Beaudine rubbed her nose with her sleeve and suddenly realized she now wore the same type of black merino wool underwear that Quinn had on. Her life before the crash seemed much too long ago to remember what she’d been wearing, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t black wool. She fought the urge to ask who had dressed her, deciding she’d rather live with the fantasy that she’d changed out of her wet clothes on her own while in some sort of stupor and just couldn’t remember it.
A sudden twinge of pain above her left eye made her reach up and touch her forehead. The flesh was tender, swollen and caked with blood. The pain eased some after a moment, falling back to a sickening ache.
“We’re going to need to take care of that before we do much else,” Quinn said, looking at her wound, chin against his bent arm. “Do all your bones bend in the places they’re supposed to bend?”
“So far,” she said, clearing her throat. “Something’s going on with my wrist. Hope it’s just a sprain. How about you?”
Quinn arched his back, wincing slightly, but keeping it to himself if anything important was damaged.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“This feels like shit.” Beaudine’s fingers explored the crusted mess on her forehead. “How bad is it?”
“You could see out of both eyes last night,” Quinn said. “But you’re going to need stitches before we go anywhere.”
“I don’t want to even think about that,” she said, rubbing her wrist. “My watch must have come off in the crash. What time is it?”
Quinn rolled up on his side. He pulled back the edge of the tent directly over his head so he could look up at the stars. He appeared to find what he was looking for, closed his eyes and counted quietly using his thumb and fingers.
“About five A.M.,” he said at length.
“You can tell by looking at the stars?” Beaudine eyed him hard with her good eye. “Who are you — Daniel Boone?”
Quinn nestled back down in the bag. “I looked at my watch a little bit ago.”
“Sure you did,” Beaudine said. “Jacques told me you were Daniel Boone.” She turned a little, stretching her neck by degrees, and saw the snow-covered lump in the moonlight that she realized was Lovita’s body. “I’m really sorry about your friend.”
Quinn rubbed the stubble on his face and stared into the night. “Thank you,” he said, his voice still thick, and now with the added heaviness that comes with losing someone very close. “I can’t just leave her out there on the rocks…”
Quinn wriggled forward, waiting to climb to his feet until he was well out of the survival bag so as not to rob Beaudine of the relatively warm bubble of air. She watched him shrug on his heather gray wool shirt and step into the unlaced boots he’d stashed just inside the door of the shelter. He disappeared into the darkness looking completely at ease in his floppy boots, unbuttoned shirt, and long johns.
He wasn’t gone for more than two minutes but Beaudine felt a flood of relief when she heard the crunch of his boots on snow and gravel.
He stooped to look into the opening of the shelter, shining a tiny flashlight into the corner beside his pack. “There’s some akutaq in that white container,” he said. “It’ll warm you up until I get the fire going again.”
Beaudine nestled deeper into the sleeping bag, trying to take advantage of the warm spot Quinn had left. It hurt her face when she turned up her nose, but she did it anyway. “I don’t think this Texas girl’s stomach could handle reindeer lard and sugar.”
“I’m serious,” Quinn said. “I don’t know what Lovita has in the survival kit but I guarantee you it won’t have as much food value as akutaq.”
Beaudine eyed the plastic container like it might bite her.
“Caribou fat?”
“Lovita is… was a traditionalist,” Quinn said. “It’s got a lot of berries too.”
“Look, I’m not trying to…” Beaudine shook her head. “I just, I mean… sugar and lard. ’Nuff said.”
“I get it.” Quinn shrugged, absent any malice. He seemed more interested in kicking snow away from the coals of his fire than schooling her about food prejudices. “Up to you, but we’ll need our strength to go after Volodin.”
Beaudine perked up and poked her head out of the thin foil bag.”
“We’re still going after him?”
“Someone has to,” Quinn said.
“And how are we supposed to do that? We don’t even know which way he went.”
“I didn’t say we were going to catch him,” Quinn said, a gleam in his eye despite the situation. “Seriously, we know he was headed toward Needle Village before the crash. If I’ve got my bearings right, we’re maybe ten miles away once we reach the main river.”
How far are we from the river?”
“A couple of miles, I think,” Quinn said, adding another log to the fire. “Lovita put us down to the south of the river, which is too bad because it’s boggier on this side. The tundra around here isn’t frozen yet. Two miles jumping from tussock to tussock will be like running a marathon. I think we’ll have to follow the streambed all the way down. It’ll be a winding route, but might be the only way without sinking up to our knees.”
He looked completely at home squatting there, poking the flames with a charred piece of willow. Both their jackets had frozen into stiff wads overnight. Quinn propped both on the top of the split boulder. Steam began to rise immediately from the damp wool and fleece.
Quinn stared into the flames, shaking his head. “I’ll make another trip out to the plane and see what else we have in the way of supplies.”
“Back into that water?” Beaudine shivered just thinking about it.
“Afraid I have to,” he said.
“Well, I gotta find me a place to use the little girls’ room,” Beaudine said, stifling a groan as she finally pushed up on all fours still inside the foil bag. Cold air rushed in around her, bringing a shiver that collided with the pain in her hip. She was tempted to retreat, but nature called.
She slipped her feet into the frozen boots Quinn had staged for her inside the shelter opening, just out of reach of the snow. “I don’t suppose we have any—”
Quinn reached in the pocket of his wool shirt and held up a plastic baggie containing a small roll of toilet paper, rescuing her from having to ask for it.
“This stuff is like gold out here,” he said. “Every time we go hunting my dad has what we called “the TP talk”—makes everyone in camp promise to be a folder and not a wadder. ‘Wadders are wasteful,’ he’d say when we were kids and threaten to make us use spruce cones if we ran out.”
Quinn went back to poking at the fire, looking completely serious about toilet-paper etiquette.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Beaudine said, snatching up the toilet paper. She turned to go, but stopped after one step, staring into the shadows. They seemed even darker now. The wolf howled again. It sounded far away, but it was impossible for her to tell in the snow. “I don’t suppose you’d loan a girl a flashlight…”
Quinn had just finished hanging the rest of their wet clothes around the boulder when Agent Beaudine came hustling back into camp.
“I heard something out there,” she said. “It sounded big. You think it might have been that wolf?” The long johns looked like yoga pants, but were made to fit Aunt Abbey, so they hung a little looser in the seat on Beaudine.
“Hmmm,” Quinn mused. “Probably not a wolf.”