Instinctively, the three ducked.
Ootah went prone. Leeward cursed. Henson was in motion.
He grabbed up a handful of loosened rock and ice at his feet and flung it at Leeward. The man had to raise his arms in front of his face to protect himself. As he did, Henson covered the distance between them with a bound and a leap. He bowled him over.
“Get off me, nigger,” Leeward howled.
Henson tried to punch him in the face but Leeward moved faster than he’d anticipated. He got a knee between them and shoved Henson away. Both were still down but Leeward scrambled up, gun in hand, about to shoot Henson. An ice axe whistled through the air and sunk in Leeward’s shoulder. Blood spurted from the wound and the hot numbness in his arm caused him to drop the weapon as he yelped.
“You goddamn chink,” he yelled at Ootah.
Henson swung like he’d seen Jack Johnson do in a fight. His fist hit Leeward flush in the face, staggering him.
“I ain’t done yet, snowball.” Enraged, Leeward plucked the axe free from his shoulder and hefted it. Powered by desperation and greed, he charged at Henson, ignoring his wound, axe poised to do severe damage.
Henson back-peddled and, heel hitting a rock, fell over on his backside. Ootah came at Leeward but he slashed at him, driving him back. Teeth bared, Leeward lunged at Henson, who yelled shrilly.
Having nothing for defense, Henson latched onto the rock he’d tripped over. He drove its rough-hewn tip into Leeward’s chest as he dropped on him. To his and Ootah’s absolute amazement, in a flash of blue-white light, he exploded into flame as if he’d been roasted by a direct beam of sunlight. Not even enough time for him to scream. A rain of dark ash powdered Henson’s clothes and face. He rose, and they both stared down at the charred remains of what had been John Leeward.
“Holy shit,” Henson stammered.
“What was that?’ Ootah said, awed.
Henson opened his hand. It was the piece of the meteorite he’d chopped loose for a sample. There was a smudge of blue on the tip of his index finger. He was afraid to rub his fingers together least the stuff ignite and burn him up, too.
“It is from Seqinek.” Ootah said fervently.
Henson wasn’t about to argue.
“Where’s Leeward?” One of the crew, a mechanic named Peters, asked when Henson and Ootah returned to the three-masted Hope several hours after the incident.
“Leeward?” Henson said innocently, with a glance at Ootah. “We didn’t see him.”
His friend remained tight lipped.
Peary appeared, frowning at Henson. “You taking up smoking after all these years, Matt?”
“No...”
“Got some ash in your mustache.” He walked off. His listing gait due to losing all his toes to frostbite.
A search party was hastily organized. The man’s dogsled and team were found, but not at Mount Robeson—not that they would have found the meteorite or the burned corpse there. Leeward’s dogsled was found near a snowy bank of headlands a few miles away from the cavern. There were tracks from the dogs and sled, but by mushing their teams back the way they’d come, the two had dragged snow shoes to better cover their own tracks. They had briefly considered killing the dogs and destroying the sled, but unless you were going to stew up the dogs as the last resort for food—as both men had had to do in the past—trained Malamutes and Huskies were more valuable than precious metals out here. And Henson didn’t believe in killing innocent creatures.
From the faked location, Henson and Ootah knew the searchers would go out in increasing circles to find a trace of Leeward. The Hope’s voyage was delayed, but despite all their searching, Leeward wasn’t found. What had he gone off to investigate, they wondered? Had he stepped on what seemed to be solid land and fallen to his death in a crevasse? They were known to open like the maw of a snow beast, then go shut again without a trace, filling in on themselves from the impact of a body hitting from enough height.
“If and when the cavern is found, well,” Henson reasoned to a worried Ootah, “who was to say who’d been there?”
“It’s too bad. He had his faults, but to die in the cold, alone, frozen to death. He didn’t deserve that.” Peary said later to Henson as the explorers stood on the Hope’s top deck, the chained down Tent behind them. It sat straddling the hold, suspended over steel rails. It was determined it would be easier to unload back in the States above deck rather than from within the ship.
“He’s in the hands of the Lord now, sir,” Henson said.
“As we all will be one day to answer for our deeds.”
“Yes, that is so.”
Peary regarded him evenly then walked away.
Henson and Bessie Coleman sat quietly and comfortably in lounge chairs in the back room of May-May’s, closed up after the dinner rush. At his behest, Lacy DeHavilin had invested in the diner and this room was his unofficial office. It was dark in New York City and the evening was chill.
“I know you and the cold are friends, but the rest of us ain’t penguins,” Coleman
