Powder Keg by Ed Gorman

crunching sounds of Jen’s feet in the snow. And Jen cooing to Clarice as she carried her around the way she would a baby. Treating the little girl the way she would treat a skittish fawn. Slowly, gently, speaking words that were almost cooing sounds.
     
    I needed to get out of the cabin if only for a few minutes. Jen by then had Clarice on her lap—sitting on a box she’d found in the overturned wagon apparently—rocking her back and forth, letting the girl cry.
    I didn’t bother them. I rolled myself a smoke and walked a ways upslope. I’d thought the clean air would help but it didn’t. I walked downwind of the cabin, so they wouldn’t be able to see what I’d done, and vomited on the far side of a copse of small pines. That helped. I hadn’t smoked the cigarette I’d made. The puking had been too urgent.
    I reached down and scooped up a handful of snow and stuffed it into my mouth. After I spit it out, the worst of the vomit taste was gone. Then I smoked the cigarette.
    I wondered how much whiskey they’d brought with them. They’d be good for anything if they had enough whiskey. I knew then that it was damned unlikely Mike Chaney would be brought back to town alive.
    Being in the cabin had drained me. I needed at least a few hours’ sleep and I was sure Jen did, too.
    Jen had taken a blanket from her horse and swaddled Clarice in it. Then she’d propped Clarice upagainst the overturned wagon. The girl appeared to be fast asleep.
    “I’ve got just enough energy to cut down some of those pine branches and build us a lean-to. Then we can get started early morning.”
    “The trees are close enough. I can hear her if she cries or something. Let me help you.”
    I needed to smile. “You’re going to get me kicked out of that he-man’s club yet.”
    “Oh, I have a feeling they’d never kick you out. You’ve got a streak of mean in you that’ll get you through about anything.”
    Then I didn’t feel like smiling at all. A streak of mean.
     
    We cut the branches together but putting the lean-to together fell to me.
    Jen came over. She was as pale as the snow.
    She held Clarice in her arms.
    “We’ll have to take her with us,” I said.
    “Good. I was afraid you’d say we’d have to turn back.”
    “He’s your brother but I want those two bastards even more than you do right now.”
    “Clarice described them to me a while ago. One of them is definitely Connelly. Him I saw around town. I never actually saw the other one. Pepper.”
    “The mother and boy we’ll have to leave here for the time being.”
    “There’ll be animals.”
    “There’s a lot of firewood in the back. I’ll carry itaround here and stack it up in front of the door. No windows for them to crawl through.”
    “She’ll keep asking me about her mother and brother. She won’t want to leave.”
    I started rolling another cigarette. Then: “You looked inside?”
    She nodded.
    “You saw the broom?”
    “Yeah. I didn’t have guts enough to pull the cover back and look at the mother, though.”
    I knew it was time to get busy. “I’ll start stacking the firewood in front of the door now.”
    “You sure work hard.”
    “Keeps my mind busy so I don’t have to remember what I saw in the cabin.”
    “I wonder if Clarice’ll be able to forget?”
    “She mention her brother?”
    “Just once. I saw him when I looked in through the door. He was trying to protect his mother.”
    “You go to the lean-to. I’ll stack the firewood.”
    I went over and started on the wood. Physical labor felt good. It would make me sleep instead of just being fatigued. A good hard three hours of blackness would give me back my strength.
    Work up a sweat and give in to just becoming a mule. There is something about that kind of labor that we all need from time to time. I worked out of the agency office for four months and finally tendered my resignation. A desk is not for me. They put me back on fieldwork.
    When I finished blocking up the