by Rain Trueax
Phillip shrugged. His eyes hadn't left Amos's face as he watched him sit at the table. "Helen, get your uncle a couple of aspirin.”
When Amos had swallowed them with water, Phillip said, “We are going to have Doc Albertson decide whether this is really nothing."
Amos looked at him as though he'd lost his mind. "I just got a twinge in my chest. You figure I oughta run into town for that in the middle of maybe the biggest blizzard we've had in fifty years!"
Phillip closed his mouth with determination. "If you just had a slight heart attack, it might be followed by worse. If you didn't, it won't cost us that much to drive you into town."
"Heart attack?" Helene repeated, swallowing hard and looking at her uncle.
"What about my hay?" Amos muttered.
"We already got two loads up there. If that isn't enough, I can load up this one later. Listen to sense, Amos. Now days if you get right into the doctor when you're having heart attack, the chances are there won't be any damage done to the heart itself. You want to be an invalid... or maybe die?"
"O' course not."
"Are you feeling weak?"
Amos started to deny it but then stubbornly set his jaw.
That was it so far as Phillip was concerned. "I'll get my truck chained up. I don't think we can make it into town on studs alone."
"Don't argue with him, Uncle Amos," Helene said. "I think he's right. If it really isn't anything, you can give Phillip a bad time for it later. A heart attack is nothing to take lightly."
Amos grimaced and looked to Curly for support. The old hired man had a frightened look on his face. "Don't look at me thataway. You get into the doc. You know what you'd say if it was me."
Amos sighed. Obviously he knew the answer to that and he argued no more as Phillip went back out into the blowing snow and in record time was back with the chained up truck. He insisted on helping Amos out the door. He glanced back at Curly. "How about you coming with us."
"What for?" Curly asked putting on his coat.
"Because you're scared to death for your buddy here, and I don't want to come back and find another patient needing to go into Doc's." He gave Helene a quick look. "You'll be okay until I get back, won't you?"
Her amber eyes were wide with worry, but she nodded. "I'll be fine. Hobo and I'll keep an eye on everything. If the weather turns really brutal, you stay in town, Phillip."
"Don't be silly," he said. A quirk tugged at one side of his mouth. "You call Doc Albertson and tell him we're on our way; so he’ll be sure and be there. I’d hate to have to drive clear to Bozeman tonight if there is a choice. I'll be back. You can count on that."
"Don't take a chance--"
Phillip closed the door on the rest of her admonition. He would have liked to kiss her, but he didn't want to take the time from getting Amos into town. He didn't like the look in the old man's eyes or the set of his lips. He might say he was having no pain, but Phillip didn't believe him.
Behind him he could hear Hobo give off a plaintive yelp at being left behind and then he was bundling the two old-timers into the truck. His only concern now was to get into town quickly. The snow was blowing and drifting already. It wasn't going to be an easy drive into town, especially not for a man determined to make it as fast as possible; and looking over at Amos, Phillip decided speed was of the essence.
Chapter Eleven
After she'd called Doc Albertson and he had assured her he would meet the three men at the clinic, Helene began to look around the house to find things to do that would take her mind off the frightening possibility that Uncle Amos had indeed had a heart attack.
Hobo stood by the door, patiently waiting with dignity for her to open it. After she'd let the big dog out, she began preparing the house for the probability the power would go out. She raised and trimmed the wicks on the kerosene lamps, refilled one that was getting low, set the glass chimneys on the bases, then set them on table and counters. She went onto the porch for a bucket and filled it and her largest pots and pans with water. Without power, the well pump wouldn't work and there’d be no water from the spring with it frozen so solidly.
She bundled up in heavy coat and boots and went outside where Hobo greeted her enthusiastically. Even though the blowing snow tried to drive them back, she and the big dog made their way to the barn where she put out extra hay for the horses and checked their water buckets, breaking away the ice where necessary. On her way back, she stopped at the woodshed and carried in armload after armload of wood to set beside the stove. Hobo followed her wherever she went but seemed relieved when she hung up her snow encrusted coat and stood to warm her hands before the fire.
Was it possible the wind was worse? She knew the snow wasn't letting up and was pretty sure it was accumulating at a rate of well over two inches an hour. This might just be the storm her uncle and Curly had warned about. Nervously she looked at the clock and wondered how long they'd been gone. It had to have been over an hour. She could only pray her uncle wasn't seriously ill, that he would soon be back in the kitchen, stomping around and laughing at Phillip's worry. Only she didn't believe that. Uncle Amos had been white, his eyes hadn’t looked well. Now that she considered it, she knew he hadn't looked well for some time.
Even with the woodstove and heat pump fully functioning, the darkening house felt cold. Probably it was as much psychological, due to looking outside the window and seeing the frozen tableau, as it was to the wind blowing so hard from the northwest. Regardless of the cause, she felt as though the cold was penetrating the thick walls and entering into her very bones. Against the feeling of chilliness, she gathered four sleeping bags and a stack of heavy quilts and carried them to the kitchen. She also filled more buckets of water and put them in the bathroom for the eventuality she would not have water to flush toilets.
If the power went out, the kitchen would be the warmest room, the room she would live in. At the rate the wind was blowing and the sheer volume of snow, Helene didn't doubt the ranch would soon lose electricity. She looked at the big kitchen woodstove on the back wall of the kitchen. Whether she was here alone, a growing likelihood in her mind as she looked out at the blizzard outside her window, or whether the men made it back, she was going to need that temperamental old stove working. She could heat water on it if nothing else.
Split kindling was in a box near the woodstove and she took that and crumpled newspapers to stuff into the chamber. Not too big a fire to begin. She didn't want to crack the metal by giving it a sudden shock. "You did well for Aunt Rochelle," she said, patting its black surface as she struck the match. "Think I can use you?"
When the phone rang, even though she'd been half expecting it, Helene jumped. Did she want to know what was happening? A second later she'd grabbed the receiver.
Doc Albertson's nurse was on the line. "They asked me to call you right away. Doc believes your uncle did have a heart attack. He's is trying to arrange to transfer him to the hospital in Bozeman."
"How is he?"
"It wasn't a major attack, although if he'd kept loading hay... who knows," the older woman said.
"I don't see how they can get him up to Bozeman in this storm."
"They're talking about a helicopter if the wind lets up. Doc says Amos will be all right here if they can't get him out, but there's more modern equipment up there. Don't worry about the old bird. He's loudly complaining this whole thing is foolishness."
"I hope he'll listen to Doc," Helene said with concern.
"I don't think he has much choice. Your husband and Curly are seeing to that."
"Tell Phillip and Curly to stay in town too," she told the woman. "The storm is terrible out here. It isn't worth taking the risk of trying to drive back. Maybe in the morning it'll let up a little, and I'm fine for the night."
The woman said she'd tell them, that Helene shouldn't worry, and then she hung up. Helene felt desolate in her sudden loneliness. She was grateful she had things to do, things to concentrate on besides her uncle an
d Phillip. Would Phillip and Curly stay in town. She hoped so because she couldn't bear the thought of them trying to drive back in what was rapidly becoming a whiteout. She knew it was probably worse at her elevation, up in the hills, but it couldn't be good in the valley below either.
The fire was building nicely in the cook stove when the electric power went out. She quickly put one of the large kettles of water on to heat. Down on her knees she located the old coffee pot, filled it with water, measured out coffee and set it on to perk. She might not know how to cook much on the cast iron monster but what she'd seen Aunt Rochelle prepare would come back to her as she began working with it—she hoped. Although it was still daylight outside, the blowing snow made the house dark, and so she lit the lamps she'd prepared.
"Well," she said to Hobo where he'd stretched by the table, "I think we're ready for whatever comes, and when it lets up a bit tomorrow, between us, we can feed the stock. We have everything here we need." Except Phillip. She could prepare for the survival of her flesh, but how about her soul. She had come to love him, and she realized how much when she thought about him driving through the blizzard and knew even to assure her own survival, she would want him to stay in town. Fortunately it wasn't going to come to that. She would manage quite nicely up here, even if the storm raged for days. Her food, water and heat were assured.
#
Driving through the snowstorm, Phillip concentrated on staying on the road. The highway had been plowed since he'd gone to town, but it was already filling back with snow; and with the drifts, driving was an exercise in acuity to discern road from shoulder and ditch.
He turned on the radio, punching buttons to find a station with a weather update, not that it mattered because he'd decided to drive home to the ranch, and no weather forecast was going to stop him. He wasn't about to leave Helene alone out there to face this storm. He couldn't leave the stock to their own devices, and so he was on the road, straining his eyes against the driving snow, seemingly blown straight at him, leaving him feeling at times as though he was driving into a vortex. He peered ahead, the beams of his headlights cutting through the darkness, searching out the road in the white world that left little clue as to where he was or at times even where the road was.
He'd been in snowstorms before, but nothing that prepared him for the fury of this white inferno of whirling snow. He was rapidly discovering a Montana blizzard was something no man could believe until he'd witnessed it.
He thought back on Amos, wondering how he would be. Before he'd left the clinic, Amos had still been less than grateful at being dragged into town, even when he'd realized he had indeed suffered a heart attack and might suffer another before the night was over. He had grumbled, "If I lose my stock, ain't gonna matter whether I make it or not."
"If you lose your herd," Phillip told him, "you'll buy more and start over, but you aren't going to lose your animals. We stacked all that hay, remember. You think you're the only one who can feed it out!"
"No, but I don't think Helene can. I don't want to think about her crawling through drifts trying to get out there."
"You think I'd leave her alone out there," Phillip snapped. "I'm going back
"You're plumb nuts," Curly argued. "We barely made it in here. How the hell you think you're going to make it back?"
Doc Albertson added his own argument. "Helene will be all right tonight and so will the stock. By tomorrow the snow might let up."
"And it might be worse. No, I'm going back tonight." He looked at Curly, "You take care of Amos. Make sure he stays in this bed and does whatever the doc says."
Curly nodded to Amos's grunt of disgust. "I'll do 'er, but you take care of yourself, son. It ain't gonna be easy gettin' back out there. Maybe impossible. If it is, turn around and come on back into town."
Phillip grinned. "Is that what John Wayne would have done?" he asked wryly.
"It shore is, but that boy preferred being on a boat in the tropics or layin’ under a tree in the desert to being up in this kind of country anyways," Curly said with a grin as he handed him his gloves. “Use these if you end up having to walk. These Montana blizzards ain't nothing to take for granted. Many's the man that figured he could outsmart 'em and died for it."
Amos reached up his hand to catch Phillip's. "Curly's right. Don't try to make it up the road if it's drifted closed. Use your head."
"So, what else could I use?" Phillip asked. With that, he reached down to pat Amos on the shoulder. "You take care," and he'd walked out the door.
By the time Phillip reached the road leading up to the ranch, he was disoriented and was only certain of where he was by the tall orange posts Amos had planted on both sides of the road. It didn't take long, plowing his way up the road, before he knew chains, high carriage and four-wheel drive were not going to be enough to take him to the house. Before he'd driven a hundred yards up the road, his truck fought through drifts, nearly high-centering. He wasn't going to make it all the way. The only intelligent thing to do was to turn around and go back before he became hopelessly stuck.
Helene answered the phone that was plugged into the wall and not dependent on electricity to work, half surprised it was still working, even knowing its lines were underground.
"He get there yet?" asked Curly without any polite greetings.
"Who?" Helene asked, even though something icy had gripped her heart and she knew the answer.
"That husband of yours. He took off over an hour ago. We was hoping he'd made it by now."
"He's not here." Helene looked worriedly out at the blackness of the night and the blowing snow. "Why did you let him come?"
"I'd like to of seen the man could've stopped him," Curly retorted.
"Maybe he saw he couldn't make it and turned around."
"I wouldn't want to bet money on that." The worry was evident in Curly's voice.
Helene couldn't let herself think about what Curly was telling her. "How's Uncle Amos?"
"Resting and as comfortable as can be under the situation... except for worryin' about the place. Doc's keepin' an eye on him. He thinks he won't get another heart attack if he takes it easy. Good thing Phil made him take that aspirin."
"You tell him not to worry about things up here," Helene said, knowing that would be an impossible task. "And surely Phillip will turn around when he sees how bad it is out here." Curly snorted his disbelief. "If he does go back to town or you hear from him that he’s staying over with someone living along the road, please call me," Helene said.
"Will do." She knew from the tone of his voice he didn't expect to see him back there that night.
When she hung up, Helene stared out the window. Phillip wouldn't try to come up their long private road. He would see it was impossible to make it through the snowdrifts and turn around. The alternative was unthinkable. If the truck couldn't make it, would he try to come on foot? If he tried, he'd never see the house in the darkness and swirling snow. Kerosene lamps provided enough light for the house, but they wouldn't be much of a beacon for a man to follow home.
She opened a drawer in the kitchen and took out a handful of candles. She began lighting them but didn't feel greatly encouraged at the visibility that would add even as she turned the kerosene lamps on high, moving them near the windows.
"He won't try to come through this," she said, looking down nervously at Hobo and trying to reassure herself, she repeated it. "He won't try to come through this."
She couldn't stand the thought she might lose him and with that awareness came the certainty Phillip was the most important thing in her life. He was the goal for her, the star she would follow. For Aunt Rochelle it had led her to Montana but there she had found it wasn’t a place but a person. For Helene now, it would take her wherever Phillip wanted to go, wherever he wanted to make a home. Whatever part of himself he offered her, she would accept if she just got him back.
#
Phillip got out of the snowbound truck and strained his eyes to see up the road. He ha
d only to stay on the road and keep climbing. The house couldn't be over three quarters of a mile farther. He felt grateful for the two pairs of insulated socks and the heavy, insulated gloves that Curly had thrust into his hands as he'd left Doc's. He pulled the wool muffler around his face as best he could, pulled his hat down low over his forehead and began walking. The snow was over his boots, and he quickly found it was more a case of plowing his way through than walking. He gritted his teeth against the stinging cold.
As he struggled on, he thought of Helene. It was all he could think about, his need to get to her. It was worth leaving behind his business, everything he knew and coming out West to make a fool of himself. He finally realized it was worth the pain of loving her and maybe even the pain of losing her if that just wasn’t now. He wondered if he'd ever find the words to tell her what she'd come to mean to him, if he would dare reach out to take what he had come to believe she would give him. He had known when he came back from California that she loved him. He'd known it but had been afraid to face what it meant.
He tried to keep himself on the road, the fence on one side helped, until it disappeared. Altered by snow, rocks and trees, landmarks disappeared. This was a terrain he'd never seen before. He was in good physical condition, but nothing could have prepared him for the effort of fighting through, first knee deep snow and then in the drifts, snow that came almost to his waist. His legs were tired, his feet and hands had passed from being chilled, to painful and now were nearly numb. He didn't think that was good but there wasn't much he could do about it. Going back wasn’t an option even if he had been so inclined and he wasn’t.
Fighting his way through a snowdrift, he was shocked on the other side to hit a rock with his boot, throwing him off balance. Lying on the ground, winded by the force of his fall against an area where the snow had been blown almost away, he knew he had to get up. If he lay there, he'd die there.