Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0) Read Online Free PDF Page B

said, “I got shot one time. It doesn’t matter.”
    Lying there, I tried to piece it all together but I came up with nothing, and it began to irk me. Who was pa, anyway? Why couldn’t he go back? And if he could have, where would he have gone to?
    By that time I’d warmed up some, and I went to the cave opening and stepped outside into the shelter of a corner of the cliff. The snow was swirling out there, falling fast and blowing just as much. If they were in trouble back at the cabin, I was in trouble out here. Any time you get caught ten thousand feet up in a heavy snow, you’re in trouble, and I was. Outside there was a deadfall, a tree that had toppled over close to the cave, and I tried to drag it inside, but it was frozen to the ground. I broke off a big branch, though, and it cracked like a pistol shot.
    I got that branch inside, then some slabs of bark and other fuel lyin’ about. It would help a little, when the ice melted off it.
    It was a long, long night. Every few minutes I’d have to wake up and add fuel to the fire, and on a cold, windy night a fire can eat up a lot of wood. Fortunately, there was a good bit stored inside.
    Come dawn I awakened stiff with cold and my fire down to gray ashes. After a bit I got it going again and built it up good and warm.
    I went to the cave mouth to size up the situation. Everything was white and still. The wind had died down, but it was cold, real cold. It must’ve been thirty below or better, and it didn’t look like it was going to get better fast. Furthermore, if they came looking, they would find me. I had to have the fire to keep from freezing, and they’d smell the smoke if they got anywhere close.
    For a long time I stood shivering, studying the layout before me. There was an Indian village down off the mountain somewhere, and the trail should take me there, but an Indian trail in the mountains can take a body into some almighty scary places, and somewhere there might be a lot of ice. Yet when I thought of what food I had, the fuel that was left, I decided I had to chance it.
    The snow crunched underfoot when I went back inside. I added a couple of sticks to the fire and then I saddled up. The roan didn’t offer any arguments, so I guess he didn’t take to that dark old cave no more than I did. About an hour after daybreak we rode out of the cave and taken the trail to wherever we were going.
    We walked a spell, then trotted to warm up a mite, and then I got off and walked to keep warm. I had pa’s watch and I figured to keep going at least four hours, and then see where we were. Meanwhile, I’d keep an eye out for another camp, as I had no idea how long the roan could take it…or me.
    We dipped down into the spruce, ragged, windblown trees that grew shaggier and shaggier. The snow was knee-deep, and in some of the canyons off the trail it looked to be twenty, maybe thirty feet deep. But the trail led down, circling among the trees, rounding boulders dropped off the ridge.
    When I’d been riding or walking for four hours, we just weren’t anywhere. I saw no tracks of man or beast, and my feet were like clumps of ice again.
    Once again the trail led upward, and I found myself riding across a great tilted slab of rock covered with snow. From where I came upon it to as far as I could see in the low clouds that shrouded the peaks, there was at least three miles of unbroken expanse. Nowhere was there a track of man or animal.
    A lonely wind prowled above the snow with eerie, threatening whispers. In the vast silence even the roan seemed uneasy, and I was glad when I glimpsed a way off into the forested valley below, yet I held back, looking doubtfully at the steep slide that would take us down the first fifty feet or so. But the roan tugged at the bit, so I let him have his head and he went right into the notch and down the slide without hesitation.
    Now we were in a thick, dark stand of spruce, a place of absolute silence. We crunched along, but here, too,