Part 6
Megan had the other machine started. Its headlight lit the yard and the steady idle sounded almost cheerful. She swung around and saw his face, and the hope went out of hers before he said a word.
One running machine. One cargo sled. Two of them, three tied men, and three hundred pounds of dying bear.
“You take them,” Megan said. She’d already worked it out; he could see it in how steady she was trying to be. “You take the three of them down to the sheriff and come back for us. I’ll stay with her. I’ll keep a fire going in what’s left of the wall.”
“That’s four hours, round trip. You won’t last four hours out here.”
“Then you go faster.”
“You take Danny,” Hollis said. “Just Danny. I’ll show you the machine in five minutes. Follow the river, it’s flat all the way. He’s no trouble.”
“I’m not leaving her.” She jerked her chin at the bear. “If she wakes up, if she crashes, somebody who knows what to do has to be here. That’s my job. That’s the only reason I came.”
They stood there in the headlight, both too stubborn and too cold to give an inch, while the frost crept into their gloves.
Kessler decided it. He lay in the cargo sled where they’d rolled him, and he spoke without lifting his head.
“I’ve got four men at the Hendricks landing,” he said. “They know where I went. You split up, they’ll find whoever’s left.”
It might have been a bluff. Probably it was. But Hollis knew the Hendricks landing, and he knew the logging road that ran from it to the river, and he couldn’t afford to be wrong.
“Nobody stays,” he said. “We all go together, and we go toward the sheriff instead of waiting for him. Every mile we make is a mile they don’t have to.”
“It won’t pull all that,” Megan said.
“On the river it might. The ice is packed by wind. No hills.” He was already unhitching the cargo sled. “It’ll be slow. Slow is still moving.”
They loaded Troy first, because he couldn’t walk. Then Kessler and Danny. From the wreck of the lean-to Hollis dragged the heavy canvas tarp he’d used to cover hay, scorched along one edge but whole. They spread it in the snow beside the bear and rolled her onto it, the two of them pushing with their shoulders, an inch and then another, until they were both gasping. He lashed the corners into a drag and tied it alongside the cargo sled so the weight sat even.
Then he put Megan on the seat behind him and opened the throttle.
The machine groaned. The track spun, threw up a fan of snow, bit, slipped, bit again. For a long second nothing happened. Then the whole strange train eased forward, out of the yard and down the bank onto the river ice.
They crawled. A man on foot could have kept up with them. The engine screamed a note Hollis had never heard a machine make and kept making it, and the wind came straight down the river into their faces. Behind them the cabin dwindled to a red smudge and went out.
Somewhere past the second bend, Megan began to lean.
He felt her weight go soft against his back and slide sideways. He braked hard and twisted around. Her eyelashes were white with frost and her lips had gone dark, and she smiled at him in a slow, puzzled way.
“I’m warm now,” she said. “That’s good, right?”
“No.” He got off and hauled her to her feet. “No, that’s not good. You’re going to walk.”
He went to the cargo sled and untied the men’s legs, leaving their wrists bound in front of them. “Out,” he said. “Everybody walks. You push this sled or we all stay on this river until spring.”
Troy cursed him. Kessler didn’t move.
“Suit yourself, Wade,” Hollis said. “You can sit right there. I’ll tell the sheriff where to look.”
Kessler looked at him for a long moment, then climbed out and leaned his good shoulder into the back of the sled.
So they went on that way. Hollis drove. Megan stumbled behind the machine with both hands on the rack, pushing. Troy hopped on one leg with an arm over the sled’s side rail. Danny pushed beside him. Kessler leaned into the sled with his broken arm hugged to his chest, breathing through his teeth. They fell and got up. The headlight swung across the ice and lit the tarp beside them, and the shape on it, which didn’t move.
An hour later Megan went down on her knees and didn’t get up.
“I can’t,” she said. “Hollis, I can’t. I’m sorry.”
He was off the machine and reaching for her, but Danny got there first. The kid crouched with his tied hands in front of him, hooked them under her arm, and lifted. He didn’t say anything. He just held her up until her legs remembered what they were for, and then he stayed on her left side, walking, until she had the rack again.
Hollis looked at the boy over Megan’s head. Danny looked away.
The sky over the eastern ridge had started to go gray, a thin line above the black teeth of the spruce. Far down the river, so faint he thought he’d imagined it, Hollis saw a light. Then a second one. Sled headlights, coming up the ice toward them. Above that, beyond the ridge, came a low rhythmic thudding that wasn’t anybody’s engine on the ground.
He turned to tell Megan. She was kneeling by the drag with the tarp pulled back and one bare hand flat on the bear’s chest. When she looked up, her face had gone completely still. “She’s stopped breathing,” she said…
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