Four Live Rounds by Blake Crouch Read Free Book Online

you was goin to.”
     
    Oatha rode between McClurg and Dan in the
early morning cold, the trail winding up a long drainage through a
dense stand of spruce. By midday, a thick cloud deck had darkened
the sky, and when the men stopped to lunch at timberline, tiny
flakes of snow stood out on the wool of Oatha’s coat. They were
making a leisurely go of it, no chance of reaching Abandon by
nightfall at this pace, but Oatha held his tongue, even as they
lounged for two hours, smoking and nipping from Nathan’s jar of
whiskey, the men fair drunk by the time they finally decamped.
    It was cold riding, and Oatha’s glow soon
faded.
    They climbed out of the trees, the snow
blowing sideways over this exposed, open terrain. The Teats, those
twin promontories Oatha had been using as a guide since yesterday,
had vanished in the storm.
     
    They camped miserable, cold, and wet just
below timberline in a grove of dead spruce, got a sheet of canvas
strung up between the trees, a fire going underneath, but even the
whiskey jar making the rounds couldn’t lift Oatha’s spirits. He sat
leaning against a spruce, watching the snow pour down and the light
recede, thinking he should be in Abandon by now.
    “How much you figure they keep on hand?”
McClurg asked.
    “Few thousand. Ten if we’re lucky,” Nathan
said.
    “Enough to make it worth our trouble,” Dan
said.
    Oatha cut his eyes at the three men, and
McClurg noticed, said, “What?”
    “Nothing.”
    Nathan smiled. “Nobody told him he felled in
with road agents.”
    The men laughed.
    “What do you do for a livin?” Nathan
asked.
    Oatha’s mouth had run dry. “Been prospecting,
bar mining, picking up work in the mines where I can—”
    “Like honest work, do you?” Dan said.
    “I guess.”
    “But the question,” McClurg said, “is how you
feel about dishonest work?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well think on it, get back to us.”
    The men laughed again and Nathan swiped the
jar from Dan, tilted it back. McClurg hoisted a log onto the fire,
a spray of ashes engulfing Oatha. He rummaged through his satchel,
located the loaf of sourdough he’d bought before leaving
Silverton.
    “Break me off a hunk a that,” Nathan said,
and Oatha tore off a piece.
    “Got a round a cheese in here, too.”
    “Don’t be stingy.”
    They cut cheese onto the bread, set the
slices on hot stones in the fire’s vicinity to let it melt.
    The storm brought a premature night, and in
the firelight, Oatha watched the snow fall without respite. They
played cards until the fire ran out of wood, won the last of
Oatha’s money, drank up his quart of whiskey, smoked all of his
tobacco.
    As the other men snored, Oatha lay awake. If
it hadn’t been snowing so hard, he’d have attempted to sneak out of
camp, resaddle his horse, and get the hell away from Nathan and the
boys. He didn’t want to look it in the eye, but the truth of the
matter was that he’d backed himself into a bind, and if he didn’t
slip away from them tomorrow, he’d probably never reach
Abandon.
     
    Oatha’s eyes opened. As he sat up, his vision
sharpened into focus and he saw the gray-white madness of the
blizzard, the canvas sheet sagging to the ground at one end, the
snow piled up three feet around the boundary of their little
shelter.
    He held his hands toward the low fire, his
head throbbing again, a whiskey hangover that wouldn’t die until
noon at the earliest.
    Nathan looked at him, shook his head.
    “My horse and yours are dead. We’ve caught a
bad piece a luck here.”
     
    They stayed under the canvas all day, taking
turns venturing out to gather wood from the abundance of rotted
spruce and melting snow in the emptied whiskey jars, a tenuous
proposition, the fire and ice resulting in shattered glass in two
out of three attempts.
    By evening, the snow had quit but the wind
raged on through the night, and the sound of limbs cracking kept
Oatha from the depths of restful sleep.
     
    The second morning dawned