Winter Kill

Chapter 30

The ordeal wasn’t over, of course. Far from it. But the pass represented a milestone to Frank and to the others. They had more reason to hope now that they could actually make it to Whitehorse and find the destinies that awaited them there.

But first they had to get down from this frozen, windswept pass.

Frank, Salty, and Pete Conway unhitched the dogs from the sleds and tied ropes from each sled to the next in line. Then Salty used the harnesses to attach about half the dogs to the last sled.

“That’s just for the first part, ’cause it’s the steepest and slickest,” the old-timer explained. “When we get lower, we’ll hitch the teams back on normal-like and put chains on the runners to slow ’em down, so they won’t overrun the dogs.”

That made sense to Frank. He said, “You’d better let me go down first with the horses. If they slip and start to fall, they won’t take anybody else with them.”

“Nobody but you,” Meg protested.

“I’ll be all right,” he assured her. “Salty, how far are we talking about?”

“Worst of it’s about a quarter of a mile,” the old sourdough said. “Be mighty careful, Frank. I’d hate to think about havin’ to go the rest o’ the way to Whitehorse without ye.”

Frank looked around at everyone, nodded, and then tightly grasped the reins, Stormy’s in his left hand, Goldy’s in his right. He stepped out onto the slope again. The horses hesitated, clearly uncertain whether they wanted to try it, but they had gone into danger and battle so many times with Frank, their gallant hearts wouldn’t let them quit now. They stepped onto the hard-packed snow.

It took Frank close to an hour to lead the two horses down the worst of the slope, one careful step at a time. But at the end of that time, they moved onto relatively level ground and he felt relief flood through him. Looking up at the pass, he pushed back the hood of his parka, took off his hat, and waved it over his head to let the others know that he had made it all right. A few minutes later, he saw the sleds begin to make the descent, followed by the dogs and the other members of the party.

Getting everybody down took awhile, but by late in the afternoon, they were all together again. Salty suggested that they make camp and wait for morning to continue on toward Whitehorse.

“It’ll be dark soon,” he said, “and we still got some tricky slopes in front of us. We’ll need to be able to see where we’re goin’.”

No one complained, and while they were all still exhausted, the air of gloom and despair that had hung over the previous camp seemed to have evaporated. Frank thought that Fiona was still a little out of sorts, but everyone else seemed to have at least a trace of optimism about them again. Some of the young women chattered amongst themselves, Conway and Jessica sat near the fire with her head resting on his shoulder, Salty tossed dried fish to the dogs, and Meg came over to Frank to ask, “Are we going to start standing guard at night again?”

He smiled. “Salty and I never stopped. We’ve been switching off. We just didn’t tell anybody. We figured y’all could use all the rest you could get.”

“That’s not fair! I would have taken my turn.”

“We’ll probably start doing it again like we were on the other side of the pass, even though I don’t think we have to worry about Smith anymore. We’re too far from Skagway now. It wouldn’t be worth his time and trouble to come after us.”

“You can’t be sure of that, though,” Meg said.

“Nope. That’s why we’ll keep on standing guard until we get to Whitehorse and get you ladies matched up with your husbands.”

“Oh. Yeah, there’s still that to do, isn’t there?”

Frank said, “You don’t sound very happy about the prospect.”

A forlorn note crept into Meg’s voice as she said, “I guess I never really thought about what it would mean. I agreed to spend the rest of my life with a man I don’t even know. What if he’s awful, Frank?”

“That’s a chance you take with any marriage, I reckon. Spending time with somebody when you’re courting isn’t like spending the rest of your life with ’em. You may think you know what’s in another person’s heart and mind, but chances are, you don’t. Not all of it, anyway.”

“I know you,” she said softly.

“You know I’m good with a gun and I can fight. I don’t spook easy. That’s about it.”

“Not really. I know you love Dog and those horses of yours. You were kind to Mr. Jennings, you respect Salty, and you’ve tried to help Pete. You’ve risked your life to save ours over and over again. You’re brave, and you’re a man of your word.”

He laughed. “You’d have me blushing, I reckon, if I was that sort of fella.”

“But you’re not. And I knew that, too.”

“There’s something else about me you didn’t mention…I’m more than twice your age.”

“Some people are born old,” she said with a smile. “I think I’m one of them.”

Frank recalled Diana Woodford, back in Buckskin, Nevada. She had shown some romantic interest in him, too, not long after he had pinned on the badge as Buckskin’s marshal, and she was about Meg’s age. Frank had nipped that in the bud and had never even thought about doing otherwise.

There was something about Meg Goodwin, though…some quality of maturity that Diana had never possessed. Maybe she was right. Maybe some people were older than their actual years.

But it didn’t matter, because Meg was promised to somebody else. And like she had said, Frank was a man of his word and believed that other people should honor their promises, too.

“I’m sure everything will be fine once you get to Whitehorse and get to know the fella who sent for you,” he said. “You’re just a mite nervous because it’s all going to be strange to you.”

She looked at him for a long moment, then said, “Yes, I’m sure that’s all it is. Just nerves.”

She didn’t sound like she believed it, though.

For the next few days, Meg seemed to be avoiding him, and Frank found himself regretting that. He enjoyed her company and admired her. She was better on the trail than most women he had known. She handled her sled and team better than Conway did his, in fact, and she was a lot more confident than Lucy or Ginnie, who had been drafted to steer the other two sleds.

Fiona warmed up to Frank again now that Meg wasn’t spending so much time with him. Fiona had been jealous of Meg, Frank realized, even though she hadn’t had any real reason to feel that way. Frank knew he wasn’t ever going to settle down with either of them. But Fiona found some excuse to talk to him nearly every time they stopped to rest the dogs.

As Salty had said, once they made several more rather steep descents, the terrain got much easier. There were still hills to either climb or avoid, depending on how big they were, but the dogs could handle them and seemed to have a new lease on life, running effortlessly for hours at a time with the sleds gliding over the snow behind them. It would still take days to reach Whitehorse simply because of the distances involved, but now Frank felt that they had a good chance to make it…if only the weather cooperated.

But then, when Salty said they were only two more days from the Canadian settlement, the wind began to pick up during the night and by morning was blowing fiercely out of the north. It brought snow with it, a thick, blinding white cloud. The wind was blowing so hard that it seemed to be snowing sideways, Frank thought as he struggled to help the women take the tents down before they blew away.

“Should we try to wait it out?” he asked Salty, raising his voice to be heard over the wind.

The old-timer gave a vehement shake of his head. “No, we gotta keep movin’, at least until it gets worse! The dogs can handle this, and we’ll just have to put up with it, too. Whitehorse ain’t but about twenty miles from here, and there’s a cave about halfway there where we can hole up if we have to. I’m hopin’ this storm ain’t the real thing, though, and it’ll blow over ’fore noon.”

That hope proved to be futile. The blizzard continued to rage, filling the air with fresh snow. Frank let Salty lead the way, since the old-timer was the only one among them who had the vaguest notion where he was going. At Salty’s suggestion, they ran ropes from each sled to the one behind it, so they wouldn’t get separated in the storm, and Frank tied both horses to the rear sled and trudged along beside Conway. Once again, the weather and their surroundings had forced them to slow almost to a crawl.

Salty had to be relying on instinct, Frank thought on more than one occasion. He couldn’t possibly see well enough to know where they were or where they needed to go. The countryside was a blur of white, broken only occasionally by stands of pine or frozen creeks. These streams were covered with thick, solid sheets of ice, and there was no danger of falling through them. The temperature had been well below freezing for more than a week and dipped below zero most nights, according to Salty.

Frank wasn’t all that surprised when Salty led them straight to the cave he had mentioned. The instincts that the old-timer had developed as a hunter, scout, stagecoach driver, unofficial lawman, and range detective came in handy now. Frank didn’t even see the cave at first, just a big mound of rocks. They had to approach at an angle before the gap between two boulders that led to the black mouth of the cave became visible.

Salty turned to wave the others ahead. “In here!” he shouted over the wind.

At the rear sled, Conway asked Frank, “What if there’s a bear or two hibernating in there?”

Frank smiled. “Then I hope they don’t mind having some company for the night.”

Conway just shook his head.

Still, the young man had a good point, Frank thought. He took his Winchester and strode forward through the piled-up snow, past the other sleds, until he reached Salty’s sled.

“Pete wanted to know what we’ll do if there are some bears asleep in there!”

Salty shook his head. “There won’t be! The Injuns been usin’ this cave for years and years, maybe centuries. Bears don’t like the smell o’ wood-smoke and men.”

Frank went into the cave with him and saw that Salty was right. He lit a match and saw in the glow that the cave’s relatively narrow entrance opened out into a roomy chamber with an arched ceiling and rings of soot on the floor where campfires had burned in the past. Salty pointed to the ceiling and said, “There are enough cracks up there to let the smoke out. Shoot, we’ll have all the comforts o’ home in here. There’s just one thing I’m worried about.”

“What’s that?” Frank asked when the old-timer didn’t go on.

“Bein’ able to get outta here in the mornin’,” Salty said. “If that storm dumps enough snow, it’ll drift up over the entrance, and we’ll have to dig our way out. That can be dangerous. I’ve heard tell about fellers who tried to tunnel through deep drifts gettin’ turned around so they didn’t know which way they was goin’. They just kept diggin’ and diggin’ until they froze to death or the snow collapsed on ’em and suffocated ’em.”

“We’re not alone, and we have ropes,” Frank pointed out. “If something like that happens, we can tie a rope onto whoever tries to tunnel out and pull them back in if they get into trouble.”

Salty nodded slowly. “Yeah, that could work, I reckon. Well, let’s get the rest o’ those folks in here. I’d planned to stop here tonight anyway, even before this storm blew up. This’ll be the first night in more’n two weeks we’ll really be warm.”

Frank was looking forward to that, and he knew the others were, too.

They left the sleds and the horses outside. The cave was rather crowded anyway with fourteen people and three dozen dogs in it, and the smell got a mite thick, too, Frank thought. But as Salty had promised, after they built a fire in the center of the chamber, the heat from the flames reflected back from the rock walls and ceiling and filled the place with warmth. They were able to take off their parkas, and after a while, everyone shed their coats, too. They had coffee and hot food, and Frank discovered to his amazement that he was actually starting to feel human again. He wasn’t the only one, either. The women began to talk and laugh. Color came back into their cheeks. Life sparkled in their eyes. Frank even saw Conway and Jessica steal off into a corner to share a few kisses.

Exhaustion was quick to catch up with everyone, though. The women spread their bedrolls and crawled into the blankets, and within minutes they were all asleep. So were Salty and Conway. Snores came from both men. Frank remained awake for a while, taking the first guard shift. Under the circumstances, he figured one sentry at a time was enough. There was only one way into the cave. Salty and Conway could take the other two shifts, and as always, Dog was the best sentry of all.

The fire had burned down to embers but was still giving off a pleasing warmth when Fiona got out of her blankets and came over to the rock near the entrance where Frank was sitting. He moved over to give her some room, and she sat down beside him.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked her quietly.

“We’re almost there, Frank,” she whispered. “We’ve almost made it.”

He nodded. “I know. Sort of hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“You don’t really think anything else could possibly go wrong when we’re this close, do you?”

“I wouldn’t go saying that. You’ll jinx us.”

She looked worried, so he chuckled and went on. “No, I’m just joshing you. I think we’ll be fine.”

“Then…I have a proposition for you.”

His smile went away. “You’re not talking again about me being your partner, are you? I told you, I’m not interested in being in the mail-order bride business.”

“After everything that’s happened on this trip, I’m not sure I am, either,” Fiona said. “But whatever happens in the future, we’re going to be stuck in Whitehorse for the next few months, Frank. We might as well enjoy them…and while we’re at it, maybe we could think of some new business venture that would interest you.”

The offer was tempting in a way, but as Frank sat there in silence for a moment, he knew his heart wouldn’t be in it. Despite what had happened between them in Seattle, Frank knew that he and Fiona Devereaux weren’t meant to be together, even for a winter in Whitehorse. And he wasn’t going to lead Fiona on and allow her to think anything different.

“That’s mighty nice of you,” he said, “but I don’t reckon it’d work out.”

Her face hardened in the faint glow from the fire. “You’re sure about that?” she said.

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

“Is it because of Meg? I saw you kissing her that night, you know. Blast it, Frank, she’s not that much younger than I am.”

He shook his head, remembering the night Meg had kissed him. “No, Meg’s got nothing to do with it. She’s got a husband waiting for her, remember?”

“Yes, of course,” Fiona said, her voice flat. “All right. I understand. I won’t bother you again.” She stood up. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Frank…even if it was just out of a sense of duty.”

“That’s not—” he began, but she turned and walked back to her bedroll, not letting him finish.

Just as well, he thought. There was nothing he could tell her that she would want to hear.