“He’s so handsome,” he imagined one woman saying.
“I can’t believe we didn’t see him like this before,” another added in his mind. “We were so wrong. I hope eventually he’ll be kind enough to forgive us.”
“Yeah, I’ll show them,” he whispered. “That coin’ll go a long way.”
As he spoke those words, however, a flicker of concern entered his thoughts. He didn’t know the coin’s value, and now he was starting to worry that it might not be enough. Obviously it was valuable, but he’d been disappointed in life before and now he feared that he was being set up for another failure. He looked down at the coin and told himself that something so shiny had to make him rich, but then slowly he realized that there was one thing that might be even better than possessing this coin.
Possessing two coins.
He turned and looked at the window.
In the distance, out there in the dark of the snowy night, the faint outline of the cart could just about be seen. Munver thought back to the two bodies, and then to Garrett’s raging anger. Was he wrong, or had Garrett – at least once – mentioned the existence of two coins? That would make sense, given that there were two bodies. The hooks of greed were already starting to tug at Munver’s heart as he stepped closer to the window and placed his hands on the cold glass panes, and he was growing more certain by the second that there must be another coin out there, held tight in the hands of the dead woman.
Now that… That would surely be enough to make him really rich.
The wind was really picking up now, and Munver had to push hard to even get the cabin’s door open. He slipped outside, and the door immediately slammed shut behind him, and the thick snow crunched beneath his feet as he waded around to the cabin’s side. He knew he could – and perhaps should – wait until morning, but he wanted to get that second coin now. He wanted to be sure that he was rich.
As he made his way to the cart, Munver felt snow blasting against him, almost as if the elements were trying to hold him back. This only reinforced his determination, however, so he kept going until suddenly he felt something tugging at his right leg. Looking down, he struggled to see much in the darkness, but the glow from the window afforded him just enough light to see something caught around his knee. Reaching down, he found that he’d become entwined in the thick chain that hung from the front of the cart, the same chain that Garrett had used to pull his load.
Muttering a few cuss words under his breath, Munver struggled for a couple of minutes to get free. The chain was heavy, and he really had to twist a little to loosen his leg, but finally he was able to start making his way around the cart’s side.
“They’re gonna look at me like they should’ve been looking at me all along,” he said, trying to warm himself with thoughts of his imminent revenge. “They’re gonna regret the day they ever made fun of me.”
Reaching the rear of the cart, he immediately saw the dead woman’s feet. The candle – now extinguished, of course – remained between her legs, but Munver had no thoughts right now of resuming the thaw. Perhaps tomorrow, although he supposed he’d be on his way from the valley as soon as the storm passed. No, right now he was completely focused on the task at hand, so he climbed up onto the cart and began to lean down, peering between the woman’s fingers in the hope that he might find that second coin.
The first hand revealed nothing, so he turned to the second.
Only now, as the wind continued to howl all around him, did Stuart Munver notice that the dead man was gone.
He stared at the spot where the man’s corpse had been, and he felt a sudden sense of shock in his chest, but there was no doubt about the matter at all. The man, who previously had been on his side with a hand on the woman’s body, had completely disappeared.
Spotting something close to his knee, he looked down and saw the finger that he’d snapped away from the man’s hand earlier, when he’d freed the first coin. The finger remained, then, but the rest of the body was gone.
Munver looked around, convinced that the man’s body must simply have fallen away somehow. He thought back to the start of Garrett’s angry attack, and he tried to work out whether Garrett might have moved the body or hidden it somehow. Reaching past the woman, he pulled the covers all the way back, hoping to find that the man had simply slid to the cart’s forward end, but all he found were a couple more bottles of whiskey. As the covers flapped loudly in the wind, Munver looked over the sides of the cart, then over the back, but still there was no sign at all of the dead man.
“What kind of game is this?” he muttered, trying to make sense of what was happening. “I won’t be tricked. I’m not easily scared, either.”
He tried to understand what was happening, but then he told himself that there was no point. The man’s body didn’t matter anymore, so he crouched down and began to examine the woman’s second hand. This proved more difficult than the first, since her fist was closed, but after a moment he realized he could just about see something glinting deep in the palm of her hand, almost entirely obscured by her fingers. Was it a second coin? Getting a good look was impossible, so he began to try forcing her fingers open.
“Come on,” he whispered under his breath, but these fingers did not crack away as easily as those of the man. They were curled more tightly, holding their prize more securely. “It’s mine, damn it. I want it.”
No matter how he tried, however, Munver just couldn’t get the hand to open and release its precious coin. Exasperated, he worked for several more minutes, and then he sat back and stared at the hand and tried to come up with some other, smarter plan.
And then, slowly, he realized he could hear footsteps nearby, crunching through the snow.
He turned and looked toward the cabin. Snow was falling heavily in the darkness, but there was no sign of anybody moving about. The footsteps had stopped now, but he was sure he’d heard two or three just a moment ago. Could Garrett somehow still be alive? The thought terrified Munver, and it took a couple of minutes before he was able to convince himself that, no, of course Garrett hadn’t miraculously revived. The man was dead, that much was certain.
“Stop getting yourself all spooked,” Munver said out loud, hoping to make himself a little braver, and then he looked back down at the woman’s hand.
After a moment he grabbed the wrist and tried to crack that part of the woman’s arm free, then he shifted around and starting using his knee. If he could break the hand away from the body, he reasoned, he could then take it inside and heat it directly by the fire, and then soon enough the coin would have to come loose. It was a foolproof plan, but it all hinged on him being able to break the wrist and so far he was having no luck at all. Finally, with a plaintive cry of frustration, he pulled back and tried to come up with another idea, and then – filled with a sudden burst of fury – he kicked the cart’s side as hard as he could manage.
“Okay, calm down,” he told himself. “Just you calm down. You’re not gonna let them stop you now, you’re gonna do this.”
He waited, trying desperately to be smart, and then he remembered the saw.
When he’d first headed out to the wilderness, he’d brought only a few items that he could fit into a sack on his back. He’d very nearly not brought the saw at all, but at the last moment he’d figured it might be useful to have at least a few tools. Since then, the saw hadn’t been used at all, but now he supposed it might well cut through the woman’s frozen wrist. For a moment he tried to work out whether there was any reason this plan shouldn’t work, but actually it was beginning to seem like a stroke of genius.
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