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.
“Oh, hell.”
Normally, wolves left humans alone. But these were lean with hunger, their ribs showing through their fur. Their age might have something to do with it. There was gray in their coats and muzzles.
Sometimes the sound of a human voice scared wild animals off. Fargo tried it now. Waving his arms, he hollered, “Light a shuck, you four-legged idiots.”
Both wolves turned and loped off, snow spraying from under their flying paws.
Fargo smiled. It worked. He started on again, and his smile changed to a frown.
The wolves had stopped. They were looking back at him. One growled. Then both came slinking toward him, their heads low, their teeth bared.
“Hell.”
Fargo still had about fifty yards to go to reach the next stand. On flat, dry ground he might have stood a chance of reaching it before they got him. In the deep snow he stood no chance at all. Bending, he slid his fingers into his boot and palmed the Arkansas toothpick. Ordinarily it had a comforting feel. But a knife against two wolves? He was in trouble.
Fargo kept walking. He must get to that stand no matter what. In there he stood a prayer. He could put his back to a tree so only one wolf could get at him at a time. Out here they could attack from two directions at once. It would be easy for them to hamstring him and bring him down.
God, Fargo wished he had the Colt or the Henry.
