When Jim woke he knew he had a fever. He could feel the sweat on his forehead, and the heat creating a headache and tightening his throat, and it felt like someone had superheated a metal band then cinched it tight around his ribcage. Movement at all, even breathing, was painful, but he was awake and still alive, and those things together prompted him to be grateful.
He was laying on his stomach and covered in blankets, and as he turned his head, he realized he wasn't alone either.
Arte sat beside the berth, Gordon's berth Jim realized, slumped back in one of the chairs from the lounge with a footstool propping his bandaged feet. He'd dressed more fully since Jim had last seen him, and also bandaged his hands for some reason. The bruise on his cheek had deepened, and he was sleeping. A cup of tea and a second cup of broth sat on the table between the two men and Jim watched the still warm vapors rising from it, wishing he was hungry for it.
Experimentally, Jim reached out a hand for one of the cups, clasped his fingers around the delicate handle then concentrated hard on getting the cup off the saucer and to his lips without spilling it. The effort was tiring but successful and Jim felt a nonsensical rush of victory as the broth came within smelling distance.
Onion and beef, thick and still warm. Jim took a sip, felt the warmth work its way down his sore throat and into his belly, then wished he wasn't so far from the table. He fought sleep, taking a second sip, then a third, managing to get most of the small amount of soup into his stomach before his body overruled his will and he passed out again.
Arte woke to a thundering crash, followed by the varnish car rocking violently. He threw his hands out, encountering the arms of the chair he had forgotten he was in, then looked to the bed to make sure his partner still safely lay there. When the rocking stopped he bended stiff knees, put his bandaged feet on the floor, and stood, groaning at the stiff bruises on his ribs.
The impact to the car had come from the opposite side of the train, and Arte thought he had a pretty good idea of what it had been. He was, without thinking, convinced that he had been only asleep a few minutes until he looked back at Jim and noticed the empty tea cup, spilling a small rivelet of beef broth onto the pillow.
He took a deep breath, fighting a wave of relieved emotion. Not only had Jim wakened, but he had, on his own, taken nourishment; without coaxing or help. Arte's hypothesis about the severity of the wound had to have been at least partially right. He put his hand against Jim's forehead, feeling just a little bit of heat.
The touch immediately woke his partner, who shifted, moaned softly then turned his head on the pillow and went back to sleep. That would have been the sleeping powder he'd put in the broth, knowing it might be the only thing that would keep Jim down and healing. There was no way for West to find out, unless Orrin told him, and he had threatened to chop one of the engineer's arms off if he so much as whispered a word, so was fairly certain there was little to worry about in that department.
All that remained was to check on the prisoners and Arte figured socks and shoes would be advisable. His watch told him he had been sleeping for hours, and if the severity of the whining wind was any indication, it was very possible that ice and snow had been accumulating steadily in those hours. As the bandages on his feet were more painful than the cuts themselves, Arte removed them before donning footwear, pulling on his sheepskin coat and venturing down the hall to the outside door.
The dark gray mass that he could see pressed against the glass alarmed him just a little, but as he grasped the handle, the knob turned freely. He pulled the door inward and was met with a wall of white that instantly made the air seem thinner. Snow was packed solid against the front end of the varnish car.
Arte closed the door, hard, thinking that it might dislodge the wall. Allowing himself to hope that it was only a foot or so of blown snow, pressed against the door. When he opened the door again some of the snow fell in, but did not appear to be sloughing off in the other direction.
Arte once more shut the door, having to use a little force this time with the snow that had collected at the jam.
He needed a pole, or a long stick. Preferably something hollow and thin. He shivered involuntarily as he headed for the lounge. The wall of snow had acted like stacks of ice in a reefer car, instantly fridgerating the hallway.
Arte grabbed one of the fire irons that would do the job, and after piling wood onto the coals in the stove, he took the four foot long blow tube with him back to the door. One end was narrow, meant to be applied to the mouth. The other end belled like a trumpet. The simple iron tube was used to direct concentrated air on the coals of a fire, superheating them faster than a bellows would, while making less of a mess.
Arte opened the hallway door and poked the narrow part of the metal stick at the snow high in the corner of the door, surprised at the resistance the snow was giving him. Gradually the hole opened however and he dug upward, judging the packing to be almost three and a half feet deep before he felt the stick break free of the surface.
Better still he was greeted not only by fresh air, but daylight. Dim, but definitely day. That meant that his watch had stopped, and that the storm had raged all night. Arte had a sinking feeling that the rumbling he'd heard was an avalanche breaking free of the mountain side and if it had buried the varnish car, it had probably also buried the other cars and the engine.
He started to calculate in his head what he would need to safely dig himself and his partner out of their own car before they started worrying about the others. While he thought he moved, pulling on gloves, scarf and a hat, collecting a small folding ladder that he had stolen from a janitorial closet a year before, a shovel and a broom. All of these things he dumped at the hall door, not realizing that the warmth creeping into him was from the activity, and not the fire that should have been busily eating at the wood in the pot belly stove.
He worked for an hour at the tiny hole, perched on the ladder, widening it and shoving the snow outside instead of letting it fall in, careful to keep the hole cone shaped so that the wider opening was above his head and that which he excavated remained supported.
It was slow going and his legs were soon soaked by the snow that he was leaning on. The sheepskin coat kept his torso warm and dry but more than a few drops of snow had fallen between this neck and his collar and melted down his back.
Cold and wet he decided to take a short break, feed the fire, and check on Jim. He expected to be flooded with warmth as he entered the lounge but found it cold as ice. Alarmed he jerked open the door of the pot belly stove to find the wood he had put there, untouched by flame, and the coals barely alive underneath.
"Stupid!" Arte shouted, slamming the door of the stove. He dropped his forehead against the top of his wrist, remembering not to disturb his palms in the last second. The burns on his hands had been protesting to the heavy work of moving the snow, even under the bandages, and he knew he was forming blisters on top of the already tender skin. The hours work had been tiring but he'd kept at it, knowing it had to be done, and thinking that he would have a warm train car to retreat to. He'd completely forgotten that it was entirely possible that the smoke stack for the pot belly stove, not more than a few inches higher than the roof, would also be buried. Without oxygen, the fire wouldn't burn.
The smoke stack had to be his priority now and Arte wondered if it would be faster to climb through the hole he had created at the other end of the car, or start a new one at this end. One glance at the dark, gray sheet pressed against the glass of the lounge door, told him it was of course also buried.
"Arte?"
"Jim!?" Arte looked up surprised at the pained face of his partner standing in the door to the lounge. He'd wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, and the odd bulge in the back told Arte that Jim was holding his side with one hand. "What are you doing up?"
"Is cold." Jim said, blinking slowly, still groggy. "And you're shouting." Blue eyes took in the charred bunting hanging from the wall, the one wall sconce missing it's shade, and the scatter of glittering green glass on the floor. His partner, fully dressed, his face red from the cold, staring with dismay at the unlit potbelly stove. The odd lighting that made one end of the car look like it was night, and the other end look like it was morning.
Leaning against the door frame, Jim pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, wishing he could stop the little shivers that were making the pain in his side all the worse. "Are we buried?"
"Looks like it, yeah." Arte said, finally standing and moving to the door in the lounge. He opened it cautiously, swinging it inward, and looking at the wall of packed snow, as he pulled his gloves back on. "It's covered the stove pipe and we're not gonna have any heat until we dig it out." At least, Arte thought, if the engine was still producing steam at all, the horses, and the criminals in the baggage car would be warm. Goodie for the criminals.
"I'll get dressed and help ya..."
"Unless you're planning on bleeding all over the snow to make the job more colorful, you'll help me by trying to sleep, Jim."
The blue eyes opened a little more, a wry smile coming to the younger man's lips. He didn't respond verbally however, merely turning and padding back down the hallway, dissappearing into his own private compartment.
Arte groaned and turned to the wall of snow, doing the trick with the blow pipe once more, only this time the snow proved to be deeper. At least four feet or more. Arte started tossing the stick up the narrow chute of snow, like a pressure drill, until it popped free and he could see daylight. Four and half feet of snow.
By the time Arte had a big enough hole to climb out of the lounge end of the car, more than an hour had passed and he realized that his partner had not, after all joined him. Arte's quiet moment of victory turned to concern, and despite the still pressing need to free the smoke pipe of the stove, Arte stopped working long enough to move down the hall and peer into Jim's berth. The man was sitting upright on his bed, a shirt on and halfway into a sweater, but fast asleep. Arte covered him with another blanket, but didn't try to lay him down for fear that he would awaken and start spouting more nonsense about being helpful.
Gordon went back to the job at hand, cutting hand and foot holds into the snow and finally climbing up the four and a half foot tube.
The wind outside was bitter cold, the skies nearly clear. The sun hadn't fully risen over the peaks surrounding them yet, making Arte realize that the light he had seen two hours ago was a false dawn. The sun was coming though and he hoped that it would take some of the bite out of the air. The track to the rear of the train was covered in a cascade of snow and debris that gradually decreased as the track curved to the left and up out of sight. Arte turned carefully, sitting on the lip of the hole he had dug, to look over the rest of the train.
He was shocked to find a mile of empty track going down the mountain, buried in littered snow but no baggage car, hopper or engine. There should have been three similar piles of snow at precisely the same height as that which had buried the varnish car, but the mounds of snow were substantially reduced beyond where he perched.
Carefully Arte climbed out ontop of the car, sinking about a foot into the snow with every step. He made his way to the left edge of the car, training his eyes along the path the avalanche had taken. For more than a mile trees had been stripped of their branches, whole boulders had been knocked from perches they might have occupied for centuries, and chunks of mud and clay stained the white of the fresh snow, making a reddish brown streaked mess at the bottom of the steep mountain side.
There were, however, no broken bits of the engine or the baggage car, no bodies of horses or prisoners, no scattered piles of wood or lost looking engineers and firemen. The engine to the baggage car had dissappeared without a trace.
Arte climbed back to the mole hole he had made and got back down into the varnish car long enough to retrieve his shovel and pace out the distance from the door to the pot belly stove. Measuring the same distance from the top of the car was tricky but he got to the approximate location and started shoveling snow, tossing it on the down hill side of the car.
He worked until his back ached, then worked some more. The avalanche had dumped twigs and branches, rocks and stones, and even a poor dead squirrel down onto the solitary car and Arte dug through it all, feeling like an amatuer archeologist desperate for the treasure of King Tut's tomb...and very afraid he wasn't even in Egypt. The snow was to his waist when he finally hit pay dirt, or the top of the varnish car. He widened the hole gradually in all directions, working well until the sun had risen over the car. The top layer of snow, which had been fairly well caked to begin with, only became heavier as it melted.
Arte had taken off his jacket, working up a sweat despite the cold of the air. He was exhausted and swaying on his feet, sometimes held up only by the walls of snow around him, when he finally found the stove pipe.
The weight of the snow had dented the tin cap, but Arte forced it back into some semblance of its original shape. He dug the snow out for a foot around it before he considered the job done, and crawled onto the crust and down the length of the car, dragging the shovel and his coat behind him, not trusting his legs to support him.
When he got to the hole that led down into the varnish car he got one foot in a foot hold before the sun weakened packing collapsed and he, and about three shovels-full of snow, went sliding into the lounge. His foot caught the top of the ladder and he managed a semi graceful, tuck-and-roll landing. The floor felt like heaven, but after working in the sun, the air in the varnish car was deadly and Arte forced himself upright and crawled, jerking open the pot belly stove.
The coals were still there, barely. Arte blew on them, kneeling on the floor and imploring with his last breaths that the coals should live, breathe, expand...heat. They grew, and he fed them, slipping a rolled up scrap of paper between the stacked logs. Eventually it lit and the coals glowed and the logs caught.
He felt like the man who invented the wheel, the steam engine, the train. He felt like the character in his favorite novel that developed a way to shoot to the moon. He'd spent most of the morning making fire, but he didn't care. He sat as close to the stove as he could get, digging his hands out of the gloves and holding them before the heat source, soaking up the way that the fire tightened the skin on his face and finger tips.
When he finally stood it was to close the outside door, then return to the stove, thrusting out blistered and bandaged hands. The heat was glorious. He'd never felt anything so satisfying in his life, and he was grateful to his partner's ingenuity. Jim's idea to heat the baggage car with steam from the engine had obviously prompted him to stock extra wood in the varnish car. The one thing they wouldn't run out of any time soon was fuel.
After warming himself again, Arte ventured away from the stove to find a stew pot. This he filled with snow from the door at the other end of the varnish car before closing that as well and returning with the pot to the lounge.
His third trip he went into his room and then Jim's, collected every blanket that wasn't covering his partner and deposited the bedding on the settee.
When he returned to Jim's room he realized that the man was awake, and shaking. "Where ya been Arte?" Jim asked, leaning at an awkward angle.
"Went for a stroll..." Arte responded, bending to put his arm and shoulder under Jim's, pulling the man upright, and walking him down the hall and into the now warm and welcoming lounge.
Arte used one hand to pull on a corner of the settee, dragging it closer to the pot belly stove before he set Jim down on it. He was guiding his partner into a laying position when Jim said, "Wait, wait, wait...I'm bleeding again, pal."
Arte pulled the blanket from Jim's shoulders and grimaced at the blood that had soaked through the thick bandages, and the shirt Jim had managed to don. "What were you doing, dancing a jig?"
"It was cold, Arte, I had to do something to stay warm."
"Ha!" The bandages were still in his room, and Arte had intended to get the lounge chair from there as well. "You alright there?"
Jim nodded, leaning as close to the warmth from the stove as he could.
Arte left, returning with the chair in one hand and a full pillow case in the other.
"What about Orrin and the prisoners?" Jim asked as Arte set the chair down, put the pillow case near the settee, then went about cutting carefully through the bandages. Gordon had enough to change the dressing this time, and had collected his soiled sheets to boil and dry for future use as bandages. As long as he kept Jim from participating in any marathons Arte was fairly certain he would have the injury under control.
"They're gone..." Arte answered quietly, ignoring the surprised look Jim gave him, finally cutting through the last layer and carefully peeling the bandages back. The bottom most layers came away easily, soaked through with blood. Jim tensed, but didn't make a sound.
It was the shape and position of the wound that was causing the problem. Any move Jim made was going to jostle it open. Even breathing was opening and closing the gap in the skin. There was some redness around it, but not enough to worry Arte yet about infection. The bruise that had formed where the blade stopped was much bigger than it had been before.
"What are you waiting for, Arte?"
"Considering stitches."
"Stop considering, the answer's no."
Arte stood, moving stiffly to the cupboard where they kept an inordinately well stocked medical kit. He collected soap and a few other materials before he checked the pot of melting snow on the stove. It had already begun to steam, but not yet to boil.
Without boiled water Arte was unwilling to use the soap alone to clean the wound. Second consideration left him realizing that stitches might not be useful, given that they too could tear open easily. Keeping his partner still for longer periods of time was the only answer...but as to cleaning the wound.
"Alright..." Arte said finally. "Then we'll try salt water first."
As Arte disappeared into the kitchen Jim closed his eyes. Everything he did seemed to affect the pain at his side, generally robbing him of breath and making any independent action almost impossible. When he was finally able to find a position that took pressure off the wound, the other muscles in his back and side would protest, cramping viciously. The only positions that didn't hurt were standing upright, and lying flat on his stomach.
Worse still his partner looked half-dead on his feet. The still thick beard he hadn't had the chance to shave off had a scattering of salt and pepper in it, graying smartly at his temple. Other than the wind burn high on his cheek bones and forehead, and reddening his nose, Arte was pale. As Jim watched him prepare a salt water solution in a shallow basin, Gordon would sway every few minutes, blinking his eyes like he was having trouble seeing.
"What time is it?"
Arte set the basin down on the floor next to the settee, then checked his pocket watch, remembering only after he got it open that it had stopped earlier and he hadn't rewound it. "No idea. Probably somewhere near noon." He responded, tossing the ineffective time piece onto the settee before he soaked a cloth with salt water and started cleaning the skin around the wound. More than a few stray drops of salt water dribbled down Jim's back, rolling over the open wound causing Jim's whole body to jerk.
"What...ah...what happened to the...ach...to the-um..."
Arte was wincing in sympathy for his partner each time he jumped, but not really paying attention to the question. When he finally caught on, he spoke quickly and efficiently, his hands working in the same manner to get the painful process over with.
"I don't know, Jim. Maybe the other cars were carried off the track by the force of the snow. I couldn't see any debris below but they could have been forced all the way down the mountain for all I know. Hold still. There has to be at least four feet of snow covering the ground around us, about the same depth encasing the car. It's all settled snow though...I'm SORRY Jim."
"S'fine just...feel free to be done at any time."
"Almost.."
Both men fell silent as Arte concentrated on the worst of it, then finally dropped the blood soaked rag into the basin and started covering the wound again, wrapping it with a pressure bandage between each layer.
By the time he finished Jim was breathing hard and looked drained and pale. Arte helped him onto his stomach, pushed a pillow under his head, then covered him with several blankets. Jim's breathing settled, then stabilized and he was sleeping a minute later.
Arte sat back in his chair, his hands shaking. His stomach was growling reminding him that he hadn't eaten since noon the day before. Jim too would need nourishment.
There was several tons of snow to shovel in the mean time and any approaching fronts to worry about.
Another idea had crept into his mind while he'd been concentrating on his partner. The possibility that the train was gone because the prisoner's had somehow escaped, taken over the engine, and forced their way through the snow that had been blocking it the night before.
The idea struck him at first as preposterous but as Arte dragged himself to his feet and went about fixing a meal he kept running it over in his mind, until slowly the possibility became more and more likely.
By the time he got a thick, brothy stew prepared, using the last of the fresh beef they had, Arte had the beginnings of a plan. As he had done the first time, he drugged Jim's portion with sleeping powder, waking his partner long enough for him to drink it, which he insisted on doing himself, then fall asleep again.
Arte ate, drinking two cups of hot tea before he filled the boiling pot with more snow, changed into dry clothes again, and went down the hall to the hole he had cut in the snow at the front of the car.
His goal was to free the door and the platform, then as much of the roof as possible before night fell.
The snow started to fall two hours after he started working. By that time his eyes were burning so badly from the harsh light reflecting off the brilliant snow, Arte would have welcomed a hurricane if it meant the sun was blotted out for a few minutes. The overcast skies gave him a reprieve that let the pounding in his skull slack off, and he ignored the gay flakes drifting gently around him. He'd already cleared the front platform of snow, and knocked away the wall encasing the front end of the car leaving only a sea of four foot deep drifts covering the track ahead. He was working on the roof when he heard the strange bellow.
It sounded like a bear, or a moose. Something large and barrel chested, and wounded. He thought it might have come from above and stood on the car's roof, catching his breath and listening intently. After nothing but silence for two minutes Arte turned back to the two foot wide, four foot high, five foot deep block of snow that he had been excavating, leaned his shoulder into it, and slid it off the roof in one piece, watching it fall and shatter against the ground thirty feet below.
Cutting the snow into blocks and shoving them off the roof had proved to be the most effective and time efficient way to clear the snow. His hands...he hadn't looked at them since covering the burns the night before...were becoming increasingly useless, and it was only the cold snow that he occasionally packed into his gloves that kept the pain from stopping his work altogether.
When he paused it was to go inside and check on Jim, feed the fire, drink a cup of tea and make sure that his fingertips weren't becoming frost bitten. Then he went back out and continued his work.
The snow continued to fall, light but steady as the skies grew darker. The sun set early in the mountains, earlier still in the winter months, and once the sun went down the temperature would drop drastically. Arte forced himself to work faster, finally clearing the last of the snow from the roof before his knees gave out and he dropped to all fours on the tarpaper surface.
In the silence that followed he heard the moan again. Crying out around the sounds of the wind and the snow flitting against the surface of the roof.
"I'm with you...buddy." Arte agreed, gasping, rounding up the final bits of energy that he had left to him. He collected the shovel and let it support some of his weight as he walked the length of the car. He barely made it down the ladder on the side of the platform and once inside the car, collapsed in the hall, shutting the door with his foot.
The car was warm, calm, quiet. Arte lay, wondering if he still had the energy to get up, crawl to the lounge, feed the fire once more...would he be able to drink a little soup..wake Jim so that he could eat too?
There was another moan, distant, mixing with the whine of the wind, but very distinctly animal. Arte was surprised he could hear it still. Then wondered if maybe he hadn't been imagining it.
Arte thought about what animal it might be, and about the nature of animals, especially when they were wounded. Finally motivated enough to move Arte sat up, reached out numb fingers and locked the door he had just shut, then worked his way to his feet and step by step reached the lounge.
The car was dark, the windows still covered by snow on both sides of the car, although Arte had discovered that the snow itself acted as an excellent insulator, keeping the lounge car warm with very little fuel. He checked on the level of the water in the large pot that had been kept warm to boiling most of the day. He opened the lounge door long enough to scrape out two cups of snow, then closed it, refilled the pot, threw wood on the low flames and finally sat slowly on the floor between the potbelly stove and the settee.
He leaned back against the hardwood of the furniture, thought long and hard about the pot of soup sitting on the floor near his foot, waiting to be heated, then fell asleep.
When Arte woke next he would have sworn that his hands were on fire. He wasn't entirely certain if he was awake or sleeping, and a vague memory was telling him that he had been very close to a heat source when he fell asleep. He tried to move away, hoping the burning would stop, but was unable to.
Then he tried moving just his hands but found that they had apparently been cut off at the wrists, yet the nerves were still attached. He could feel the pain, but had no ability to control the appendages. On his third try he heard water splashing and worked at forcing his eyes open, and couldn't seem to make them work either.
Frustrated at the out and out mutiny his body had apparently begun as soon as he fell asleep Arte made one final try with his legs, kicking out, hitting something and shoving hard against it. There followed a louder crash, the sound of a very angry voice swearing and something liquid, lapping. Suddenly Arte could move his hands and he did, pulling them free of what had to have been the basin of water.
He was sitting, probably still on the floor with his back to the settee.
"Jim?"
"Arte..." Jim's voice sounded strained, and irritated. "You do that again I'm gonna kill you. And put your hands back in that water."
Timidly Arte pushed his hands out in front of him, found the edge of the basin and started to lower his fingers into the water. The minute the first blister touched its surface it stung and Arte jerked his hands free again.
"Put 'em in, Arte."
"It hurts!"
"It's gonna hurt. That's salt water. Put 'em back in."
Reluctantly Arte lowered his hands, tensing his whole body until they were completely submerged and he had acclimated to the temperature and aggressive nature of the saline solution.
"Ya kicked me, Arte..." Jim groused, sounding as if he was still staying well out of reach.
"Sorry, Jim...I can't open my eyes."
"Yeah, I know that. Whatever you did to 'em, they were crusted shut when I woke up. The bandage there should soak them open if you just leave it."
Arte was quiet for a few minutes, letting his other senses take over, trying to shut out the constantly changing burn in his hands.
"Snow blindness..." He said finally, "...maybe."
They were quiet, Arte stuck in his own dark world, leafing through a half dozen questions, that for some reason he didn't want to ask. They both heard the animalistic bellow as it sounded. Closer, Arte thought, than it had been before.
"That's the third time." Jim commented, his voice nearer. Arte could feel his partner's hands working at something behind his head, then the bandages around his eyes loosened and the slightly cooler air greeted him.
Arte tried blinking his eyes open a few times, wincing at the bright light in the car...only a handful of the sconces had been lit but it felt like he was staring into the sun. Groaning softly Arte closed his eyes again and let his head rest back against the seat of the settee behind him. "That uh...that animal was doing that even earlier today...while I was-"
"Wearing yourself out like an idiot on the roof of the car?" Jim offered.
Arte pursed his lips but kept his mouth shut. Were their positions reversed he would have said the same, or worse. He knew though, that making any excuses would only invite more of his partner's wrath.
"How long have you been awake?"
"An hour...I ate some soup, boiled some bandages...got kicked."
"I'm sorry, Jim."
"Are you hungry?"
He was, but he wasn't going to have Jim feeding him, and couldn't at the moment feed himself so he said, "No."
"Thirsty..."
"No, Jim-"
"One or the other, Arte, take your pick."
Gordon finally opened his eyes to slits and focused on his partner, who was entirely too eager to get him to swallow something.
"You found the sleeping powder?"
Jim nodded, not looking at all pleased about it.
"In my defense, that wound won't stay closed if you keep moving around. Forcing you to sleep was the only way-"
"I'm not complaining, Arte. And I'm not mad at you."
Arte paused, starting to draw his hands out of the water. One look and pointed finger had him reversing the action quickly. "You look mad, Jim."
"I'm not." James said again but his facial expression hadn't changed, and Arte wasn't in any way reassured. "Would you, however, like to tell me what made you think you could single handedly dig us out of an avalanche?"
When the only answer that came to Arte's mind was 'no', he decided to keep his mouth shut, and glared morosely at the edge of the basin that had been set on the lowest rung of the ladder he'd been climbing up and down all day.
"That's what I thought..." Jim said, as if by some logic he had won the argument.
"Did I really kick you?"
"Yes, you really kicked me, Arte?"
"Did it hurt?"
"Nah, I'll be fine, buddy, don't worry about it."
"Can I try again?"
After a moment Jim gave Arte a pleasant smile, and Arte returned it, the space between them slowly changing from a battle ground to a neutral zone.
"Can I try again!?" Jim asked, and both men were soon laughing.
That night both men slept fitfully. Jim, on a mattress on the floor which he insisted was more comfortable than the settee, and Arte on the green, over stuffed couch. One or the other was always awakened at some point in the night and would feed the fire, or refill the constantly steaming pot of water.
Both had limited mobility and by morning, Arte could hardly move at all. The muscles in his arms burned, his hands felt crispy under the bandages, his back was frozen in the position he had slept in and his face and neck were sunburnt.
Jim felt little better.
"Did it snow last night?"
"Lightly...there's a dusting on the platform." Arte answered, wincing as he lifted the cup of soup to his lips, drank, then lowered it again with stiff fingers. He had tried closing his hands earlier and had discovered it was a mistake.
Jim drank his own soup. The inactivity was driving him crazy, but any time he moved, even to stand, the wound at his back pulled. He'd broken it open when Arte had kicked him the night before, and had been forced to change the bandage himself. He wasn't interested in doing it again and was considering slipping sleeping powder into his food himself, just to make the time pass and the healing go faster.
The bellow, now as familiar to them as the sounds of the train, sounded a long, searching cry that echoed down the side of the mountain, rolling over them just as the snow had twenty-four hours before.
"What do you suppose that is?" Arte asked, his ear tilted toward the still snow packed windows.
Jim sat, listening, waiting for the call to come again, which it did, the beast obliging that morning. "A bear or a moose maybe."
"That's what I was thinking."
"A cross between a moose and an elk." Jim amended, but it didn't matter what he called it, the woeful cry sounded almost like a lot of things. But nothing at all exactly like what he knew to be living in those mountains.
"A whale..." Arte said, sipping at his soup, unconsciously following his partner's line of logic. "Or a...rhinocerous."
"When was the last time you heard a rhinocerous, Arte?"
Gordon lowered the cup and tilted his head back to think.
"Never mind, forget I asked." Jim chuckled. He was cut off by the beast, louder. Closer. Quietly he said, "That sounds like its right on us."
Both he and his partner tried to gain their feet at the same time, awkwardly, favoring the various painful spots. They both froze once they were upright, as something heavy landed on the roof.
Arte felt his heart jump into his throat. He'd grown used to the idea that he and his partner were the only living things on the mountain for miles.
Then the bellow sounded, directly above them, a trumpeting groan, moaning at unusual volume from the throat of something that sounded much bigger than the both of them put together. Arte swore softly and backed hurriedly away from the center of the room, his partner backing up further against the wall, both men staring blindly at the ceiling.