Once, a long time later, he thought he heard a faint sound. Head up, he listened. Nothing. He walked on, head down, moving ahead like a blind, unreasoning automaton. He brought up suddenly against a solid obstruction. Lifting his head, he found himself against the bars of a pole corral.
Following the corral bars around, he saw dimly through falling snow a darker blur. It took shape, became real. It was a low log house, and at the door stood a horse, and in the saddle was a man.
It was a man upon whose clothes the snow had caked and whose head hung on his chest. How he had stayed in the saddle was a mystery until Healy tried to remove him from the horse.
He pounded on the door. No sound. He dropped a hand to the latch, lifted it, and opened the door.
“Hello!” he shouted. “Anybody home?” No one answered.
Fumbling then, he got a mitten off a half-frozen hand and dug into his pocket for matches. His fingers were so stiff that he had to make several attempts before one burst into flame.
And the first thing he saw was a half-used candle. His hand trembled as he held the match to the wick. It caught, flame mounted; the room became light.
Lifting the candle, he looked around. The cabin was empty. Before him was a fireplace and on the hearth a fire had been laid. He used the candle, holding the flame to the kindling. As it flared up he returned outdoors and broke the frozen snow from around the stirrup.
Pulling, he found that Mabry’s clothes had frozen to the saddle, and had to be freed by force. He toppled the big man into his arms but was unable to carry him, so he dragged him through the door and into the cabin.
Dragging Mabry closer to the fire, Healy added sticks and built it up until flames crackled and the heat reached out to war against the empty chill of the deserted house.
He got Mabry’s coat off, then his boots.
He had no experience with frozen men, nor was he sure that Mabry was frozen or even frostbitten, but he began to chafe his feet gently, then warmed the coat at the fire and spread it over his feet. He lifted Mabry’s alms and worked them back and forth and around to restore circulation.
There was an ugly tear in Mabry’s scalp and his face was covered with dried and frozen blood. Healy hesitated to touch the wound, deciding for the time being to let well enough alone.
With the fire blazing cheerfully and Mabry stretched on a buffalo robe and under blankets, Healy took the candle and walked around the cabin.
Obviously it had been in use not many weeks before.
In various cans there were dried beans, rice, salt, flour, and coffee.
Shrugging into his coat, he led the patient black horse to the barn. The building was snug and tight, half underground. In a bin he found some ears of corn, and he put them in the feedbox.
He wiped the snow from the horse with his hands, then with an old bit of sacking. A couple of moth-eaten blankets hung on nails, and he put them over the horse, forked some hay into the manger, and returned to the house.
Mabry still lay on the floor. The fire burned steadily. Dull with exhaustion, Healy backed up to a chair and sat down. He would rest. After a while he would make coffee. Outside the snow continued to fall, and the fire ate at the pine knots, and there was no sound within the room but the breathing of the two men. Occasionally a drop of melted snow fell down the chimney into the fire. It was very still.
HEALY AWAKENED with a start and for a minute lay still, trying to orient himself. Slowly he remembered, recalling his arrival and the finding of Mabry.
The big gun fighter lay sprawled on his buffalo robe several feet from the fire. His breathing was heavy, his face flushed and feverish.
Building up the fire, Healy put water in a kettle and hung it over the flames. There was little wood left in the fuel box. He went to the window.
It was growing light and everything was blanketed with snow.
All tracks were wiped out. There was small chance of being found, yet while they stayed here, what would happen at the wagons? He put the thought from his mind. There was nothing he could have done without being armed.
His only chance had been to do what he had done, to find Mabry and get a gun. He had the gun now, but not the slightest idea where he was or how to locate the wagons.
Still, the Hole-in-the-Wall was a landmark that must be visible for some distance, and the Wall itself was miles long.
One thing at a time. If he could save Mabry they might have a chance. When the water was hot he made coffee and then: went to work on the wounded ,man.
He took off the short jacket and found the other wound. Mabry had been hit low on the side right above the hipbone, and his side and stomach were caked with blood.
He bathed both wounds, taking great care and much hot water. He felt movement. Looking up, he saw that Mabry’s eyes were open. Mabry looked from Healy to the wound. “How is it?” “I don’t know,” Healy admitted. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. You’ve got a scalp wound, too.” When he had finished bathing the wounds, he bound them with bandages torn from a clean flour sack.
“Where are we?” “I don’t know that, either.” He explained what had happened and how they had reached the cabin.
“Horse came home,” Mabry said. “That’s got to be it. Bought him in Deadwood from a trapper from over this way. So when the horse found himself close by and without anybody to guide him, he just came home.” “There was a fire laid, though.” “Custom,” Mabry said. “Any man who leaves a cabin leaves materials for a fire.
Custom in cold country.” At noon Healy found a woodpile in a shed behind the house and brought in several armloads of wood.
“What’ll we do?” he asked suddenly.
“Do the girls have a gun?” “Yes. I didn’t know it, but they had one” Mabry considered that. As long as their food and fuel held out, and if they did not waste ammunition, they could hold Barker off. It was unlikely they had more than one pistol load.
Probably five bullets, and one fired. Four left.
Toward night Mabry’s fever mounted.
He was very weak. During the day he had examined his hands and feet. By some miracle they had not frozen.
Yet he would lose some skin on his feet and ankles and his nose would probably peel. He had been luckier than he had any right to be. Had Healy not found him at the door, he would have eventually fallen or been knocked from the horse to freeze in the snow. He would never have regained consciousness.
Mabry thought it out. They could not be far from the wagons. Several miles, but not too many. Yet he was weak, very weak, and something had to be done at once. Barker would not wait long. He would grow impatient and find some means of getting the girls out of their wagon.
How much had Healy learned? How much could he do?
That he had nerve enough to act was obvious. He had chosen his break and escaped. He had, before that, made his try for the shotgun. He had nerve enough if it was directed right.
“You got to play Indian.” “Me?” Healy shook his head. “I’d never get away with it.” “You’ve got to. You’ve got to go back.” Healy would be bucking a stacked deck, yet he might make it if he was lucky… and there was no other way.
Pain lay in Mabry’s side and his mouth was dry. His skull throbbed heavily. He explained carefully and in detail what Healy must do, and what he would do if he was forced to fight or run. Yet somewhere along the line his mind began to wander and he found himself arguing with himself about Janice. Vaguely he was aware that Healy was gone, that the Irishman had started out to do something he himself should be doing, but he could not bring his thoughts to focus” upon the problem. Before him and through his mind there moved a girl, sometimes with one face and sometimes with another. He kept arguing with Janice and kept seeing Dodie, and the latter’s warmth and beauty kept moving between himself and Janice, distracting him and making his care- fully thought-out arguments come to nothing.
He told himself in his delirium that he had no business loving any woman, or allowing any woman to love him. He told the image that came to him in his sickness that he would be killed, shot down from behind, or sometime he would draw too slowly.