William Johnstone - Winter Kill

Bad luck was putting it mildly, Frank thought, but he agreed with the sentiment Fiona expressed. He didn’t believe in giving up. If he did, he would have been dead a long time ago.

Anyway, he knew more about the wilderness than any of the others, and he intended to see to it that they got out of this mess, whether they liked it or not.

By the next morning, the rest of the group had come around to Frank’s way of thinking. They didn’t want to try to spend the winter on this bleak, isolated beach.

Several more bodies had washed up during the night. Frank and Conway carried them to the ravine and laid them to rest as best they could, then returned to the camp. Frank had stripped the jackets off a number of the corpses, and he used them to make packs for carrying supplies. The women found that distasteful but went along with it. The only supplies they could take with them were what they were able to carry.

Everyone shrugged into their packs, and then the group strung out along the beach and headed north. Frank took the lead, with Dog bounding on out ahead of him. No one was riding at the moment. Frank wanted to save the horses for when their strength was really needed. He put Conway and Neville at the back of the line to bring up the rear and keep an eye on things. The other three cheechakos were spaced out among the women to lend them a hand if necessary.

A cold wind blew in Frank’s face and sent thick gray clouds scudding through the sky. It was only a matter of time before the first real blizzard of the season came roaring down out of the north, Frank knew. They were in a race against that blizzard, and the stakes were their lives.

He wanted to make at least five miles a day, preferably more. If they could cover ten miles each day, he felt sure they could reach Skagway in less than a week. That gave them an outside chance of making it while the relatively good weather held.

The first morning went well, but then the women began to flag. They had to take turns riding, and even with that, the pace slowed slightly. By nightfall, Frank wasn’t sure how much ground they had covered. But it was a start, and he was going to remain optimistic as long as he could.

The next day, the going was harder. The trees came right down to the edge of the water in places, forcing everyone to wind among the pines rather than striding along the open sand. In other places, boulders blocked the beach and made them go inland as well. Frank kept everyone moving, though, that day and the next and the next.

He felt sure they were more than halfway to Skagway by now. When he looked out across the water, he could see low, tree-covered hills in the distance, proof that they were tramping along beside an inlet now, not Glacier Bay. Every instinct Frank possessed told him that they were heading in the right direction. It was just a matter of time before they sighted the smoke from Skagway.

So far, though, they hadn’t seen a single sign of human habitation. Frank had thought they might come across a trapper’s cabin, or some sourdough’s gold claim. Not along this coast, obviously.

On the fifth day after leaving the camp where they had come ashore, the women were barely able to stagger along. Conway and the other cheechakos were pretty worn out, too. Frank began to consider calling a halt and giving them a day to rest. He squinted at the gray sky. Was there snow up there? He couldn’t tell, but he felt a tingle of unease along his spine. Would taking a day to rest just doom them when they were practically at their destination?

He didn’t have much choice in the matter. Some of the women collapsed, dropping off their feet and unable to get up again. Frank said, “All right, unsling your packs. We’ll stop here for a while.”

Maybe after an hour or two, they could go on, he thought. It was worth a try.

All of the women except Meg Goodwin slumped to the ground. Meg had been a real trouper. She had to be as worn out as the others, but she had kept on as if she could go all day. She came over to Frank now and said, “Thank you, Mr. Morgan. Mrs. Devereaux and the other girls are really tired.”

“And you’re not?” he asked her with a smile.

“I’m fine,” she insisted. “I grew up on a farm and did most of the plowing from the time I was ten years old. I must have walked thousands of miles behind an old mule. This…” She gestured toward the beach. “This is nothing.”

“Farm girl, eh?”

“That’s right. So I figured being a sourdough’s wife wouldn’t be much harder.”

“You might be right about that.” Frank nodded toward the north. “I was thinking about scouting on ahead with Dog. You want to come with us?”

Meg’s quirky smile lit up her face. “I’d like that.”

Frank went over to Conway and said, “Miss Goodwin and I are going to scout on up the beach a ways. You mind staying here and keeping an eye on things?”

“Nope, that’s fine,” the young man replied. He glanced at Jessica Harpe, and Frank figured Conway planned on spending the break talking to the curvy little brunette. If Fiona was able to follow through on her plan and take the women to Whitehorse, Conway was liable to be disappointed when he had to say good-bye to Jessica and let her travel on to the man who had paid to have her brought up here to marry him. But Frank couldn’t do anything about that. It was just Conway’s bad luck.

He and Meg set off up the beach. Dog ran ahead of them, darting into the woods at times and then running back out onto the sand. As they walked, Meg talked about her life on her family’s farm back in Ohio.

“What about you, Mr. Morgan?” she asked after a while. “You must have had a very interesting life, what with being a gunfighter and all.”

“A lot of hard, lonely trails,” Frank said. “That’s what most of it has been.”

“Have you ever been married?”

“A couple of times.”

Meg frowned. “What happened?”

“I lost them both,” Frank said.

She put a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories. Although I guess I should have known that I would, with questions like that.”

“It’s all right,” Frank told her. “Life goes on and time passes, and after a while, if you’re lucky you’re left with more good memories than bad ones.”

“What about children?”

Frank had to grin. “I’ve got a boy. Conrad. He had some trouble along the way, but he grew into a fine man.” He grew sober again as he thought about what had happened in Conrad’s life in recent months. “Then he had some more trouble. But he’ll come through it all right. He’s strong.”

“Like his father,” Meg said. Her hand still rested on Frank’s arm.

He frowned suddenly as he realized how easy it was to talk to this woman. But she was young, he reminded himself. His son’s age, or thereabouts, which meant he was old enough to be her father. Somehow, it hadn’t seemed like there was quite as big a difference between him and Fiona…

He didn’t have time to ponder on those troubling thoughts, because at that moment, somewhere behind them, the roar of gunshots suddenly filled the cold air.

Chapter 16

Frank whirled toward the sound and saw to his surprise that he and Meg had walked so far along the beach the others were now out of sight. The shots were definitely coming from that direction, though. He broke into a run along the hard-packed sand, calling over his shoulder to Meg, “Stay here!”

“No!” she said as she hustled after him. “You may need my help!”

Frank knew there was no time to argue with her. He wanted to get back to the rest of the survivors as fast as he could. It was possible that they had just spotted a bear or a moose and were blazing away at it, but he had a bad feeling that this was something worse.