Trexler walked up behind him, leaned over, and reaching under his pants leg, pulled the SS dagger from the sheath strapped to his ankle.
“I don’t think I’d do that, Soapie,” he said.
The ranger turned to him.
“Whyn...?”
Trexler’s arm was already making a powerful underhand swing. It arched upward almost from the floor and buried in Kramer’s stomach just under the rib cage. The long blade sliced deep and up and pierced Kramer’s heart.
“Oh,” he cried out, his eyes bulging with surprise.
Trexler grabbed Kramer by the collar, spun him around and dropped him on his back on the rug. Kramer sighed once as Trexler slammed his foot against his chest and pulled the knife out. He stuck the point of the long knife into Kramer’s throat just under one ear and slashed it. Blood gushed like a fountain from under Kramer’s chin. Trexler quickly rolled him up in the rug before the blood could spread.
A mile away, Ranger Harris was getting fidgety. They had to do something.
“What the hell,” Harris said finally, “I’ll try to back down to Trexler’s place. Least we won’t freeze to death.”
Shifting quickly between first and reverse, he rocked the car back and forth. The tire dug into the fallen tree, started to jog back onto the road, but as it did the tree gave way and dropped into the gully. The front end of the Ford lifted straight up and twisted sideways.
“Jesus, we’re goin’ over!” Harris screamed as the Ford’s rear end dropped over the precipice and the car rolled over and plunged upside down into the gulch.
At Kramer’s cabin, Trexler dragged the ranger’s rug-wrapped body down the front steps of the cabin and dropped it beside the trunk of his car. He opened the trunk, stuffed Kramer’s body in it, then hurried back inside the cabin. He went through Kramer’s rucksack, found an army Colt .45 and a box of cartridges and stuffed them in his own knapsack. He went back outside and threw Kramer’s rucksack in beside him. He slammed the lid down, got in and drove to the edge of the lake. He parked, walked out on the ice with a stick and tried to punch a hole in the ice. Too thick. Leaning over, he carefully worked his way around the lake until he spotted a large clear space below the ice, an air bubble about five feet across. He jabbed the stick into the ice until it punched through. An inch thick, he figured.
He hurried back to the car and put it in gear. Driving with the door open, he steered it out onto the lake and aimed at the air hole. Then he slammed down the gas pedal and rolled out of the car, skidding and rolling across the frozen surface until he slid to a stop. He rose to his knees and scurried on all fours toward shore. The car slowed, rolled out to the middle of the lake. Through the wind, 27 heard the ice groan. He reached hard ground and looked back. The car had almost stopped and had skidded sideways. The ice groaned again, then there was a sharp crack like lightning, and another, even louder than the first, and suddenly the front wheels of the car crashed through the ice. The surface shattered and the front end of the automobile plunged through the frozen surface and the car slid nose down into the lake. A large air bubble burst through the hole.
Then there was only the sound of the wind.
Trexler snapped a pine branch off a tree and walking backwards, dusted the car tracks and his own footprints, smoothing them out. Then he hurried back to the cabin.
Keegan was lying on his back against the door on his side of the Ford. It had flipped three quarters of the way over and jolted to a stop, lodged five feet above the ground against a thick pine tree. Harris was hanging upside down, his head in Keegan’s lap. He was unconscious. Keegan cautiously looked over his shoulder and out the window. He was staring straight into the deep gully.
Keegan struggled to get his feet under him. He had cracked his ribs but otherwise was uninjured. Harris’s right leg was twisted grotesquely above him, caught between the clutch and brake pedals. In the backseat, Dryman lay on his back with his knees against his chest. A large bruise was beginning to discolor his forehead.
“You okay?” Keegan asked.
“Yeah,” said Dryman, gingerly touching his forehead and flinching. “Though I’m gonna have the worst headache in history.”
“Harris’s out. How’s your first aid?”
“I took the army course about ten years ago.”
“Well, you’re one up on me,” said Keegan. Hefting Harris with his shoulder, he carefully dislodged the foot.
“His ankle’s broken,” Keegan said. “The bone’s sticking out. We’ll have to tie it up and get him back to Trexler’s cabin.”
Keegan carefully forced open the door on Harris’s side and worked his way out of the sedan. He was sitting on its side, staring up at the road. The car seemed safely wedged in the tree.
He stretched out along the length of the Ford and forced open the luggage kit on the back. Inside were a first aid kit, blankets, a coil of rope and a large tool chest. He pulled out the blankets, first aid kit and rope and inched back to the door.
“We’re in luck. He’s got enough stuff back there to start a hospital,” he said. “Tie up that ankle and wrap him in a blanket so he doesn’t go into shock. I’m going to wrap this rope around the tree so we can lower him down by rope.”
“We ought to be dead, you know that, don’t you?” Dryman said, “We ought to be down there in that creek.”
“But we’re not,” Keegan said. He was lying on his stomach, handing the first aid kit and blankets down to Dryman. “That tree’s gonna give out if we don’t get the hell out of here.”
“Then hurry it up, pal.”.
Dryman stretched out sideways. Reaching between the seats of the wreck, he pulled Harris’s leg taut, pushing
