Finally he saw something that had possibilities. A prow of granite jutted out at a slight upward angle, balanced on another giant slab. These weren’t going anywhere—they’d been there so long they were mostly buried, with mature trees growing on top of the prow. Another of those giant firs grew on the south side of the opening underneath, partially blocking it. Brushing aside the limbs that hung almost to the ground, he squatted and surveyed the interior. It was about ten feet long and shallow, no more than five feet deep, and the highest point in the opening was about the same. That was good, because small spaces were easier to warm than large ones.
He’d brought a small flashlight, so he clicked it on and swept the light into every corner, looking for snakes, dead rats, live rats, anything with which he wouldn’t want to spend the night. There was debris, of course, and some insects that scurried away from the light. The fire would take care of them.
He broke a small limb off the fir and used it to sweep out his chosen sanctuary, then used the trenching tool to gather more branches from the surrounding trees, not taking too many from any one tree, and laid the limbs in a crosshatch pattern on the floor of the opening. Not only would the evergreen freshen the musty smell, but the limber branches would provide something of a cushion for the sleep mat. He could sleep on the ground, rolled up in his blanket, but Cate would be more comfortable on the rough mattress.
At least they could have a fire tonight. The slope they were on faced east, away from the shooters. The trees overhead would filter the smoke through their branches, breaking it up so it didn’t form a plume, and the weather would dissipate it anyway. A little light and a lot of warmth would go a long way toward making them more comfortable. Besides, he had to get Cate’s shoes dry.
The rain had changed completely to snow, and it began swirling down fast enough that the ground began turning white despite being so wet. He didn’t like that, not just because of the snow, but because after dark the temperature would plummet and whatever was wet would develop a slick coating of ice. Their only hope was if this was a fast-moving front, with warmer rain behind it.
He had other things to do, but he didn’t want to leave Cate sitting alone in the cold any longer than he had to. The sooner she got into their little shelter and he could get a fire started, the sooner she could pull off her wet shoes and socks and start warming her feet. He could finish securing the shelter afterward.
There was about twenty minutes of light left by the time he could make his way back to her; the thin layer of snow was incredibly slippery. Several times he had to use the trenching tool to catch himself. The drops of water still on the tree branches were beginning to freeze, making a faintly clinking sound in the wind.
“I have us a place,” he said, and she looked up from where she’d buried her face against her knees. The poncho was pulled up over her nose to warm the air she breathed, and her eyes were more alert; they had begun to take on the dullness of suffering, which had worried him a lot more than he’d let her see. “It’s dry, and we can build a fire.”
“You said the magic word.” She crawled out from under the sheltering branches with more energy than she’d shown crawling under them. The rest had refreshed her. She would have been in much better shape if he’d insisted she wear boots, but he hadn’t expected rain and snow. He didn’t have arthritis to warn him of changing weather, and he hadn’t been able to watch the Weather Channel for the past couple of days. For all he knew, a record-breaking early-season blizzard had been predicted.
“The rain has started freezing,” he said. “Getting back is going to be tough, because the ground is so slippery. Don’t take a step unless you’re holding on to something.”
“Got it.” She pulled out her hammer and gripped it in her left hand as he loaded himself down with all the gear he’d earlier removed. He started out, moving as easily under the weight as he had without it, and she carefully followed.
Cate’s feet were still miserably cold and wet, but while she’d been resting, she had constantly flexed her toes to increase the blood flow in them, so she wasn’t as clumsy as she’d been before. Still, she hoped the shelter he’d found wasn’t far, because light was fading fast and the snow was getting heavier, filtering down through the trees in eerie silence.
She hoped the valley was getting snow. She hoped the shooters staked out on the mountainside were getting ten feet of snow dumped on their asses. She hoped they’d been in the rain all day, and were now frozen into human Popsicles. The mountains often got snow when the valley didn’t, but she hoped this wasn’t one of those times.
“We’ll have to turn back, won’t we?” she asked softly.
“Probably.” He didn’t sugarcoat it. She was glad. She could deal better with reality than with rosy pictures that dealt more in wishes than fact. “Unless it’s so bad we have to wait it out.”
He paused on a particularly slippery patch and used the trenching tool to hack a stepping place in the ground. With his poncho covering the supplies on his back, he looked like some misshapen monster, but she figured she looked the same.
Physically she was as miserable as she could remember ever being. Steam puffed from her open mouth, and she made an effort to close it and breathe through her nose, which gave her a dragon effect. She distracted herself by thinking about how she could show this to the boys this winter. They would love playing dragon.
“Here it is,” he finally said, sweeping aside the branches of a giant fir and using his flashlight to show her the interior of a slanted overhang. “I swept it out and laid down those fir limbs for a cushion. Crawl in and get comfy while I gather firewood.”
She didn’t ask where he intended to find dry wood; she had absolute faith that if there was any out there, he would find it. She stopped at the entrance and pulled off her wet poncho, reaching out to hang it on one of the fir branches, then quickly ducked inside. An extra flashlight would have come in handy, but she didn’t have one.
“Here,” he said, pulling a thin green tube out of his pack. As soon as she saw it, she knew what it was, having seen them in stores that carried outdoor gear. He bent it to start the chemical reaction and the tube began to glow.
Light was a wonderful thing. She immediately felt better, even though she was just as cold and miserable as before.
He knelt at the entrance and began shedding supplies and gear, trying to wiggle out of most of it without pulling off his poncho, though he especially didn’t want to get his blanket and the sleep pad wet. All of the climbing gear went at one end; she pulled hers off and placed it down there, too.
She had become used to the weight of the water in the improvised sling, but as soon as she took it off, she breathed a huge sigh of relief as her back and shoulder muscles relaxed. The water was a big part of their burden, each of them carrying about twenty pounds of it, or two and a half gallons.
“Do you have dry socks with you?”
“In my pocket.”
“Before you do anything else, get those wet shoes and socks off, dry your feet, and put on fresh socks.” Then he was gone, ducking back into the night. She watched the bob of the flashlight for a moment, then did exactly as he’d said. He was the survival expert, not she.
She put aside her wet shoes and with difficulty peeled off the two pairs of socks. Her feet looked dead white. She cupped her hands around her toes, but her hands were also cold and that didn’t give her much relief. Briskly she began rubbing her feet, both to get them dry and to get the blood flow going again. What she needed was a pan of hot water to soak them in, but this overhang didn’t have plumbing, so she kept rubbing and chafing, and slowly began to warm both her hands and her feet.
The light the chem tube gave off was dim and weird green in color, so she couldn’t tell if her toes were getting a little pink or not, but they felt somewhat warmer. Quickly she pulled the fresh socks out of her pocket and put them on. Joy of joys, they had absorbed some of her body heat; it was almost like wrapping her feet in heated towels. The sensation quickly faded, but it was wonderful while it lasted.
Her sweatpants were wet from the knees down, but she didn’t have another pair of pants to put on. Then she remembered the silk long johns she’d put in her jacket pocket. She got them out, then swiftly shucked the wet sweatpants and pulled on the formfitting long johns. They were dry, but felt too insubstantial in the cold, so she pulled her blanket around her, then started arranging the meager space in their shelter.
That consisted of rolling out the sleep pad on the layer of tree limbs he’d put down, then placing his blanket roll on top of it. She moved their slings of water to the back of the space, where she hoped they wouldn’t freeze, and got out a bottle of water for each of them. Their available food was more muesli, some individual boxes of raisins, and miniature PayDay candy bars. To her surprise, his pack yielded some corn chips. She shrugged; maybe he was a corn chip fanatic. She could understand that. For a few days every month, she would kill for chocolate—perhaps not literally, but she would certainly knock down old ladies in the grocery store parking lot to get to any Hershey’s bars they might have in their shopping bags.
A smile touched her lips. Tanner had once offered her a Hershey’s Kiss to make her feel better. She’d burst out laughing and hugged him exuberantly, confirming in his mind that chocolate could heal all woes.
To her surprise the chip began to flame, fire sitting in the curve of the chip like a baby in a swing. “I’ll be damned,” she murmured.
“High oil content,” he said, sliding the chip under the twigs.
She leaned forward, watching the corn chip in fascination as the twigs began to catch and smoke curled upward. “How long will it burn?”
“Never timed it. Long enough. Don’t let the fire get too hot; feed it just enough to keep it going until I get back with more wood.” He went back into the night.
The fire was engrossing, and the warmth that began to bathe her face was pure heaven. She watched the corn chip until it was no more and was tempted to light another one, but instead she carefully monitored the little fire and let it die down before she fed it another small stick.
He amassed what looked like a small mountain of sticks and dry bark in the far end of their shelter before he deemed it enough. Then he cut young, limber branches from the nearby trees and sat just under the overhang while he quickly lashed together a frame, using long strips of fiber pulled from the branches themselves to tie everything together. He began weaving the remaining branches in and out of the frame, overlapping and interlocking. When he was finished, he propped one end of the frame against the outside edge of their enclosure and drove a stick into the ground to prop up the other end. He’d made a screen that blocked most of the opening, to hold in more of their precious heat and keep out the wind, and he’d done it in little more than half an hour.
Then he sighed and rubbed his hands over his face, and she saw how tired he was.
“Sit down,” she said, moving over on the pad to give him room. She handed him a bottle of water and a bag of muesli. “I also have raisins and PayDay bars, if you want them.”
“Both,” he said. “We’ve burned a lot of calories today.”
They were silent while they ate, so tired they had to concentrate on the act of chewing. When she ate the raisins, she could almost feel the sugar in them racing through her bloodstream in a rapid burn. She laid the little cardboard box beside the fire, to feed to it later.
He noticed her shoes and moved them closer to the fire, as well as her socks. That was when he saw her sweatpants. He froze for a moment, then slowly reached out and drew them closer to the fire, too, arranging them so the wet parts were nearest the heat. He darted a quick glance at her, clearly wondering if she was naked under the blanket.
Smiling, she parted the edges of the blanket to show her silk long johns. Some of the tension went out of his shoulders, and he gave her a rueful smile in return. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
After they ate, nothing seemed as interesting as getting some sleep. He pulled off his boots and dropped the light stick down in one of them, effectively turning out the light except for the green glow coming from his boot and the much more comforting light from the fire. Wrapping himself in his blanket, he stretched out between her and the opening to the shelter.
Cate lay down on the pad and pulled her blanket around her. “Aren’t we keeping watch tonight?”
“No need.” His voice was a sleepy murmur.
“We’ll take turns on the pad.”
“I’m fine here. I’ve slept on the ground more nights than I can remember.”
She started to protest, but her eyes were too heavy. Instead she sighed and dropped off to sleep.
She woke sometime later—could have been an hour, could have been several hours—shivering as cold air crept under the edges of her blanket. She opened her eyes to find
The night had grown a lot colder. She could feel a difference in the air that came around and through the screen he’d built. How much colder would they have been if the screen hadn’t been there? She curled on her side, pulling her knees up in an effort to conserve her body heat. He glanced at her, saw her eyes open.