He has a gun, Miss Seton thought, and the whole scene became suddenly unreal — the blizzard, the missing driver, Mr. Crawford bent over the wheel with his breath coming out of his mouth like puffs of smoke, the gun in his pocket...
Lurch. The engine died again and Mr. Crawford’s mouth moved in silent cursing.
“I think that settles it.” Joyce’s voice rang out clearly through the bus.
“Shut up!” Mr. Crawford said savagely. He tried the engine again but it was dead for good this time. He put his head down on his arm for a second and Miss Seton saw that his face was the color of putty and the sweat stood out on his forehead like little drops of oil.
No one spoke while he silently put on his hat and rebuttoned his overcoat and got out from behind the wheel.
He said at last in a soft voice, “The little lady wins.”
There was another silence. Then Joyce said crisply, “We’d better get started. We’ll have to leave all the luggage behind.”
Maudie began to weep. “I can’t! Oh, I can’t! We may freeze...”
“Hush, angel,” Herbert said masterfully. “Give me your hand.”
“Let go of me!”
“Do you want to stay here and die!”
“Yes!” Maudie shrieked.
“Well, all right,” Herbert said, and strode into the aisle and up to the door.
“Coming, Goodwin?” said Mr. Hunter.
Mr. Goodwin leaped up, struck his head sharply against the baggage rack and joined Herbert at the door.
“Come, Evaline,” he said to Mrs. Vista.
Mrs. Vista stared at him, annoyed. “Anthony, you don’t mean to say you’re going out into that storm with your weak chest? You must be crazy!”
Mr. Goodwin was always flattered by any aspersions cast on his sanity. He said almost gently, “Genius is to madness near allied. Come.”
The door swung open and the wind trumpeted in. Herbert stepped out and sank in snow up to his knees. He cupped his mouth with his hand and yelled, “Hurry up! The tracks are nearly gone! Make it snappy!”
Miss Morning scrambled out into the aisle and gave Maudie a good-natured push in the back. “Make it snappy, he says, dearie.”
Maudie swung around and glared at her. “You take your hands off me!”
“Phooey,” said Miss Morning pleasantly and followed Miss Seton and Joyce to the door.
Mr. Crawford was the last to leave. He watched the others carefully as they passed him.
There’s no danger from any of them, he thought. Bad luck for me, but they’re all harmless. I’ll just have to be more cautious. But what a filthy break!
He stepped out of the door and closed it behind him. He was barely conscious of the intense cold and the blinding wind. He was accustomed to both, and his mind was working too fast to permit him to feel discomfort.
Ahead of him Miss Seton tottered through the drifts, her eyes nearly closed. The wind needled her eyelids and stung them to tears which she wiped off with her stiffening gloves. There was nothing to hear. It was as if she was alone in a torture box with walls of wind, and sharp little knives of snow were being hurled from all sides.
Her face was a dull steady ache and her legs in silk stockings were numbed. When she leaned over a little she could see tracks ahead of her, and slightly to the right of these, a single set of footprints growing fainter and fainter as she moved, the footprints of the bus driver.
“Where could he have gone?” she gasped. “And why? Why?”
She stopped a moment to put her sleeve against her throbbing forehead. Her coat was thick with snow but the sleeve felt warm against her skin. I’m freezing, she thought wildly, I’m already frozen.
Then suddenly and miraculously the wind and snow vanished, as if a hole had opened in the sky and sucked them up and closed again. The silence was so sudden that she heard her own gasp of surprise and the heavy breathing of Mr. Crawford behind her. And she could see again; the bandages of snow had been lifted from her eyes, and in spite of the approaching dusk she saw everything with a new clarity and perspective — a column of strangers following some faint tracks in the snow: Mrs. Vista an enormous raccoon clinging to Mr. Goodwin’s coat, Mr. Goodwin taking off his hat and carefully shaking the snow from it, Mr. Hunter wiping his frosted mustache with a handkerchief, Paula Lashley standing beside Chad Ross, still not looking at him but staring out across the snow.
Joyce Hunter was gazing around her with evident satisfaction as if she had personally ordered God to do this little favor and He had obeyed.
Miss Seton looked at her and giggled. Joyce turned in her direction and shouted, “Are you all right? You’re not hysterical?” Her voice rang out sharply in the new intense silence.
In spite of her stiff cracked lips Miss Seton managed a murderous smile. “No, I’m not hysterical, Miss...?”
“Hunter,” Joyce said.
“Seton,” Miss Seton shouted.
Paula said quietly, “I think there’s a house over there.”
“A house!” Maudie Thropple gave a long shuddering sigh and swooned comfortably against Herbert. “A house. We’re saved.”
“Saved!” Mrs. Vista echoed.
Joyce casually flicked the snow from three curls at the top of her parka and remarked that there had never been any danger anyway and it seemed silly to get all emotional because they’d seen a house. She herself, she added, had known from the first that there’d be a house.
Miss Seton looked around carefully. The house lay some five hundred yards to the east, a huge square pile of grey stone squatting on a small hill. A thin scraggly wisp of smoke issued from one chimney straight up into the sky.
It’s the only place, Miss Seton thought. He must have gone there. There’s nothing else.
Yet she hesitated. The footprints had disappeared now as if they had never existed. There was only a smooth unbroken field of snow in front of them, serene and inhuman. Inhuman, Miss Seton thought with a shiver. I can’t believe a man walked there.
Chad Ross was leading the way towards the house, his long legs moving in slow rhythm through the drifts. No one was talking, they were straining towards the house because it was very cold again. For a few minutes after the wind had lifted, they were warm by contrast and from excitement, but now their faces were aching. The fine laugh-lines around Miss Seton’s eyes deepened and became static.
Awful, she thought. Why would people live here? Or did people live here? Perhaps the house was inhabited by snow creatures, white wind-bloated ghosts which skimmed the snow and left no marks.
I am hysterical, she thought, the girl was right. I’m too old to cope with ghosts. I must think of something else.
Mr. Goodwin was directly in front of her so she thought about him and wondered where he got the strange hat with the feather. She kept looking at the feather to keep from thinking about the cold and the dreary-looking house ahead of them.
There was a queer sharp noise and the feather disappeared from Mr. Goodwin’s hat as precisely and quickly as if it had been shot off.
Shot off, Miss Seton repeated to herself.
She became aware that the others had stopped almost simultaneously and that Mr. Goodwin’s hands were fumbling towards his head. His voice, slightly cracked and husky, came to her ears:
“Someone is shooting at me.”
Mrs. Vista sat down abruptly in the snow. A second sharp crack splintered the silence.
“Down!” Charles Crawford yelled. “Keep down, everybody!”
Miss Seton’s knees were fluid and she sank gratefully down. She looked around at Charles Crawford and saw that he was the only one left standing and that he seemed to be doing his best to be murdered. He had taken off his hat and was waving it violently in the air. He didn’t look at all frightened or desperate as he had when he was trying to start the