The old woman gave him a sharp look. "No, I don't. Don't you go talking tongues to me, George Jefferson! I still say Paul Fergis would have showed more sense to have stayed right here till morning or this storm's over." She gave him another look. "What does that mean?"
" 'To each saint his candle,' " he translated. "I think I'd say give the man credit for guts, at least."
Jan-Doreen Stevanic giggled. "I studied French, Mr. Jefferson. Yours would be a loose translation, wouldn't it?"
"Well, anyway, you get the idea. In my book Fergis gets a gold star. So does Norstead."
Sarah turned quickly to stand with her back to the fire and watch the long, weird shadows pirouette across the cabin. The fire, fed by the spruce wood Mac McDavie had cut and all of them had carried to stack in the lean-to, was their only light and in this moment the chasing shadows and dimness were a blessing. Tears smarted in her eyes and lumped hot and tight in her throat, and they mustn't see. Especially Mrs. Stevanic mustn't. Paul had been right to be concerned. A complete medical history, which Mrs. Stevanic's doctor thoughtfully had given her, and a healthy patient whose baby was not due for another two weeks wasn't everything, and—although they had achieved near-miracles in the few hours since they had been marooned—visions of the sterile labor and delivery rooms at the hospital in Dayton peered over the periphery of Sarah's thoughts to haunt her. Because even that was safer than thoughts of Paul she let herself picture the delivery table, the autoclaved instruments ready should they be needed, Dr. Lindon in his sleeveless gown, his shock of red hair hidden by the stockinette cap, his big laughing mouth masked by thicknesses of gauze… But suddenly it was Jenny Allison before she became Jenny Fergis who was beside him and then, somehow, and in his pilot's cap and jacket not belonging at all, Paul—
She drew a deep, steadying breath and bit her lip when she realized how audible it had been.
Or, amid the wildness of the storm, had only she heard it?
"—do with a steak."
Only a part of what George Jefferson had said got through to her, but it was enough. The lunch they would have eaten before taking off from Tanacross suddenly became the most important meal in her life, the steak George Jefferson was dreaming about a T-bone of astonishing proportions and mouth-watering flavor. They would have to do something about food tomorrow—with better results, she hoped, than the shot Mr. Jefferson had taken at an inquisitive rabbit. One precious shell gone, and the snowshoe hadn't even lost his nonchalance.
"What say we be frivolous and have another cup of Mrs. Emlyn's coffee around?" Jefferson asked. He grinned at her. "I don't see why you didn't pack some chocolate bars and hardtack too."
"That rabbit," Mrs. Emlyn reminded him, "would taste mighty good right about now. In the morning you give me that gun— You set that kettle on," she in-strutted Andy Stevanic, who was nearest it. "We can melt snow for water when that's gone. That river's apt to be froze over by morning."
Al Malcolm looked up from his whittling. "Too rough." He held the spear-end of the five- or six-foot length of wood—larch, Mac McDavie had identified it-out for McDavie's inspection. "How's that look?"
"About as sharp as you're going to get it."
"They'd probably laugh at me on Waikiki, but I used to have some luck spear-fishing."
George Jefferson grunted. "I'll still take Maggie but right now my stomach says don't argue. Damn. I didn't know being hungry could hurt so much."
They all laughed. Trying not to think how forced the mirth was, Sarah went to stand at the window, which, like the chaise longue on which Mrs. Stevanic and Mrs. Emlyn were sitting, had come from one of the other cabins. Luckily it hadn't been broken, as the one in this cabin had, either by that limb that at some time or other had crashed down to lie alongside the cabin until Mac McDavie chopped it up, or by a prowling, curious bear.
Shivering, Sarah leaned her forehead against the ice-cold pane. It was a strange world outside. An oddly white, wind-whipped world that seemed not to belong on this planet. What was she doing here, anyway? She knew what Ralph would say. She'd asked for it, and in a way she supposed she had.
But here at least she was needed and it had been a long time, almost a year, since she had been called upon to do anything more strenuous than drape Ralph's neurotic female patients, hand him an occasional tuning fork or probe or a lubricant. Usually Miss Davenport did even that. Prim, plump, fiftyish Miss Davenport, who was one of Ralph's "work-nurses"—and looked it. "Can you imagine a man ever wanting to go to bed with Davenport, darling?" Ralph had asked her once when, miraculously, the waiting room was empty. "She's a good nurse—the best in Dayton, barring not even you, but ugh." He had kissed her. "Don't ever let yourself get fat and frumpy, sweetheart."
Remembering, while the world beyond the small, square, not-too-clean window seemed oddly tranquil in spite of the storm, Sarah wished she could think of Ralph Porter without something unpleasant nudging into her mind.
She was in love with Ralph, she supposed she would marry him when she returned to Dayton after Jenny had her baby and was flying again.
Jenny, she thought. Paul— Oh, God!
"Miss Bennett!" George Jefferson was jovial. "Coffee's on and it's ladies first at the Chez Alaska!" He was holding a steaming hot tin cup to her, handle first.
Sarah summoned a smile. "You're the one with the hungry pain. You first."
"You don't have to say that twice!" He gulped the coffee.
Sarah went to sit on an end of the suitcase on which Al Malcolm was hunkered, still whittling, shaping up and balancing the wooden spear.
"How will you have your breakfast fish?" he asked, grinning.
"Fried. In oodles of hot Mazola. With a crisp green salad and—"
"For breakfast?" He faked a yelp.
"Now, look, you two," Mac McDavie began, "if you don't even think about food it's easier."
Sarah scarcely heard him. What in the world was wrong with Mr. Jefferson? He had taken a swallow of the coffee and was sitting there, nursing the tin cup in his hands as if to warm them, when he'd stiffened, drawn a sharp gasping breath. His jaws were set as if against sudden pain, the muscles in his thick neck stood out hard, ropelike—
"Is anything wrong, Mr. Jefferson?" Sarah asked.
"Damned if I know! All of a sudden I—feel as if I'd been stabbed in the navel. I—"
He broke off, grimacing with new pain.
Sarah's breath caught in her throat. Not appendicitis! Please, God, don't let it be appendicitis.
Chapter 5
The pain eased. They could see it going, see relief coming into George Jefferson's ruddy face slowly, at first accompanied by unbelief. Then he let go a deep breath, as if he'd been holding it all this time.
"Whhhhew! Miss Bennett, for a minute there I would've sworn you had one of those surgical scalpels in me and were twisting it."
Somebody laughed, but the sound was so strained and unnatural that it was a full minute before Sarah realized it had been Mr. Jefferson himself.
The rest of them sat silent, waiting—looking to her, she realized with a pang that she promptly diagnosed as fear. They knew she was a nurse, at the moment their sole link with that sterile, clinical, smelling-of-antiseptics-and-soporofics-world that is the hospital on which they'd always depended, whether it be in Fairbanks, Alaska; Vincennes, Indiana; or, in George Jefferson's case, Seattle.
"Have you had pains like this before?" She heard her voice slipping into her calm, reassuring nurse's tone as naturally as Ralph's Cadillac shifted its own gears.
"Oh, sure. It's the old appendix."
But the attempt at casual aplomb didn't quite come off. Worry, or a new pang, was nibbling at the man's mantle of assurance. As well it should, Sarah found herself thinking. Still, if it was chronic, perhaps—
She asked, "Is it chronic?"
George Jefferson winced at a renewed twinge before he said, "No. As a matter of fact, I'm due to check in at the hospital in Seattle as soon as I get back. That," he f
logged a weak grin onto his lips, "was to be day after tomorrow."
The growing cold lump of fear behind Sarah's sternum cringed. Then he'd had previous attacks, or at least an attack— "When was your attack?"
"Last month." Pudgy fingers explored the tenderness in his abdomen. "My doctor didn't think much of the idea, but I had this business to see to and—hell, Miss Bennett! I've never been sick a day in my life!"
How often did doctors hear that? Sarah wondered.
And most of the time from men like George Jefferson—big hearty persons who saw others stricken and didn't even slow down. After all, it couldn't happen to them— How many times, when she had been doing surgical nursing at the hospital in Dayton, had she heard Dr. Cal mutter bitterly about that during an operation, when, if the patient hadn't been, in Dr. Cal's words, "so all-fired contrary," the surgeon's job would have been infinitely easier?
"I don't blame your doctor," Sarah said, rising from the piece of luggage on which she had been sitting, her shoulder brushing Al Malcolm's. "I think you should lie down, Mr. Jefferson."
Jan-Doreen Stevanic rose with surprising agility from the spruce bough-covered door. "It's real comfy, Mr. Jefferson," she encouraged him.
The weak grin seemed frozen to his lips. A bead of perspiration formed on his forehead, an incongruous thing in this half-warm half-chilly cabin.
But pain was twisting and writhing within him, Sarah knew. She had parted with her own appendix during nurses' training days and the prelude was no fun even in Nurses' Residence with a whole hospital full of surgeons across the street.
Here—
No blood count, no sedimentation rate test, no X-ray— She did have a fever thermometer and a stethoscope in the First Aid kit, thanks to Jenny, who, when they'd gone through it yesterday, had admitted she "tried to think of everything, including babies." Sarah had laughed at that—then. But this morning, when she had checked her passengers onto the plane at the airport in Fairbanks and there had been Mrs. Stevanic, she had breathed a small thank-you prayer. How apropos it had been she'd had no idea…
Thinking that, she snapped open the medical bag, took out the thermometer.
"Just like back in Seattle," Jefferson quipped.
Sarah shook down the thin column of mercury. "I wish it were."
She tucked the thermometer beneath his tongue, reached for the husky wrist and after an infinitesimal span found the pulse. Eyes on the sweeping secondhand of her nurse's watch, she counted the steady beat-beat-beat—
"Whatch—" Around the thermometer the word didn't come out right.
"Normal," Sarah answered, although in beginning appendicitis a normal pulse rate didn't mean a thing. It usually was. "Now keep still," with a smile. To Jan-Doreen Stevanic, who was hovering worriedly, she said, "What makes a patient try to talk with a mouthful of thermometer?"
The girl's fine dark eyes met hers understandingly. "Oh, it's surprising what a person can think of to say when he can't open his mouth. Isn't it, Mr. Jefferson?"
The thermometer bobbled suspiciously when he nodded. Sarah blotted the twin beads of sweat with a Kleenex and moments later was retrieving the thermometer.
It was hard to see in the uncertain firelight, but— 101.1.
"What is it?" George Jefferson asked. Then, "I sounded stewed to the gills, didn't I?" He mimicked himself, " 'Whatch?' "
Sarah told him.
"That's not much fever."
"No. But beginning appendicitis is like that. Let's palpate your abdomen—"
She laid her hand flat against his abdomen, brought pressure unerringly on McBurney's point. George Jefferson winced.
"You're as bad as Doc Alexander. He just about bounced me off that examining table." Level eyes probed hers. "What are the chances if it perforates, Miss Bennett?"
Sarah met the challenging gaze. With George Jefferson, somehow, she had to. He knew he was in a spot. "I don't know, Mr. Jefferson."
This isn't Chilkoot, Paul Fergis told himself. It can't be—but damn! he thought as the wind, at his back-thank God, he couldn't help thinking—seemed to pummel his shoulders with renewed fury.
They couldn't keep going if the wind was not at their backs—he didn't know how much farther they could anyhow, he admitted to himself.
But turning back was out of the question. They had decided that as soon as the blizzard struck—that bitter, angry wind driving snow in a man's face would put him out of commission in a hurry—at the same time that they had agreed to keep going as long as they could and then hole in on the leeside of some of these rocks or behind a bluff until daylight.
They had better start looking for a likely spot, he decided when he stumbled again. He had been doing that with more frequency the last hour and each time it took him a split second longer to regain his balance, and once, a while back, Norstead had lost his footing and gone down.
And a broken leg in this would be it, cold as it was getting, he thought. Or was he only noticing the cold more?
Stumbling on, he reached back into memory for survival instructions that had been a part of his Air Force training. Keep moving. Build a fire if you can, or at least a shelter, but keep moving to keep up circulation…
Stripped of military phrasing, the instructions sounded even more elemental, primitive, what-any-damn-fool-should-know, than they had in the manual and Paul found himself thinking instead of the crampons in his gear-kit at home.
Hell, he and Norstead didn't even have a rope, and if the snow got much heavier they wouldn't be able to see each other from ten feet, even in daylight.
Aware that he was breathing heavily again, he stopped. A man sure could get winded in a hurry in this. Winded, and sapped of his strength, and so blasted cold the marrow of his bones ached.
Steeling himself for the ordeal, he turned to check on John Norstead. The wind drove snow-slivers into his face, stabbed at his eyeballs through slitted lids, snatched the breath from his mouth. He closed it. Couldn't risk sucking in too much cold air, he warned himself. He'd heard of men's lungs freezing and though he'd never known of it actually happening it might damn well be possible.
"You all right?" he shouted at Norstead.
He knew Norstead answered although he couldn't distinguish the words. Probably Norstead hadn't understood his either, he thought. God, what this wind would register on an anemometer!
"Want me in front for a while?" Norstead bellowed the words with his mouth only inches from Paul's ear and even then his voice sounded crazily distorted.
Paul nodded. They had been alternating—it was easier that way, gave a man a chance to save a little on his strength, where always breaking trail was plain hell.
With Norstead in the lead they struggled on, Paul praying that Jenny hadn't heard about the storm and knowing that she had. If there was any one thing Ward Barthey prided himself on, it was keeping his listeners posted on Alaska's tricky weather. Not that there was anything unusual about a blizzard in the mountains this time of year. Alaska, especially inland Alaska, wasn't like Wisconsin, where October was lavish with color and though mornings were crisp, later in the day the sun lay pleasantly warm on land and lakes. Through these mountains the birchs and poplars would have been bright yellow-leaved by early September, and there would have been geese and sandhill cranes in v-formation against the sky.
Determinedly he put thoughts of bright yellow poplars and birches, harlequin ducks and sandhill cranes —and the Dells—from him. He and Jenny had spent their honeymoon at the Dells and if he let himself think of those bliss-filled days and nights, if he let himself think of Jenny, alone now in Fairbanks—
No, not alone. A part of him—
The thought was comforting, somehow. Jenny was not alone. No matter what happened, she never would be…
Norstead caught at his arm, with his other hand gestured toward a wall of rock that reared into the storm. In the strange pale darkness it might have been Wickersham, that sheer fourteen-thousand-foot wall on Mount McKinley which had awed Paul
the first time he'd seen it and still did after years. The rock wall climbed into the snow and vanished there, but along its face was less snow and less wind to whip it in maddening circles, into eyes and nostrils and down necks.
They crept along its base, seeking better shelter, grateful for even the partial respite from the storm, however scant the protection might be, beating their arms against their bodies, stamping their feet, feeling the slow spread of faint warmth.
God, Paul thought. It was that wind that drove the cold deep.
If they could have a fire—but no such luck. Even with the vole's nest he'd stuffed into a pocket before leaving the cabin, with the idea that the dried grass would help start a fire, and his lighter fluid would be too much of a flash-in-the-pan thing to do them any good. With that rain today—yesterday—what the hell time was it, anyhow?—wood would be soaked, even if they could find any.
"Wonder how far we've come?" Norstead asked. Here, out of the tormenting wind, he didn't have to shout.
Using his lighter, which, no matter how he tried to shield the flickering small flame, was almost snuffed out by eddying gusts that swooped down over the cliff, Paul looked at his watch. Twelve minutes to one—
"It's twelve to one."
"We left the cabin a little after three."
Nine—almost ten—hours.
All of them over cruel, unfamiliar ground, sometimes with what might have been an animal path skirting the river to guide them but mostly not. Maybe eight of those hours through snow, and at least five of them through this raging, howling blizzard that had shoved and tugged at their bodies, half blinding them—
Fifteen miles? Paul asked himself.
Ten?
Ten miles, or fifteen—when they might be fifty, or a hundred and fifty, from the sound of any voice but their own… He heard himself saying around the desolate feeling that came in spite of him, "Ten. Fifteen, at the outside."
"That's what I figure."
Norstead banged his thighs with gloved hands and didn't say anything more. Paul wondered what he was thinking. He had a family in Tanacross, and yet he hadn't hesitated for the span of a breath—
Wings for Nurse Bennett Page 4