Denny said, “Are you sure I can’t come with you, Pa?”
“No, you stay here,” Smoke told her. “Salty, let’s get busy putting that lifeline together.”
They left the shelter and went back out into the snowstorm. Smoke began tying the lengths of rope together while Salty cut the harness loose and used his knife to separate it into usable lengths. He could manage that one-handed, but it took two hands to tie secure knots.
Smoke added the pieces of harness to the rope. While he was doing that, Salty said, “There’s one thing we didn’t think about, Smoke. What if that . . . varmint . . . we both saw last night comes back?”
“You mean . . . ?”
“The Donner Devil.” The old-timer nodded emphatically. “That’s what I mean, all right. You don’t want to run into that critter when you’re out there by yourself.”
“Whatever it was, he helped me,” Smoke pointed out. “He grabbed that wolf and pulled it off me, then broke its back by throwing it against that tree. Sounds like he’s on our side.”
“You don’t know that,” Salty insisted. “Like I said, he looked like he was half wolf his own self. Maybe that one he killed was his enemy from the pack. Maybe he just didn’t get around to attackin’ us yet.”
“He had his chance last night. Instead he ran off, according to what you told me.”
Salty nodded. “He did. Didn’t seem to take no interest in us at all. But that still don’t mean he’s friendly. Or it. Don’t hardly seem right, somehow, callin’ that thing a he.”
“Well, I don’t expect we’ll find out one way or another. Whatever it was, it’s probably long gone by now.” Smoke touched the grip of his Colt through the sheepskin coat he wore. “But I’m packing iron if anything does give me trouble out there.”
The makeshift rope was ready. Smoke tied one end to the stagecoach and then coiled the rest so he could play it out as he made his way through the snow. He told Salty, “Get back inside the shelter. You might as well be warm.”
“No, sir,” Salty replied. “I’m gonna hang on to this end of the rope. You run into trouble, give it three tugs, and I’ll come and find you.”
Smoke considered that suggestion and then nodded. “That’s a good idea.” He began trudging in the same direction the coach had been going before the axle broke, holding the rope in his gloved left hand and letting it play out from the coil in his right.
It was slow going because of the deep snow. Smoke didn’t think he had gone very far when he looked back, but his eyes were able to follow the rope for only a short distance before it disappeared in a white void behind him. He peered intently toward the spot where the stagecoach should be, but he couldn’t see any sign of it.
Smoke sighed, looked ahead of him again, and pressed on. He knew that the tall, rocky walls of the pass had to be rising somewhere on either side, but nobody could prove that by him, because he couldn’t see a thing.
The snow got in his boots. There was no preventing it. He felt his feet getting colder and colder. He couldn’t leave them like that for too long, or he’d risk losing his toes to frostbite.
Right now, though, that was the least of his worries. His breath fogged in the air before the wind snatched it away, along with seemingly every ounce of warmth in his body. His teeth began to chatter so hard he clamped his jaws together to keep them from breaking.
In this white hell, there was no way of knowing how far he had gone, so he wasn’t really surprised when he came to the end of the tied-together lengths of harness.
That was it. His lifeline was stretched out behind him, and it was his only way of getting back to the stagecoach. Without it, he could pass within fifty feet of the vehicle and never see it, and his shouts might never be heard because of the wind’s howling.
Smoke gripped the harness tightly in his left hand and peered ahead of him, searching for anything other than the whipping snow. A light, a glimpse of a building, any sign of the hotel.
Nothing.
He used his teeth to pull the glove off his right hand, then slid that hand between two buttons and under his coat. The fingers were so cold they felt like stiff, dead sticks, but after a few moments they began to warm up. When he could flex them again, he closed them around the Colt’s grips and pulled out the. 38. Pointing the gun into the air, he squeezed off two shots.
If somebody at the hotel heard those shots, they might come out to investigate, bringing their own lifeline with them. It was unlikely, Smoke knew, since the wind was so loud . . . but wind was capricious and did funny things. You never could tell when and where sound might carry.
He stood and listened.
After an unknowable time, Smoke sighed and looked around. No trees were in sight, but he saw an iron-gray rock jutting up from the snow about twenty feet to his left. He made his way over to it.
What he was contemplating amounted pretty much to suicide, and he knew it. But his children were back there, and despite what he had told them earlier, he wasn’t confident that they and the others could survive in such a primitive shelter for four or five days or even longer, depending on when the blizzard ended. For one thing, he didn’t think they could find enough wood to keep the fire burning for that long, and without it they would freeze. So he had to take a chance and trust his natural ability to find his way. That instinct had never let him down before.
He took a deep breath, feeling the cold air burn his lungs, then wrapped the lifeline around the rock and knotted it in place. It was high enough that it would keep it from being covered up with snow, at least for a while. He ought to be able to find it if he could get back here. As long as the lifeline remained taut, Salty would believe he was on this end of it.
Smoke took a good look around him, even though there wasn’t anything to see except snow. He hoped the mere act would help keep him oriented and pointed in the right direction.
He started walking again, deeper into the pass. If he was able to keep going straight, he would find the Summit Hotel sooner or later. The trick would be to keep himself from veering off or even starting to go around in circles.
One foot in front of the other, he told himself. One foot in front of the other . . .
Damn Frank Colbert for getting us all into this predicament. That outlaw’s greed might wind up killing all of us.
Smoke wasn’t sure how long he had been walking when that thought crossed his mind. A long time, that was for sure. His legs felt like lead except for where they ended at his feet.
He couldn’t feel his feet at all anymore.
He stopped, his arms hanging. Despair did not come naturally to Smoke Jensen. It wasn’t just that he didn’t like to give up. The thought of surrendering almost made him ill.
“Preacher would keep going,” he muttered to himself. “You don’t want to let Preacher down.”
Sally wouldn’t want him to quit, either, he thought suddenly. She had a core of steel stronger than any woman he had ever known. That was one reason he loved her so much. He hated to think that they would have to spend Christmas apart, but if he survived, he would make it up to her.
Not if, he corrected himself. He was going to survive, and so were Denny and Louis.
He took another step, then another and another.
Then stopped again to lift his head. He dragged in a deep breath of the frigid air, feeling the snowflakes against his face.
There it was again, the thing he thought he had smelled a moment earlier.
Wood smoke.
A fire meant people. More than likely, it meant the hotel.
Unless he had looped around despite his best efforts and was right back where he started from, smelling the fire underneath the makeshift lean-to beside the stagecoach. That possibility brought a bleak chuckle from him. There was only one way to find out, so he had to keep moving.
He had taken only a few steps when a large, dark shape loomed up in front of him. Not the hotel—it was too close to be the building, and shaped wrong, to boot. This was a vaguel
y human figure....
That thought had just formed sufficiently in Smoke’s mind to set off alarm bells when something whipped out of the snow, crashed against his head, and sent him pitching backward. The blizzard’s whiteness faded into an enveloping black.
CHAPTER 34
Time meant nothing in a situation like this. Denny had no idea how long it had been since her father had left in search of help, trailing the makeshift lifeline behind him. It seemed as if hours had passed since then when she crawled out of the lean-to and stood up next to Salty. The old-timer waited next to the coach with his right hand on the rope.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Nope. But that’s a good thing, I reckon. I told Smoke to tug on the rope three times if he got into trouble, and there ain’t been no tugs at all. The rope’s as steady as a rock and has been for a good long while.”
Denny thought about that and frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If he was still moving around out there, wouldn’t you be able to feel it through the rope?”
Salty didn’t reply for a long moment. Denny could tell that he was considering the idea, too. Finally he exclaimed, “Dadgummit! You’re right. It shouldn’t be this still. Grab hold of it yourself and see if you feel anything.”
Salty let go of the rope. Denny wrapped her fingers around it and waited for several minutes. Every now and then, she felt a tiny shiver, but she thought that might have been caused by the wind. As worry welled up inside her, she looked over at Salty and said, “I don’t think he has hold of it anymore.”
“But he’s gotta. It didn’t go slack.”
“Maybe he tied the other end to something,” Denny suggested.
“Why in blazes would he do that?”
“So he could keep searching for the hotel without you knowing that he’d let go.”
The more Denny thought about it, the more that sounded to her exactly like something Smoke might do. He had complete confidence in his ability to get himself out of whatever predicament he might get into . . . and so far in his life, that confidence had been completely justified.
“Smoke ain’t that loco,” Salty insisted. But even he didn’t sound convinced.
“I’m going out there to have a look.”
“Blast it, no!” Salty said. “I ain’t gonna have two Jensens disappearin’ while I’m supposed to be in charge.”
“I’m not going to disappear,” Denny said. “I’ll just go out to the end of the lifeline and then back. I promise.”
Salty grunted as if he would believe that when he saw it, but he seemed to understand the futility of arguing with Denny once she had her mind made up. That was one quality she shared with her father.
“All right,” the jehu said reluctantly. “But you be mighty careful out there.”
“There’s one thing I want to do before I leave.”
Denny went to the rear of the coach and rummaged in the snow-covered bags stored there. She found a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt among the range clothes she had brought along, as well as her Stetson and a pair of high-topped boots. She kept the coach between her and Salty as she changed clothes.
That was one of the most bone-chilling experiences she’d ever had, but the range garb was much more suited to trudging through snow than the traveling outfit she’d had on.
She tromped back around the coach to where Salty was standing. He nodded in approval when he saw how she was dressed.
“Got your gun?” he asked.
She moved the thick coat aside so he could see the holstered .38 on her hip. She had put that on, too, as well as changed clothes.
“If I run into any trouble, I’ll be ready.”
“Yeah, but there could be anything out there in that blizzard. You hang on tight to that rope and don’t LET LOOSE.”
Denny nodded, crammed her hat down tighter on her head, and pulled up the chin strap. She didn’t want the wind blowing it off. If that happened, she would never find it again.
She grasped the rope in her left hand and started out. By now, Louis was probably wondering why she hadn’t crawled back into the lean-to, but she hadn’t wanted to tell him what she was doing because she knew he would argue about it. If he got curious enough to stick his head out, Salty could tell him what was going on.
Denny ducked her head against the wind as she plodded forward. The deep snow made every step an effort. She couldn’t help but move the rope as she clung to it and trudged along, but there was no response from the other end, which made her more convinced than ever that Smoke no longer had hold of it.
When Denny reached the end of the rope section and slid her hand onto the first piece of harness, she stopped to listen. Nothing but the wind blowing. She lifted her voice and called, “Pa! Pa!” There was no response to that, either.
Well, that wasn’t surprising, she told herself. With that howling wind, nobody could hear anything for more than a few yards. She and Salty had had to talk pretty loudly when they were standing only a few feet from each other.
Denny resumed the frozen trek and didn’t stop until she came to a large rock jutting up from the ground. It was a couple of feet in diameter, and the lifeline was wrapped around it and tied in a hard knot.
When Denny saw that, she felt a hollow in the pit of her stomach that was even colder than the air whipping the snow through the air around her. Smoke wasn’t here at the end of the lifeline, where he should have been. She looked desperately for tracks in the snow, but in this blizzard, even a few minutes would be enough to obliterate any sign of where someone had gone.
Denny’s heart pounded hard as she called again, “Pa! Smoke! Where are you? Can you hear me?”
The wind mocked her.
Terrible indecision filled Denny as she stood there. She wanted to let go of the lifeline and search for her father, but she knew how hopeless that idea was. Stumbling over him would be sheer luck . . . and stumbling was the right word, Denny thought bleakly, because she knew there was a good chance he was lying out there somewhere, covered up with snow that would keep his body preserved until the spring thaw.
No! That was exactly the sort of thinking she had been raised to avoid. Smoke Jensen was a practical man, but he wasn’t the sort who ever gave up, no matter what the odds against him. He was alive, Denny told herself. He was alive, and he was out there trying to get help for all of them, to save them from the danger into which Frank Colbert had led them.
And he was counting on her to keep the others safe, she recalled, so if she did anything else, no matter how strong the impulse was, she would be letting him down.
She went around the rock so she could continue holding the lifeline with her left hand and started back toward the stagecoach.
By the time she got there, she was chilled to the bone and ready to warm herself beside the fire. As she came in sight of the stagecoach, Salty came out to meet her, holding on to the rope himself.
“You didn’t find him, did you?” the old-timer asked.
“No. He had tied the last section of harness around a rock.”
“Damn it!” Salty burst out, then said, “Pardon my French, Miss Denny—”
“Don’t worry about it, Salty. I promise you, what I was thinking when I saw that was worse.”
“Why would he do such a thing?” Salty asked, then answered his own question by continuing, “He wasn’t willin’ to admit defeat, was he?”
“You’ve known my father for longer than I have, and honestly, I was never around him that much when I was growing up. What do you think?”
“I reckon that’s exactly what Smoke Jensen’d do. He knew it was dangerous, but he figured he could keep looking for a while and still find his way back.”
Denny nodded. “That’s what I think, too. The question is, what do we do now?”
Salty didn’t answer for a long moment. Then he said, “We can’t go lookin’ for him in this blizzard. He wouldn’t want any of us to risk that.”
“We should send Colbert
to look for him,” Denny said with a bitter edge in her voice. “It would serve him right.”
“Smoke wouldn’t even want that. He’d put a bullet in a fella quicker’n he’d send him out to freeze to death in a blizzard.”
Denny sighed, which made a cloud of condensed breath appear in front of her for a second before the wind carried it away, then said, “You’re right about that.”
“We’ll stay here and keep warm as best we can,” Salty said. “And keep hopin’ that Smoke finds his way back here and brings some help.”
Denny nodded. “I don’t like the idea of telling Louis that Pa has disappeared, but I reckon it’s got to be done.”
* * *
Louis was understandably upset.
“Why would Father have done such a thing?” he demanded. “He was supposed to go out there looking for help and then come back if he didn’t find any.”
“He didn’t find any,” Denny said, “and he didn’t want to give up. You know how he is.”
“Yes. Stubborn as a mule.”
Denny held out her hands toward the small fire burning under the lean-to and flexed her fingers. They had been almost numb when she got back, but the warmth and the movement restored feeling to them. She looked across the fire at her brother and said, “Pa is determined. He doesn’t know what it’s like to give up.” She paused, then added, “And he’s never been wrong yet, has he?”
Louis shrugged. “His continued survival speaks volumes, that’s true. But you can’t gun down a blizzard, no matter how fast on the draw you are.”
“We’re doomed.” The words came from Jerome Kellerman, who stared morosely into the small, leaping flames. “We’ll never get out of here alive.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Denny snapped at him. “When the blizzard stops, we’ll find that hotel, and then everything will be fine.”
Melanie said, “Do you really think so, Denny?” Her arm was tight around Brad’s shoulders, holding him against her so he would be warmer.
Over the past couple of days, Melanie had become Denny’s friend. She tended to be too protective where Brad was concerned, and she went to pieces easily, but Denny liked her anyway and knew she was the way she was because she’d had to survive plenty of hardships and make sure her son survived them, too. Denny didn’t like lying to her.
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