If he could cross that ice.
He should dismount, but as cold as his legs were, would he be able to mount again? He blinked his eyes, then had to place a mittened hand to them where the tears froze his lashes together.
“God fucking damn,” he whispered. “Locomotive, reckon we’re gonna die one way or another, and what the hell, Devil’s gonna get me in the end anyway.” He glanced around. “Sure as shit, we can’t stay here.”
He tapped spurs lightly to the black’s side, and—dumb trusting brute that he was—the big black horse slowly minced his way out onto the frozen river. Once on the ice, Billy turned the packhorse free. The buckskin would either follow or not.
“Easy there, hoss,” Billy whispered to Locomotive’s frost-whitened ears. “One step at a time.”
He heard a hollow crack.
Damn it!
“Whoa, now.” He almost fell as he climbed off, easing his foot down on the snow-streaked ice. Shivering, taking the reins, he half stepped forward. Locomotive had his eyes rolled back and worked the bit.
“Gotta go slow, old friend,” Billy soothed, leading the way. To keep on line he picked a toppled cottonwood on the far bank, and kept sliding his steps forward. If the ice broke, if Locomotive fell through, Billy could hurl himself headlong. Maybe he’d have a chance.
Sure. A chance to freeze to death as the blizzard raged down on him and buried him in a whiteout of howling snow.
Off to the right he could see an open patch. Black water running fast before vanishing down into the darkness and cold depths.
What would it be like, falling through? Feeling the cold shock of icy water through his clothes, the grip of the current. To grab at the lip of the ice, fighting, struggling, terrified as the cold ate his strength? That moment of desperate realization, knowing that nothing could save him. Right up to the moment his fingers let go and he was dragged down into the blackness. Thrashing, bumping up against the ice, feeling it slide past. The air in his lungs would begin to burn, bitter with cold, and he’d finally blow it out and suck frigid water into his chest.
There, he would die. Down in the black depths. Floating along, arms and limbs akimbo, hair playing in the current. And no one would ever find him.
Forgotten by everyone but the Devil.
Damnit all, how thick is the fucking ice?
He’d never been so scared in all his life. If only he’d waited. Shot that fancy-dressed son of a bitch after the weather cleared.
He shook, jaw muscles in such a spasm that his teeth clacked like castanets.
He’d worked wide around the black hole.
Heard the ice crack beneath him again.
Froze.
His heart skipping.
But nothing happened.
Step by step, he shivered his way, expecting at any instant to hear that final crack. Each step was made with the expectation that the ice had to give way.
What the fuck had possessed him to try this? Better to have just kept riding until he froze in the saddle and fell off into a drift.
But he’d made it halfway. Maybe more.
“Slow, you stupid idiot,” he whispered, the wind tearing his breath away.
Again the ice cracked, seemed to shift. Locomotive pulled up, muscles tense, head up, on the verge of panic.
“Easy there, old friend. Whoa, now. Easy. That’s it. Just stand for a bit. Get your bearings. That’s my good old horse.”
And once again the stupid beast believed him.
“One step at a time,” he told the horse, worrying that he couldn’t feel his feet anymore, and that his knees were so stiff he could barely bend them.
Damn, had he ever been this cold?
And then they were across, scrambling, slipping, as they climbed the icy bank and onto the snow-packed rocky shore.
He couldn’t bend his legs, couldn’t find the strength to climb into the saddle. He might have crossed the river, but he was still going to freeze.
Until he fixed on the fallen cottonwood.
“Come here, boy. That’s it.”
Took him three tries to clamber up onto the log, then to launch himself halfway into the saddle and swing over.
Two hours later, his body like senseless clay, he topped the rise from the Prickly Pear Valley and into Last Chance Gulch. His brain numb, he passed the shacks and cribs on the outskirts, then into town. He passed J. H. Ming’s books, Cannon’s Steam Bakery, Binzel & Hamper’s, and the Occidental Billiard Hall.
At the livery he staggered off the horse, pounded on the door, and mumbled something incoherently at the hostler before stumbling to the small heat stove in the man’s office. In bliss, he shucked off his frozen and snow-packed coat. Practically hugging the stove, he had to wait nearly a half hour before he could talk rationally to the proprietor.
“You just made it,” the man told him. “Cain’t hardly see across the street the way it’s coming down.”
Billy sucked at the cup of hot coffee the man had given him. “I couldn’t think. Hands were too numb to move.”
He sipped again, belly happy. “I was starting to feel warm. Ain’t that something? To look down and see all that ice on my legs … and feel like it was July?”
“Yep. And next you go to sleep. Not a bad way to go, I guess.” The old man pointed a knobby finger at him. “Son, yer jist damn lucky you made it.” He paused. “Thinking of sleeping here, are ye?”
“No. I’m good enough to find my way to a hotel and a meal.”
Billy wrapped himself in his coat, pulled his hat down, and stepped out into the storm. He knew the way from his previous visits,
