As they headed east through the aspen, Abigail felt her stomach tighten. The imminent threat to her life notwithstanding, there was still something unnerving about being in the wilderness with night coming on and watching the sky lose its light above you, a sinking feeling rooted in the most basic of primal fears—the woods after dark.
They came to a stream. It flowed stronger than Abigail remembered, and it seemed two lifetimes ago that she’d watched Scott fly-fish this same watercourse two miles up the valley for their supper. “Stream’s up,” he said. “I’m gonna filter some water, since we can’t camp here. First place Quinn will look for us is along this stream. We’d never hear him coming.”
They climbed down into the gully and found a place at the water’s edge beside a pool protected from the chaos of the main current and clogged with aspen leaves that looked like gold coins floating in the water. Scott dug the PUR filter out of his pack and inserted the two hoses into the bottom. He fitted the end of one with a bottle adapter and screwed it onto an empty Nalgene bottle. The other hose, he dropped in the pool.
Abigail sat beside him in the fading light, watching Scott pump the filter and holding the newly filled bottles between her legs. She kept looking back up the gully. Scott had been right. Streamside, you couldn’t hear a thing but the chatter of water flowing over rocks. Approaching footsteps would be lost in the noise. When he’d topped off five Nalgene bottles, Scott disassembled the filter and packed everything away.
There would be no dry, easy crossing.
They forded the stream—fifteen feet across and thigh-deep in the middle, so strong that Abigail had to brace herself and lean into the current to keep her footing. The water had been snow less than an hour ago. Her legs burned and her lungs contracted from the freezing shock of it.
They climbed onto the bank and up the muddy gully on the other side, hiked several hundred yards over a forest floor carpeted with brilliant aspen leaves.
The air smelled metallic and stale. It began to rain.
Scott turned to her, said, “I see where we’ll camp tonight,” and Abigail followed him into a thicket of chokecherry, not much space between the shrubs, but enough to conceal a tent.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
F
our nylon bags lay spread out on the ground, containing the footprint, poles, pegs, and the tent itself—a bright red Hilleberg. They unrolled the footprint in a cleared area between the chokecherry shrubs, and Scott unfolded the tent while Abigail took out the poles and locked them together. In the deepening darkness, as the rain set in, they slipped the three poles into the tent sleeves and staked out the guylines, Scott’s hands shaking so badly that he could barely grip the pegs to jam them into the softened ground.
With the tent pitched, they threw their packs into the roomy vestibule, climbed in, and zipped themselves inside. Scott shivered uncontrollably, and he slurred his words.
Abigail said, “You have spare clothes in here?” He nodded. “Why don’t you get in the tent and take off your wet ones.” Scott unzipped the inner tent and crawled inside. While he stripped, Abigail pulled everything out of his pack, realized she didn’t feel right, either—her motor coordination was disrupted and she had trouble focusing on the task at hand.
“I can’t find your sleeping bag,” she said.
“Bottom compartment.” She dragged out the Marmot compression bag, tossed it in with the Therm-a-Rest and his bag of extra clothes. Then she unlaced her boots, pulled off her socks, all her soaked clothing, and climbed in.
Scott twisted shut the air valve on the Therm-a-Rest, laid his sleeping bag on top of it. He wriggled inside, said, “Get in with me. We both have hypothermia.”
Abigail climbed into the down mummy bag and zipped them up. Scott spooned her. She could feel him shaking against her, their legs so cold, like malleable ice.
“I should really get us something to eat and drink,” she said.
“Just stay here with me for a minute, get some body heat going.”
They lay shivering together, listening to the rain patter on the tent. The sky detonated. Thunder shook the ground and decayed like a shotgun blast, Abigail thinking it sounded so different from East Coast thunder. In the West, it was deeper, right on top of you, and seemed to fade forever.
“Think we’re safe in this thicket?” Abigail asked.
“As long as we stay quiet and don’t turn on any lights. Fuck, I can’t get warm.”
Abigail turned and faced him. She ran her hand along the right side of his abdomen. It felt hot, swollen, and sticky. “Your wound’s leaking,” she said.
“My boot was full of blood. I’m hurting pretty bad again.”
“I saw the first-aid kit in your pack. I’m gonna get it out, and you’re gonna tell—”
“You think I’m dying?” he asked.
“No,” she said, though she didn’t know. “I think once we get some food and medicine in you, you’ll feel a lot better.”
She started to sit up, but Scott stopped her. “Not yet,” he said. “Just stay with me. This is the worst shit I’ve ever been in. And I’ve been in some real shit. You believe in karma?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I think it’s fucking me over at the moment.”
“How so?”
“This trip isn’t the first time I’ve gotten someone killed in the backcountry.
