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With eyes all but shut, goaded by desperation, he fought the blast and lurched forward, seldom confident whether he was going uphill or down. All he knew was the cold, the wind and the rutted clay.
At best he would get out of this bruised and half-frozen. At worst … Oh, my darling Edith … At worst he might—
No earthly use dwelling on that. One step after the other. Keep to the ruts. Keep moving.
Impossible to reckon time. Doubts grew in his mind: suppose the wind had shifted course? Suppose he was going the wrong way—back away from the wagon?
The storm bucked and pitched like the devil’s own broncho. Well I have ridden those. I shall ride this one too. He gri
He flinched from the ice-stones; batted his arms across his chest and struggled on. Feeling drowsy now. Clung to a dreamlike sort of half-wakefulness in which a part of his mind knew the other part was drifting. Necessary, the first part told the second part, to fight for sentience.
He plowed into a knee-high pile of snow wedged against a scrub plant and it was a moment before he realized that was wrong: must have lost the road. Felt behind him with a toe and backed up and prodded the earth with his hand until he knew the ruts were there. Which way now—left or right?
It was a sign of the dangerous deterioration of his mind that it took quite a while to remember that the wind needed to be at the right shoulder.
Exhaustion and frostbite. With senses slowly disintegrating he recognized the dangers. He felt the ache in his legs as they began to turn numb; he stamped his feet hard as he walked. Tucked the rifle under his arm and whacked his hands together with powerful beating strokes.
Don’t worry, my darling Edith. I shan’t stop fighting back. Nothing will keep me from our lovely nuptial appointment.
Must feel like this to be blind.
He groped ahead of him, hand splayed …
Abruptly his hand banged into something hard; he stubbed his finger.
He felt at it. Flat vertical surface. Wall? Ridiculous. Couldn’t be a building in the middle of the road.
Maybe this wasn’t the road.
Or maybe it wasn’t the same road.
Had there been a fork in the road? Had he taken the wrong turn? Walked into a farmer’s yard?
He slid his hand across the surface and found its boundaries.
The wagon tailboard.
It wasn’t moving.
He heard, or felt, something; he bent down and dimly saw the huddled lump beneath the dubious shelter of the wagon bed: four men; ferociously flapping blankets and ponchos. He caught the dim glimmer of a pair of yellow eyes. O’Do
They saw him at the same moment he saw them. A hand reached for his ankle—pulled him down. Tumbling, he nearly lost his grip on the rifle. There were hands against him in earnest—pawing at his face, scrambling for the weapon. He could smell their rank breath. It was Fi
It was all a terrifying confusion then.
They were pulling him to them—tugging him under the wagon—it was hard to sort out, in his mind, what was transpiring; Fi
Fi
“By thunder you haven’t whipped me yet!”
He stood up—stood up on his hind legs with such an immense effort that he not only dragged the Irishmen with him but also lifted the back of the wagon on his bent shoulders.
It squeezed Fi
Fi
In that broken interval of time the ranchman slapped the rifle’s forestock into his palm, yanked the hammer back and laid his aim hard and steady against the Irishman’s face not two feet away.
“Hold!”
Fi
The frigid air sawed in and out of the ranchman’s lungs. He coughed hard.
Fi
The wind seemed to have dropped; everything had gone quiet; and the ranchman said resolutely, “Very well then. You’ve had your chance. It didn’t work. Now get back!”
When Fi
He moved forward, shooing Fi
Soon enough it passed by—as quickly and as mysteriously as it had begun. By early afternoon it was possible to see miles across the high plain. The sky was lead-grey. A warm soft rush of south wind brought such an emphatic thaw that even the larger hailstones underfoot were transformed to slush within less than an hour after they had fallen; the temperature climbed so rapidly that the ranchman, heated from the exertion of walking behind the wagon, removed his coat and tossed it in the flatbed and made do comfortably in buckskin shirt and fringed waistcoat.
Dutch Reuter, after half an hour’s battering in the lurching wagon bed, asked permission to get out and walk.
“I have your word you won’t jump me?”
“Yah. My word you got. No trouble—my word on that.”
“Then get down and walk. Beside the wagon, where I can see you.”
The two Irishmen shot malign glares at Dutch.
The muzzle of the ranchman’s rifle stirred. “Turn your faces forward, please.”
They glanced at each other, gri
Dutch said plaintively, “You me can trust.”
“I’m sorry, Dutch, but I’m not sure I can. I don’t think you know yourself whose side you’re on.”
Dutch went alongside the wagon without further complaint.
Walking along behind the procession, the ranchman opened his copy of A
He sat with his back braced against the wagon wheel, notebook on his upraised knees, rifle across his lap; at intervals he looked up at the four men beyond the fire. The two Irishmen and the old frontiersman lay close together; Fi
At a guess there were another thirty miles or so left to travel. Barring another storm they could make it that far by tomorrow evening.
The four pairs of boots were piled beside the ranchman. He adjusted the blanket around his shoulders and continued to write in his notebook. After a while the mutter of the two Irishmen’s voices began to a
“What about you, dude? Need your sleep too, I expect.” Fi