“Christ, Sloane!” Jack said sharply. We all jumped to get him up again.
“Leave ‘im be!” Miller barked. He stepped in and rolled Sloane over onto his back. He felt Sloane’s pulse in his throat and then pulled over a chunk of log to put the big man’s feet up on.
“Altitude,” he said shortly. He looked around at us. “His heart OK?”
“He’s never had any trouble I know of,” Jack said, “and I’ve known him for years.”
“That’s a break. Get some whiskey.”
We all dove for our sacks, but Lou beat all of us. He was already out. Miller nodded approvingly. He and McKlearey began working on Sloane, and soon they had him awake.
“Son of a bitch!” Cal said thickly. “That’s the first time that’s ever happened.”
“Better take ‘er easy for a bit,” Miller said. “Takes some men a while to get adjusted to it. You come from sea level to better’n eight thousand feet in less’n a day.”
“I just couldn’t seem to get my breath,” Cal said.
I picked up his air mattress and blew it up for him. Toward the end I got a little woozy, too.
“Easy, boy,” Clint growled. “We don’t need two down.”
“Sloane, you dumb shit,” Jack said, “why didn’t you bring a bicycle pump? You like to scared the piss outa me.”
Sloane grinned weakly. “I figured as windy as this bunch is, I wouldn’t have any trouble gettin’ enough hot air to pump up one little old air mattress.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Stan asked.
“I’ll be OK,” Cal said. “Just a little soft is all.”
“If I was carryin’ as much beer as you are,” Jack said, “I’d be pooped, too.”
“For God’s sake, don’t the on us,” Lou said. “You still owe me three days’ pay.”
“You’re all heart, McKlearey,” I said.
He grinned at me. It suddenly occurred to me that he could be a likable son of a bitch when he wanted to be.
We eased Cal onto his air mattress and then stood around watching him breathe.
“We better get to work on the firewood, men,” Miller said. “Ol’ Sarge here can watch the Big Man.” He gathered up the lead-ropes we’d taken off the packhorses. “Slim,” he said to Jack, “you and the Professor and the Kid there take these two axes and that bucksaw and go down into that grove of spruce below the corrals. Bust the stuff up into four-or-five-foot lengths and bundle it up with these. Then haul ’em out in the open. We’ll drag ’em in with a saddle horse.” I guess that was his way. Miller seldom used our names. It was “Sarge” or “Slim” or “Big Man” or “Professor” or “the Kid.” I suppose I should have resented that last one, but I didn’t.
The three of us grabbed up the tools and headed off down into the spruce grove.
“You think Cal’s going to be OK?” I asked Jack.
“Oh, he’ll snap out of it.” Jack said. “Sloane’s a tough bastard.”
“I didn’t much like the way his eyes rolled back when he passed out,” Stan said.
“Did look a little spooky, didn’t it?” Jack said. “But don’t worry. Soon as he gets his wind back, Sloane’ll run the ass off the whole bunch of us.”
We spread out, knocking off dead limbs and dragging downed timber out into the open. We started to bundle the sniff up, lying it with the lead-ropes.
“Say, Dan,” Stan said after a while, “give me a hand here with that ax.”
I went over to where he was working on a pile of dead limbs.
“It’ll take me all night with this saw,” he said.
I grunted and started knocking limbs off. I could hear Jack chopping away back in the brush.
“It’s beautiful up here, isn’t it?” Stan said when I stopped to take a breather. I looked around. The sun had just slid down behind the peaks, and deep blue shadows seemed to be rising out of the ground.
“Good country,” I said, echoing Miller.
“I wish Monica could see it,” he said, zipping up that bright orange jacket. “Maybe she’d understand then.”
I sat down and lit a cigarette. “She gave you a pretty rough time about it, didn’t she?”
“It wasn’t pleasant,” he said. “You have to understand Monica though. She’s an only child, and her parents were in their forties when she was born. I guess they spoiled her — you know how that could happen under the circumstances. She’s always been a strong-willed girl, and nobody’s ever done anything she didn’t want them to before.”
“She’s got to learn sometime,” I said.
“I’ve tried to protect her,” he went on. “I know she’s not much of a wife really. She’s spoiled and willful and sometimes spiteful — but that’s not her fault, really, is it? When you consider how she was raised?”
“I can see how it could happen,” I said.
“But this trip got to be such an issue,” he said, “that I just had to do it. I couldn’t let it go any longer.”
“You’ve got to draw the line someplace, Stan.”
“Exactly,” he said. “She just had to realize that I was important, too.” He was rubbing his hands together, staring at the ground. “I know she’d do anything to get her own way, and I’m just afraid she might have done something stupid.”
“Oh?” I got very careful again. Damn it, I hate this walking on eggshells all the time!
“Some of the things McKlearey’s been saying the last few days — I don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t pay too much attention to McKlearey,” I said.
“If I thought there was anything — I’d kill him — I swear it. So help me God, I’d kill him.” He meant it. I knew he meant it. Stan didn’t say things like that. His hands were clenched tightly into fists, and he was still staring down at the ground. I knew that one wrong word here would blow the whole thing.
“McKlearey and Monica? Get serious. She wouldn’t touch that crude bastard with a ten-foot pole. McKlearey?” I laughed as hard as I could. It may have sounded a little forced, but I had to get him backed off it. It wouldn’t take too much for his mind to start ticking off the little series of items as Clydine had done in her little breakdown of the “Hubby-Wifey-Creepy-Jarhead” caper. Once he did, somebody was liable to get killed.
Stan looked off into the distance, not saying anything. I don’t think I’d been very convincing. Then Jack came up, dragging a big bundle of limbs.
“Hey, you guys,” he said, puffing hard, “I hit a bonanza back in there. I got enough wood to last a month, but I’m gonna need help gettin’ it out.”
“Sure, buddy,” I said with a false heartiness. “Come on, Stan, let’s give him a hand.” I hoped to get Stan’s mind off what he was thinking.
We spent the next half hour dragging piles of wood out from under the trees. The light faded more and more, and it was almost dark when Miller rode down to where we were working.
“I got them other piles you left farther up the line,” he said. “Looks like you got into a pretty good batch here.”
“There’s plenty more back in there,” Jack said, “but it’s gettin’ too goddamn dark to be climbin’ over all that stuff.”
“We can haul out some more tomorrow,” Miller said. “This’ll last a while.”
He had a rope knotted around his saddle horn with a long end trailing on each side of the horse. We lashed several bundles of the limbs to each end of the rope and followed his horse back toward the campfire and the greenish glow of the Coleman lantern hanging from a tree limb in front of the storage tent. The grass and moss felt springy underfoot, the air was sharp, and the stars had started to come out.
I think we’d all figured that we’d be able to just sit around the fire now that it was dark, but Miller kept us busy. McKlearey was just finishing up a table. It was the damnedest thing I’d ever seen — crossed legs, like a picnic table and a top of five-foot poles laid side by side. The whole thing was lashed together with baling wire. At first glance it looked rickety as hell, but Lou had buried about two feet of the bottom of each leg in the ground. It was solid as a rock.
“Hey, Professor,” Lou said to Stan as we came into camp, “you want to bring that bucksaw over here and square off the ends of this thing?” Lou had immediately picked up Miller’s nicknames. Stan gritted his teeth a little, but he did as Lou asked.
“Damn!” Clint said, grinning, “this’ll make things as easy as workin’ in the kitchen back at the ranch.” He had pots and pans spread out on the table even before Stan had finished sawing the ends square.