Piece of cake, he’d said. His own words echoed in his ears, mocking him.
8 Jake and Taylor walked along the highway for about half a mile, looking out for the turnoff. Not a single car passed them.
“Where is everyone?” Taylor said uneasily.
“It’s just a quiet stretch, is all,” Jake replied.
“I guess even the locals don’t come down here much.”
To Jake’s relief he eventually spotted the turnoff he could see on his map. They crossed the highway and stood by it; a straight, unpaved road, heading north and looking as bleak as the surface of the moon.
“You’re sure this is the right one?” Taylor asked.
“I think so,” said Jake. “Even if it’s not, we’ve got a compass. We’ll figure it out.”
As they set out up the track, Jake wondered again if he’d done the right thing. Around his dad’s cabin, where the trees grew thickly, shelter was easy to find. Out here nothing grew but sagebrush and rabbitbrush. There was nothing to shield them from the cold winds that blasted them in the face and made their eyes water.
The hats Chase had given them were warm, but they weren’t enough. The snow was coming down fast now, in thick flakes that made it hard to see. Dad was right, Jake thought ruefully. The storm was here, and they were walking right into it.
Before long the snow was crusted on their shoulders, and their fingers were numb. Jake could just make out the dim shapes of the Owl Creek Mountains through the constant snowfall, but barely anything else. The road, once a dark smudge, was now completely hidden by white snow.
“I’m cold,” Taylor moaned.
“Hang in there.”
“We’re on the wrong road, Jake! I’m sure of it!”
Jake was sure of it too. He’d been suspecting it for a while but hadn’t wanted to say. This was on him. He’d talked his brother into coming and had taken them down a deserted road to nowhere. He wanted to throw back his head and yell for help, but he knew that wouldn’t do any good.
“Okay, let’s say we are on the wrong road. What do we need to do?”
“Dad would know,” Taylor said.
“Well, he’s not here,” Jake snapped. “It’s up to us to find somewhere to ride out the storm.”
Jake breathed deeply, trudging through the freezing snow and wrapping up the best he could. “We need to keep our heads together and our eyes open. Shout if you see anywhere we could shelter.”
High up in the mountains, the snow had piled up even deeper than it had down by the highway. Only the tops of the tallest sagebushes poked out through the white layer. Jake couldn’t see anything that even remotely resembled shelter. He let out a sob of frustration before he could stop himself. Cruelly, the wind seemed to suddenly crank up a notch. It moaned across the landscape and cut right through his clothes. Cody whimpered and huddled between the boys’ legs, trying to avoid the chill.
“I wish we had a tent,” Taylor said, stamping his feet to stay warm.
Jake was about to tell him not to waste his breath on wishes, but Taylor had given him an idea. About fifty feet away he spotted a shallow dip in the landscape.
“Down there,” he told Taylor.
Taylor looked at him like he was crazy. “The snow’s even deeper there!”
“I know. C’mon, unless you want to freeze to death.”
Cody followed in their footsteps as the boys trudged down into the wash and unslung their backpacks.
“What are we doing?” asked Taylor.
“We’re going to build ourselves a snow house,” Jake said, pulling on the deerskin gloves Abe had given him, protecting his red-raw fingers from the wind.
“We can’t make an igloo!” Taylor yelled. “Where would we start?”
“A snow house is not an igloo. Dad told us about them. He made one when he had to escape from the wolves,” Jake admitted grudgingly, the wind blowing snowflakes into his mouth. “So they can’t be that hard to make.”
Taylor was either too tired or too cold to argue anymore. He pulled on his gloves, and using their portable shovel and their hands, the boys began stacking up a giant pile of snow.
It took longer than Jake had expected. Every time they threw snow onto the pile, the wind carried away half of it. With all the exertion, he began to sweat. The dampness on his skin made the icy wind bite all the more painfully.
Finally, after twenty minutes of stacking snow, their pile reached about chest high.
“Grab some sticks and lay them across the top,” Jake instructed.
Taylor realized what he was doing. “I’ve got something even better,” he said. He unstrapped Brittney’s snowboard from his pack, and positioned it across the middle of their snow pile. “It’s like she knew,” he said above the howling wind.
“Yeah,” Jake huffed, placing two sage branches next to the snowboard.
Once their “rafters” were in place, the boys piled about two more feet of snow on top of them. Jake stood back, panting, and nodded once. “Time to start tunneling,” he said.
The boys took turns carving out a cave under the snowboard and sage branches. Even Cody pitched in, digging with his little legs, until the snow sprayed up into the air like a fountain. They dug downward, so that the entrance to their shelter was protected from the wind.
Eventually, exhausted, the boys clambered into their snow house. In the light of their kerosene lantern, their little cave felt almost cozy. The wind still howled and snow was still falling, but now that was outside.
“It’s almost like an igloo,” Taylor said sleepily. Cody barked his approval and turned circles on the spot before settling down.
Jake tugged at Taylor’s arm. “We can’t sleep on the snow floor. Come on. We still have work to do.”
The boys lined the floor of the cave with their ponchos, the ground cloth, and the foil blankets, then spread out their sleeping bags. Jake stuck a twig through the snow roof to make a ventilation shaft. Using more dry twigs from the bushes that grew nearby, Taylor managed to start a fire at the cave’s entrance, and they made hot tea to go along with their cold meal of biscuits, pemmican, and jerky.
By now the gray pall of evening had spread over the landscape. The snow had eased slightly, but the wind howled like it would never stop. The boys retreated into their shelter and walled up the entrance with snow, leaving another hole for air. Then they crawled inside their sleeping bags, huddling together with Cody for warmth.
Jake hesitated before turning off the light. “Taylor?”
“Hmmh?”
“What I said before, about this being a piece of cake? That was stupid.”
“Mmm.”
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to get back to Mom, but . . .”
A snore interrupted him. Taylor was already asleep.
The boys slept fitfully that night. The air inside the cave stayed warm enough, but with only thin layers beneath them, the cold seeped through to their bones. The whistles and moans of the wind woke Jake several times, and he could tell Taylor was awake too from the way he tossed and turned.
By the time a dim light filtered into the cave, the boys were stiff and cramped. Despite the uncomfortable night, Jake felt defiant and alive, as if he’d faced up to a test and passed it.
“Dad’s cabin was like a luxury hotel compared to this,” he groaned, stretching.
“Yeah,” said Taylor. “I feel sorry for the Eskimos.”
They punched their way out of their shelter to find that the wind had finally died down and the snow had stopped. The storm, though, had left two feet of fresh snow piled up across the bleak landscape, and thick fog prevented them from seeing more than a hundred yards in any direction.
“Where’d the world disappear to?” Taylor asked.
“You got me,” said Jake, rummaging through the pockets of his backpack. “Hey, Taylor, where’s the compass?”
“Don’t you have it?”
Jake unzipped another pocket. “I thought you did.” Then he noticed one poc
ket he’d failed to zip the previous day—the same pocket that had held the compass. His stomach dropped.
“Oh no. Remember when we ran for the van yesterday?”
Taylor shook his head. “Oh man,” he complained. “The map won’t be much use without a compass, huh?”
Jake didn’t answer. He turned away. I blew it again, he thought.
“Wait!” Taylor said. “I know! We can look at the sun to find which way to go.”
Jake threw his arms up at the sky, where the fog completely hid any sign of the sun. “Maybe when the fog burns off.”
Taylor sighed. “Or we could turn back? Follow the road back to the highway?”
For a moment Jake wanted nothing more. But then he imagined a patrol car pulling up, and police asking questions that he and Taylor wouldn’t be able to answer. For one horrible second he saw Bull’s bones on a morgue slab, covered with a sheet. Jake was angry with his dad but didn’t want him to go to jail.
“I say we keep going,” he said. “Between the two of us, we should be able to find our way through these mountains to Thermopolis, compass or no compass. What do you say?”
Taylor smiled. “I’m in. We’ve got to live up to our Wilder name, right?”
Jake slapped him on the back. “Right. C’mon, let’s pack up.”
After a hasty breakfast of jerky and biscuits, Taylor rescued his snowboard from their shelter, and the boys set off. Guessing which way was north based on their travel the previous day, Jake led. It didn’t take long to realize just how big a task he’d taken on.
“Man, this is deep,” he muttered, slogging through the layer of white beneath him.
“Yeah, you want me to break trail for a while?” Taylor asked.
“Sure. We can trade off.”
“We should make Cody do it,” Taylor joked. They both looked back to see the dog trailing behind, content to let the boys do the hardest work.
Despite the deep snow, the boys made decent progress—at first. Without warning, the gulley suddenly ended, forcing them to slog up a steep slope to a ridge above them. They continued following that, but then the ridge abruptly changed directions. They zigzagged along the ridge until finally, after a couple of hours, they stopped and looked at each other with dismay.
“Jake, we’re even more lost than we were before,” said Taylor.
“Yeah, I know,” admitted Jake. “Let’s stop for a minute.”
Jake spread out the foil blanket for them to sit on while Taylor broke out the last of their deer jerky.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” Taylor asked.
Jake looked all around them. The sun still hadn’t shown itself through the fog, so their map might as well have been toilet paper.
“No,” he said, “but let’s head this way.”
Making his best guess, Jake led them up into higher ground, following whatever ravines or contours looked promising.
Soon, as they continued, the land ahead of them rose up much more steeply—almost into cliffs. It took them almost two more hours to reach the summit of the rocky pass. At the top they collapsed on their packs, as tired as they’d ever felt before. Even Cody seemed exhausted.
“What do you think Mom’s doing now?” Taylor asked.
Jake looked out at the wintry landscape. He let the question hang in the cold air. The truth was, he didn’t want to even imagine an answer—it would be all too easy to think the worst.
As they lay there, the fog eventually began to clear from the ridge they were perched on. For the first time that day, the sun made an appearance, a silvery orb tracking across the horizon. Feeling the dim warmth on his face, Jake opened his eyes, then stood up to get his bearings. Taylor joined him.
Jake realized that they’d actually gone farther west than he’d intended. He began studying the terrain to see which way they should go next, when Taylor exclaimed, “Jake, look! Is that a house down there?”
Jake turned and squinted. At first he saw nothing.
“Right there,” Taylor said, pointing.
Then Jake spotted it, a small structure in the canyon below them. The house was too far away to make out many details, but a plume of smoke rose from the chimney into the sky. Jake’s spirits rose with it.
“Good spot,” he told Taylor. “If we can get down there, we might even find a road—or a ride—to Thermopolis.”
“What are we waiting for?” Taylor said, hoisting his backpack.
Jake began leading the way down the opposite side of the ridge. It was steep and soon took a toll on Jake’s legs.
It’s almost as hard going down as it was coming up the other side.
“I wish we could just sled down to that cabin,” Jake said.
He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around to see Taylor grinning, holding out his snowboard. “Uh, hello? Jake?”
Jake laughed. The snowboard was proving to be their most useful possession. “You wanna go first, so I can watch you fall on your butt?”
“Hey! I’m a pro!” Taylor protested.
Jake helped Taylor get his boots into the snowboard’s bindings. The fit was far from perfect, but they managed to tighten the clips, and at last Taylor stood up on the board, ready to give it a try.
“Here goes,” Taylor finally said. “Meet you at the bottom.”
With Jake’s help Taylor pushed off on the board—and did a face-plant into the snow.
Jake cracked up, and Cody ran over to lick Taylor’s face. Even Taylor was laughing as he dug himself out of the drift.
“Try again,” Jake said, helping him up.
Taylor did, a couple of dozen times. He crashed every way possible. He fell on his face. He flipped over onto his back. He did a three-sixty spin before flopping onto his side. Finally, however, he managed to turn before falling. The next time, he did three turns and went about a hundred feet down the slope.
“About time!” Jake hollered as he and Cody bounded down the slope after him.
The land fell away in a series of steep steps, and at the bottom of the first gradient, Taylor waited for Jake and Cody to catch up with him.
“Your turn, Jake,” Taylor said.
“Uh, I don’t know, Taylor,” Jake said.
“You’ll be fine. It’s a blast!” Taylor replied as he pulled his boots out of the straps.
But as Jake was about to try, he felt his legs go to jelly.
“Whoa, what was that?” he said, staring wildly at Taylor.
“You felt it too?” Taylor asked. “I thought my legs were just shaky from the ride.”
Suddenly the whole landscape began to shift. A deep, low rumble spread through the mountain. It shook the snow-covered ground and seemed to come right up out of the earth and through Jake’s legs. And that was when Jake finally saw it—a hundred-foot-wide shelf of snow breaking free right above where they were standing!
Jake yelled, “Taylor, run! It’s an avalanche!”
9 Jake and Taylor grabbed their packs and tore down the mountainside. Jake looked behind him frantically and saw a long wave of snow billowing up and coming thundering down toward them.
“Move!” he screamed.
“I’m trying!” Taylor shouted, tumbling through the snow, with Cody fast on his heels.
Jake fled, pure terror powering his limbs, as the mountain seemed to collapse from under him. He snatched up Cody and sprinted, but the knee-high snow slowed him down like thick mud.
It was no use. The avalanche was bearing down on them. In moments they’d be engulfed.
“Taylor, if you go under, make a space for—”
But before Jake even had a chance to finish, the colossal mass of snow smashed into them from behind. Jake staggered, stumbled to his knees, and fell hard. From under his arm Cody let out a frightened yip of pain. Jake gasped for air and flailed with his free hand like a drowning swimmer, but he found nothing. Cody slipped out of his arms and bounded away as the snow heaped up on Jake, burying him alive.
The wave passed, and the ea
rth was still. Cold snow pressed in all around Jake until he couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down. He tried to move his arms, but they didn’t budge. The darkness was total. Snow stifled him like a pillow held across his face.
Don’t panic, he told himself as he tried to gather a breath. Instead of air he sucked in a wad of frozen snow. Not panicking was easier said than done. Jake racked his brain, desperate to find a way out.
Suddenly a flash of inspiration came to him and he remembered exactly what he had to do—even if it was gross. He gathered the saliva in his mouth and pursed his lips, letting it dribble out. Instead of going down his chin, the spit seemed to be traveling upward, ending up in his right nostril.
I’m upside down.
With a grunt and a heave, he flexed his legs and kicked upward. Suddenly they broke free, and instead of tight snow and compacted ice, Jake could feel the cold air whip across his ankles. Working his elbows back and forth, he struggled upward, wriggling his way out of the snow backward.
Dazed, he got to his feet and looked around him. His backpack was lying half-buried in the snow twenty feet away, but that was the only thing he recognized. Everywhere around him, pure white snow had wiped out the landscape.
“Taylor!” Jake called. Panic was battering his chest and demanding to be let in. “Taylor, are you okay?”
A furry, brown-and-white head popped up from the snow.
“Cody!” Jake yelled. The little dog struggled up, shook himself off, and bounded over. “Good boy! Find Taylor. You got it?”
Cody seemed to understand. He skittered back and forth in the deep snow, sniffing and whining.
“Taylor!” Jake shouted at the top of his lungs. The noise echoed across the mountainside, with no reply.
Jake remembered where Taylor had fallen, but now hundreds of tons of snow had rearranged the hillside, and nothing looked the same. He scrambled up the slope, praying he’d see Taylor’s sandy brown hair sticking out of the powder, but there was only blank whiteness in every direction.
On impulse Jake stopped to dig a hole, thinking some deep instinct might have led him to his brother. But there was nothing. He moved a few feet away and dug another one.
The Journey Home Page 5