The poets would have gotten it right if they had called that long night a chimney. The thick night plastered the walls with soot, and ash heaps of snow drowned the grass before it could learn to swim. The world was icing over – it would not be long before the land became a marble monument to how strong life could be, with no one around to enjoy it.
But there’s no night without a day to stretch it across. Stretch the night too thin and tears start to run through the fabric like shooting stars. It was how every sunrise began, ever since the world learned to pirouette. And, given how shattering the night had felt, that the sunrise was normal would have been a disappointment to some. For others, though, the routine behind it was a work of art that they had not appreciated before now.
As the claws of sunlight ripped through the soupy clouds and ran across the prairies, it bred with the Chinook wind that the Rockies shook off like a hot blanket. And just like a fire stoked at the feet of a chimney, the orange glaze lit up the snow and melted it down. The warmth was contagious, and the sooty skies caught fire. In just a matter of a few minutes, the acidic morning dissolved the night and all was finally right.
The train stood out in the melting snow like a rock in the surf. As the sunlight heated up the black exterior of the train, the snow that leeched off the steel melted even faster. The sun baked the train so much that some of the passengers cracked their windows open, to let a bit of cool air breathe in. And as the windows on the train yawned open, an excitement could be heard from inside. They were still miles away from the nearest town, and their supplies were running out. But the sun was out, and to them, that was all that mattered.
About a hundred feet from the train, there was a bulge in the snow. It was a strange lump – there was nothing remotely natural about it. What made it odd was that it was shifting around, like a tree rustling when there wasn’t a breeze. A few seconds passed, and then Ian erupted out of the snow. He gave a devolved shout as he shook off the snow like he was a wet dog. After spending the night buried in the snow, his eyes and ears were sensitive. His eyes were rinsed in light like water, and every inch of sound trumpeted in the chambers of his ears. In the distance, there was the sound of snow crunching that sounded like a note slammed down into a pipe organ.
Ian spun around like a wild man, startled by the noise. He felt a little bit ridiculous to see it was only a man standing outside of the stranded train, smoking a cigar. Ian only felt foolish for a few moments before realizing something beautiful: he had survived his night in the wild. He wanted to shout with joy, but when he inhaled deeply, he spontaneously started hacking. The night in the blizzard had burned his esophagus. He could feel every inch of his lungs as they expanded and contracted. But the pain was good. If he had felt nothing, then it would not have been long before he was nothing either.
He looked down at his fingers, afraid of what he might see. Although the chill had nipped at his fingers like a hungry dog, there was no sign of the black frostbite he had seen on a dead mountain climber before. Instead, his hands were as red as shame, and as he looked at them, he suddenly realized how much they itched. He clenched his hands into fists, wincing as the dry skin crackled and bled at the knuckles.
The man who was standing at the feet of the dining car was one of the porters. They were burning the last chunks of coal, and a carpet of frost was infecting the floor of the car. Desperate to stay warm, the porter had stolen a cigarette from one of the passengers, even though he had never smoked before in his life. He was about to drink the smoke when he saw something like a bug unfurl in the snow. The porter squinted, trying to focus on what he was seeing. The morning sun was skipping against the snow like a rock across a lake, and it had been playing magic tricks on his eyes. But even after he rubbed his eyes, the porter could still see the bug puffing up like a balloon, its features filling in until Ian was trudging up the hill towards him.
Shocked, the porter didn’t even realize that the cigarette had already fallen from his slack jaw. The cigarette was poking out of the snow, its flame snuffed out, as Ian walked past. He stopped to fish the cigarette out of the powder. “Good morning,” Ian said, chewing on the cigarette. “I didn’t miss breakfast, I hope?”
The porter stared at him in amazement for a few moments before finally sputtering, “Where – where did you come from?”
Ian looked thoughtful, as he tried to imagine what would be the most entertaining lie. Then, his face lit up. “I wanted to go out for a walk, but I guess you can say I got cold feet.”
Ian laughed because someone had to, and he stepped past the bewildered porter and into the dining car. The car, which was thick with the hungry just the day before, was running low on all food. As well, some of the porters had walked through the car just an hour before and stripped some of the wood paneling off the walls to use as firewood. Now, there were only a few people left behind in the car, there to escape the suffocation of the crowded cars.
One of the lonely souls was the porter Laurence, who was sitting on the bar counter, his legs dangling in the air. When he caught sight of who walked in, though, his boredom evaporated. Pushing himself off the counter, Laurence exclaimed, “Mr. Hunter! Where have you been? We’ve been worried!”
“I guess someone had to be. It certainly wasn’t going to be me,” Ian said numbly. As stiff as his words felt, his legs were rattling. Ian could just barely make it to one of the tables before collapsing into a chair. Laurence was standing nearby, still frozen in shock, before Ian said through clenched teeth, “Get me something hot.”
Snapping out of it, Laurence ran behind the counter to fetch what he could. As the porter did so, Ian’s carefully constructed persona started to break apart. His arrogance collapsed into a chattering jaw, and his wit became slurred. Ian was on the verge of crying when Laurence called out, “I’m sorry, Mr. Hunter, but we don’t have any more coal to boil tea.”
Staring blankly ahead, Ian’s words tumbled out of his mouth. “What about…what food you have?”
“What food? Just potatoes by this point,” Laurence said, feeling helpless.
Ian thought for a moment. “Potato, whiskey, tin can.”
“What?”
“Just do it!” Ian snapped.
As Laurence rushed the ingredients to Ian, the handful of sleepy people in the car were beginning to wake up, watching the scene with curiosity. Ian was ignoring the audience festering around him. Instead, he dropped the potato into the tin can with his shaky hands and motioned for Laurence to pour the whiskey into the can. Laurence hesitated, knowing that the company wouldn’t be fond of him donating the high-proof bourbon. But then he rationalized it away by thinking that they were all going to die someday, anyway. And so he poured the bourbon to the top of the can.
“Light it up,” Ian said quietly, struggling to keep some control over his voice.
By this step in the recipe, Laurence was no longer questioning Ian’s logic. He quickly struck a match and tossed the splinter into the can. The spark drowned in the liquor and immediately the amber murk exploded into a little sun. The others recoiled from the sudden flash, but Ian remained still. As the fire settled and the tin can began to glow a dull red, Laurence asked, “That’s not going to scorch the table, is it?”
Ian shrugged. With a weak finger, he gestured around at the room stripped of paneling to keep the fires burning a little longer. “Probably – but is now the time to start caring?”
Ian went back to warming his freezing fingers over the fire. Laurence sat down across from Ian at the table and asked, “Why the potato? Does it help with keeping the fire going?”
Ian smiled a little. “It gives me something to eat when the fire’s out. I like potatoes.” He twirled his hands slowly over the flames. “Did I miss anything good while I was gone?”
“That rancher’s wife got arrested. I guess the marshals figured that one rotten soul was as good as another. I missed the show, but one of my friends told me
that she put on a good cry.”
“I take it the cry wasn’t good enough.”
Laurence shook his head. “The rancher’s bodyguard was talking with one of the marshals. My guess is that he spilled his guts.”
“That tends to happen when someone gets punched in the gut,” Ian said, still remembering the fist he dug into Price’s side. That was likely the best punch he would ever throw. He idly wondered what larger role the wife had to play in the conspiracy. But the more he wondered, the more he realized just how pointless it all was now. “A lot of good it did, though. We’re all going to be dead within the day, as stiff as planks.”
Laurence paused. “Well, it’ll save money on coffins, I guess.”
Ian snorted. “I guess.”
By this time, enough of the whiskey had burned away to reveal the potato, its skin charred. Ian looked down at it curiously as he asked distantly, “And my friends?”
“They’re fine. Your lady friend wouldn’t want me to tell you this, but when I was walking through the car last night, I saw her staring out the window.” Laurence smirked. “There’s something there. You only came back because you knew there was someone waiting for you.”
“No. I came back because I had a job to do.” There was still the remaining hit man onboard the train, sent to kill the woman from Ian’s past. He was still obligated to her, although now she was little more than the memory that kept him warm the night before, and Nellie was very real and standing behind him.
He felt her presence and turned slowly in his chair. Indeed, Nellie was standing behind him, her arms crossed, her eyes red. Nellie made it obvious that she had never felt so vicious before. She said through a clamped jaw, “Why…?”
She had so many questions she wanted to ask him: why he jumped out the window to chase the rancher through the blizzard, what happened to the rancher, how did Ian survive the night in the snow. She had so many questions, and she wasn’t going to get a single answer.
Just then, there was a distant howl. For a moment, everyone forgot to breathe, as they imagined wolves churning in the snow around the train like sharks. But that was only for a moment, as they realized that their salvation was chugging towards them. A few hundred feet further down the tracks, there was a train coming from Cheyenne. The men who had left the train during the blizzard had done the impossible and found help
Ian flashed the best smile he could to Nellie, and he held up his hands like a magician. “Your old train was broken, so I bought you a new one.”
Nellie slapped him.