"What do you make of them taking Elder?"
"Jefferson's probably right. So," Paul added grimly, "is Mrs. Stevanic."
They'd kill the old man, all right, he thought. What else could they do? Why else would they have taken him along? Hell, they wouldn't even have to put a bullet in him! Just open the cabin door, give him a push, and by the time he was found—if he ever was found—they'd be wherever they were going and forgotten about.
"I wonder."
After thought-filled moments Norstead went on, "I've been thinking, Fergis. Something about Elder struck me as familiar when I first saw him there in Fairbanks. He's an odd duck, you know. That mop of white hair, those shaggy brows being white too do something to his eyes. It was a long time coming to me, but I read about him in the papers a year or so ago. I think he was mixed up in one of those spy hearings down in Washington. The man's name was Elder and he got quite a play in the newspapers, as I recall. You know. A nice old fuddy-duddy, somebody's-grandfather type of character."
Yes, Paul thought, Elder would. But—
He voiced it, then, "What was he doing flying from Fairbanks to Juneau on my plane? There are others that fly direct, without milk-train stops."
"That's what I was asking myself."
He had a point, Paul told himself. Tanacross was a regular stop. So was Yakutat.
But Killmoose, Copper Creek—
"You mean he maybe was going to meet those three?" he asked.
"He could have been."
"Then he must have put on a pretty good act. Sarah said he was scared to death ever since Killmoose, and nervous enough before that. You saw him, yourself, when Rand ordered him back on the plane."
Norstead admitted, "I'm just guessing, Fergis." Then, "Why would he have been nervous?"
Around them the storm seemed to be lessening. Or perhaps, since they were sheltered from its full fury, the wind only sounded less wildly, less majestically, fierce. Within a few feet of the face of their protecting rocks the ghostly-pale, mystic "seven veils" of the snow cut off the rest of the world until it might not have been there at all…
Paul thought about what Norstead had said. Why should Elder have seemed nervous and upset even before he'd boarded the plane in Fairbanks? He wasn't afraid of flying or he would have taken one of the regular airlines' planes, not Alaska Passenger and Freight Airways' only one.
That was one of the bugaboos Paul had thought he was beginning to whip, that lack of faith in his airline because it was small and made frequent unscheduled stops. Up to now he'd done it too. Now only God knew what would happen, he thought. When he'd watched that plane lift over that string of peaks at the end of the valley he'd watched Alaska Passenger and Freight fly right out from under him.
"Damned if I know," he said after a long time, answering Norstead's question.
Not that it would have mattered if he did, he thought. Elder could have been making for contact with Khrushchev himself with microfilmed plans for that new missile base there'd been talk about stashed in his fillings and he and John Norstead were in no position to do anything about it.
Chapter 6
The October wind blew itself out with the gray anemia of the dawn, leaving a snow-filled silence that to Sarah was ethereal and unreal. How could a world that all night had been so buffeted and tortured by wind, so filled with shrieks and whines and moans, become suddenly so quiet? Even the fire's crackling, whispering, "walking in the snow" sounds, as Mrs. Emlyn called them, seemed subdued by this vast oppressive new stillness.
It was still snowing, though. The pristine chiffonlike curtain enfolded the tiny cabin and all but erased the corner of one of the two other cabins that huddled among the spruce and larch on the river side of the narrow valley, all that she could see of them from the window.
She fought off a yawn. The night had been long, a restive one for them all. Al Malcolm, Andy Stevanic and Mac McDavie had taken turns keeping the fire going and when it wasn't their turn had tried to sleep stretched out on the dirt floor near the fire. Jan-Doreen Stevanic—bless her! Sara thought fondly—had slept like a cherub on the spruce-bough pallets Al and Andy and Mac had made up for her, Mrs. Emlyn and Sarah, who, because of her patient, had slept little. Mrs. Emlyn, she suspected, had played 'possum a good part of the night. Her breathing had been too controlled, not relaxed enough, Sarah had decided once and thought: The old darling! Of us all, she knows Alaska best.
The thought was not a comforting one and Sarah almost welcomed the grunt that said George Jefferson was awake again. He had been, most of the night.
Awake, or tossing in a pain-filled twilight that was neither sleep nor wakefulness.
"It's getting daylight," she said, leaving the small square window and stepping over Al Malcolm's long legs to reach the side of the spruce-bough bed.
"I hurt like hell."
"Same place?"
He shook his head. "More here," as he gingerly touched his right lower abdomen.
Sarah's heart gave an uneasy lurch. Although she had known better actually, she had let herself think that perhaps it was not appendicitis. That it was a gall-bladder condition, or maybe an ulcer.
Which, with the man's medical history, had been a foolish hope, she reminded herself.
"I've been remembering things Doc Alexander said," he went on after moments.
"I wish you had listened to him while you were in Seattle."
There was only a trace of tautness in his voice as he said, "So do I. But you know how it is. The attack was a minor one, I guess. Anyhow, I stopped hurting— oh, my belly stayed a little tender and I've been watching what I eat." Humor nudged his tone. "Not much trouble doing that here, is there?"
Sarah smiled. She had been hungry enough in the night to have eaten spruce needles, but the gnawing sensations in her stomach had ceased.
"Being careful of what I eat is important, the doc said. Constipation brings about—impaction, I think was the way he put it, and impaction does things to the appendix."
"Yes."
He shifted position, as he had been doing most of the night, seeking—and not finding—a position to ease his growing misery.
"The thing I'm getting at is this, Miss Bennett. Alexander said if obstruction isn't complete—he used a lot of words, including ifs and buts and ors which were about all of them that I understood—there is a chance of the attack passing."
As the other one had. That was what he was thinking, Sarah told herself. And, oh, God! she hoped it did! But suppose it didn't?
Suppose his appendix perforated and started spilling fecal matter and accumulated inflammation into the abdominal cavity? What would she do?
What could she?
If she were Dr. Cal, or Ralph… no, not Ralph, she reminded herself. Ralph didn't do surgery. He simply referred patients—but not to Dr. Cal—and then collected a fat part of the surgeon's fee. Dr. Cal abhorred fee-splitting—almost as much as he abhorred Dr. R. Caldwell Porter…
From some far mountain she heard a voice, so calm and unafraid that it couldn't be her own, replying to Mr. Jefferson, reassuring him, "Lots of them do pass. Fever and leukocytosis—that's when white corpuscles increase in your blood to fight the infection," she explained—"return to normal. Usually it takes a few days."
"Long enough for us to get out of here."
"I hope so."
The others were stirring. Al Malcolm, she had an idea, had been lying there listening. Perhaps the others had too, as Andy Stevanic, whose turn it was to keep the fire going, was making no pretense of not doing. He sat on a couple of suitcases, his back against the chinked wall of the cabin, blue eyes quietly upon her and George Jefferson.
"Good morning, everybody," Jan-Doreen Stevanic murmured sleepily from the spruce-bough pallet in a corner near the fire. She sat up clumsily. "How are you feeling, Mr. Jefferson?"
"Like you know where."
He eased his legs over the side of the improvised bed and as gingerly got to his feet.
"Just w
anted to see if I could do it," he told them as he started with slow, careful steps toward the door.
Sarah's eyes sought Al Malcolm's and without a word he followed George Jefferson outside.
They already had decided to use the partly burned cabin as a latrine and it wasn't far, but George Jefferson had no business going alone.
A latrine was one of their least important problems, Sarah thought now with her nurse's practicality. They must have food, and more wood, and more spruce boughs for beds—Al, and Andy Stevanic and Mac McDavie couldn't go on sleeping on the bare dirt floor…
"I thought it was a custom to leave supplies in cabins," Andy Stevanic said, kneading his empty stomach.
"Just be thankful they left an ax, boy," Mac McDavie grinned. "How's the wood supply?"
"It almost isn't."
Groaning that he "was afraid of that," McDavie got stiffly to his feet.
He took the ax from its place in the corner and went outside, followed by Andy Stevanic, and a few minutes later the sound of the ax rang out, each strike sharp and clear as a shot in the stillness.
Sarah took the iron pot and just outside the door scooped snow into it, remembered the ratio of rain water to snow and tamped the snow down hard. When it melted they would have water for coffee, and for tooth-brushing— She almost smiled at that. Nothing to eat and she thought of brushing her teeth. Picking up the snow-filled kettle she went back into the cabin.
"I didn't know it could snow so hard," she said.
"Land, child," Mrs. Emlyn said, "I've seen it snow two feet overnight. There's been many a miner'd've given all the dust in his poke for a place like this."
Sarah said, "I suppose so."
She placed the kettle carefully on the stones Al had arranged under Mrs. Emlyn's supervision and went into the lean-to for more wood.
It was a pitiful little room, of rough-hewed boards that had warped out of place, and boasted none of the cabin's basic sturdiness. In the night, snow had sifted through the gaping cracks and lay in a powdery mist on the floor, across which thin ridges rose in a striking, precise pattern.
Andy Stevanic had been right, she thought. The remaining wood supply almost wasn't. She pulled three or four of the smaller pieces from the stack that had dwindled swiftly through the night and caught her breath when some tiny, furry creature went scuttling.
One of those voles Mac McDavie had spoken of last night when they'd heard a noise that wasn't the wind, she told herself. A kind of field mouse, really. Probably they had been what had dug the cabin floor full of burrows.
The sound of chopping had stopped, and without it, despite the sound of Mrs. Stevanic's and Mrs. Emlyn's voices in the cabin, the quiet seemed more profound than ever. Sarah was wondering how far Paul and John Norstead were, if, perhaps, they already had found help and were heading back, when she heard the shout.
Oh, God! Mr. Jefferson—
Dropping the wood, she ran.
Mrs. Emlyn and Mrs. Stevanic already were at the door.
"What—" Sarah began only to be interrupted by Jan-Doreen Stevanic's ecstatic, "Mr. McDavie's got a rabbit!"
"And what a rabbit!"
He held the big snowshoe up for their inspection. "I drew back to whack into a dead limb and there he was, humped up for shelter. I let 'im have it."
Sarah felt a sickness in the pit of her stomach. It was the first snowshoe rabbit she'd ever seen, it was a beautiful thing—it had been before Mac McDavie's ax had— Swallowing, she summoned a smile that felt awfully thin. This was the sort of thing their lives might depend on, and—
"Heyyyy!" as Mac McDavie glimpsed her face. "Something wrong, Miss Bennett?"
Sarah shook her head. "N-no. Just—the sight of food, I guess."
He said, "Sure," and wasn't fooled a bit, she knew.
"We'd better have coffee first," he went on, "and then put this fellow in the pot." He got out his pocket knife. Grinning, he asked, "Want the fur for bootees, Mrs. Stevanic?"
"Oh, yes!"
Some of Sarah's queasiness let go. At least Mrs. Stevanic wasn't bothered, thank goodness, she thought, going back inside. Although last night's bitter cold seemed to have gone with the angry wind, it was good to shut the door, to hold her hands out to the fire.
Remembering the wood she had dropped when Mac McDavie shouted, she went to get it.
Jan-Doreen Stevanic was opening one of their suitcases when she finished replenishing the fire.
"It's a good thing Andy's skinny, Miss Bennett," she said, taking out a pair of trousers. "You can wear these—ohhhhh! how I wish I could!" She handed them to Sarah. "Hurry and put them on before the men come back. I'll watch."
The trousers were a good wool worsted, obviously belonging to Andy Stevanic's best suit.
Sarah hesitated.
"Don't be a silly. Take them."
"All right. But I— Thank you, Jan-Doreen," she said warmly, and by the time Al Malcolm and George Jefferson returned had substituted the trousers for her skirt.
"Well, well!" George Jefferson, in pain though he might be, did an exaggerated double-take.
Al grinned. "Andy Stevanic's?"
She nodded.
"What was the whoop?"
Jan-Doreen Stevanic told him, adding, "Let's hope there are more where that one came from. The two of us are getting awfully hungry."
Al grinned at her.
But he looked worried too, Sarah thought. As well he might be. One rabbit and six people to eat it-seven, if you counted as Jan-Doreen had…
They had had their coffee and the rabbit was in the pot, from which a tantalizing just-beginning-to-cook aroma already was beginning to rise, when Sarah slit the side seams of the mist-gray wool skirt and bound the pieces around her feet, buckling them at her ankles with safety pins from the plane's First Aid kit. The snow was nearly a foot deep even where it wasn't drifted, Al had said, and high-heeled pumps were no match for it.
She pulled on over her suit-jacket the windbreaker jacket which Andy Stevanic's suitcase also had yielded and went outside. Snow was still falling, great fat lazy flakes that reminded her of the snow storms that sometimes seem to follow the Miami River down across Ohio and wrap Troy and Dayton in white, quiet worlds of their own.
If only this river was the Miami and she were walking home along Market Street in Troy, as she had been doing only—how many days ago? She had been in Alaska going on four days now and already it seemed a lifetime.
Although Al and Mr. Jefferson had been this way only a short time ago, the path they had broken already showed how heavy the snow still was. Sarah broke trail again, to the latrine and then to the other cabin.
Unlike theirs, it had not lost its chinking, but the roof sagged alarmingly beneath its dirt and dead-sod burden. Through the hole left by the window that George Jefferson had taken to their cabin, snow had driven across the cabin to drift against the far wall.
Sarah stood for moments in the doorway looking around. They could use that fireplace crane, if they could get it out, she told herself.
In an emergency, they even could build a fire in that fireplace—and let the roof cave the rest of the way in? She gave it a suspicious glance before she went inside.
Not that there would be anything. Al and Mr. Jefferson had searched this cabin and the half-a-cabin that they were using now for a latrine, before it began snowing yesterday afternoon.
A vole went skittering across the floor, leaving his own odd little pattern in the snow, to disappear beside the stone hearth. The cabins must be full of them, Sarah thought. These dirt-and-sod roofs were, especially. And the floors. She shivered at the thought of that spruce-bough pallet—no matter how comfortable it had been, sharing it with a mouse was something else again. A veil of snow whipped into the cabin, only briefly, but enough to say that the wind was rising again. Sarah's heart sank. Snow was bad enough-there couldn't possibly be any air search so long as the storm continued—but that wind!
She went outside and was almost back to th
e other cabin when she stopped short, startled. A—frog?
For Heaven's sake—
She heard it again, a throaty, croaking sound, and thought: For Heaven's sake, are there snow frogs too?
The sounds had come from off to the left, in the direction of the river and that spruce thicket, but she didn't hear it again.
Summoning a laugh at herself, she pushed open the cabin door. "You're going to think I'm crazy from hunger, but I just heard a frog."
"Where?" Al Malcolm was on his feet, excitedly.
Sarah told him.
"That's a rock ptarmigan, Sarah," he explained. "Come show me?"
Al took "Maggie"—Mr. Jefferson's .357 Magnum— and they hurried outside again.
"They're hard to see, Sarah," he explained as they went. "Getting white now for winter, but—" He broke off to say, "In there?" as they approached the clump of spruce.
They didn't find the ptarmigan. If it hadn't flown, its camouflage was too perfect, or it was too well-concealed—
"Nuts," Al muttered.
"We've got the rabbit."
He didn't say anything for a minute; then, "Sarah, what about Jefferson?"
Sarah drew a deep breath; the cold air stung her lungs. "I wish I knew."
"He's plenty worried."
"He should be. If his Dr. Alexander had him now he'd have that appendix out in thirty minutes."
He thought about that for a long minute while they walked back toward the cabin.
Then, "I listened to you two this morning."
"I thought you did."
He seemed not to have heard. "I know there's maybe a fair chance that it won't, but, Sarah—what if it does perforate?" He shot her a quick glance. "Peritonitis?"
She nodded.
"Damn…"
Despite their busyness, chopping wood and carrying it into the lean-to, making the cabin more comfortable, the day dragged. And the snow continued. Sarah examined Mr. Jefferson again and, although his condition did not seem to have worsened, said a little silent prayer that Paul and Mr. Norstead would hurry. Appendicitis was too tricky. It could go along like this, and the inflammation gradually wane, or his fever could skyrocket, the pain bend him double with its severity, and then—
Wings for Nurse Bennett Page 5