Poor son of a bitch, Horn thought. But I guess it no longer matters to you much anymore. It’s not like it’s going to make any difference to you if the ice ever melts. You’re still as dead as a fish at market.
And what’s this?
What Horn had initially thought were reflections in the ice finally dawned on him. Surrounding the man in equal stillness were saddlebags bursting with coins. Gold coins. One hung suspended close to Horn’s face, and after a few minutes work he dug it out with his pickaxe.
Excited now, he sought out other coins he could retrieve easily. While the sun passed overhead, he managed to get quite a few. He told himself he would return home and buy food for the family table as soon as he could. The trip into town might be dangerous, but he still knew a few people in Wrath Butte who might be persuaded to help him.
As the sun passed over the last of the glacier, Horn was jarred back to the fact that he had not yet found a way out of the crevasse. Maynard looked even closer than before, reminding him of the traveling wax museum he’d once seen as a child. Maynard seemed to be smiling too, welcoming Horn to the coins suspended around him. But when Horn saw the two dark shapes next to Maynard’s stilled corpse, his blood froze. The things looked like twisted clouds of smoke, but somehow gave the impression of once being alive.
“I’m going to leave now, sir,” he told Maynard. “But I’ll try and come back soon and take you up on your offer.” After biting down on a coin, just to feel the gold between his teeth once more, Horn smiled and tipped his hat at the man who’d been dead for a few years. “If I don’t make it back, I want you to know I’ve appreciated the little taste.”
Warmed now by his reversal of fortune, Horn left Maynard and the frozen cache of gold and followed the tunnel until it eventually rose up close enough to the surface were he could safely climb out. He drew a map on calf skin so he could remember how to get back and kept it hidden in a wooden box he’d carved the winter before.
****
In the end Horn became less interested in pursuing gold coins than spending his time sitting in front of Charlie Maynard and staring into his frozen eyes. For Charlie had begun talking to Horn. Not with his mouth of course, but by some power Horn could never accurately describe.
Horn became the perfect pupil too, even sometimes lighting candles and bundling himself up in animal fur and spending whole nights at the bottom of the crevasse. At first he began carving wood just so to keep his fingers warm and his mind alert, but gradually he felt as if Charlie was working through his hands and he no longer needed to watch what he was doing.
He didn’t understand right away what Maynard was supposed to teach him. He listened patiently to the man’s stories about his life and adventures, up to the time when he fell into his icy tomb.
Horn listened and carved. Asked questions when appropriate. And all along, his hands kept busy without him having to look away from Maynard’s eyes.
The first set of carvings scared him to death. They were the size of chess pieces, and captured in the soft pine were the grotesque caricatures of Wrath Butte residents. It wasn’t this aspect that upset Horn, for he’d seen such things in the newspapers. What got to him were their expressions of terror, as if he were seeing their images just before they died violent deaths.
What am I doing?
Hands trembling, Horn set each figurine on the ground and smashed it to pieces with his hammer before turning and striking the ice in front of Maynard’s grinning face.
“I will not be party to evil,” he’d shouted. “I might have good reason not to believe in a god, but don’t you ever tempt me to accept this as a substitute. I do not wish to burn in hell…”
Horn’s words fell on deaf ears, for before he realized what he was doing, he picked up the knife where he’d dropped it and pushed it up tight against his own throat and held it there until his arms ached. And he didn’t move again until the will to resist Maynard’s power faded from his mind…
Horn never brought up the subject again, and when winter came on he returned home full time to be with his family. He worked on his crafts in the cellar, turning out beautiful objects of wonder day after day, knowing all along they were not what they appeared, but actually seeds of destruction in a pretty disguise.
Although Horn didn’t want to admit to himself that he was preparing his revenge upon Wrath Butte, he knew deep down that it was exactly what he was doing. He felt an unusual power growing inside him, and his hunger for more caused him to return to the glacier before winter was over.
He’d taken Maynard’s offer to lend him one of his servants. It took several days to chip the block containing the shadow from the ice and more to haul it in a wagon back to his home. With Maynard’s instructions he’d thaw it and learn to control it for his own use. Never again would he or his family have to live in fear, Maynard promised. Not again for as long as Horn lived…
Horn hadn’t expected the vigilantes to come and hang him from the giant cottonwood so soon. But he’d had a feeling trouble was brewing, and he’d sent his wife and children away with plenty of gold coin so they could join the next wagon party headed south. He’d instructed them that if he didn’t find them in three days, they must assume the worst and proceed to San Francisco where his wife had a sister.
No one knew that Horn’s younger son would steal a horse and ride it back to the farmhouse to warn his father of the posse he’d seen watering horses down at Trout Lake earlier in the day. Once back to the farm, he helped his father gather wood for the stove so they could melt the block of ice, but the process was taking too long. Then they heard the sound of hoofs beating around the house and breaking glass. Men began shouting at Horn to come out or they would burn his house down.
Before he ordered his son to leave he remembered to give him the bundle of slender wooden boxes with the calf skin maps to Maynard’s body. He told his son to take them with him and head out through the tunnel in the secret basement and once he caught up with the wagon train he was to give the boxes to his older brother.
The men were pounding on the front door of the house.
“Run,” he said to the boy crying at the bottom of the ladder. “They’re going to come looking for you after they’ve finished with me.”
But after Horn closed the trap door behind his son, the boy went back to the block of ice to see if it had melted some more…
CHAPTER 35
“When we get back to town, I’ll call someone to go out and pick up your truck,” Will said.
The front of Will’s El Camino was tight, especially with Nugget squeezed between them, panting and fogging up the windshield. Driving as fast as he was, Robert wondered why Will wasn’t worried about attracting cops.
One day his luck has to come to an end. What if a cop decides to pull us over and wants to see what we’ve got stashed in the back? What then?
“Can you slow down?” Robert asked.
Will glanced over and nodded, but his foot never let up on the gas. Robert shut his eyes.
Thick rain clouds spilled on them as they moved down a twisted road toward town. Robert was thirsty, and as he sat with his arm wrapped around Nugget, he fought off the ungodly pain stabbing at his hip. Will hadn’t failed to notice. He reached under the seat for a half pint of tequila and shoved it into Robert’s hand.
“Do me a favor and take a hit or two. I can’t stand seeing you this way.”