Taking a deep breath, and feeling a rush of relief, he was still smiling as he got to his feet. He rested the rifle against the wall, then he wiped some dried blood from around his broken nose, and then he stepped over and took a look at Garrett’s face. His shot during the night had blown away about a quarter of one side of the man’s skull, taking an ear and an eye and part of the mouth. As he looked at Garrett’s features, however, Munver couldn’t help but notice two things. One was that the remaining half of the face looked completely undamaged, and the other was that the remaining part of the lips – caught by the ever-rising sun – seemed to be locked in the process of making a whistle.
Munver’s smile faded a little, but only for a moment, only until he remembered that he was due to set off and that with luck he could be a rich man inside of a week.
“Sorry,” he said, patting the side of Garrett’s arm, “but I ain’t got time to bury you. You’ll just have to make do with that chair.”
He brushed some fragments of bone and hair from the dead man’s shoulder.
“There,” he added. “I’ve prettied you up as best I can. It’ll just have to be enough.” He turned to walk away, but at the last moment he remembered one other thing. “Oh, and sorry about pissing on you last night. I guess I kinda got carried away, but you… Well, you deserved it just a little. You’d have to admit that.”
For the next hour or so, he busied himself with the task of preparing for his journey. There was no point taking the pots and pans, he supposed, and he wanted to travel light. He wouldn’t be taking his lady-box, either, seeing as how he wouldn’t need it once he’d seduced Angelica Graft. Every so often, his mind wandered and he thought back to the missing man from the cart, but he didn’t let that situation trouble him unduly. There was some explanation, he was sure, and Munver had never been the most curious of men. Perhaps the man had simply slid off and got covered in snow, or maybe Munver’s brief moment of madness had caused him to hallucinate the man’s disappearance. Smiling as he finished packing for the road, he figured that soon he’d be out of the valley and back in his hometown, and nothing at the cabin would matter one jot to him anymore.
Getting to his feet, he realized he was ready to go.
And then, spotting the saw, he remembered that there was still one final task that he needed to complete. During the night, the idea of going out there and sawing the woman’s hand off had seemed absolutely terrifying. Indeed, it amused him now to think of just how scared he’d been, but he figured the night sometimes did that to a man. Now, with daylight spreading further and further with each passing moment, all the fear had faded away and he reached down and grabbed the saw, figuring that two gold coins would definitely be better than one.
He took one last look around the cabin, marveling at how long he’d spent living alone in such a small space, and then he headed to the door. He removed the spoon and the remains of the wooden bolt, and then he pulled the door open. For a moment, he worried that he might find the frozen man standing outside, but of course that wasn’t the case at all. There was no-one, and Munver smiled at his own superstitious foolishness as he stepped outside, pulled the door shut, and headed around to the cart.
Seventeen
“Let’s be having you then, lady,” Munver said as he set his bag on the cart and then climbed up, saw in hand, and prepared to get to work.
The first thing he noticed, in the dawn’s early light, was that the dead man was still missing. That caused a moment of concern, but only a moment. He quickly reminded himself that soon he’d be long gone from the valley, and that the disappearance of the man’s corpse wouldn’t matter in the long run. No, he had bigger thoughts to think. In some ways, Stuart Munver was like a dog, choosing to not worry about things that didn’t seem to concern him, so he focused on getting into position and then setting the saw’s blade against the dead woman’s wrist.
“Sorry about this, M’am,” he said cheerfully, “but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
He liked that phrase.
He’d heard other man in town say that a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, men who were respected. Saying such things now, he felt a little more like them.
Well, soon he’d be even better than them.
“Sure is true,” he muttered. “Yes, M’am, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
With that, he began to saw through her wrist, although he found to his irritation that the blade really wasn’t penetrating very well. He worked for a good few minutes before stopping to check on his progress, and he found that he was barely a quarter of an inch through the frozen flesh. This wasn’t exactly encouraging news, although he supposed that once he was halfway through he might be able to snap the rest loose, but he told himself that in this instance thinking wouldn’t be nearly as much use as doing, so he set himself back to work.
As he sawed, he felt the cart shake slightly beneath his knees, and he heard the wooden joins creaking. After a few more minutes, however, he found that he’d made no more progress than before. He adjusted the saw and tried cutting at a different spot and then – when that didn’t work – he tried sawing directly through the fingers. All the while, he was muttering a growing list of cusses under his breath, and his sense of irritation was getting much stronger.
“I won’t be denied,” he muttered, but he had to sit back for a moment and try to come up with another plan. He began to think as hard as he’d ever thought before, so hard that he began to develop a headache, but he kept thinking anyway.
As he thought, he stared at the dead woman’s frozen hand.
There has to be a way to get that coin free, he told himself. I need it. One coin might not be enough, and even if it is, I want two, damn it!
Finally, slowly, an idea began to form in his mind. If he could get the woman off the back of the cart, he could carry her into the cabin and set her by the hearth, and then he could get a really huge fire roaring. She’d have to thaw then, and the coin would slip free like candy from a child’s hand. The idea made so much sense, he was surprised he hadn’t thought of it sooner, but he was grateful that at least he’d come up with a solution eventually. All he had to do was get the woman into the cabin and then everything would be okay.
He leaned forward.
At that moment, an icy hand reached around and clamped itself over his mouth.
Shocked, Munver stared straight ahead for a moment, not daring to turn and see his assailant. He remained completely still, not even summoning the strength to move so much as a muscle, before slowly he felt another hand reaching out to touch his left shoulder. He could hear a creaking sound now, coming from a little way back, but he told himself that he had to be wrong, that none of this could actually be happening.
If you look, it’ll make it more real, he told himself, even as he started trembling with fear. The frozen hand was starting to move up his face, toward his broken nose. Don’t give in. You beat the madness once. You can do it again.
He gritted his teeth.
He clenched his fists.
Suddenly he heard laughter ringing out; uproarious laughter, filling the air all around. It took a moment before he could pinpoint the source of that laughter. It wasn’t coming from behind. Instead, he looked toward the cabin and saw Garrett’s grinning face through the broken window pane. It was Garrett – despite missing one side of his face – who would laughing so hard, hard enough that his whole torso shook even as he remained pinned to the chair by the knife’s blade. It was Garrett, a man who had died several hours earlier, who now laughed and laughed as Munver stared at him in horror.