Abandon

“Miss Hartman, what are you doing out here?” He’d stopped just a few feet away, both of them close enough to the opening to be stung with the razor cold of stray snowflakes. “Weren’t you in the mine with everyone else Christmas night?”

Lana nodded.

“A band of heathens rode through town just a couple hours ago. They’re on the peck. Nearly raised my scalp. Everyone’s still in the mine. I’ve been bringing food and water, extra candles. Packer’s gold’s in there, too. That’s what all the burros were carrying.”

It suddenly clicked. Stephen had hidden in Abandon since Christmas night, eluding the heathens, waiting for an opportunity to bring provisions to those who had holed up in the mountain. She felt a shot of relief and admiration, hoped Joss had made it back to everyone else in the main cavern.

“Come with me. We’re not safe out here, particularly with night coming on.”

Lana looked once more down into Abandon, nothing to see but snow and darkness and—

A single grain of light burned on the other side of the canyon—a firelit cabin.

When she turned back, the preacher had lit a shadowgee, and he stared intently into her eyes, offering his hand.

“Don’t be ringey. You need to come with me right now.”

She didn’t take his hand, but she did walk beside him into the passage, and as they went on, candlelight glinting on the slickensides of the day hole, a strange thing happened. Her mouth ran dry and her heart raced, and as rays of firelight reached the iron door at the tunnel’s end, she realized what it was—the preacher’s eyes, his voice. You need to come with me right now. A predatory insistence bordering on desperation that she’d seen in another pair of eyes, heard in another voice three years ago that awful night in Santa Fe, and though it made no sense, she knew at some gut level that the preacher intended to kill her.

They reached the door and Stephen fished a key out of his pocket, slid it into the keyhole of a large padlock.

He turned just as she lunged at his back, the blade refracting shards of firelight. Stephen swung his arm down onto her wrist, and it might have knocked the bowie to the rock, but Lana had momentum and a ferocious grip.

The blade sank into his thigh.

The preacher screamed and Lana saw him reach into his frock coat.

Lana was running now, enveloped in darkness. She tripped on the uneven rock, fell as a revolver thundered. Her ears ringing, she scrambled back onto her feet and hauled toward that oval of dark gray in the distance, glancing back—flare of fire, another gunshot shattering the passage.

Ten seconds of hard running brought her out of the tunnel and into the early-evening light.

She followed the burro tracks under the rimrock, moving as fast as she could manage downhill toward Abandon, the hood of her cape blown back, snow pouring into her hair, down her neck.

It was the preacher’s cabin glowing on the west slope, she figured. Had he lied about the heathens? Devised some way to murder the entire town?

On Main Street, Lana bent over, gasping, petered out, saw the preacher already halfway down the slope.

She looked south toward all the dark, empty buildings.

She could try to hide, but he’d hunt her all night.

North of town, she spotted movement, took a moment to realize it was just those burros Stephen had driven out of the mine, congregating at the livery.

Inside the barn, an albino, still saddled and toting a slicker roll, stood eating a bale of hay.

When Lana grasped the harness, the horse threw his head and whinnied, but she held firm and stroked his neck.

Her arctic slipped into the stirrup and she stood and swung her other leg over and settled into the saddle. She took up the reins and gave him a little kick, and he trotted out of the stable, halting under the overhanging roof.

The snow had let up and a bit of moon shone through between the clouds.

There was nothing left of dusk, and a voice whispered that she would die out there if she did this.

Gonna die here if I stay.

In the last light, she glimpsed the profile of a man hobbling out of town, heading toward the stables.

She dug the heel of her arctic into the horse’s side and rode off into the dark.

2009

SEVENTY-FIVE

The wind was storm force at the Sawblade, blasting through the gap in streamers of freezing fog, the pass blown clean of snow. Scott held up a small yellow instrument with a digital display, locking arms with Abigail to keep her from blowing off the mountain.

They took cover on the lee side of the pass behind the palisade. Scott clipped a couple of carabiners onto the hip belts of their packs and short-roped them together.

He leaned over, shouted in Abigail’s ear, “My Sherpa clocked that last wind gust at fifty-one miles per hour! Stay close!”

As they started down, Abigail couldn’t help but think it a good thing the clouds had socked them in, so she couldn’t see the sheer drop that awaited even the slightest misstep. Two days ago, she’d freaked out on this part of the mountain, been paralyzed by vertigo.

Despite the relentless wind, the rocky trail near the top lay under three feet of snow.

Scott led, Abigail close enough behind so she could touch his pack if she reached out.

They descended slowly, painstakingly.

Before each step, Scott stabbed the old ski poles he hiked with through the snow to probe the depth and check the ledge width, ensuring they didn’t stumble onto a cornice. Abigail followed in his footsteps, trying to ignore how the oval of her face not protected by the hood of her Gore-Tex jacket was progressing once again from burning into numbness.

The wind let up the lower they went.

After the sixth switchback, Scott stopped to unclip their carabiners.

Where they stood, in the upper realm of the cirque, the wind had diminished to a soft, icy breeze. They’d dropped out of the clouds into a boulder field, the snow having buried all but the largest rocks, the lumpy white terrain resembling a field of sugar cubes.

They moved on. Within the hour, they reached the timberline, and though still post-holing in waist-deep snow, they had come safely down from the pass and back into the trees.

The sense of relief was potent and long overdue.

In the late afternoon, they rested at eleven thousand feet in a pure stand of Douglas fir. The cold front had pushed through, driven out the clouds, and scrubbed the sky into high-gloss Colorado blue. They dug out a spot in the snow, sat leaning against one of the old firs, eating gorp, sharing a bottle of water.

“Drink as much as you need,” Scott said. “I have a filter with me, so I can pump more.”