Relentless

4

It was madness. Every animal had the sense to get shelter and hide out a blizzard.

No way to judge the passage of time but his extremities were almost without sensation and fatigue had set in; he could hardly lift his knees. And then the tilt of the ground changed again, for the fiftieth time, and the wind almost knocked him off his feet. The noise was earsplitting. He had a handkerchief wadded in his mouth and he was breathing through it but it was beginning to clog with ice. He kept one hand clutched over his nose. He couldn’t feel his fingers.

He walked into the sorrel’s rump again and stopped, waiting for it to go on, but it didn’t move away. The line had stopped. Something wrong. The Major-had he fallen down? Not Hargit; nothing knocked Hargit down.

Something tugging the nylon rope. He turned, afraid, puzzled. Something banged into him and he recoiled; a hand gripped him and Baraclough’s voice rasped an inch from his ear.

“We’re here. Follow the rope inside. There’s room for the horses.”

And Baraclough was gone, finding his way back along the rope toward Burt.

The rope stirred again; the sorrel was moving. He took the blue by its headstall and felt his way forward. Bruised his fingers against a wall, felt around and found the doorway. And led the blue inside out of the wind.