Fully Loaded - Blake Crouch [16]
do.”
It was snowing again by nightfall, and it didn’t stop for three days, the snow accumulating higher than the canvas tarp so that the shelter more resembled a snow cave.
Oatha could tell by the brightness of the tarp that the sun was out.
McClurg snored.
Nathan stared grimly in his direction, said, “He left.”
“Who?”
“Who ain’t here?”
Oatha saw where the wall of snow had been broken through behind him, cobalt sky and fir trees powder-blown and sagging.
“Where are the horses?” Oatha asked.
“Dan took one. The other’n keeled.”
Oatha’s head was hurting again—dehydration instead of whiskey and the beginnings of real hunger. He’d eaten the last of his cheese and bread two nights ago.
“We botched it,” Nathan said. “Should’ve walked out after the first storm. Wouldn’t of been fun, might’ve froze, but we’d of had a chance.”
“You don’t think we got one now?”
They butchered the calico that had just died, cut warm, blood-colored steaks out of its haunches and grilled them over a low fire. The smell of the meat cooking and the sounds of what little fat there was burning off gave Oatha a charge of energy, made him realize just how hungry he was.
The meat was stringy and tough, commiserate with the lean muscularity of the horse, but he ate his fill of it and slept for the rest of the day.
“Tell you what,” Nathan said two nights later as they roasted the last of McClurg’s horse. “God’s been waitin for this, and I know he’s enjoyin ever minute of it. You just had the misfortune a being with me when he finally caught up to my ass.”
“Wonder if Dan’s made it to Abandon or Silverton,” McClurg said.
“I hope he’s froze. Don’t mention his name again.”
“He might come back and save us.”
“That happens, I’ll reevaluate my feelings toward the man.”
“So tell me,” Oatha said, “you boys weren’t going to Abandon for the mining opportunities, were you?”
Nathan glanced at McClurg, let slip a little smirk. “Let me put it this way. This horrible weather saved your life.”
“I don’t get your meaning.”
“Sure you do. You was gonna try and take your leave of us your first chance. If I’m wrong, you can have my portion a Barney the horse.”
“You was gonna kill me?”
“Dan would of done the honors, him bein our resident cutthroat.”
Nathan grabbed hold of the hoof, turned over the horse’s leg.
“Why?” Oatha asked.
“For whatever money you had. For your horse. Because the first night I saw you diddling around in that Silverton saloon, you struck me, of all the people in it, even the beat-eatin pelados, as a jackleg, and I thought how much fun it’d be to take you apart.”
Oatha’s heart pounded under his coat, his windpipe constricting, the reality sinking in that he was trapped in this barely adequate shelter with two men who’d intended to kill him and perhaps still did, out of food, and colder than he’d ever been in his life.
“But you had a change a heart?” he asked.
“Way I see it, we caught this rough piece a luck, we’re in it together now.” Nathan unsheathed his bowie knife. “Ya’ll think this leg’s fit to carve?”
Two days hence, their eleventh in the shelter, the hunger returned, Nathan’s bowie insufficient to the task of cutting cookable portions out of the horses that had frozen straight through. He took his hammer shotgun, spent half a day wandering through snow deeper than he was tall, McClurg and Oatha waiting in the shelter, listening for a gunshot, talking of their last warm meals in Silverton, what they intended to eat upon their reentry into civilization.
Nathan returned at dusk, doused in snow and shivering uncontrollably.
Growled, “Not even a fire to come home to?”
“I’ll make one,” Oatha said.
“You can hunt tomorrow, too.”
The weakness and hunger made negotiating the snow nearly impossible, but Oatha ventured out anyway, lightheaded and cold.
He spent two hours fighting his way downhill under the bluest sky he’d ever seen, verging on purple, following Nathan’s tracks from the previous day, the snow melting off the trees.
At lunchtime, he stopped at