Beartooth Incident (2 page)

Fargo stared at the old warrior and the old warrior stared at him, and neither said anything. Fargo didn’t see a weapon but no one, red or white, went anywhere unarmed.

The old man trembled. Not from fear, for there wasn’t a trace of it on his face, but from the bitter cold.

Fargo looked closer and realized the old man was gaunt from hunger and haggard from near exhaustion. The eyes, though, were filled with a sort of peaceful vitality. They were wise eyes. Kind eyes.

“Do you speak the white tongue?”

The old warrior simply sat there, a shivering stature.

“I reckon not,” Fargo said. Twisting, he fumbled with his cold fingers at a saddlebag and got it open. Rummaging inside, he found a small bundle of rabbit fur. Carefully opening it, he counted the pieces. He had six left. That was all. Without hesitation he took three out. He wrapped the rest and put the fur back in his saddlebag, then held out his hand to the old warrior.

“For you.”

The old man didn’t move.

“It’s pemmican.” Fargo motioned as if putting a piece in his mouth, and then exaggerated chewing. He held the pieces out again. “They’re yours if you want them.”

Caked with snow, flakes clinging to his hair and his seamed face, the old warrior stared at the pemmican and then at Fargo and then at the pemmican again. Slowly, as if wary of a trick, he extended his hand.

Fargo placed the pieces in the old man’s palm. He asked who the old warrior was in Crow and then in the Blackfoot tongue and then the Sioux language, which he knew perhaps best of all Indian tongues from the time he had lived with the Sioux. He tried a smattering of other Indian languages he knew.

The old warrior just sat there.

Fargo resorted to sign language. Fingers flowing, he made the sign for “friend” and asked the man’s name.

The old warrior never moved nor spoke.

“I don’t blame you for not trusting me,” Fargo told him. Not given how most whites treated Indians. “I’ll be on my way, then.” He didn’t want to. The warrior might know where to find shelter from the storm.

Touching his hat brim, Fargo rode on. He didn’t anticipate an arrow in the back, but he glanced over his shoulder to be safe and saw the old warrior staring after him. Then the snow closed in.

Fargo sighed. He had half a mind to turn around and follow the old man. He must know the mountains well. But it was plain the warrior didn’t want anything to do with him.

Suddenly the Ovaro slipped. It recovered almost instantly and stopped.

Fargo leaned to one side and then the other, bending low to examine the ground. He couldn’t be sure because of the snow but they appeared to be starting down a slope. The footing was bound to be treacherous and would become even more so if ice formed.

“Some days it doesn’t pay to wake up,” Fargo grumbled. He gigged the Ovaro.

The next hour was the worst. The snow never let up. Twice the Ovaro slipped, and each time Fargo feared he would hear the snap of a leg bone and a terrified squeal.

He was terribly cold. His skin was ice, and when he breathed, he would swear icicles formed in his lungs. His feet were numb, his hands slightly less so. He shivered a lot. His body temperature was dropping, and once it reached a certain point, he was as good as dead. There was a word for it, a word he couldn’t recollect. But the word didn’t matter. A person died no matter what the word was.

Fargo never thought he would end it like this. He’d always imagined going down with a bullet to his brain or his heart, or maybe an arrow or a lance. But not in the cold and the snow. Not by freezing to death.

The Ovaro slipped again, and this time it wasn’t able to regain its balance. Fargo felt it buckle and he instinctively threw himself clear of the saddle. Or tried to. For in pushing off, he slipped on the snow-slick cantle and pitched headlong to the ground. He figured the snow would cushion his fall but he didn’t land in snow; he came down hard on a snow-hidden boulder, his shoulder bearing the brunt, and pain shot clear through him.

The next moment he was tumbling and sliding.

Fargo envisioned sliding over a precipice and plummeting to his doom. He clawed at the ground but all he could grab were handfuls of snow.

A white mound loomed, another boulder, and he careened off it and hurtled lower.

Dazed and hurting, Fargo sought to focus. He thrust his hands into the snow but it had no effect. In fact, he was gaining speed, going faster every second.

Fargo swore. Sometimes a man did all he could and it wasn’t enough. Some folks gave up at that point. What was the use? they figured. But Fargo never gave up. So long as he had breath in body, he fought to go on breathing.

Rolling onto his stomach, he jammed both arms and both legs into the snow.

It didn’t work. The snow was too deep. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reach the ground. He couldn’t find purchase. There was only snow and more snow.

Fargo had lost sight of the Ovaro. It could be lying above him with a broken leg. Or maybe it was sliding down the mountain, too. He vowed to go look for it. Provided he survived.

Another mound loomed. Frago threw himself to one side but the snow had other ideas. His other shoulder slammed hard. The pain was worse than the first time. Now both of his arms were numb. He had to struggle to move them even a little.

And he was still sliding.

His hat was gone, too. That made him mad. A hat was as necessary as footwear. It shielded a man from the heat of the sun and the wind-whipped dust and falling rain. He’d had that hat for a couple of years now, and he’d managed to keep it in fairly good shape.

Fargo peered ahead, seeking some sign he was near the bottom. He had the illusion he’d slid half a mile but it couldn’t have been more than a few hundred feet.

Suddenly he shot off into space. He looked down but saw only snow. Flakes got into his eyes, and his vision blurred. He tried to twist so he wouldn’t land on his head and neck, but he was only partway around when he smashed down with a bone-jarring impact. If he counted on the snow to cushion him, he was wrong. It felt like his chest caved in. He slid he knew not how many more feet and crashed against a boulder.

God, the pain! Fargo hurt all over. He thought half his bones must be broken. He marveled that he was still conscious, and tried to sit up. The attempt blacked him out. For how long, he couldn’t say, but when the stinging lash of falling snow revived him, the sky was darker.

Night was falling.

Fargo had to get up. He had to keep moving. If he stayed there he would freeze. His days of wanderlust, of roaming the frontier wherever his whims took him, would be done. He got his hands under and pushed but his strength had deserted him. He rose only as high as his elbows and then fell back.

“Not like this, damn it.”

Again Fargo sought to rise. Again his body betrayed him. He lay staring up into an ocean of falling flakes, his consciousness swirling like the eddies in a whirlpool. He felt himself being sucked into a black abyss and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Nothing at all.

The cold woke him.

Fargo snapped awake, sucked out of the abyss by ice in his veins. Ice in his veins and in his flesh. Ice in his bones, in his marrow. He stared up into white. A white blanket of some kind. Confused, he tried to remember where he was and what had happened to him.

Without thinking, he opened his mouth and some of the white filled it. He coughed, and spat, and swallowed, and realized the white was snow, and then everything came back to him in a rush: the blizzard, being unhorsed, the slide, and the fall.

He was buried in snow.

Part of him wanted to stay there. Part of him wanted to lie there and let the cold seep through what little of him the cold hadn’t reached, and to go over an inner precipice from which there was no turning back. But another part of him—the part that never gave up, the fighter—refused to go so meekly. That part of him struggled against the cold. That part of him fought with fierce intensity for his very life.

Somehow, the inner fight warmed him. Somehow, bit by bit he grew warmer, and bit by bit the cold faded until he felt almost himself again. The snow helped. The snow was a cocoon that once he was warm kept him warm.

Fargo tried to move his arms and found to his immense delight that he could. There was pain, but not more than he could bear. He moved them slowly at first, half afraid they were broken. They were fine. He wriggled his legs next, and tried his toes. His toes moved, but not as much as they should. He must do something about that soon, or he would come down with frostbite, if he hadn’t already.

Fargo wanted to sit up but first he must do something about the snow. He thrust upward and it broke away, and clear, cold air rushed into his lungs even as bright sunlight nearly blinded him. Only a few flakes fell. The worst of the blizzard was past.

The sun was where it would be at about ten in the morning.

“I was out all night?” Fargo marveled. No wonder he had been so cold. It was a wonder he hadn’t frozen.

Girding himself, Fargo slowly sat up. He pressed his hands to his ribs, to his hips, to his back. His body was intact. Bruised and battered and scraped, but intact.

Elated, Fargo made it to his feet. He swayed for a few seconds, in the grip of dizziness, but it went away. He breathed deep, relieved and grateful to be alive. He was even more grateful when he looked up and saw the cliff he had fallen over. It was sixty feet high, at least. The fall alone could have killed him. Fortunately, he’d landed in a deep drift, missing a cluster of boulders by only a few yards.

Damn, he was lucky. Fargo’s elation, though, was short-lived. He gazed about him to find that he was at one end of a broad valley. Everything in it, and everything on the facing slopes, was buried in white. White, white everywhere, an unending vista of white and more white. And nowhere, not anywhere in that sea of white, did anything move.

Nowhere was there any sign of the Ovaro.

Fargo turned this way and that, searching, hoping against hope. He scoured the base of the cliff, fearful that the Ovaro had plunged over the cliff as he had done, but there was no other disturbance in the snow. Apparently the Ovaro was still up on the mountain.

Fargo craned his neck but couldn’t see above the cliff. He had to get up there. He had to find the stallion and make sure it was all right. He waded forward, the snow as high as his thighs, but he took only a few steps when he received another unwelcome shock.

His Colt was gone.

Fargo turned and cast about where he had landed. He kicked snow aside. He dug with his hands. But if the Colt was there, he wouldn’t find it until the snow melted. Or maybe, Fargo reflected, it was somewhere above the cliff. He slid far before going over the edge. Never once did he think to hold on to it so he wouldn’t lose it.

“Damn me.”

Fargo roved along the base of the cliff. He told himself there must be a way to the top, but if there was, he couldn’t find it. The rock face was sheer, save for a few fissures, and they were too narrow to be climbed.

In a quarter of a mile, Fargo came to where the cliff ended. The slope beyond was deep with snow and so steep that when he started up, he took barely six steps before he slipped and fell and slid back down.

Only then, as Fargo stood and brushed himself off, did the full gravity of his situation hit him. He was stranded in the heart of the Rockies. He had no horse. He had no gun. He had no hat. He had no food or water. All he had were the buckskins on his back, and his Arkansas toothpick.

Or did he? The thought caused Fargo to squat and grope under his boot. He exhaled when he confirmed the knife was still snug in its ankle sheath.

“At least I didn’t lose you.” But now what to do? Fargo asked himself. He wanted to look for the Ovaro but he had to be practical. He needed shelter as well as something to eat. Once he was sure his toes were all right and he was warm and fed, he could strike out after the stallion.

Fargo gazed the length and breadth of the valley. Except for where a few stands of trees had taken root, it was open. The trees, like everything else, were covered with snow, some so heavy with white, they were bent nearly to the ground. He made for the nearest stand. If he could find dry wood, he could get a fire going and warm his feet.

The glare blinded him. The sun was so bright that looking at the snow hurt his eyes. They kept watering. It got so bad, he kept his gaze down and his eyes narrowed to slits to spare them the misery.

His were the only tracks. For as far as he could see, the snow was unbroken. Not a living thing had been abroad since the blizzard ended.

A dry chuckle rattled from Fargo’s throat. The animals had more sense than he did. They were snug in their burrows and dens. He would gladly trade places with any of them.

His boots made little noise. His toes had begun to hurt, and he hoped it wasn’t a sign the frostbite had worsened.

The first stand proved to be mostly cottonwoods, which suggested water, but there was no spring. Fargo moved carefully among the pale trunks. He didn’t find a single downed limb; they were buried under the snow. And since the branches on the bent trees were covered with wet snow, as well, his prospects of starting a fire were slim.

The next stand was almost a hundred yards away. Wishing he had his hat to ward off the sun, Fargo trudged toward it. He was thinking of his hat and not paying any attention to his surroundings, which was why he was all the more surprised when a low growl fell on his ears. He looked up. For a few seconds the glare prevented him from seeing anything.

Fargo blinked a few times. Suddenly everything came into sharp, stark focus. Including the two wolves studying him much as they might a deer or elk they contemplated devouring. He drew up short.