Normally, faced with a storm such as this and no horse, Smoke would cut some branches off pine trees and build himself a lean-to to weather out the storm out of the wind. With ten or so angry men on his trail, this wasn’t an option, but if he didn’t do something to get out of the weather, he was going to freeze to death while he walked. His only hope was to make it until dawn lightened the eastern sky so he could find something else that would do to both hide him and keep him out of the cold.
By the time the eastern sky began to lighten enough for him to see his surroundings, Smoke was shivering with cold and was weak from dehydration. His sweat had frozen on his skin and his mouth was so dry he couldn’t work up a good spit.
He resisted the urge to eat snow, as that would only lower his body temperature. He knew of several mountain men who’d made that mistake and hadn’t lived to tell about it.
As the day got brighter, Smoke noticed a fallen ponderosa pine off to his right. It appeared to have been struck by lightning, as there was a jagged, blackened scar along its trunk.
He slogged over to it, and saw to his relief that the giant had taken out several other smaller trees around it when it crashed to the ground. Smoke moved along the trunk until he came to the jumble of broken and crushed limbs at the top of the tree. Sure enough, it was as he’d hoped. The tangle of tree limbs and trunks and roots made a perfectly acceptable place to get out of sight and weather out the rest of the storm.
With any luck, the men chasing him would just ride on by if they came this way.
Smoke pushed aside a thick branch and bent over to worm his way into the thick tangle. He froze when he heard a low growl from in front of him. He realized immediately what it was. It was the sound of a mountain cougar who’d had the same idea of using the tree for shelter as Smoke had.
Moving slowly, Smoke took out the small clasp knife and worked the blade open, trying not to provoke the big cat into a charge. He couldn’t see the animal in the gloom of the enclosure, but he could smell its fetid breath and musky odor as if it was very close.
Suddenly the cat snarled and rushed at him out of the darkness of the jumble of tree limbs. Smoke jumped back and let go of the branch he’d been bending back to enter. The branch snapped forward, catching the cougar in the face as it leapt at Smoke.
Smoke dove onto the cat before it could regain its balance and slashed to and fro with the small knife, praying he’d hit the throat before the cat got his arm in its powerful jaws.
They rolled over a couple of times, Smoke almost screaming at the burning pain as the cat raked his back with its claws. Luckily, the intervening branch kept the cougar from gutting Smoke with its hind feet as cougars usually did.
Moments later, it was over. The cougar gasped its last breath as Smoke’s knife tore its throat open almost to the spine.
Unable to see the damage to his back, Smoke did the next best thing. He pulled his shirt up and lay on his back in the snow, rocking back and forth and letting the coldness stop the bleeding and wash out his wounds.
The pain was almost unbearable, but he counted himself lucky to be alive and a little pain was a small price to pay for shelter, and now food. He sat up and pulled his shirt back down over his back, wincing as the deerskin scraped the raw wounds. He had no way of knowing if the bleeding had stopped, but figured he’d find out soon enough if the blood soaked the shirt.
He didn’t dare start a fire, so he quickly skinned the cougar and gutted it. Since liver has the most nutrients, Smoke ate as much of the raw liver as his stomach could take. Once he’d filled his belly, he scraped the skin as best he could and cut it into wide pieces he could wrap around his lower legs as leggings, to keep from getting frostbite when he walked through deep snow. It wouldn’t smell very good, he thought with a smile, but that was the least of his worries.
With the still-warm liver in his stomach, he risked eating enough snow to slake his thirst, and then he curled up in the crown of the fallen tree under a blanket of pine boughs and the rest of the cougar skin. He was asleep instantly.
Cletus took the lead, with Sarah right behind him, as the group headed through the forest toward the mountain whose peak couldn’t be seen through the driving snow.
Even though they were on horseback, they couldn’t move much faster than Smoke had been able to because of the depth of the snow and the uneven, wooded terrain.
“Hey, Boss,” George Jones called from the middle of the pack.
“Yeah, George?” Cletus answered, twisting in his saddle to see what the man wanted.
“Maybe it’d be a good idea if we spread out ‘stead of riding in a line like this. In this storm, it’s better’n even odds Jensen froze to death last night. It’d be a shame to ride past his carcass and not know it.”
Cletus had to admit the man had a good point. Though he didn’t for a minute think a mountain man would ever freeze to death in a minor storm like this, Cletus knew that Jensen might well have gone to ground somewhere between here and the mountain hoping they’d ride right on past him.
“That’s a good idea, George,” Cletus said, stopping his horse. He waved his hands to both sides. “I want you men to spread out, and keep a sharp eye for any sign of Jensen along the way,” he called. “And be sure to stay in sight of the men on either side of you. I don’t want Jensen to be able to slip between us.”
In a lower voice, he said, “Sarah, I want you to stay next to me. Your daddy’d have my hide if I let anything happen to you.”
Sarah gave him a gentle smile. They both knew she could shoot every bit as straight as him and she was probably a lot faster on the draw. Still and all, he’d been a good and loyal friend to both her and her father, so she didn’t point this out to him. “All right, Clete. I’ll stay close so you can protect me from the big, bad Smoke Jensen.”
He frowned at her, knowing she was putting him on. “Don’t underestimate this man, Sarah. I know you don’t think he is a really bad man, but men who are desperate to live will sometimes do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do—and that includes Smoke Jensen.”
Sarah had a hard time imagining Smoke Jensen would ever be desperate, but she kept her mouth shut and rode alongside Cletus as he moved northward toward the nearest mountain. She pulled her heavy, fur-lined deerskin coat tight around her shoulders as they rode into the freezing wind, wondering how Jensen, who was dressed only in buckskins, would be able to survive the brutal conditions.
Even though they were downwind, Smoke heard the approaching riders when they were still over a hundred yards away, and he came instantly awake. Years living in the High Lonesome had trained him to be able to hear and see things most normal men couldn’t, and he could respond to them instinctively without having to think about it beforehand.
It was a trait that’d saved his life on more than one occasion when he and Preacher were living up in the High Lonesome.
He eased to the edge of his tree-limb hideout and glanced around to make sure the snow had covered all signs of the struggle with the big cat. He nodded in satisfaction to see a pristine blanket of fresh snow around the jumble of fallen trees he was in. He was also relieved to see that the storm was still fairly heavy. He was counting on it to mask his next moves.
He readied himself by moving to the very edge of his hideout so that he could exit it quickly and silently when the time came, and then he got out the clasp knife and opened it. He was going to need it very soon now.