Jake swiped the flint out of my hand, and in the most frantic yet controlled manner I’d ever seen, fixed it to the hammer. Before he could aim it properly however, Hank was scrambling to his feet and running in the direction of the woods.
Isaac got to him first. He fired, shooting Hank in the arm. Jake propped himself on one knee and took aim. He got Hank’s calf just as he disappeared into the trees. It did not kill him, it did not slow him down, but at least he was running away from us.
Question was: would he come back?
“You all right?” Jake asked Isaac, the reluctance heavy in his voice.
“Oh, I’m all right,” Isaac said with twitching eyes, getting to his feet. “I’ve never been better.”
He headed toward the cabin, leaving me and Jake together in the snow. The reality of the moment began to seep in with the cold. If I didn’t get both of us inside soon, we were going to get frostbite, but the last place I wanted to go was in the cabin with a total madman.
I stood up, wincing at the burning sensation of the ice on my soles, and hooked my hands under Jake’s good arm. “Come on, we have to go in.”
He stared at the woods for a moment before he looked up at me and frowned. “After all that’s happened, I’m surprised you’re not leaving me out here to die.”
“I’m not a savage.”
He smiled handsomely and with a shake of his head said, “No, you aren’t. And you’re not a lady either. I reckon you just might be perfect.”
My heart skipped a beat. I blamed it on waning adrenaline.
Our eyes met for a thick moment before I helped him to his feet and got him inside. Tim had already covered Donna up with an animal hide so none of us had to see her. Not that Isaac cared—he was sitting on a stool in the corner and staring down at his hands, his crazed eyes deep in thought. What were we going to do with him?
I wanted to patch up Jake but Tim was insistent that I take care of myself and warm up my frozen feet by the fire. I wondered about his change of heart and the way he’d reversed to being the caring, fatherly type but I guessed that after everything we just saw, I really was the least of their problems.
I sat down by the fire and did my best to ignore Isaac. There was something so unbelievably unsettling about the way he was staring so intently and at absolutely nothing. He must have felt like God with what he did to Hank but that was no act of God at all. God didn’t slice the noses off of dying women. God didn’t create monsters. Monsters created themselves.
Jake sucked in his breath and I swiveled my attention to him instead. He was sitting completely shirtless on the table as Tim poured iodine on his wound. The gunshot didn’t look too bad but then again I was distracted by his body. I felt deeply ashamed and slightly animalistic to admire Jake’s chest at a time like this, but it couldn’t be helped. My eyes were drawn there like it was instinct. Sure, I’d seen bare-chested men before but none of them had ever appeared so…sexual. None of them were built like a house, strong and firm and wide, with muscles that didn’t end and a dusting of hair that screamed he was nearly a beast himself.
To make matters worse, Jake caught me staring at him. I quickly looked away, turning back to the fire, hoping he wouldn’t draw my behavior to anyone’s attention. He may have saved my life but he wasn’t exactly a gentleman.
But Jake only hissed as Tim pulled the bullet out of him and patched him back up. I stole peeks at the scene, both horrified and fascinated.
“You’ll be good as new in a few days, I reckon,” Tim said. He poked his finger at a raised scar on Jake’s abdomen. “Remember how long this one took?”
“Forever,” Jake groaned. “Damn Mexicans.”
“And this won’t take as long. It was a clean shot. You’re lucky Hank wasn’t shooting a rifle or we’d be singing a different tune.”
Jake looked over at Donna’s lifeless body underneath the hides.
“I reckon we should bury her,” he said.
“With what shovels?” Tim asked.
“Well, we can’t just haul her out to the woods to be pecked on by animals. Or worse—Hank. She deserves better than that. She had no idea what she was getting into.”
“Neither did we,” Tim said. “Not for true.”
“And I would be lucky if I would be treated the same if I died.”
So as the day wore on and Isaac stayed motionless inside, the three of us went out to bury Donna. Tim and I took on the task of carrying her since the bite on my shoulder was pretty much nothing compared to Jake’s wound, and we brought her out to a pretty patch by the lake. The ground here was easier to penetrate, and though she might not stay buried for long, it was the act and the final respects that actually counted.
The three of us dug what we could with axes and our hands. Tim did most of the work since he was the only one uninjured, and even though it took a long time, it was worth it. We placed Donna in the shallow grave and sprinkled the first dirt on her, each of us reciting something nice about her.
I didn’t really know Donna at all, but she liked me and treated me as an equal. She may have been God-fearing but she saw the good in everyone, no matter the cost. Perhaps that was what cost her her life.
When she was finally buried in a thin layer of frozen soil, we looked out to the lake. A goose was calling in the distance and a flock of them flew overhead through the gauzy mist that was hovering around the shore. Jake made a measured movement to grab his gun, but I put my hand out and steadied him. It would only aggravate his wound more and Donna deserved the grace of animals more than we deserved our supper.
That evening Jake and I went to sleep as soon as the sun went down. No one wanted to eat, no one wanted to talk. There just wasn’t much to say. All most of us wanted was for the morning to come so we could be back on our way to River Bend.
Isaac was on one side of the room, and Tim was nearby and staying up as long as he could. I was alone in my bed with Jake in the bed next to me. It felt strange for him to be sleeping there all hurt and shot up and so close to me but not close enough.
I rolled over and stared at him in the flicker of the fire, my eyes drifting over his striking profile—the slight bump on his nose where I was sure it had been broken once, probably in a bar brawl, the way his lips looked inviting even when in sleep. I could tell Tim, who was propped up by the door with a rifle, was watching me, wondering what to do with me when this was all over.
I could only wonder what Jake thought. There was nothing between us and so many bigger issues to worry about, but I felt an odd pang of fear in my chest, this hollowness carved out, when I thought about saying goodbye to him. To get out of these mountains alive was all we could wish for.
And yet, for some reason, I lay on the floor of that cabin and watched Jake sleep—wishing for more.
Chapter Ten
At first I wasn’t quite sure how it happened. When I opened my eyes in the grey light of dawn, I found myself inches from Jake’s chest. I sucked in my breath and slowly raised my head to see him peering down at me through his long lashes.
“Morning,” he whispered gruffly as he watched my eyes widen, a trace of a smile on his lips.
What the dickens was I doing, lying next to him like this?
Then it all came back to me. Visions of sleep and snow and the grainy reality of dreams.
A nightmare.
In it, I had been walking through the woods hand in hand with my father, snow falling softly around us. Unlike my other dreams, I wasn’t a younger girl but as old as I was now, and we were in these very mountains, not the safe world he’d been a part of. My father was ageless, with kind eyes that twinkled in the fading blue light. The world around us was silent and he kept repeating a word over and over again. I had no idea what it meant, until finally he stopped and held me close to him.