Blizzard: Colorado, 1886 (9 page)

“Hadyn.”

He could hear Maggie, but he didn't want to answer her.

“Hadyn?”

He rolled away from the sound of her voice. He curled up, wincing at the soreness in his muscles. For a few minutes there was blessed silence, and he drifted back toward sleep.

“Hadyn!”

This time her voice was too loud to ignore, but still he tried. His whole body was weary. He didn't want to open his eyes. He didn't want to move. In spite of the fire, he had been cold during the night; he hadn't slept much.

“Hadyn!” Now she was shaking him gently. “Hadyn, are you all right?”

He gave up and opened his eyes. “What?”

“You have to get up. We can't stay here.”

“Why not?” Hadyn sat up slowly in the bedroll. It hurt to move, and he winced again. Maggie had built a little fire. He could see the snow still falling beyond the shelter of the krummholz branches. More than anything, he wanted to lie back down, cover his face, and go back to sleep.

“I've been thinking,” Maggie began. “If we head straight east, I think there's a good chance—”

“Leave me alone.” Hadyn lay back down. If they were going to die in these cursed mountains, what
difference did it make whether they moved on or stayed where they were? At least here they were a little warmer. He heard Maggie get up and he opened his eyes. She looked pale and weary, and she was scowling at him.

“You've caused enough trouble, Hadyn.”

He shook his head angrily. “I already apologized to you. I'm sorry your father got hurt, but it wasn't my fault. I didn't want to come here. I—”

“I'm going to get back home,” Maggie interrupted him. “I am not going to carry you, or stay here and freeze with you, or even spend the rest of the morning talking you into coming with me.”

Hadyn stared at her as she opened her knapsack. She pulled out a flour sack and reached inside it. “I'll leave you some food, but I'm going to eat before I go.” She glanced up at him as she lifted a hunk of dark red meat from the bag. She pushed the slim, sharply broken end of a pine branch into the meat and propped it over the fire.

Hadyn felt his stomach cramp and his mouth flooded with saliva. He sat up again, gasping at the sharp pain in his muscles.

Maggie was watching him. “Sore? It gets better
once you're up and moving. Here.” She handed him the canteen. “The coffee is gone, but I melted some snow for water.”

Hadyn drank. There was still the faint taste of coffee. The water was delicious, and once he started drinking it was hard for him to stop.

“Slow down or you're just going to get sick,” Maggie cautioned. Hadyn lowered the canteen. She reached out and took it back. “I don't know what you're going to do for water, but I can't leave this. You might be able to keep the fire going and find a dish-shaped rock to melt more snow.”

Hadyn stared at Maggie. “You can't just abandon me here.”

She looked up. “I'll leave you the bedroll. If I can find your bag on the way down, I'll use your clothes to—”

“Wait.” Hadyn felt sick. The nausea bent him forward and he struggled not to vomit. The muscles in his legs spasmed; the pain was almost more than he could stand. He let the nausea subside, then looked up. “I'll go with you.”

The smell of the roasting venison was thick in the still air as Hadyn struggled into his socks and boots. They were warm from the fire, and dry. He got to his feet, but it was impossible to straighten up all the way—the branches were too low. For a minute, he stood swaying back and forth, unable to make his cramped legs do more. Finally, he forced himself to take a single step, and then another. Bent double, he walked out from beneath the branches and stood blinking up at the dark clouds. Snow fell on his cheeks as he lifted first one foot, then the other. After a few minutes, he ducked back inside.

Maggie was right, he thought as he picked up the edge of the bedroll: His leg muscles hurt less now
that he had moved around a little bit. He shook the bedding, frowning at the ache in his arms.

“Get all the dirt out,” Maggie said from behind him.

Hadyn shook the quilts a little harder, then rolled them up. He set the bedroll down close to the fire. The smell of the meat was making him almost dizzy. Maggie pulled two biscuits out of the flour sack and Hadyn leaned toward her without meaning to.

“This is all I have. These and the meat.”

Hadyn swallowed, holding out his hand.

“I think we should eat the meat and save these. The venison will go bad faster.”

Hadyn lowered his hand. She was probably right again, but he wanted to grab the biscuits from her—both of them. It scared him, feeling like this. He had never had to go hungry in his life. He realized that he was still staring at the biscuits and raised his eyes to Maggie's face as she put them back in the flour sack. She met his eyes for an instant, then looked away, turning the meat over the fire.

Hadyn watched, his mouth watering. “When will it be ready?”

She didn't look at him. “We have to let it heat up. That way it'll warm us from inside.”

Hadyn swallowed again. “How long?”

Maggie turned to face him. “You watch it.
You
tell
me
when it's ready.”

Hadyn could hear the irritation in Maggie's voice. “Why are you so angry at me?” he asked.

“Because you never think, Hadyn. You make me do it all.”

Before he could say anything more, she had stood up and moved away from the fire. “I'm going to fill the canteen with snow again. I'll be right back.” She stepped out from under the krummholz. He could see her shoes against the snow, then she moved away.

Hadyn turned the branch over the fire. The meat was starting to sizzle on one side. He lowered it a little, then pulled it back up when it started to burn. His hunger felt like a live thing in his belly, like it had teeth of its own. Glancing back outside, he couldn't see Maggie's shoes. He reached out toward the meat. Maybe he could tear off a little strip that she wouldn't notice was missing.

Hadyn glanced back and forth from the venison to the snow just beyond the krummholz. He stopped himself, shaking his head. Maggie wouldn't have taken more than her share, and he knew it. The
truth was, he would be dead now if it hadn't been for her. He turned the stick, careful not to sear the meat again. When Maggie ducked back under the branches, he looked up at her. “I think it's ready.”

Maggie grinned as she set down a flat rock and placed the canteen by the fire. “If you'd said I had to wait another minute, I might have given in and said we should eat the biscuits. I'm starving.” Hadyn watched Maggie pull a pocketknife from her knapsack. “Lay it on the rock,” she said. “I scoured it with snow.”

Hadyn pulled the meat from the fire. It spit and sizzled as Maggie cut it into two chunks. He tried to eat slowly, but it seemed like the meat was gone all too soon.

When he looked up, Maggie was taking her last bite. She grinned again. “I feel better.”

Hadyn nodded, realizing that he did too. “Thanks.”

Maggie was wiping her knife, using a handful of green pine needles. She looked up. “Do you think you can walk? We'll have to cover some ground. The truth is, Hadyn, I'm as lost as you are.”

“Nobody is as lost as I am, Maggie,” Hadyn said. He meant it seriously, but when she laughed, he had
to join in. “I've been lost since I left the road.” As they talked, they gathered up their belongings and stepped out of the krummholz.

“At least the wind is gone,” Maggie said, shouldering her knapsack. She handed him the bedroll.

Hadyn tucked it under his arm and nodded, glancing up the mountainside toward the rock ledges. They looked so small that he blinked.

Maggie turned and followed his gaze. “It must have snowed a couple feet overnight,” she said in a low voice. Then she looked back at him. “This isn't going to be easy.” Hadyn nodded and tried to smile as Maggie led the way.

The snow was deeper than it looked. But even worse, Hadyn's feet sank unevenly. Every step was different. One would bottom out on bare frozen soil about two feet down, and the next one hit an old drift, burying his leg up to his thigh. The layer of clean, white snow on top gave no hint of what was beneath.

Maggie followed a zigzagging course across the face of the slope. Hadyn soon figured out why. It was hard enough to keep his footing like this; headed straight downward, it would have been impossible.

Hadyn glanced back up at the rock ledges, only to find that they had disappeared behind the curtain of snow. He tried to spot the deformed krummholz thicket that had sheltered them for the night, but he couldn't.

Looking downhill, Hadyn couldn't see far enough to spot any trees at all, but he knew they were there. He realized suddenly that in snowfall this thick, they could pass within thirty feet of the road and never see it.

“You all right?” Maggie asked over her shoulder.

“I think so,” Hadyn answered, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. She had said she was as lost as he was. He prayed it wasn't true.

A distant rumble like thunder caught Hadyn's attention. Maggie stopped suddenly and he nearly bumped into her. She was glancing around, her eyes searching the mountainside above them.

“What is it, Maggie?” She shook her head as the noise went on and on. It got no louder and Hadyn saw her relax when it finally faded. “What was that?” he asked again.

“Snowslide,” she told him. “I thought for a minute it was above us. We get some big ones this time
of year.” She looked past him, then upslope again, squinting.

Hadyn could see how scared she was, and he followed her gaze. “How can you tell when one is about to start?”

Maggie shook her head. “You can't until it does.” After one last look, Maggie turned and started off again.

Hadyn could only follow. He listened for the dull roaring with every step. After a while, he relaxed a little. She was probably making more out of the danger than it deserved.

He walked without speaking through the ghostly landscape, sometimes falling a little ways behind Maggie, then hurrying to catch up. She didn't seem to want to talk, and he was grateful—the air still felt too thin to him and he was breathing hard.

After a long time, Hadyn noticed the first tree looming out of the falling snow. Others emerged as he and Maggie got closer. It was eerie, as though they had been standing silently nearby the whole time and were stepping forward now, revealing themselves.

“I want to go around this stand,” Maggie said, stopping to face him.

“Why?” Hadyn asked. “Isn't it smarter to just go straight back down the way we came up?”

Maggie shook her head. “Don't you remember coming through there? That's the burn. Under this much new snow it would take us hours to find our way through the fallen logs and the snags.”

Hadyn tryed to remember. He had been so scared that he had barely noticed anything.

“This is where I lost Rusty, more or less,” Maggie said quietly. “I'll have to come back up and try to find the saddle. Papa will be furious.”

“No he won't,” Hadyn said. “He'll understand. He'll get you a new one.”

Maggie shook her head, and he could tell that she was angry again. What had he said? He had only been trying to help out. She hitched the knapsack higher on her shoulder. “Your father might be happy to buy a new saddle, Hadyn. Mine won't be able to. Especially after the trip to the doctor in Lyons.”

Hadyn looked out over the trees without responding. It was hardly his fault that her parents weren't rich, was it? After a few seconds, Maggie turned and went on. She veered to their right, away from the burned ground, heading across the mountainside.

It got harder for Hadyn to keep pace with Maggie. Somehow, she had them going uphill again. As the footing got worse, he reached out to tap her shoulder. “Shouldn't we be going down?”

Maggie answered him without turning. “If we can keep going east, we'll have the best chance—and I'm pretty sure that's east.” She pointed, then pulled her hat down over her ears. “I don't think we'll have to go uphill much longer.”

Hadyn hunched his shoulders against the cold. The snow muffled every sound, including Maggie's voice. The instant she stopped speaking, the silence closed in again, as if it had never been broken. If they did die up here, it would be years before anyone even found them. Hadyn blinked, trying to still his thoughts. It was stupid to scare himself.

The direction Maggie had chosen seemed to lead them endlessly upward. The icy flakes slapped at his face, and Hadyn pulled his scarf higher. He felt like he was gasping for air again. The muscles in his legs had stopped hurting, for which he was grateful. He switched the bedroll from his right side to his left. His right arm had cramped and he tried to work out the kinks as Maggie led him higher.

As the hours passed, Hadyn followed Maggie as well as he could. More than once she had to stop and wait for him. After a while he noticed she was constantly glancing up at the sky. Sometimes after she had looked upward, she readjusted their course. She was somber, serious, and he didn't try to talk to her very much.

Hadyn forced himself to keep going, even when his feet grew numb with cold again. Maggie seemed to know where she was going now. It couldn't be much farther, could it? Hadyn kept waiting for Maggie to cry out suddenly. He kept expecting her to stop and point, showing him where the road lay. But she did not turn to him; she just went on walking.

Hadyn tried to ignore the constant pain in his stomach. Breakfast seemed like a distant memory. He noticed Maggie eating mouthfuls of clean snow and imitated her, but even though his thirst lessened slightly, his hunger only got worse. He could not stop thinking about the biscuits in Maggie's knapsack. Step after step through the deep snow, he labored behind her. He started to get angry. What gave her the right to decide when they would eat?