by Rain Trueax
On his feet again, he ordered himself to keep walking. Hardly knowing what he was saying, he argued against the body that wanted to give up, to lie down and let the snow claim it. "No," he mumbled, "got to get to the ranch." He wouldn't die in the snow like a rabbit that wouldn't fight for its life. He could keep going. He had to keep going.
Looking around, he realized he had no idea where he was. Had he stayed on the road or lost his direction? If he went downhill, he'd come back to the main road but going up, he might climb right past the house. His world had become snow and darkness. He'd been a fool to try and make it to the ranch, and he suddenly knew there was every chance he'd die for that foolishness, but he couldn't turn around. He had to keep on. Up there somewhere was Helene, and his world had narrowed down to one thought--he had to get to her.
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Helene peered into the darkness. She thought about going outside to yell for Phillip but with the noise of the storm, he would never hear her unless he was right on top of the house. When Curly didn't call back, she was forced to accept the fact that Phillip hadn't turned back. Her only other hope was that he'd gone off the road somewhere down on the highway, and someone would come along to pick him up. That hope was faint. She knew he'd call--if he could.
Hobo paced beside her. He looked nervously at the door, then moved to stand in front of it. He looked back at her expectantly.
"I can't believe you want out, boy. It's too cold out there for even you." She hadn't expected the shepherd to need another trip outside before morning. When she heard him whine, she was astonished. Hobo never deigned to whine. Bark occasionally but never whine.
"All right," she said, reluctantly opening the door, "but don't say I didn't warn you."
Hobo disappeared almost instantly into the night and Helene began to worry he might go too far and become lost himself.
Tears filled her eyes as she thought of Phillip. Where was he? God, what she'd give to have the phone ring and hear his voice. She began praying, hardly knowing what she said, only filled with the desperate fear that Phillip was out there somewhere in that nightmare of white.
Unsure of whether he could keep putting one foot in front of the other, if he could fight his way through another snowdrift; Phillip lost all ability to think beyond the necessity to keep moving, to keep climbing. His breath came with more and more difficulty, his body hurt where it wasn't numb from cold. If only the wind would stop, if only he could actually get his bearings to know he hadn't climbed past the house, that he wasn't lost on the mountain. He'd fallen more times than he could or wanted to remember. Each time he picked himself up and somehow made himself keep moving. How much longer could he keep doing that?
Falling again, he lay in the soft snow, gathering up his strength. In a daze, completely disoriented by the swirling snow, he heard a sound and looked up to see the dog above him. It took a moment for him to realize it was Hobo. The shepherd whined, grabbing at his coat with his teeth.
"Okay," he managed to mumble, shoving himself to his feet and stumbling ahead. Suddenly the dog was in front of him, blocking his way. It took Phillip's dulled wits a moment to realize he was telling him something. Wrong way, he guessed and shifted his direction to the dog's satisfaction.
The journey was a nightmare as man and beast kept moving ahead, struggling through the drifts, but now Phillip had some hope that he might actually survive, that Hobo knew where he was going when Phillip no longer had any idea. Whenever Phillip veered from the correct path, the dog blocked his way or whined to indicate his error until he was again pointed the right way. 'If only he could carry me,' Phillip thought with what small part of his mind was still capable of thinking. He was uncertain how much longer he could keep his body moving.
There was no reality in his world except cold--stinging cold and the agony of muscles pushed past their limit of endurance. If there had ever been another life, he couldn't remember it. All he knew was the misery of constantly putting one foot in front of the other, pushing his way through snow and knowing he couldn't keep doing it forever.
By the time they got to the first of the ranch buildings, Phillip was so dazed he barely understood that the faint light he saw ahead was home, that it represented safety. Almost before he realized it, he was stumbling against the porch, falling again and unsure if this time, so close to warmth, he could rise. He heard Hobo bark but couldn't even lift his head to respond.
The door opened; light streamed out. Numbly he knew Helene was at his side, but her words were only sounds, sounds he didn't understand. She wanted something from him, and he had to obey her. He struggled to crawl, to help as she tried to lift and pull him across the porch.
Only when he was inside, when he felt her hands pulling the muffler away from his face and felt warmth assault his skin, did he faint.
"Phillip, oh no, please..." Helene felt desperately for a pulse. When she found it, she tried to think of everything she had read about hypothermia, about frostbite, about all the things she had never expected she would have to know.
She threw several towels, a quilt and one of the sleeping bags over a chair directly in front of the woodstove. She had to restore heat to Phillip's nearly frozen body.
The first thing was to get him out of frozen and wet clothing. "Please don't die," she begged as she tore open the buttons of his snow-laden coat. He was heavier than she expected, but she managed to lift his shoulders and pull the garment from him. Dragging him closer to the heat from the woodstove, she peeled frozen gloves from his hands. Frostbite? What would his hands look like if they'd been frostbitten? She damned herself for her ignorance and prayed she wasn't making a mistake in what she was doing to tend him.
Hobo, warming his own body with the wood stove, leaned over Phillip with almost human concern as Helene pulled off boots and wet socks and set about to strip him of the wet clothing that was keeping his skin from receiving heat from the fire.
As she was pulling off his pants, Phillip's eyes opened. He stared at the ceiling, his eyes glazed. "Phillip," she said, bending low over him, "can you hear me?" She reached out and tenderly touched his cheek. So cold. He was so very cold.
He blinked and focused on her. "I..." he managed to say before his teeth began to chatter with such force he couldn't force out more words.
"You're safe," she said, covering his face with kisses and praying she was right. "You're here with me, and you're going to be all right."
Efficiently, not letting herself think whose body she was working over, she finished removing the wet garments, dragged him onto the heated sleeping bag in front of the fire, threw two warm towels over him, and began rubbing his cold body. She replaced the heated towels as soon as they cooled. She had to create as much friction and heat as possible.
She talked constantly, unsure of how much he understood or even what she was saying. If only she hadn't been such a fool in coming out here, almost daring him to prove himself to her and where had it gotten either of them? Had he left the safety of town, fought his way through the snow, through the blizzard to prove to her at last that he was a man? As if she had any more doubts.
Mumbling to herself and him, she promised she would go back to Massachusetts with him, play hostess wherever he asked, live in whatever home he provided, if only he would be all right. Taking a quilt she'd had hung on a chair by the stove, Helene wrapped it around his naked body. Seemingly, he shivered more violently as his body warmed.
She got to her feet and hurriedly found two dishpans, filled each part way with cold water from a bucket, then taking heated water from the kettle on the cookstove, warmed the water to slightly above lukewarm and carried the dishpans back to set on the table.
Leaning over, she tried to lever him up. His muscular frame for all his leanness was impossibly heavy. "Can you sit up?" she asked. Groaning, he struggled to do as she asked. She wasn't at all certain he was really aware of where he was, but at least he was conscious enough to obey her commands and between them they managed to get him si
tting in the chair where she wrapped the quilt back around his nude body. Taking his right hand, she put it into the water. Steeling herself against his moan, she did the same thing with his other hand, and then put his feet into the basin on the floor.
"You have to get warm," she murmured, holding him against her, kissing his neck, rubbing his chest, making sure his hands and feet stayed in the water even though it was causing him pain as feeling returned to his limbs. Through it all, she soothed him, crooning words of love, words his muddled mind probably couldn't understand.
More aware of his surroundings, Phillip turned his head to watch Helene as she added hotter water to the pans where his feet and hands soaked, sending shooting pains through them and up into his arms and legs. That hurt. He couldn't keep them in the water, but he did.
Helene brought a mug to him, holding it to his lips. Sipping hot coffee, liberally laced with whiskey, he felt life returning to him. He'd made it back to her, and he never wanted to leave the comfort of those sweet arms again.
He struggled again to make his mouth work to get out the words he'd been thinking of saying since he'd started his hellish walk in the snow, the words he'd been afraid he'd never have the chance to say to her. "I... love you."
She knelt at his feet, her hands never stopping their work of rubbing and warming his flesh. When she looked up into his eyes, her own were filled with tears. "I love you too. So much. I've been so scared, Phillip. So afraid I'd lose you and you'd have never know how much I love you."
He closed his eyes against the mixture of pain and bliss that threatened to make him incoherent again. If he could just stop shaking long enough to take her into his arms, but it seemed that wasn't possible yet. "Kiss me," he managed to mutter.
Her smile was sweetness itself as she reached up and lightly touched his chattering lips with her own, her tongue pushing his lips apart as she delved into his mouth, bringing her warmth into him. He sighed against the pleasure flowing from her touch.
She opened her flannel shirt and putting her arms around him, brought her breasts against his bare chest, searing him with a new kind of heat.
"No bra," he managed.
"You are warming up," she said with a half laugh, a mixture of relief and love.
"Mmmm." He felt life returning to him, a life he'd given up over and over on the walk up the hill. "Hobo saved my life," he managed.
"He wanted to go out. At first I didn't realize why. Then when he didn't come back right away, I thought maybe he'd somehow sensed or heard you were out there. I didn't know if he'd find you--" She caught a sob in her throat. "I just prayed he'd bring you back to me."
Phillip's breath came out in a long shudder. "I thought... I was going to die, but I couldn't give up. It kept me going... thinking of you up here." He stopped, gritting his teeth against the tremors that seemed to have control of his body, "But without him... it wouldn't have been enough. I never had seen a storm like this. I couldn't see where I was. I was every bit the dude you thought I was."
"No," she said, sobbing against his bare chest, her hot tears running down his belly, "I was so wrong about what I thought a man was. I was just afraid because of my parents' marriage, and I didn't know the man you were. The smartest thing I ever did was to say I’d marry you. I just wish I’d realized it sooner."
His arms reached out and tentatively drew her against him, the strength only gradually returning to his muscles after the abuse he'd subjected them to. "We were both wrong back then but we can make it right."
She looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears. "I want that."
He kissed her hair as he held her against his chest. He lifted her chin so that her watery eyes were looking into his. "If I had died out there, it would've been better than living the way I had been... not knowing or believing in love at all. Maybe it was stupid to want to be with you so much that I didn't consider the consequences, had no idea what a storm like this could be, but if it was stupid, I'd rather live that way than any other."
"God," she gasped, "don't tell me you plan to do this again."
He gave a half laugh. "No, but..." he looked deeply into her eyes, his own intense in their passion, "I'd go through anything to have you be my wife."
She wiped her eyes. "You don't have to go through anything for that," she said, reaching up to stroke his cheek. "I am your wife, and it's all I want to be." She left him long enough to pour a cup of coffee, add another dollop of whiskey to it and bring it back to him.
She held it to his lips and he took a sip, nearly choking. "What is this?" he asked when he could.
"Making coffee on the cookstove is new to me," she said, putting the cup back to his lips.
"Geesus, I guess so," he groaned, drinking a little more before he pushed it away. "it does add warmth," he said with a faint smile.
"That’s the idea."
He looked toward the sleeping bags piled on the floor. "You think that bag's big enough for two? Not that I think I could manage much more than holding you."
"One isn't, but there are several of them, and they zip together," she said. She stood and opened the other bag to let it warm up inside. "I think you ought to eat something before you sleep." She was still concerned for his depleted reserves. Was the crisis really over?
He shook his head. "I'm too tired. Just you, babe. I just want to hold you." Helene zipped the two bags together at the bottom, retrieved pillows and arranged their bed near the stove. She took Phillip's hands and feet from the water, dried them, then helped him to lie down in the bags.
"How do your hands feel?" she asked, kissing his fingertips to make her own diagnosis. They were still cold but not that frigid, frozen kind of cold as when he'd come in. She thought circulation was going through them.
"They hurt... in fact, I don't think there's a part of me that doesn't hurt, but it’s okay. Curly had given me his gloves. If he hadn’t, I might’ve lost fingers over this," he whispered, his eyes closing with exhaustion. “I got to admit… even for me, I cut it too fine this time.”
Before she could find her own rest, Helene called town to let Curly and her uncle know that Phillip had made it to the ranch.
"He's here and okay," she said when Curly pressed for more details. "We'll make sure everything gets done out here. You just take care of Uncle Amos."
Curly heaved a sigh. "Amos'll be doing a heap better when he finds out Phil made it home through the worst blizzard I ever seen. That man of yours is a dang fool, but that's the way with them young studs. They figure there ain't nothing they can't do." He chuckled. "Most of the time, they're right."
Before she crawled into the sleeping bags with Phillip, Helene loaded more wood into the stove and blew out the candles and kerosene lamps. By firelight, she could see where Phillip had curled his long frame into the sleeping bag. Smiling, tears again coming to her eyes at her gratitude he was with her, she stripped off her own clothing and burrowed down into the bag, putting her arms around him.
"Mmmm," he murmured, leaning back against her.
"Mmmm yourself," she whispered, nibbling on his ear. "Sleep now. I've got you."
She felt his muscles relax, the coldness of his body gradually disappearing as her own warmth wrapped itself around him. She felt Hobo lie down at her back. Outside, the wind was still blowing but maybe it was lessening. She hoped so because she didn't want to think Phillip would try to go back out into the bitter cold, that he would put his life at risk again.
Whatever he had to do, it wouldn't be alone. She wouldn't give him up to anything, not to the storm, not to an uncertain future. She wrapped her arms more tightly around him and was rewarded by a faint snore.
Chapter Twelve
In the morning, Helene woke and realized the other half of the sleeping bag was empty. She felt a burst of panic. Had last night been a dream? Had Phillip really made it through the storm to her? And then she saw him bent over and feeding a piece of wood into the stove. His powerful, naked body gleamed with the reflected light of t
he fire.
"What are you doing out of bed?" she demanded, trying to make her voice authoritative. She was suddenly remembering all the times recently where Phillip had been hurt and should have taken it easy but refused to do so. She wouldn't let that happen this time. He'd come too close to death for her to take any of it lightly.
He looked back at her, a crooked grin on his face. "And what would I be doing in bed?"
"Resting, damn it. Don't you know you could have died last night!" she snapped. Before she could say more, he had come back to the sleeping bag and was sliding in beside her.
"You're right," he said, nibbling on her the lobe of her ear. "I should rest." He kissed the long line of her neck.
"You aren't resting," she murmured against his temple. "You have to sleep a lot today, drink liquids and not do anything strenuous."
He laughed, his lips moving down to the top of her breast. "But don't I have to make sure that all the... uh apparatus is working the way it's supposed to. Maybe something got frozen and we don't know it!"
She narrowed her eyes and looked down at his naked body. The blatant arousal was impossible to ignore. "It looks to me as though everything is working just fine."
He took her nipple into his mouth. "But we can't know for sure without sufficient testing," he argued, persuasively accenting his words as his hands stroked down her side, making her forget why he should take it easy.
She tried to concentrate on her arguments, on the points she wanted to make, but all she could think about was how good his long, lean body felt next to hers, how much she loved the feel of his roughened hands on her flesh, and how grateful she was they had another chance. Her own hands began an exploration of his body. Thoughtfully, she said, "You have to lie back and take it easy."
He grinned, obeying her suggestion. "What now?" he asked as she leaned over him, her lips and hands telling him without words what came next.
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