“No, damn it. It’s not all right. There’s a dozen ways they could kill you. From the hill. From the woods. As soon as you poked your head out. After you’d gone a ways. After you got clear of the cabin. As you reached the woods. I can’t let you—”
“You can’t stop me. There’s one more thing. I have to leave you without a gun for a few minutes. But they saw me and they won’t know. I’m alone. They won’t know who else is in the cabin. They won’t know you’re not armed. They ought to stay put, for a while at least. Just don’t get cocky. Keep under cover and wait.”
He nodded glumly, then raised his head and grinned. “Jesus, the way you have it all figured. Clausewitz has nothing on you.”
I smiled back at him. It took some doing. I opened the door and shut it behind me. It had all sounded splendid, in theory. But in fact it was dazzling sun and snow and the big white hump of the hill and the dark woods and a cold keening wind in the trees and death waiting everywhere you looked.
I went down to my skis and fastened the bindings awkwardly with one hand. In my other hand I held the Magnum. I was exposed. I was vulnerable. I had done some pretty good guessing, but I could have been wrong ten ways from Sunday. One way would have been more than enough. Any moment I expected to hear the crash of a gunshot. It wouldn’t surprise me. It wouldn’t surprise me because I wouldn’t have time to be surprised. It would be the last thing I’d ever hear.
One of the bindings had frozen over. I had to bang it with the butt of the gun. Sweat ran down my back. The wind wailed and the sun glared. Something snapped in the woods. A branch, I told myself. Breaking under the weight of snow and frost. But was it?
I shoved my boots into the open bindings, flipping them forward and down until they clicked into place. I stood up. So far, it made sense for them to wait. They wanted to see what I was going to do. So far. I squinted against the bright sun-glare and saw the place in the snow where Curt had made his stem turn, a gash in the unmarred whiteness of the hill. I glanced, just once, at the top of the hill. They were there, waiting, watching. It was absolutely certain that they saw me, and just as certain that they had a gun. I didn’t see anything.
I thrust forward over the snow and poled toward the woods.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IF I entered the woods right behind the cabin it would be safer. That would give me cover, but Curt had cover too. And if I didn’t follow the parallel ruts of his ski trail through the snow I might blunder in the woods for hours without spotting him. I decided to follow the trail.
Pretty soon I was climbing a slight rise on the flank of the hill, to reach Curt’s trail about fifty yards beyond the gash in the snow where he’d made his stem turn. From that point the trail ran slightly downhill all the way to the woods and I figured to make the best time skiing down after it. But I had reached the point of no return. I was now halfway to the woods. I looked back once over my shoulder and saw the dark square mass of the cabin silhouetted against white snow and blue sky. It seemed ineffably snug and peaceful with a tendril of smoke curling lazily from the red chimney. It stood for a warm stove and a hot drink and the sanctuary of four walls. I looked ahead to the spruce woods, the branches feathery with snow, the boles of the trees dark and straight, the shadows between them so dark blue they were almost black. I had my skis and my gun. I was vulnerable from the hill and vulnerable from the woods. I kept going.
Then I reached the first few scattered trees. Here only a few inches of powdery snow blanketed the ground, for the thick spruce overgrowth had kept most of last night’s heavy fall twenty feet off the floor of the woods. I snowplowed to a stop, squatted and unfastened my bindings. I could make better time in the woods on foot. I trotted through the snow and the silence, in and out among the trees, following Curt’s trail.
Before long I heard something. I couldn’t identify the sound at first, then I realized it was someone’s labored breathing. It seemed to hang in space ahead of me, not growing fainter, not coming closer.
I began to stalk him. My heavy ski-boots made crunching noises on the snow. I couldn’t help that.
Ahead of me, quite suddenly, the zig-zagging tracks through the snow ended. He stood there in dim shadow with his back turned and his head slumped forward. His breath made a steam-engine sound through his slack mouth. I could even see the white plumes of it in the still, cold air. He stood with one arm against a tree trunk as if he was keeping it from falling. Every now and then he would jerk his head up and look in one direction or another. He was lost and he was scared.
He wore a turtleneck sweater, black, with a high red collar. His shoulder moved in unison with his panting. The back of his neck, above the collar, gleamed with sweat.
I was almost between the tails of his skis with the gun in my hand when he whirled around. One of the skis caught my shin and we both tumbled to the snow. He swung wildly with a ski pole, numbing one side of my face from temple to jaw. I brought the Magnum down flat on top of his head. He collapsed as if all the bones had been drawn from his body, leaving him as limp as an empty gunny sack.
Swiftly I went through his pockets. He had a .32 automatic with a nickle-plated handgrip. I ejected the clip. It was full. I slammed it up into the butt and put the .32 in my pocket. Then I left him there and followed our trails back totny skis. There were three people in the cabin back there and Bobby ahead on the snow somewhere who said I couldn’t stop to worry if Curt might freeze tar death before anyone found him.
I carried my skis through the woods to the copse which sheltered the cabin. There I put the skis down and sprinted around to the door. A gunshot cracked hard and flat in the silence. The bullet thumped against the logs ten feet from me and whined off. They wanted to scare me, I thought. If they had meant to hit me, it would have been much closer. I tried to tell myself that because I had to go out there again.
THE door opened. I went in. The door shut behind me and I gave Goheen the .32 automatic.
“Curt?” he said.
“In the woods.”
“Did you kill him?”
“He’s unconscious.”
“They shot at you. You were lucky once. You can’t go out there again.”
“They wanted to scare me.”
Carol brought me a hot cup of coffee and Goheen gave me a cigarette and lit it for me.
“I could use something stronger,” I admitted. “About ninety proof stronger.”
Howie grinned and hobbled over with a hip flask. When I had drunk half the hot coffee off, he poured what was in the hip flask into my tin cup. I gulped it down and felt the warmth flood through me. It was rum.
I hadn’t sat down. All I had to do was walk four steps over to the door. It looked like half a mile. I shook Goheen’s hand. Howie wanted to shake too. That was easy. Carol came over and touched my arm. She was a small girl. She stood on tip-toe and brushed her lips against my cheek.
“Hey, you’ll make a guy jealous,” Howie said. But he was grinning again.
Carol’s eyes held mine for an instant. “That’s for being how you are,” she said.
I took the map from Goheen, opened the door and shut it quickly behind me. I ran at a crouch along the porch and vaulted the porch rail. No one took a shot at me—this time.
I put on my skis and moved slowly out over the snow toward the hill. At the top of it and skirting the woods on their right was Lac du Diable trail. Somewhere up there, waiting, watching me, were Dygert and Jerry Trowbridge.
That was the hard part of it. Herringboning up the hill, I was a step closer to them every time I moved.
Two men, desperate, high on a hill. One of them scared enough to shoot. He had proven that. He had taken one shot at me already, and maybe two. Was he up there now, waiting, hunched over with a stiff cold finger on the trigger of his gun and fear sending the tiny electric impulse from his brain along his arm to the hand that held the gun and the finger that would squeeze the trigger?
I let go like a locomotive getting rid of excess pressure
at the top of the hill. It had been a long, hard climb. Curt must have felt like that in the woods, right before I hit him. I shaded my eyes and squinted. There were dips and gullies in which they could be hiding. There was a higher shoulder of hill to my left. They could have been down behind that, out of sight from the cabin and out of sight from where I stood. I was looking for the glint of sun on gun metal, but didn’t see it. The shoulder of the hill was the most likely spot, I thought. If I spoke in a conversational voice, they would hear me. If I looked straight at them they could see the color of my eyes. And if I turned my back on them, which I had to do to pick up the markers of the cross-country ski trail, they could stand up, take dead aim, and empty their guns at me. My life hung on a thin thread which said they didn’t want to commit that land of murder—yet.
I turned my back and skied down the back slope of the hill to the Lac du Diable trail.
THE sun was weak and watery and an hour past its zenith when I reached the Jake. A few hazy white clouds hung against the blue of the sky. The wind was very strong, whipping the branches of the spruces and birch which bordered the frozen lake shore. I had followed the trail of their skis all the way. I hadn’t stopped once. It was the toughest journey I had ever taken, anywhere, any time. My arms were like lead. My knees trembled so much I hadn’t been able to ski in a straight line for the last half hour. Not once had I seen or heard Dygert or Terry Trowbridge pursuing me, but I knew they were there, behind the low hills, takings cover in the copses of trees along the trail.
Every step I took could have been my last. I knew it, and they knew it. Yet they hadn’t done anything about it. Why?
I found out why when I reached the lake shore.
The ski trails ended there. They had gone out with Bobby over the frozen surface of the lake. It was the color of mercury with bluish glints here and there. Only an occasional patch of snow marred the solid surface of ice, for the fierce wind had blown the snow off the exposed lake as soon as it had fallen, piling it high in drifts against the trees on the shore.
I could see clearly where Dygert, Jerry and Curt had come off the lake a dozen yards to my left, but the lake was at least half a mile wide and so long I couldn’t see the other end of it. They could have taken Bobby in any direction. And left her.
This far I had come. I could go no further. Left? Right? Straight ahead across the frozen lake? No wonder they hadn’t tried to stop me. They would have been crazy to.
The wind moaned in the trees. It was a sad, bitter sound, a minor key wailing for the dead, the dying and the defeated.
I sat down against the bole of a big birch which slanted out over the lake. I put the Magnum on my lap and got out a cigarette. My hands were shaking so badly I used up half a pack of matches to light it.
I threw the cigarette away and stood up. “Come on!” I shouted, “Come on down here!”
It was a foolish, melodramatic gesture. It said I had lost and knew I had lost. The sound of the wind changed. It was laughter rattling the gaunt birch branches. I took off my skis and prowled along the lake shore, my boots silent as death on the ice. There was just enough snow to keep it from being slippery.
After a few minutes I turned around and went back. It would take days for one man to search along the shore. That was the worst part of it, knowing that. Because if they had followed me back here, it meant they knew Bobby might still be alive.
Lake of the Devil, I thought. The thought drifted, and for a few moments my mind was an absolute blank, barely aware of the cold, the wind, and hopelessness.
Then I heard something.
I don’t know when I first heard it. It wasn’t there and then it was, a sound which the wind could not quite hide. I must have heard it for some time before I realized it didn’t belong to the wind in the trees.
A noise. A faint scraping.
I stared out over the lake. Gray mercury. Blue glints of deep ice. Tattered white cobwebs of snow. And the watery yellow reflection of the sun.
A dragging sound. Then scraping, silence and scraping again.
Her ski jacket was white, like the snow. Her hair was yellow, like the watery reflection of the winter sun. I saw her.
I saw her.
White and yellow movement a quarter of mile down the lake. Dragging itself with agonizing slowness across the ice. And something trailing behind the white ski pants. A matchstick, scraping. A single ski still fastened to one of her boots.
I RAN out across the ice, and fell. Skidded a few yards on my belly and got up and ran again. She wasn’t very far out, but she wasn’t making for the shoreline either. She was dragging herself roughly parallel to it, using her arms to pull her weight, using one leg, bending it and straightening it, the ski dragging, making a few inches, maybe half a foot, with each intense effort.
When I reached her, she looked up at me. Her eyes were wide, but she didn’t see me. Her face was covered with snow. Her hair was frozen. There was a red streak in it that was frozen blood.
“It’s going to be all right, Bobby,” I said. “It’s going to be all right now.”
Her wide eyes just went on staring at me. Then, silently, she started to cry.
I couldn’t get the single ski off because it was frozen solid to her boot. I picked her up the way she was and got her in a fireman’s carry. Staggered across the ice with her like that.
Forty yards. Fifty. The birch branches rattled, beckoning.
A shot rang out. The bullet hit ice three feet to my left and ricocheted away. I ran with her then toward the trees, slipping, sliding. Another shot. The bullet tugged at my sleeve. I saw him. One of them, and he wasn’t on skis. He came running among the trees on the lake shore, firing as he ran. If he stopped, if he got down on one knee and steadied his elbow on the other—
He kept running.
I reached a drift of snow which the wind had piled high against the trees on the shore. I stooped and dropoed Bobby there, took the Magnum out with stiff, half-frozen fingers, and waited.
I could hear him coming. Dygert?
Then I saw him, head and torso above the drift, his eyes scanning the lake shore anxiously, desperately, a big automatic in his hand.
It was Jerry Trowbridge.
I think I had known somehow, ever since the fight with Dygert in the bar and grill in Washington, that it would come to this. He didn’t look like a college kid now, with his pale good looks and his short-cropped dark hair. His face was haggard with a two-day growth of beard on it. His eyes were wild. I thought of his father, and of the way he smiled when he was pleased with something he had done. I thought of Duncan Lord and of Bobby, and how he had helped them drag her out here to die. Maybe I weighed it all, but if I did, I did so unconsciously. He had a gun. I had a gun. One of us was going to die.
I stood up and brought the Magnum in front of me, my arm extended, the way they teach you at F.B.I. school. He saw the motion. His eyes narrowed and he whipped the automatic around.
I squeezed the trigger once. The Magnum roared and bucked back against my hand.
Jerry fired twice. Two quick shots, at the sky, as he fell.
SECONDS later, I saw Dygert. He was a dark bulk crashing through the frozen, winter-dead scrub that poked up stiffly through the snowdrifts. He wasn’t on skis. He came fast. He was still too far for a good shot. I waited. Then he stopped and went out of sight behind the drifts. When he appeared again, he was gliding on hickory, poling hard, away from the lake. I stood up, climbed the high drift, sinking to my knees in the soft snow, and watched him go. After a while, he was a minute speck sliding across the white vastness of the snow. Then he was gone.
I went to Jerry. He had fallen on his back near a big white birch. One of his legs was twitching. It stopped when I reached him. The bullet had entered his head below the chin, driving up because I had been below him on the lake. His head rested on a red stain in the snow. The stain grew, and darkened. He was dead.
I took the .45 from his slack fingers. It was a U.S. Government Issue
Colt. I put it in my pocket and went back to Bobby.
Goheen’s map showed a shelter about three quarters of a mile down the lake shore. I carried Bobby up and over the snowdrift. There didn’t seem to be any life in her, but I could feel the faint ruffle of her breath against my neck.
I set her down gently in the snow and fastened my skis. Carrying her, it took me an hour to cover the three quarters of a mile to the cabin. I lurched like a drunk, slipped and slid like an ice skating comic at a winter carnival.
For a long time the cabin didn’t appear any closer. Then, all at once, it loomed just ahead of us. I put Bobby down on the porch steps and unfastened my skis. I opened the door and carried her inside. The ski frozen to her boot caught crosswise in the doorframe. I pulled it clear. I went inside carrying Bobby cradled like a bride.
The groom had almost been death. But I didn’t think of that till later.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE potbellied stove glowed cherry-red. Bobby lay near it on a cot I had dragged across the cabin with every blanket I could find piled on top of her. She was trembling, and still very cold. Once she opened her eyes, and whimpered, and shut them again. I made coffee from a tin on a shelf in the cabin. I tried to spoon feed it to her, but she gagged and choked and the hot liquid ran down her chin.
I sat down to wait on a wall bunk. Neither the blankets nor the stove could stop Bobby’s trembling. Pretty soon I got up, lifted the covers and climbed into bed with her. Even through her ski jacket I could feel how cold she was. I took her into my arms, trying to give her some of my body warmth. We lay that way a long time. She didn’t move. I could feel her breath faintly on my cheek. Then she stirred and one of her cold hands came up and touched my face. She sighed.
Exhaustion washed over me in warm, drowsy waves, like an ocean of lead. I couldn’t sleep, because Dygert might decide to come back. It wasn’t likely, but he might. The way he had fled wasn’t likely either, but he had done it. I thought about Jerry. I should have felt the guilty gnawing bite of remorse, but it didn’t come. I was too tired, or too much had come between me and Jerry. Beyond Bobby’s head I could see her ski-boots on the floor. I’d had to cut one of them away with a knife because her ankle and instep were swollen almost twice their normal size. Dygert, I thought. Dygert. Don’t sleep. You can’t sleep. The tide of exhauston rose and engulfed me. I tried to fight it off. Get up, I thought. But I couldn’t get up. Bobby needed my warmth. Coffee, I thought. Get up and have some coffee. I could still smell it. I didn’t get up. I didn’t have it. I slept.
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