Quest of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

17

Hammer and his men rode hard for the rest of the day to put as much distance between them and the railroad as they could, until just before dusk they came to a large lake.

The edges of the lake were still rimmed with ice, with large patches out away from shore showing brilliant blue water where the ice was beginning to melt. About twenty yards from shore, the dead body of a large elk floated in an open hole in the ice where he’d evidently fallen through the ice pack.

“Looky there, Hammer,” Bull said, pointing to the elk. “That sumbitch must weight over a thousand pounds.”

“Yeah, an’ that elk meat would taste mighty good if we cooked it over a fire,” Sam Johnson, one of the gang members said, licking his lips at the thought.

Hammer glanced around. The place where they’d stopped had a good cover of trees growing by the edge of the lake, and was moderately well protected from the frigid north wind blowing across the lake toward them.

“That’s a good idea, Sam,” he said. “Why don’t you see if you and the boys can get a rope around his horns and drag him into shore. We’ll make camp here and see about cooking up some hot food.”

“It’s ’bout time,” Shorty Wallace observed as he sat shivering in his saddle, his coyote-fur coat pulled tight around his shoulders. “I’m ’bout frozen clear through.”

Hammer grinned. “Good. Then a little work pulling that elk in will warm you up, Shorty,” he said. “Go on, get to it so we can eat ’fore it gets dark.”

“You think that ice will hold a hoss?” Shorty asked as he tried to figure out a way to get the elk to shore.

Hammer laughed. “Well, it sure as hell didn’t hold that elk, did it, Shorty?”

“Yeah, an’ if you fall in that water, you’ll be frozen solid ’fore we can get you out,” Bull added, shaking his head at the thought.

* * *

By the time Shorty and Sam and a couple of other gang members had managed to rope and drag the elk to shore using long ropes tied to their saddle horns, Bull had a roaring fire going in the center of the copse of trees they were camping in.

Coffee had been brewed in several pots, and the men were mixing it with generous dollops of whiskey and brandy to ward off the chill as the temperature continued to fall and large, wet flakes of snow began to drift downward from the dark clouds overhead.

The wind, instead of dying at dusk as it usually did, was freshening as the storm built to its full force and the snowfall intensified.

“Damn,” a half-breed Indian named Spotted Dog said, rubbing his hands together in front of the fire. “I thought Minnesota was cold, but this land is even worse.”

“Shit,” Jerry Barnes said, edging closer to the fire and turning his back to it to warm up his rear. “I thought Injuns don’t feel the cold like us white men do.

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