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“Stop there,” Dante called. I can see the problem. Looks like she got caught in a depression caused by the root ball of a fallen tree which was hidden by the drifts.” He dug around, clearing the area as best he could amid the plumes of snow that sought, just as quickly, to cover it again.
“I can see where she’s broken some of the roots trying to pull herself free,” Jeri remarked, as Dante fished around in his backpack for his hunting knife.
“Hold her feet in case she comes around, while I’m doing this,” Dante instructed as he used the razor-sharp blade to clear away the debris. “There you go. She should be free now.”
With Lazarus hauling her backwards and Jeri maneuvering her legs while Dante stood by in case anything else needed to be chopped away, they finally managed to free the woman, who still showed no sign of coming around.
“What the hell do we do now?” Dante asked when they were done. “We can’t stay out here and wait for mountain rescue, and there’s no way a helicopter is going to fly in this weather. They wouldn’t find us, even if they did, in this visibility.”
“There’s no need to panic yet,” Lazarus replied. “We should be able to carry her down between the three of us.”
“It might be better to make some kind of sled to pull her on,” Jeri put in, but Lazarus shook his head.
“She’s losing too much heat. It will take too long to make and there’s nothing around here we can utilize. We need to get moving. I’ll take her first.
With that he hauled the woman into his arms, and they continued on their way.
Half an hour later, it was clear they weren’t making enough headway.
“This isn’t going to work.” Jeri spoke the words they were probably all thinking. “We need another plan.”
“Do you have one?” Lazarus asked as they fought against the building wind which had now reached gale force.
“Maybe we should pitch another tent and you could stay with her while I go for help, '' he replied.
“No!” Dante’s response was immediate and unequivocal. “Nobody is heading out alone in this weather. It’s too dangerous.”
“How about we pitch the tent and you two go for help while I stay with the girl?” Lazarus suggested. As fit as he was, his breathing was becoming labored as he struggled against the wind with the girl’s deadweight.
“Still no,” Dante repeated. “If anything happens to you, that just leaves you both compromised. We carry on together. There’s no other option.”
“Here, let me take her for a while,” Jeri said to Lazarus. Lazarus didn’t argue. They stopped to maneuver her between them, but before they started out again a beeping noise interrupted them.
“What the heck is that?” Lazarus asked as he adjusted his backpack.
Jeri didn’t hang around to find the answer but continued their slow descent. Lazarus followed him and Dante brought up the rear, patting at his jacket as he tried to discover the source of the incessant beeping.
Reaching in his pocket, he found the GPS he’d taken from the unconscious woman. He blinked, as he tried to focus on the device to switch it off, when the screen and a landmark she’d tagged caught his attention.
He ran clumsily through the drifts to catch up with the others. “Hey, I think I might have something,” he told them. A note of excitement tinged his voice.
“What is it?” Lazarus asked, frowning at the device in Dante’s hand but leaning across to see all the same.
“She must have been trying to get to shelter,” Dante replied. “She’s got a hunter’s cabin tagged on her GPS with an alarm set up to warn her if she veered off course. That’s what the noise was.”
“Do you think it really exists? How far away is it?” Jeri called back.
It’s only half a mile away. If the weather was clear we’d probably be able to see it,” Dante told them. “We should take a look. It could be exactly what we need.”
“What direction?”
“Southeast. I could go ahead and check it out if you like.”
“No.” It was Lazarus who rejected the plan this time. “You’re the one who insisted we all stay together. That hasn’t changed.”
Dante didn’t say anything, just moved ahead so he could lead the way.
Lazarus decided he probably spoke for all of them when he thought it was the longest half mile any of them had ever walked.
