Abandon

TEN

B

art Packer glided through the darkness in his sleigh, the whisper of the runners drowned out by the clinking of chain loops and the singletree groaning in the cold. A half mile south of town, and with the snow blowing in every direction, he could hardly see beyond the horses.

He’d have missed it, but the horses knew the way, making the turn just past the grouping of snow-loaded firs. They pulled the sled up a series of switchbacks and after awhile slowed to a walk, their legs punching through the snow, their nostrils flaring like bellows, Bart slapping the reins against their rumps, hollering, “Get up there! Go on, girls!” They climbed several hundred feet above the floor of the box canyon. The trail leveled out. “Now get on!” he yelled, and he worked the reins furiously until the horses trotted in the powder.

He wasn’t rushing them out of meanness or impatience. Nothing riled Bart like the mistreatment of horses, but they were approaching the most dangerous section of the ride home, where the trail passed through a gap between steep slopes that produced slides every winter. If caught in an avalanche tonight, he’d have almost no chance of survival.

When the sled had passed safely through the gap, Bart drew up the reins and brought the horses to a halt. He stepped down into the snow. It rose to his waist. He unfastened an ax from the side of the sleigh and waded over to a pool of ice the size of a wagon wheel. He hacked at the mouth of the spring, chipping away the ice until he could see water flowing down the rock. He let the horses blow. While they drank, he climbed into the sleigh and pulled a flask from a pocket of his wool overcoat, then leaned back, wrapped in the buffalo robe, sipping brandy, listening to the pair of horses slurp the icy water.

Maybe it was the alcohol, but he imagined his lips tingled from their contact with Miss Hartman. He replayed the kiss. Why had he waited so long? ’Cause of your pride, man. Your fucking pride.

The horses lifted their heads and neighed. They backed away from the spring and stomped their hooves. Bart grabbed up the reins.

“What is it, girls?” His first thought was they’d sensed a slide. He peered up, listening for the rumble of snow raging down through the darkness above him, heard only the horses nervous ly clicking their teeth on the steel bits. He took a final swig of brandy, stuffed the flask into his coat, and had just lifted the reins to put his team into motion when one of the horses snorted.

Bart cocked his head, strained to listen. He heard the whoosh of animals struggling through deep snow. Two riders appeared twenty feet up the trail, their horses buried to their stomachs. It occurred to Bart that they resembled phantoms in the snow.

He blinked, half-expecting them to have vanished when his eyes opened, but they were still there, and close enough that he could see the clouds of vapor pluming from their horses’ nostrils.

“Evening!” Bart called out. There was no answer, and he thought maybe they hadn’t heard him, so he yelled, “Merry Christmas!” The rider on the left said something to his companion, and Bart heard the click of tongues. The riders came up on either side of the sleigh. They wore wide-brimmed hats topped with several inches of snow, had draped themselves in blankets and wrapped their faces in pieces of a torn muslin shirt, so that Bart could only see their eyes. Those belonging to the rider on his left exuded a cold focus. The other pair of eyes were wide and twitching with fear and nerves.

“Merry Christmas,” Bart said, more cheer in his voice than he felt, and wondered if he was facing a couple of road agents. “Hell of a storm. Ain’t on the prod. Just trying to get my ass to a fire—”

“I’d appreciate you shuttin that fuckin hole in your face.” The rider on the left had spoken, his voice low, metallic.

Bart said, “Sir, I’m sorry, I don’t understand what the problem—” The business end of a double-barreled scattergun peeked out from under the rider’s blanket. “You shoot that gun, sir, you’re liable to bring a slide down on us all.”

“Didn’t you hear what he said?” Bart looked at the rider on his right. He was smaller than his partner, much younger, barely a man, if that. But what struck Bart was his accent. Pure Tennessee.

“I don’t understand,” Bart said. “You work for me, son.”

The boy’s eyes darted to his companion, then back to Bart.

“N-n-n-n-not no more I don’t, Mr. Packer.” Bart saw the six-shot Colt patent revolver trembling in the boy’s hand, a huge sidearm, de cades old, a relic from before the war.

“Easy son,” Bart said, and though his intoxication had faded fast, he was far from clearheaded. He thought for a half second that maybe he’d been caught in a slide and was lying packed in snow, suffocating, hallucinating this nightmare. “What in holy hell are you doing? I don’t under—” The other man put his horse forward and rammed the barrel of the shotgun into Bart’s face. Blood poured through his mustache, between his teeth, down his chin.

Bart pulled off a glove and cupped his hand over his nose.

“Goddamn you, it’s broke!”

“Now go on and drive the sled up to your mansion. We gonna follow behind. Don’t know if you got a shoulder scabbard, but I wouldn’t advise reachin into your coat for any reason. Rest assured I’ll err on the side a blowin your goddamn head off. Savvy?”

“What do you want? I’m a rich—”

“You remember what happened last time you opened that mouth? Now go on.” Bart lifted the reins and urged his team up the trail, his nose burning, tears running down his bloodied face. The riders followed close behind, and they hadn’t gone fifty feet when one of them retched into the snow.

The other muttered, “Christ Almighty.” Bart didn’t dare look back, but he figured it was the boy, wondered if he’d gotten sick because he was going to kill his first man tonight.