have held, but the rope was gone, and then he saw where the pinto tugging at the rope must have snapped off another smaller branch that had projected and kept the rope from slipping off the bigger one. It didn’t matter. The horse was gone, and the wind had drifted its tracks so that he couldn’t follow it, and the wolves would have gotten it by now anyway.

Looking off through the forest, he saw movement under the low-hanging branches of a pine tree as one of the wolves crawled out from between a snowdrift and the trunk. He had his gun up, aiming to fire before he realized it wasn’t a wolf—it was the old man’s dog. Even so, he almost shot it anyway. The only thing that stopped him was his fear that someone following them would hear the shot.

“My horse is gone,” Sarah murmured.

“And we’ve got company,” he told her, pointing. “Stay away from it. Roll up the sleeping bag.”

He was setting the two saddle blankets onto the bay while she did what she was told. Then he was burying one saddle in the snow, hefting the other one onto the bay, cinching it, and all the while the air was still in contrast with the wind in the night, and the dog stood fifty yards away under the low-slung branches of the pine tree, watching. It hardly breathed or blinked or otherwise moved a muscle, just stood there, waiting. He coiled the rope he had used to tether the horse and secured it to the saddle. He picked up the saddle bags from the pinto and tied them over the ones on the bay. Then he tied the rolled-up sleeping bag over them, lifted Sarah onto the saddle, got on behind her and started off. They had deliberately not eaten the night before, figuring that the soup they had eaten at the mine was enough for one day. Now he pulled out some beef jerky that he had saved from the meal they had eaten with the old man back in town, gave some to Sarah, bit into some himself, cold and brittle, taking a while to soften it in his mouth, and looking back, he saw that the dog was coming out from under the pine branches, struggling through the chest-deep snow, bounding, stumbling, finally reaching the depression of their tracks and following.

5

It kept the same distance, fifty yards behind them. He looked back once, and it was gone. He looked back another time, and it was following them again.

“What are you stopping for?” Sarah asked.

The dog stopped too, easing down onto its haunches.

He nudged the horse forward. The dog followed. He nudged the horse faster, and the dog kept pace. Then fearful of draining the horse’s strength, he reined the horse slower, and the dog eased up as well, still following.

In time the wind returned, coming from the right, gusting snow across in front and back of him. But the snow never rose more than four feet off the ground, it just kept streaking along the ground, the thick green boughs of the pine trees clear all around him above it but everything hidden below, and glancing back, he couldn’t see the dog anymore. He imagined it darting closer to them under the cover of the gusting snow, imagined it leaping, his hand on his gun in its holster, riding faster, and then the wind eased off, and he looked quickly back, and the dog wasn’t there anymore.

Then it was.

The procession went on like that, the dog sometimes there, sometimes not, sometimes hidden by the gusting snow but always the same distance behind whenever he saw it. He was forced to stop that night in a hollow among the trees, the only half-decent spot that he could find, and he couldn’t let himself sleep, lying in the sleeping bag, keeping watch over Sarah, his gun by his hand, the rope that tethered the horse wound several times around a tree and then around his wrist so that he could tell in the dark if anything was happening to the horse.

He must have dozed, but if he did, he didn’t know it, day suddenly and the horse all right and the dog the same distance over there under a tree. He saddled the horse again, and they started off again, the dog following, and this time the wind returned much earlier, not just picking up snow and blowing it along but bringing flakes down with it, sporadic at first, then thin and constant, by late afternoon a steady snowfall, and this was what? the third day, he wasn’t sure anymore, since his horse had eaten anything, and it was moving slower, more awkwardly, and he didn’t see how it could keep going much longer. Once it stumbled to its knees, and he was barely able to urge it up.

That was when the dog moved a little closer.

Or maybe it was before that. Since the snowfall shortened the distance that he could see, the dog must have been moving closer all the while, keeping them in sight in the gathering snowfall.

The whiteout settled everything, the wind so strong, the snow coming down so thick around them that sky, earth, air, everything was the same gray washed-out color, and trees which they bumped into weren’t visible even a foot away, their faces crusted with ice and snow, the horse hardly moving, every way the same and likely a chasm in front of them, and when the horse finally tumbled down, he knew that they were finished. The horse just kept tumbling, and he and Sarah were falling over, rolling in the snow, him tugging at Sarah to keep her free from the weight of the horse as it rolled, and then they were lying motionless, him still gripping the reins of the fallen horse but as close as it was to him, he couldn’t see it. He struggled to his feet, waist-deep in snow, fighting to get the horse up, shouting at it, the wind driving his words back into his throat. He got it up, and it rolled again, and he realized that he couldn’t see Sarah, clutching for her in the blinding snow, finding her, dragging her with him into the depression that the horse’s body had made, sinking down exhausted, for one brief moment thinking of the dog again before he noticed that the wind had lessened.

No, it hadn’t. It just seemed that way from where they were collapsed in the snow. They were in a kind of trench, sheltered by the walls, the whiteout whipping over them, and this was maybe the last idea he would ever have, but he needed to try it, cursing, rousing himself into motion, fumbling at the snow.

“Dig!”

“My hands,”

“Dig!”

He clawed at the snow, grabbing Sarah’s hands and working them, scooping with his arms, burrowing into the side of the drift.

“Dig!” he kept telling her, squirming farther in, the wind lessening the more he worked, and in a moment he had a hollow in there for her, pushing her in, and he was scooping the snow beside her, digging, worming in next to her. The hollow was maybe four feet by six feet, just room enough for the two of them scrunched up on their sides in there, but the wind was less, and he could breathe again, and if snow was still coming in on them, it wasn’t so much that he couldn’t keep pushing it away.

He crawled out, groping for the horse.

He couldn’t find it. Then he had it, almost drifted over by the snow. It was breathing weakly, trembling under his touch, and he was sure that the horse was going to die anyway and he couldn’t let it stand somehow and wander off and get buried by the snow where he would never find it again, so he slipped off his glove, fumbling for his gun. In the blinding snow he couldn’t see the horse’s head; he had to feel along until he touched where its massive jawbones curved up at the back of its head toward its ears, and pressing the barrel of his gun against the soft spot just behind the ears, he cocked and fired. The horse jerked against him, knocking him back down into the snow. Sarah screamed, and he almost let it go at that, but he couldn’t bear the thought that he might not have killed it, that it still might be alive and suffering, so he struggled to stand and felt and fired, the shot almost muffled soundless in the storm, and this time when the horse jerked, it was just from the impact of the bullet and he was satisfied.

Sarah was only a few feet in back of him. Even so, when he uncinched the saddle from the horse and worked it free, he almost didn’t find his way back to her.

“You shot the horse.”

“I had to. It was suffering.”

And something else, and he didn’t know how she was going to take it, but he had to be honest with her.

“We’re going to eat it. It’s what’s going to keep us alive up here.”

He was scooping out more snow to make room for the saddle and the saddlebags and the sleeping bag, glancing at her, and the idea of eating the horse didn’t seem to matter to her one way or the other. It might be food, but it wasn’t food now, and she just settled back against the low wall of the hollow, holding herself.

He made one more trip out, groping for the saddle blankets off the horse, finding his way back, spreading the blankets under them, covering themselves with the sleeping bag, leaning back with his head against the saddle.

One more thing. Always one more thing.

“Here,” he said. “Use these saddlebags for a headrest. Here’s some jerky.”

It was the last two pieces he had left, one for her, one for him and they nibbled at them in silence, him sucking on a piece in his mouth while he waited for it to soften so he could chew it.

6

He didn’t know when he fell asleep, but the close stale air woke him, and he couldn’t see, and he realized that the snow had blocked the entrance. He pushed to clear it, and then he was out into darkness and the wind was shrieking in his face and he ducked back down, registering that it was night out there, that the snow was still coming, him sucking huge gulps of fresh air, crawling back down to where the air was warm from their breathing. He didn’t hear anything from Sarah. Touching her, he slumped back satisfied that she was alive. He snuggled in under the sleeping bag, heat from his body still lingering in its folds to comfort him. The entrance blocked up once more in the night, and he woke, crawling to clear it, only this time when he burst through, the snow blinded him in a different way, the storm gone, not night but day, the sky deep blue and cloudless and the sun arcing off the snow so brilliantly that after the darkness, he needed to close his eyes and lower his head.

He crawled back to Sarah.

“Wake up. It’s morning.”

She didn’t move.

“Wake up.”

But she still didn’t move, and suddenly frightened, he reached under her arms, dragging her to the entrance, nudging her, watching as her nostrils widened in the sharp cold air, seeing her eyelids flicker. The air down there must have half poisoned her. Or maybe she was simply exhausted. No matter. He had to wake her. He tapped at her face, pried at one eyelid, and then her arm was up, pushing weakly to get his hand away.

“I know,” he said. “It’s hard to see. But we can fix that. Right now we need to get some water into you. We’re going to be all right. Do you understand?”

She nodded weakly, but it was obvious that she didn’t believe him.

“No, it’s true. Listen. As long as we’ve got water, we can stay alive. There’s a rule of numbers that somebody made up once for people who get lost up here. You can only go three days maybe without water, but you can go for as much as three weeks without food. You might not look like much after all that time, you might not have very much flesh on you, but you can stay alive that long, and as it is, we’ve got plenty of water, all this snow around here, God knows we’ve got plenty of that, and we’ve got the horse for food, and we’re going to be all right, do you understand me?”

She nodded again, and this time her nod was a little more convincing as she took a handful of snow and brought it toward her mouth.

He had to stop her. “No, that isn’t what I meant. It takes too much heat to melt the snow in your mouth. We need to fix up that hole down there. We need to widen it, find a way to make it stronger, warmer, get it big enough to build a fire.”