William Johnstone - Winter Kill

Conway didn’t respond. Frank glanced over at the young man and saw that he was leaning against a tree trunk with his eyes closed. Again, Frank thought for a second that Conway was dead, but then he saw the cheechako’s massive chest rising and falling shallowly.

He reached over with a hand that was tingling painfully now and shook Conway. “Pete!” he said again. “Wake up, damn it! You go to sleep and you’ll die!”

Conway muttered something; then his eyelids flickered open as Frank continued to shake him. “Wha…wha…” He saw the fire and his eyes widened. He moved closer and extended his shaking hands over the flames.

“Don’t leave them there for very long,” Frank warned him. “We’ve got to warm the flesh gradually.”

Conway groaned. “It hurts like hell.”

“Good,” Frank said with a note of savage triumph in his voice.

“G-good?”

“Damn right. Hurting means we’re still alive.”

During the next hour, Frank kept feeding pine needles into the fire, building it bigger and bigger. His clothes started to dry, and the chill that had gripped him all the way to his core began to ease. Conway was recovering, too.

But they were still a long way from being out of the woods, both literally and figuratively. They had some supplies of some sort, although they didn’t know what was in either crate that had washed up on the beach. Not the guns, though, Frank was sure of that. That particular crate had been so heavy it must have gone straight to the bottom.

“It’s not sleeting anymore,” he told Conway as they huddled under the trees next to the fire, “and the wind’s not blowing near as hard. The worst of the storm must have moved on.”

“Too late to save the Montclair. ” Conway’s voice caught in his throat for a second. “Or those women.”

“We don’t know that,” Frank said. “Their boat could have made it to shore safely.”

“Through those rocks?” Conway shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“We won’t know until we have a look around. That’s what I intend to do as soon as I thaw out a little more.”

Conway shrugged. “I’ll go with you. No reason to stay here.”

They stayed by the fire for a while longer; then Frank stood up and waved his arms around to get the circulation going even more. He stomped his feet on the pine-needle-covered ground. So did Conway. Then Frank said, “Let’s go.”

They stomped out the fire, then stumbled out of the trees onto the edge of the long, curving beach. “North or south?” Conway asked. “Do you even know which way is which?”

Frank pointed. “That way is south. We’ll head that way. The women’s lifeboat left the ship first, so they should have reached shore first.”

“You can’t know that, as crazy as that storm was.”

Frank grinned. “No, but that direction’s as good as any, I reckon.”

“I suppose you’re right about that,” Conway said with a grim laugh.

They set off, following the treeline. The wind had died down to a breeze, but even that was cold. Frank continued waving his arms to keep as warm as possible.

He couldn’t even begin to estimate the distance they had covered when he spotted something on the beach up ahead. Conway saw it at the same time and said, “That’s part of our lifeboat!”

The young man was right. A large chunk of the boat had washed ashore intact. Even more important, a couple of crates were still in it. Frank and Conway broke into a stumbling run toward it.

As they approached, Frank dared to hope that one of the crates contained the guns. He fell to his knees in the sand beside the wreckage and wrestled one of the crates around. Conway leaned in to help him.

Relief flooded through Frank as he recognized the crate. Considering the bad luck that had befallen them so far, they were overdue for a stroke of good fortune, and they had just gotten it. This was the crate with the guns and ammunition. Their chances for survival had just gone up.

But then, with a sudden growl, fate smashed those chances down again. The noise made Frank and Conway look toward the woods, where a massive brown bear stood on its hind legs, glaring at them.

Chapter 14

“Don’t move,” Frank breathed.

“I…I thought bears hibernated during the winter,” Conway said.

“I reckon this one hasn’t quite gotten around to it yet.” A grim smile curved Frank’s raw, wind-chapped lips. “Maybe he wants to fill his belly with a couple of cheechakos before he goes to sleep for the next few months.” He thought back on some things that old-time mountain men had told him. “Bears can’t see worth a damn. They rely more on their sense of smell. The wind’s from offshore, so he’s caught our scent. Or she. Might be a female.” He glanced down at the crate of guns and ammunition. “We’ll take it slow and easy, Pete, so as not to spook that critter, but we need to get the lid off this crate.”

“You think you can get one of those rifles out, load it, and shoot that bear before it charges us?”

“That’s not what I had in mind,” Frank said. He bent his knees and reached down to the crate. They needed some sort of lever to pry the lid off. “There’s a little busted place here. See if you can get your fingers in it.”

Conway had to lower himself to one knee in order to slip the fingers of one hand into the opening. He heaved against the lid while Frank took hold of one of the broken boards from the lifeboat’s hull and began slowly twisting it back and forth. Meanwhile the bear stood at the edge of the trees, sniffing the air with a confused look on its furry face.

“It can’t figure out if it wants to attack us or not,” Frank said. The piece of board came loose in his hands. “See if you can work that lid up a little more, Pete. If you can, I think I can slip this board in there and pry it open.”

Grunting with the effort he put into it, Conway struggled with the crate. With a squeal of metal against wood, the nails holding the lid down gave slightly.

Frank wedged the end of the board into the gap. “You pull up on the lid while I press down on this board,” he told Conway. “Ready?”

Conway nodded as he cast a nervous glance toward the bear. “I suppose so.”

The two men worked together, throwing their remaining strength into the task. The nails screeched loudly this time as muscle power added to the leverage of the board pried the lid up. It came loose suddenly, flying up into the air and nearly hitting Conway, who jumped back, tripped, and sat down down on the beach.

“Oh, hell, Frank, here he comes!” the young man exclaimed.

Frank turned to look at the bear, which had tottered several steps out of the trees. The massive creature stopped short, though, and lifted its head higher as its nose wrinkled. The bear stood there for several tense moments, then turned abruptly, dropped to all fours, and lumbered off into the woods, vanishing into the shadows under the trees.

Conway stared after it uncomprehendingly and muttered, “What…what the hell just happened?”

Frank dropped the piece of board he was still holding. It wouldn’t have done much good as a weapon against a monster like that bear.

“Like I said, a bear’s got a really sensitive sense of smell. I thought all the oilcloth and grease packed around these guns might stink pretty bad to it. If it’s ever been around any hunters, it’s smelled those scents before and knows they mean trouble. So the bear figured it would be better off somewhere else.”

Conway stared at him. “You knew that was going to happen?”

“I hoped it would,” Frank said. “But no, I wasn’t sure. Just played a hunch.”

“It was a good one,” Conway said with a nod. He clambered to his feet. “We’d better get some of these guns out, clean ’em up, and get them loaded before we run into any more wild animals.”