Edges
xxx
"It's ... c-cold..."
Joe thought he could actually hear his brother's teeth chatter, but he just tightened his grip on Adam's shoulders. Their seat was already a precarious one, perched on the boulder as they were, and the small ledge above offered almost no protection from the harsh wind.
Adam shivered again, more violently this time, then coughed lowly. Joe could sense the heat emaciating from him, but all he could do at the moment was to keep his brother as quiet as possible.
It wasn't at all an easy task. The stony coldness from the rock beneath them rose slowly into his bones, with no chance of escape. Adam's fever-glowing head on his thigh gave him some kind of warmth, but Joe didn't want to think of how it had to be for his brother who was forced to lay on the freezing ground, full-length.
"C…c..cold."
"I know." Again Joe tried to tighten his hold, but Adam was already shivering so violently that he had to use all his strength to keep his brother from moving. Concerned, he threw a quick look at the tourniquet around Adam's thigh, but the bandage held for now. For the umpteenth time Joe inwardly cursed fate for giving him this stubborn son of a mule for a brother, who not only insisted on riding out in the late autumn mist with a fever, but who also managed to rile a steer so much that the ornery beast went straight for the intruder.
Slowly, Joe shook his head. It had happened so fast that he had actually to concentrate to remember the sequence of events - but he knew he wouldn't forget the look of surprise on Adam's face when the steer charged him anytime soon. Nor would he forget the vision of his brother falling over the cliff and the sickening crunch of the three bodies that followed.
Adam had tried to turn the cattle back from the ledge they had come dangerously close to, but nothing could have prepared him for the small, sturdy steer that charged at him from one second to the next. Its sharp horns had gored Adam's leg and sent him straight over the edge.
His brother had been unconscious when they got to him, the breath knocked out from him in the fall and his leg bleeding freely. It was very likely that he had broken or at least cracked some ribs as well, Joe thought grimly, but their first concern had been to stop the severe bleeding before it took Adam's life. Joe knew that the hands had put the steer and the unfortunate cowpony that his brother had been riding this morning out of their misery; somewhere in his subconscious he remembered shots disturbing the silence.
But it was Adam he worried about.
Joe's cold hands fumbled again with the tourniquet, the blood on his hands already dry and cracking in the sharp wind. Above on the ledge he thought he could hear shouting and hoped they would hurry.
Adam, eyes squinted tight against the pain and skin the colour of ash, moaned softly when his trembling jostled his leg. Joe gripped his hands.
"Think of... something warm." Joe groped madly for any straw to hold on. "Think of home … soon you'll be warm and comfortable in bed … and you'll see Becky again…"
Joe felt the snort more than he heard it.
"…kill me …" The raspy, pain-filled voice of his brother was hardly louder than the wind.
"She promised? No wonder after what you did to your leg last time." Joe chuckled softly, but the shiver that ran down his spine had nothing to do with the cold. It didn't matter. Adam's hands had already loosened their grip, his body gone limp before he could answer.
Joe shifted uncomfortably on the ground, then turned his head into the wind and listened.
He only hoped the others would hurry.
xxx
the end