Fair Land, Fair Land by A. B. Guthrie Jr. Read Free Book Online Page B

clothes. He washed his hands and face
in the snow and used the capote for a towel. The pile he had laid
steamed behind him.
    Like a fool, he had forgotten the ax. He went back
and got it and set to work. While he was working, he heard one shot.
One was all Summers ever needed. He was bringing in the last load
just as Summers showed up.
    " Horses all sassy," Summers said. He swung
out a hand that held a rabbit. "One lousy snowshoe."
    The sun was up now. It had no heat in it, only light,
and a man could go blind from the glare on the snow.
    Summers skinned and cleaned the rabbit and tossed it
in a pot, ready for boiling. The tent had become fairly warm, warm
close to the fire but chilly at the edges, so that a body felt half
hot and half cold and kept squirming to thaw out the chilled parts.
    "That sun might take on some meanin' later,"
Summers said, "but what we need now is more air."
    Higgins took a deep breath and blew it out in a white
plume. "I was just hopin' you could rustle up some."
    " Air in the shape of more wind."
    " Sure. I miss it."
    " To scour out the trail. To lift up the snow.
Sure, it will leave some drifts, but we can bull through."
    " I'd as lief stay safe for a while as risk my
neck."
    " Risk is the name of it all, Hig. You can break
a leg any time, get kicked by a horse, fall off"n a cliff, get
lost and give up. But how'd you like to live without it, like a milk
cow, say, or a prize stud horse? You want pamperin'?"
    " Yeah. Like a woman to take the fret out."
    " It's weather and chances we're talkin' about.
The first snow goes away fast. You can bet on that."
    Higgins put a stick on the fire. He looked through
the open end of the canvas. "It's not meltin' now by a long
shot."
    " It's goin' away. Shrunk already by two inches
or I'm a nigger."
    " It's just settled, is all."
    " That's not the half of it. This high up the
air's pretty dry, and it sucks up the snow."
    " I don't see any goin' back up."
    " It evaporates. That's what it does. Goes up in
a mist you can't see."
    " Like the soul, huh?"
    It was good to hear Summers laugh. Through the laugh
he said, "Quit play-actin' the muttonhead."
    With nothing else to do,
they sat by the fire, lay down and snoozed, fed the fire and snoozed
some more. Half-drowsing, Higgins heard the wind again. The soul that
went up in it would get one hell of a ride.
    * * *
    Empty-bellied, they set out in the gray of morning.
Summers had been right. The snow had shrunk, been blown away or gone
up in mist. Or some of it had. Where it hadn't, the horses shuffled
through, knee-deep in places. The wind had turned into a cold breeze.
The red ball of the sun came up, cold-firing the snow. Higgins
squinted and moved his cold butt in the saddle.
    His life hadn't been worth a damn, he knew and didn't
care. A man took things as they came and, if he had gumption, went
out to meet what was coming. So he had thrown in with Summers and
wasn't sorry. He wondered about the sadness he saw sometimes in
Summers' face, a sadness that never poked through to sour his manner.
He wondered if, like Summers, he had distance in his eyes, of long
trails traveled and others that lay ahead. Summers had said risk was
the all of it, but in his face, off-guard, was the look of search, of
long wanting.
    Anyhow, it was plod, plod, on and on, while the cold
tried for a man's vitals and the breath of his horse came out frost.
Times like these, it seemed a long way to yonder, but who
wanted it underfoot?
    Ahead of him Summers dismounted, his rifle in one
hand. It was always with him, like a part of himself. He let the
reins drop and went ahead, tramping a trail in a drift. Now Higgins
saw why. The drifted snow slanted down to a drop-off, a cliff face
with a base a hundred, two hundred feet down. A misstep or slip would
shoot a man over the edge.
    Higgins forgot he was cold. He raised his eyes from
the drop. He tried to shut it out of his mind. Let him fall, he
thought, looking up, and the mountains, dressed in