Nathan Jones: Shortage

He left without another word, more than ready to go back to bed.

It took them 6 days to get to the hideout.

Even with having to deal with the heavy wagons the length of time surprised Trev, considering the distance was around 15 miles as the crow flies. But then again he hadn’t anticipated how the winding, switchbacking roads would require them to go more than half again the distance along steep mountainsides and over high passes.

But what he really hadn’t anticipated was the weight. He’d thought towing it on wheels would help, but even that only did so much when he had to deal with well more than double his own weight. Lugging his heavy backpack Aspen Hill from his car had been brutal, and going over 250 miles to Antelope Island and back had been a long exhausting grind, but towing the cart was like weightlifting.

Except with weightlifting he’d do it for an hour or so, drink a protein shake, and watch a movie or do homework, while with the wagon they went as far as they could without exhausting themselves, then paused for nearly as long to rest and recover before starting again. And if he was lucky he’d be pulling the 400lb wagon, while half the time he had to manhandle Lewis’s heavier 600lb one with the only consolation being that the wheels were larger and the entire thing was better designed and balanced.

Actually it was a tossup which wagon was worse to pull, since Trev’s slapped together cart made from a moving dolly frequently got stuck on anything bigger than a pebble. And since the four wheels all turned in every direction it had a tendency to drift to one side or another as he pulled it, making it hard to control and increasing its chances of getting stuck on obstacles he was trying to avoid.

In fact, after the first day he was really starting to hate the thing.

Those difficulties were bad enough on the mild uphill slopes, but where the road got steeper in many places they had to double up to tow each wagon for as far as they could without losing sight of the other wagon, then hurry back to bring it up and just in sight past the first one in a sort of leapfrogging pattern. And downhill was nearly as bad because they both had to put their weight against the wagons and strain to keep them in control for every foot. At least there Lewis’s wagon had a hand brake that they could ride, and Trev found himself constantly thankful that his cousin had taken the time and expense to get a quality wagon.

Leapfrogging slowed their pace to a crawl, but they weren’t moving fast at the best of times; one mile an hour was a stretch when they were actually moving. Not only did they have to deal with exhaustion and the constant uphill or downhill climb with flat stretches few and far between, but every time a wagon got stuck on a rock, which was happened now and again even on gravel roads and was a regular hassle on dirt roads especially with Trev’s wagon, they had to stop and take a moment to either back the wagon up and maneuver it around or manhandle it over. Individually the delays didn’t take more than a few seconds, but over time they added up.

To add to that Lewis insisted that they stop at any suspicious bend in the road, moving ahead cautiously in his body armor while Trev took cover behind a wagon with his rifle ready. At those pauses they’d both pan the area thoroughly with their binoculars, but even while lugging the wagons they also did their best to keep their eye on their surroundings. The entire way they didn’t see any sign of people, so either nobody was there or they weren’t feeling sociable about approaching two armed men, but Trev didn’t complain about the precautions after everything he’d been through. In truth he remained just as vigilant as his cousin.

Between the pauses to scout, the rest breaks, and the slow pace they were lucky to make five miles on a good day. They also spent nearly as much time resting or scouting as moving, and each night found the best spot they could find that was sheltered from outside observers and collapsed into their tents, sleeping til dawn and nearly too sore to move when they got up. Lewis had them drink protein powder three times a day, along with enough other food to nearly double the calorie intake he’d kept them on in Aspen Hill, but he spaced the meals out throughout the day and had them wait for a while after eating so their stomachs were never full to the point that digestion would get in the way of the hard work.

The first night Trev actually had trouble sleeping because his muscles were so sore, but after the second day he was so exhausted that he practically passed out as soon as he slipped into his sleeping bag, not even the plummeting temperature enough to bother him in there while wearing his balaclava.

And the temperatures did plummet the higher they went. Down in Aspen Hill the first snowfall was a month away at the earliest, and he’d be surprised if it got in the 30s on the coldest nights. Yet up several thousand vertical feet among the mountaintops the temperature variance with Carbon county below was anywhere from 10 to 15 degrees during the daytime, and even more extreme at night.

Snow was already beginning to accumulate in shaded areas on the higher mountainsides, among the trees or on north facing slopes. In some places the drifts were already several feet deep, and they even encountered a couple across the road that they had to navigate around. And while in the afternoon the air was bearable with a light jacket, or even shirtsleeves while they were exerting themselves pulling the wagons, at night the temperatures plummeted below freezing and gave them a taste of the coming winter.

Trev had the gear to comfortably handle sleeping out in those temperatures, but even with that gear it required some getting used to while getting ready for bed and especially waking up in the morning. And every time he found himself shivering as he got dressed laying on his back in his low one-man tent he couldn’t help but wonder if they weren’t making a huge mistake coming up here.

He hoped his cousin was right about the wood stove in the hideout and the “minor” weatherproofing required to make it livable when the temperatures plummeted far below zero and ten foot snowdrifts piled up around them. He also had to hope they’d have enough food to last until spring, because going hungry in that sort of extreme cold would make it even harder on the body.

As they got higher into the mountains the vegetation changed from scrub oak and meadows in the foothills to an about even split of aspen and evergreens in the lower mountains, still with long stretches of meadows covered by sage. Higher up on the highest mountains that changed to a dense blanket of primarily blue spruce and douglas fir covering the steep slopes, broken by denser thickets of aspen struggling to hold their territory, usually around small meadows. Only at the tops of those highest mountains did the trees give way to sage-covered meadows again.

That was the area they’d built their hideout in, on one of the highest mountains along Highway 31 with Huntington River running at its base.

On the sixth day they reached 31 and followed it the rest of the short distance to their hideout. Thankfully it was on a lower slope of that tall mountain, only a few hundred feet above Huntington River on a 10-acre plot of land Lewis’s parents owned. There was no real road to get there, which in a way was nice since it guaranteed their privacy but in another way was a pain when they had a thousand pounds of stuff to lug up to the lean-to.

Most of the time when they came up here they crossed the Huntington at a narrow spot using a few large stones they’d long ago firmly embedded in the riverbed, then climbed the steep slope, densely treed and choked with deadfall, up to 10 to 20 foot overhanging cliffs with only a few ways to climb past them to the gentler slope above. A hundred or so yards across that gentler slope, at the far end where the hillside grew steep again, they’d built their hideout. Although that had been years ago when they were still kids.