Her voice was a thready whisper. "Johnny. What happened?"
Her voice, the sense of her words was like an on switch for a fury he hadn't known was there. He surged to his feet and very nearly howled at the sky. "Those assholes jumped us!"
"What assholes?"
"Those assholes on the snow machines!"
She raised herself painfully to one elbow. "I know you're mad, but don't yell, okay?"
Her pitiful little smile melted his heart. "Okay," he said, mastering his anger, not without effort, at least for the present, and dropping again to his knees. "Sorry."
"It's okay. I understand, believe me." Van tried to rise and faltered, putting a hand to her head. "Oh," she said, and then leaned over and vomited in the snow. He tried to help her, to hold her hair out of the way, and then brought her handfuls of clean snow so she could rinse out and off.
She looked up at him and smiled again, this time a little less tentative. "Tell me you don't know how to show a girl a good time," she said.
He surprised himself by laughing. It was a pale effort but it was real.
He got back to Ruthe to find her on her feet. She was wheezing slightly. "Are you okay?"
"Think I busted a rib," she said.
"I think that asshole busted it for you," he said, his anger coming back to a simmer. "Fucker was using a two-by-four."
"I see they took your sled. Why didn't they take the snowgo, too?"
"Not enough drivers, probably. I don't remember really well, but I think there were only three of them, one for each machine."
"Where's mine, then?"
They found it a thousand yards up the river, nose buried in a drift beneath the lip of the riverbank and miraculously still with the sled attached. "I pushed the throttle all the way up, last thing before I fell off," Ruthe said. "It must have got away from them and they were scared they'd get caught if they wasted time looking for it."
"Not as scared as they're going to be when I catch up with them," Johnny said fiercely. The thought of beating on the guy with his own two-by-four was as warming as the fire Van had started next to his snow machine.
He fumbled for the pocket that held the PLB and pulled it out. He held it up and said to Ruthe, "Are we in trouble now?"
Her sleep was made restless that night by dreams of Johnny heading off over the horizon on a snow machine, laughing over his shoulder at her just before the machine carried him over the edge of a cliff. And dreams of Jim, too, although these dreams were less story and more snapshot, Jim kissing her much against her will-really and truly, against her will-the day Roger McAniff went on a killing spree in the Park, Jim crouched behind the bar after getting his Smokey hat shot off during the most recent shoot-out between the Jeppsens and the Kreugers, Jim bleeding all over the floor of Ruthe and Dina's cabin after she'd beaned him with the file box. And bleeding all over her afterward.
She was jerked awake before she got to the really good part, by Mutt's full-throated bark and vehicle lights flashing across the interior of the house. She got up, pulled on sweats, and trotted downstairs. She reached for the.30-06 at the same time she switched on the porch light, which revealed Bobby's snow machine stopped in the yard, engine running, one person dismounting and running to the stairs. A frisson of nameless fear shivered up her spine. She put the rifle back and opened the door. "What's wrong?" she said before Dinah had her foot on the bottom step.
Dinah looked up and without preamble said, "Johnny triggered his PLB. Jim got the word and the location and he's on his way there with Bobby."
Kate ran upstairs and found clothes, ran back downstairs, pulled on bibs, parka, and boots, grabbed her gloves, goggles, and rifle, and ran outside. Dinah had pulled Kate's snow machine out of the garage and Mutt was already waiting next to it. The engine started without fuss, Mutt hopped up behind, and Kate slid the rifle into its scabbard and followed Dinah up the trail, swung wide onto the road, where both women opened up the throttles.
The miles sped by as Kate tried very hard not to think of all the different ways Johnny could have gotten hurt going down the river. A pickup could have run into them. A snow machine pileup. Some drunk in one of the villages could have been shooting at hallucinations and they got in between him and his target. The river could have opened up one of its inexplicable leads and they could have fallen in, and Johnny's last conscious act before the water closed over his head was to trigger the PLB.
She could feel the beginnings of hysteria, a coldness seeping over her from the inside that was worse than the windchill without. No, she thought, very firmly. You don't know anything. Don't speculate, don't borrow trouble. It'll be as bad as it is and you'll deal. Right now all you're doing is going from your house to Bobby's. All you have to do is hold on until you get there.
The trees lining the road blurred, the stars overhead were a silver smear against the black sky. They met no traffic along the way, and in Niniltna Dinah slowed down just enough to take the turn for the road leading downriver that led to the Roadhouse and then opened up the throttle again. Kate stuck to her tail like a burr, Mutt holding the shoulder of Kate's parka in her teeth to maintain her balance. The two miles between the village and the turnoff at Squaw Candy Creek passed in a blink and then Dinah was negotiating the trail that led to her and Bobby's house. Kate saw with dismay that Bobby's truck wasn't outside.
They killed the engines and went into the house, shedding outerwear as they went.
"I'm freezing, let me make some coffee," Dinah said.
"Talk while you do," Kate said. At her side stood Mutt, tense and ready to rip a new one in whatever had Kate so upset. She looked up and Kate rested a hand on her head. Mutt's ears flattened and she gave an interrogatory whine.
"It's okay, girl," Kate said with more confidence than she felt. "Everything's going to be fine." She hooked the rung of a stool with her foot and sat down. Mutt, not entirely convinced, allowed herself to be persuaded to sit, too, but she wouldn't move from Kate's side, leaning against her thigh, a solid, anxious presence. When Dinah gave her a strip of moose jerky, she took it politely, gave it a gnaw or two, and then set it down, which had to be a first.
"Where's my goddaughter?" Kate asked belatedly.
"With Bobby. We figured it was better Katya was in the truck with him."
"What happened?"
"At about-" Dinah glanced at the clock on the wall and calculated. "-I guess it would have been about one a.m… maybe one thirty, everything happened so fast I wasn't paying attention to the time… Jim banged on the door. He said that Johnny's PLB- Your idea?"
"Yes."
"I think I'll have one welded to Katya's ankle. The Park equivalent of a Lojack. Anyway, Jim said Johnny's PLB went off and wherever the alarm is received alerted Kenny Hazen, who called Jim. Who evidently was in Niniltna?" A raised eyebrow.
Kate raised her shoulders. "I don't know, work, I guess. He didn't make it out to the house last night."
"We need cell towers in the Park and we need them now," Dinah said. "Jim was going out after them. Bobby said he'd ride shotgun. Jim said no, he didn't know what the situation was, if anyone was hurt or how badly, be better if Bobby brought his truck, and the snow machine trailer, too."
Kate drew in a sharp breath.
Dinah held up one stern hand, like a traffic cop, and repeated
Kate's own admonitions to herself almost word for word. "Don't, Kate, don't borrow trouble. They'll bring them back and then we'll see. We can handle whatever happens. Just keep calm."
But Kate noticed that her hands were a little unsteady with the teakettle.
They drank in silence. The minutes crawled by, the drag of every second like a fingernail on a blackboard. It was twenty-plus miles from Bobby's house to where Jim said the PLB was transmitting from. Bobby and Jim would have taken the road to a mile or so past the turnoff to Camp Theodore, Ruthe's eco-lodge. There they would have left the road to Bernie's and taken to the river.