Joanna reined her horse hard, stopping them just at the front of a weather-worn building bearing a sign that might have at one point born the word INN but was now no more than a wood panel with flecks of paint clinging to it, flapping in the wind. It didn’t look very inviting.

  The snow was coming down in earnest now, lowering visibility to a dangerous degree. Jo could barely make out her companion six paces back. She looked in his direction anyways, and sighed. There was no hitching post here; they had grown more and more rare since they’d entered the wastes.

  Back at Far Point, where they were supposed to be, horses were still the main mode of transport. Out here, though, oxen and even the occasional motorized vehicle seemed to be what people relied on. Probably due to the weather. But it was just another thing about the wastes that made Jo feel uneasy.

  Nate brought his mount to a stop beside her, squinting up through the snow. He wore a thick scarf wrapped around his neck, and the hood of a fur-lined coat pulled over his brown hair. A gust of wind— mild yet, but seeming to hint at the coming wrath of the blizzard— forced his face down. Both of them squeezed their eyes closed against the bitter cold of the breeze.

  When it passed, Jo looked at her partner imploringly. “Please, Nate. Let’s just head back. We can still beat the storm if we keep up speed.”

  Nate frowned. His face was windburned, red tinting his normally tanned cheeks. He was wearing a familiar stubborn expression that drove Jo crazy. He was a good man, but when he dug his heels in he could be absolutely maddening. Judging by the set of his mouth, this was not a fight he was going to give up.

  “Jo,” he said, matching her pleading tone. “It’s a matter of principle. Not to mention money. The sheer cost of those supplies-”

  “I know,” Jo cut him off. Too annoyed to argue, she swung her leg out of the stirrup and slid to the ground. Tumble, her baldfaced paint, whickered at her. Snow had begun to collect in his mane. Jo brushed it off, murmuring reassurances into his ear. She slipped the reins over his head and led him closer to the building. Nate sighed behind her. He knew he would hear about this later.

  “I promise I’ll find you somewhere warm. And the thickest blanket I can,” Jo told her horse. Talking to him like a person was a bad habit, according to most everyone back home, but it soothed her. Especially when she didn’t feel like talking to Nate.

  Tumble just blew air through his nose and stood there serenely while she tied him to one of the building’s deck posts. The snow wasn’t thick enough yet to entirely muffle the sound of hooves, so she heard Nate come up behind her before she saw him. He had pulled his hood down and was looking at her cautiously.

  “Are you upset?”

  Jo, sighing, turned to face him. His green eyes, so lovely and gentle in that rugged face, softened her mood as they always did. She rubbed the back of her neck with one gloved hand. It was going to be a lifetime of this man getting his way, with that look.

  “I just don’t think this is a good idea. We aren’t supposed to be out this far without a guide. And we aren’t outfitted for a storm,” she told him, trying to regain some dignity by sounding stern. He didn’t buy it, of course, and visibly relaxed.

  “The wastes aren’t as bad as the tales, Jo.” He grinned at her as he dismounted. “Plus, you’ve got me! I’ll protect you.”

  She made a face at him. The big tough gunslinger act would have been pathetic had he not been so damned earnest. He laughed, more at himself than at her face, and she couldn’t help grinning along with him.

  He made quick work of tying his horse, a huge, borrowed Shire named Sentinel, and slung his arm around her shoulders as they entered the building. Jo nervously checked her hip for her knife, then the stock of her sidearm. Nate had only his hunting rifle, slung over his back. He was confident none of this would come to a firefight, Jo thought, because of course he was.

  “Can I help you?” A woman asked them before their eyes even had a chance to adjust. She didn’t look like an innkeeper or a barmaid. She was dressed in snow gear tip to toe, with a long coat and snow goggles pulled up onto her blonde head.

  “Hello, Ma’am,” Nate said politely. “We’ve been blown off course, I’m afraid, and when we stopped a little farther down the road for directions it seems somebody may have accidentally confused our cart with their own.”

  The woman raised an eyebrow. “You were robbed?”

  Nate held up his hands and shook his head. “I’m not saying that. We don’t really know what happened. I just know that last we saw of our cart it was headed towards this town.”

  “What was in it?” She asked. She didn’t sound concerned for them at all. Jo clocked the shift in tone from polite to greedy and took an automatic step back, her hand itching for a weapon.

  “Supplies,” Nate answered truthfully. “But rather expensive amounts of supplies. And our people at Far Point are really counting on us to bring all of the supplies that they ordered. Not just some of it.” He looked at her plainly, clearly unworried. The woman peered at both of them. It seemed like an assessment.

  “Well, I can ask my boss if he’s seen it,” she said after a moment. Nate smiled at her warmly.

  “That would be excellent.”

  “Wait here,” she ordered. Jo watched her disappear into another room. Though the sign had indicated this was an inn, the interior didn’t much look it. If anything it looked like a general store near to going out of business. There were a couple tables, sure, but no counter to speak of, and the whole back of the room had shelving that was nearly empty. What few items there were for sale looked dingy and used.

  In one corner, a tiny wood stove and a hanging rack of pots and pans stood near the entry to what might have been a small kitchen. Despite the blistering cold outside, the stove had managed to heat this place to an uncomfortable temperature. Jo fought the urge to pull off her scarf to relieve the itchy prickling of sweat breaking out along her collar.

  “I promise, Jo,” Nate said quietly. He could probably read the nervousness on her face like a book. “After this we check the outfitters across the road, and if nobody there knows anything either then I promise we’ll head right back to camp.”

  Jo nodded. A surly looking man with a limp entered the room from another door, eyeing them warily. He poured something from the kettle on the stove and limped back the way he came. Two revolvers and a pickaxe hung at his belt, which he wore over bare underclothes.

  “Frontiersman, do you think?” Nate whispered. Jo only shrugged. The people out here were notoriously tough, a trait rivaled only by their reputation for eccentricities. They had seen it firsthand over the past couple days of travel.

  A sudden gust of wind rattled the windows, startling them both. Then there was an odd snapping sound and a louder smack of impact. Jo whirled towards the noise. An arrow’s shaft stuck out of Nate’s shoulder. He stared at it in confused dismay.

  Jo, reacting faster because she had been expecting something to happen, found the source of the shot crouched on the top of a small stairwell in the corner. She drew and fired off three rounds. The bowman fell forward, dead.

  “Nate let’s go!” She shouted, grabbing Nate’s elbow and running for the door. She threw it open, squinting through the onslaught of freezing wind to discover herself staring down the barrel of a gun. Another man had been waiting on the threshold. She risked a glance back and saw that two more had set themselves up on the stairs, armed with rifles instead of bows. They were surrounded.

  “Put down the gun, girlie,” One of the men on the stairs ordered. The man in the doorway cocked his own six-shooter for emphasis. Seeing no way out, Jo gingerly placed her pistol on the ground and stood, arms raised. Nate’s face shone with pain but he still tried to bargain.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Alright, alright gentlemen. You can keep the cart, it’s alright. I didn’t realize how… How important it was to you.” He raised the arm that didn’t have an arrow sticking out of it. “Just take it easy and let us go.”

  All three men closed in, pushing them back towards the tables. The wind slammed the door shut with such force that it bounced open again, letting in a swirl of snow. One of the men behind them laughed.

  “We might take you up on that, to save the energy,” he drawled. “But your woman here is so pretty… I think we could put her to use instead.”

  Nate’s normally friendly face darkened. He turned to face the man who had spoken and, as if there wasn’t an arrow protruding from him, he lunged, kicking the rifle out of one pair of arms before the other could react. Jo saw the opening and rushed the man in the doorway. Her shoulder drove him back a few steps and before he could react she had pulled her knife and stuck it hard into his crotch. He howled in pain, but didn’t drop his gun.

  No matter. Nate got one shot off before the third man had him at gunpoint once more, and that single shot hit its target. Jo looked back as the man she had stabbed clutched his bleeding, broken, and – most importantly – gunless hand.

  Nate was now in a chokehold, with a gun aimed at his heart. Jo cried out, starting for him, but he shook his head fervently. She hesitated. Their eyes met in a wordless exchange. Then wretched, helpless understanding passed between them, and Jo bolted from the building without looking back.

  The wind was fierce now, biting into her bare skin as soon as she broke cover. She blindly fumbled at Tumble’s reins but the blowing snow made it impossible to see the knot. There was a scream from inside the building, and two more shots fired.

  “Fuck this,” Jo mumbled. She unclipped the reins from the bridle and leapt awkwardly onto her horse, who needed no spurring to sense her urgency. He wheeled around and took off at a gallop before she even had her seat. Everything was a blur of white that stung at her nose, her eyes, her skin.

  She had never seen a storm like this. The sound of it was like a freight train roaring. Once in the saddle she wrapped her hands in Tumble’s mane and held on, praying he could see better than she could. The land was all white now, and trees were few in the wastes. She could have steered, but she had no idea which direction was which in this weather. All they could do was try to put distance between themselves and that Inn.

  Eventually, Tumble slowed to a lope that could be more easily maintained over distance. Jo buried her wind-burned face into his neck and whispered encouragement and thanks. He radiated heat as horses always seemed to do, and it felt good on her frozen nose.

  All they could do was run.

  The cold put Jo in a sort of stupor after a while, and she found that she felt intensely drowsy. Curled in against Tumble’s warmth, with that ceaselessly howling wind and white in every direction, she fought sleep.

  Eventually, she became aware that Tumble had slowed to a trot, and she had nearly fallen asleep. She was slipping to the right. The horse felt his rider’s shift in weight and grunted his distress. It snapped her back awake.

  “Shit, shit!” She exclaimed through numb lips. Tumble’s white face was turned slightly to look back at her. “I’m okay, I’m awake.” He whinnied and looked ahead again.

  A memory from the beginning of their journey, when they were still riding in familiar landscape, surfaced in Jo’s exhausted brain. It was something like a hallucination, perhaps. Or maybe she had fallen asleep again.

  “I’ve seen snow before, Nate,” Jo chided, rolling her eyes. Nate laughed. He was leaning forward in his saddle, reins forgotten on his mare Cricket’s neck, showing off a bit by steering with his legs.

  “I know you have, Joanna.” He laid the sarcasm on thick.

  “Ugh,” Jo said. “If we’re going to get married you have got to stop calling me that.”

  Nate lit up like she had known he would. He straightened up. “I still get a little thrill every time you mention it. I can’t wait. How about, instead, I call you fiancee?”

  Jo wrinkled her nose. “Nah, that’s even worse.” She glanced down at the ring on her finger, feeling her own thrill despite the feigned nonchalance.

  “Ha! Alright. Fine, Jo, babe… Anyways, this isn’t like the soft mountain snow when we run the passes in winter. This is harsh, unforgiving. It’ll freeze you to death.”

  “I reckon any sort of snow will do that.”

  “Maybe so, but it happens fast in the wastes. Hypothermia can creep up on you.”

  “I think I’d notice if I was freezing to death.”

  “You’d think so, but this type of cold does it quick. And you get confused before you feel anything else. The confusion makes it harder to recognize what’s going on. Suddenly you’re dizzy, a little nauseated perhaps. Then tired. You just want to fall asleep. You’re confused as to what’s even going on, so you maybe think to take a little nap.”

  “A nap in the snow?” Jo guessed.

  “A nap you never wake up from,” he countered, serious now. “Wake up, Jo.”

  WAKE UP!

  His shout dissolved into the sound of Tumble screaming in distress. Jo felt her reaction happen at half speed. It was like trying to wade through sand to move at all. They had hit a snowbank at speed, and the horse was going down. Tucking her chin and using every bit of strength she had, Jo rolled as she hit the ground.

  Tumble couldn’t even try to break his fall. He fell hard, his head slamming against the ground with such force that Jo found herself suddenly thankful for the snow. His legs pawed at the air for balance, hooves flashing. She crouched where she landed, feeling the tug of sleep again. It would be so comfortable to just close her eyes here, and nap for a second. Just while she waited for Tumble to get up.

  She forced her eyes open, fear struggling to ooze its way along her nervous system. There was an unnerving gap between thought and action that grew wider with each second. Her heart should have been pounding, her mind sharp with adrenaline; instead it felt as if a sedative coursed through her. Each heartbeat was a slow labor.

  Even as her mind screamed with urgency, unconsciousness teased at the edges of her vision. It waited there for her, conjuring memories from childhood of stepping out of the bath and into the fluffy, warm embrace of an outstretched towel and her mother’s arms. No! This was what Nate had been talking about. She couldn’t go to sleep.

  The wind picked up even more, as if angry at having been outsmarted.

  Tumble was still scrambling to get up, but the frozen ground offered no purchase. His eyes were wide and white rimmed. He snorted in fear, rocking to the side once more to get legs under but sliding back down. Jo crawled towards him on numb limbs.

  By the time she made her way to him, painfully slowly, he had stopped trying to stand. His flanks heaved and shined with sweat. His eyes rolled. She laid one hand on his nose and he steadied a bit, looking at her through the wind-whipped mess of his forelock. How long had they ridden? She looked around and realized, with sluggish surprise, that dusk had fallen.

  Guilt gripped her. She had been so out of it that she had no idea how long they’d ridden, or how far they’d come. She must have fallen asleep at some point, she knew, because an entire chunk of time had been lost. And she hadn’t even stopped to let Tumble rest. He had run himself out of strength.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Her eyes stung with tears, and stung again as those same tears froze on her lashes. She pulled off her glove with her teeth, gasping at the sight of the bruise-colored tips of her fingers. Frostbite. She refused to consider the implications just now.

  The frostbitten hand burned like fire as she stroked Tumble’s side. He stared at her with his wide blue eye, his trust complete even as he lay dying in the snow. “I’ll get you out of this,” she told him. He snorted at her, eyes calmer now.

  Jo unlatched his bridle and slipped the bit from his mouth. That icy cold metal couldn’t be helping things. He huffed his thanks. Thinking as quickly as her lethargy would allow, she put her glove back on and started digging in the snow with slow, clumsy motions. The hypothermia had nearly ruined her dexterity.

  The snowbank itself sheltered Tumble’s head for the most part, but she awkwardly scooped at it with numb hands to build it up in a half-circle. That alone winded her, and she had to sit in the snow to catch her breath for a few minutes before going back to her snowpile and packing it down into a wind-breaking wall. She then worked on the other side, til he was surrounded in a horse-shaped pit of packed snow.

  Jo’s tears flowed faster now. She stood at last, trying desperately not to think of this snowy cocoon as Tumble’s tomb. He had closed his eyes, but his breathing was steady. The wind was quiet when Jo was crouched behind the shelter of the banks she had made, which gave her hope.

  Then, the hardest part of all. The wind whipped at her hair, punishing every inch of exposed skin. It was like razors. The desire for sleep was nearly overwhelming but she gathered an armful of fresh snow and dropped it onto Tumble’s legs. Her eyes closed again and again, and she continued to force them back open.

  Step by step, scoop by scoop, every grueling movement costing energy she didn’t know she had, until all that was showing beneath the white was Tumble’s head. She had punched a couple holes in the side of her makeshift shelter, but with the rate the snow was falling he would suffocate soon anyways.

  Jo wasn’t even aware that night had fallen. Everything seemed bright and white. She knelt beside her beloved horse’s head and leaned down to kiss his nose. The warm, hay-scented breath that brushed her face felt weak. But at least he was still warm.

  A nauseating wave of dizziness nearly knocked her back down when she straightened. She was sweating despite the cold. Her nose had run, her snot frozen on her burned and numb skin, and she figured she was as good as done for. She might as well just curl up next to Tumble and fall asleep. Blissfully, wonderfully asleep.

  But then he would die, too. She took one last, lingering look at his head sticking out of the snow, memorizing it, and using it to steel her will. She took a purposeful step forward. Then another.

  And collapsed.

  She made an attempt to get up, but her hands slid from under her, pushing easily through the now elbow-deep fresh coat of snow. Beneath it was a layer of frozen gravel. It looked as if it had been shoveled and then covered with a fresh layer of snow.

  Half asleep already, she vaguely wondered if it was a road.