The High Rocks by Loren D. Estleman

moving. With no clouds for insulation, the entire range was laid bare to the elements, rendering useless our heavy clothing and making the snow squeak beneath our horses’ footsteps. I rubbed my face at intervals with my gloves to keep the blood circulating, but as soon as I stopped the numbness would creep back in and I’d be forced to do it again. After a while my arms felt like lead. I kept at it, however, driven on by a boyhood memory of a trapper I had once seen in Doc Bernstein’s office, a young man who had been found unconscious in the snow on the outskirts of Staghorn. His face had split from exposure and had begun to ooze blood and raw meat through the cracks. It must have been as painful as it looked, because that night he had made his way to his gun and put a bullet through his brain. I rubbed until the skin felt raw and then I went on rubbing.
    The trail led down a steep slope on the windward side of the mountain, an irregular incline swept by the wind in some places to bare rock interrupted in the middle by a crevice some twelve feet wide.
    â€œDevil’s Crack,” I told Rocking Wolf, once we’d stopped to view it from a distance of fifty yards. “Two miles long and a hundred feet deep at its
shallowest point. We’d save several hours if we jumped it.”
    â€œAnd if we did not make it across?”
    â€œThen I guess we’d save the rest of our lives.”
    He grunted distrustfully, but a quick glance around seemed to assure him that there was no place nearby to set up an ambush, so he gathered up his reins and, slapping his stallion smartly on the rump, took off down the slope at a gallop. I did the same, but there was no way the mare could hope to catch up to an animal at least six years her junior, and that was why we were several lengths behind Rocking Wolf when I spotted the thong.
    It had originally been covered with snow, but the wind, its gusts confined to this side of the mountain, had exposed a two-foot length to glisten wetly in the light of the moon where it had been made fast to an upended tooth of shale. It was taut as a guitar string and raised about a foot and a half above the ground.
    I shouted a warning to the Indian and drew back on the reins so hard the chestnut reared onto its haunches and slid on its rump for twenty feet before coming to a stop. I was pitched off and had to grab the thong in both hands to keep from sliding over the edge. I stopped with my boots dangling in mid-air. But it was too late for Rocking Wolf. His horse hit the thong, screamed, and pitched forward onto its chest with an impact that shook the mountain. For a frozen moment, Indian and horse were a
tangle of arms and flailing legs, fighting for traction on the icy rock. Then they sailed over the edge of the crevice and into space. The stallion’s screams echoed off the walls for an impossible length of time, then ceased abruptly. The wind whistled irreverently in the silence that followed.
    It was not a long silence. I was lying stretched out full length on my back, my gloved hands clutching the thong that had just claimed Rocking Wolf’s life and saved mine, when I heard a sound like a guitar string being plucked and the thong, weakened when the Indian’s horse had struck it, gave away where it had been lashed to the rock. I began sliding.
    I was about to go over when a hand grasped my collar, stopping me. Beneath my feet, an outcropping of brittle snow fell apart and sifted down toward the bottom of the crevice. Icy air played over my boots and up inside my pants legs where they hung over the edge. But the grip on my collar held firm and began pulling me backward. Empty space gave way grudgingly to solid ground. In another moment I had gained enough footing to turn over and see my rescuer. In that instant it occurred to me that I might have been better off if I’d fallen, because I found myself staring into the grinning, bearded face of Bear Anderson.

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