Healy was swinging an ax awkwardly, chopping a log. Wycoff was standing nearby, carrying the rifle in the hollow of his good arm. Neither man was talking and Healy was obviously all in. The unfamiliar work and the cold were exhausting him.
Wycoff chewed tobacco and watched, his features expressionless.
Healy stopped suddenly. “Got to take a breather,” Mabry heard him say. “I never used an ax before.” “I can see that.” Wycoff was contemptuous.
“What’s Barker figure to do?” Healy asked.
Wycoff shrugged, saying nothing. Obviously he believed it was no concern of Healy”and “He might get away with killing us, but if he touches the girls, he’s in trouble.” “Our business,” Wycoff said. “You get busy.” Healy picked up the ax and started a swing.
Mabry eased back carefully, making no sound.
Not a word about either Doc Guilford or Boyle.
He began to scout the vicinity. He was no longer worried about tracks, for in this snow they would soon be gone. He had circled well to the east, between the wagons and the Hole, when suddenly he stopped.
The body of a man lay sprawled across the wash ahead of him. A man that was no longer alive.
Moving to the body, Mabry looked down into the features of Doc Guilford. The old actor stared up at the sky, his sightless eyes staring at the falling snow. A flake touched an eyeball and remained there. The creases in his clothes and the tired lines of his face had become a web of white lines from the snow.
If Barker had killed this man, he dared not let the others live. So why was he waiting? And why here, of all places?
Mabry thought of the man who had been following him.
He had led the fellow into the broken country to the south and then switched back north, traveling on rock to leave few tracks. Eventually the tracker would work out his trail and come up with him, and he might have a rendezvous with Barker at this point.
Suddenly he heard voices. One of them he instantly recognized as Boyle’s. The teamster was alive, then, and still present. Mabry saw Healy come in with an armful of wood, and they let him rest.
Wycoff swore as he bumped his arm.
“What the hell?” Boyle was impatient. “Why not bust the wagon open and take them out?” “Let them starve for a while,” Barker said. “They’ll listen better if they do.” “To the devil with that!” Boyle kicked angrily at a stick. “We’d better burn those wagons and get out of here. I don’t like the feel of this place.” Barker said nothing, but after thinking it over he got up and walked to the wagon door. “All right!” he spoke impatiently. “Open up or we’ll break the door in!” Straining his ears, Mabry heard somebody within the wagon reply, but could distinguish no words. Then Barker turned to the others. “She says she’s got a gun.” “She’s lying!” Boyle picked up the ax and walked to the door.
He balanced the ax, drew it back, and swung hard.
As the ax struck there was a heavy concussion within and Boyle sprang back, tripping over the ax and falling. There was a bullet hole in the door on a level with his head. Mabry hesitated. He could walk in now, but if he were killed in the shoot-out, Healy would be helpless to get the girls back to civilization. He might kill all three, but the odds were against it, and having killed Guilford, they would not submit tamely to capture. There was no simple solution. At present they were stopped cold, yet there. could be little food in the wagon and the women’s fuel must be about gone. There were blankets, however, and plenty of clothes. And they could huddle together for warmth.
Carefully he eased back into the trees. At night, that would be the time. Snow fell, hissing softly. The tracks he left behind were gone. When Mabry got back to the black, the big horse was covered with snow. Mabry went up to him, speaking softly. Suddenly the horse jerked his head up and his ears twitched.
That and the sudden smash of sound were the last things Mabry remembered.
It was the nudging of the horse that brought him out of it.
That and the awful cold.
He felt the horse nudging at his shoulder and whimpering, and then he felt the cold. In all his life he had never known such cold, for there is no cold such as that when the inner heat of the body dissipates itself and the cold penetrates to even the deepest tissues. His body was a thing of ice.
He rolled over and tried to bring his arms under him, but the muscles refused to work. Then he rolled once more and back again. His legs would not function, or his arms, but he could roll, and the rolling made his body prickle with a million tiny needles.
He rolled and rolled, back and forth, and his head began to throb, and somewhere down inside him there was a birth of pain. He worked his fingers, and finally, after several attempts, he got to his knees.
Feebly he grabbed for the dangling stirrup, but missed. He fell face down on the trampled snow under the horse.
The will to live was too strong. He began to fight, struggling against the cold as against a visible antagonist, knowing death was very, very near. He had been shot. That much was clear. He had been wounded.
He had lost blood. That was against him, for a wounded man has small chance for survival in the cold.
And the cold was frightful. It had cut deep, it was within him, robbing his body of its last heat. But he would not let himself die. He got his hands under him again, and he rolled over again, and he got to-his knees again.
How long it took him he had no idea. It seemed an endless, bitter stFuggle. But he got to his knees again and he reached out and drew the stirrup close. He could not grasp it, for his hands were like clubs, useless except for fumbling movements.
He thrust his arm into the stirrup, and using that leverage, he got half way up, then lunged to his full height and fell against the horse.
Leaning there, he thrust his icy hand under the saddle girth, up under the blanket and against the warm belly.
He held it there while the patient black waited and snow fell steadily.
He worked his fingers and the blood began to flow again.
His hands were still numb, but the fingers moved. He withdrew his hand and grasped the pommel, pulling himself into the saddle and knocking most of the snow away. The horse was tied. In his cold, numbed brain he remembered that. It was tied to a bush.
He spoke to the horse and it backed slowly. The horse stopped when the reins drew taut, but the branches were brittle with cold and would snap. He backed the horse again and this time the branches snapped off, and he drew the horse’s head around and got the reins in his hands.
Then he started the horse, looping the reins around the saddle horn. Where he was to go he had no idea, or what he was to do. He was hurt, and badly. His leg felt stiff and there was pain in him. The cold was a help in some ways. It would keep down the pain and keep him from bleeding too much. Feebly he struck his hands together, then beat his arms in a teamster’s warming, swinging them again and again.
Warmth returned a little, and the horse kept moving. The black was going somewhere and Mabry had no choice but to trust him. All around was a tight white world of snow, shutting out all sound and sight. The wagons would not move. In the place where they had stopped, much snow would have to be moved before they could start even after the storm passed. By driving into the hollow out of the wind, Barker had trapped himself. Yet Mabry’s own plight was desperate. The warmth stirred by movement was the last warmth in his body. His toes might be frozen, and his face might be. It felt like a mask.
He must get to shelter. He must find warmth.
He must… A long time later consciousness returned and he was still on the horse and the horse was still walking. Yet he had never actually lost consciousness, only sunk into a half-world where he was neither dead nor alive. And the snow fell….
It fell softly into a cushiony silence, into , a world where all was cloaked in white death and where there was no moving thing but the walking horse and the sifting flakes.