Ashes and Ice by Tracie Peterson Page A

you.
    Adrik dug in and worked along a line where the trail had once been. Someone said that the remaining two hundred people on the Scales had been making their way down the mountain. One man claimed to have been at the end of the line holding on to a rope that simply seemed to disappear as the snows assaulted them from every side.
    Bodies, some battered beyond recognition, were lined up and transported down the trail to Sheep Camp, where a makeshift morgue was set up in a donated tent. An emergency committee was appointed for the task of identifying and tagging each body for burial or shipping.
    Adrik shook his head at the loss of life. They’d been warned, but greed had kept them fearlessly ensconced in the path of danger.
    “Here’s another one!” someone yelled.
    Adrik looked up to find the Englishman from the night before. He sighed. The man was dead. Shaking his head, he went back to work only to unbury another body.
    “I’ve got one, too,” he called out.
    People came to help him dig out the man who surprised them all by moving his lips and fluttering his eyes. When he opened them, he stared up at Adrik as if he were God himself.
    “He—he—lp me,” the man stammered. Blood streamed from his face, which was crusted from the ice and snow in his beard and mustache.
    “We’re doing the best we can for you, mister,” Adrik told him. “Look, just lie still. You’ll be taken to Sheep Camp where there’s a doctor.” Even saying it, however, Adrik knew the man would never make it. The left side of his face had been crushed.
    The man closed his eyes, then opened them again. Adrik could see he was laboring to breathe—to live. With a power that seemed beyond the man, Adrik watched him struggle to reach his coat pocket. Realizing the man would not be settled, Adrik moved his hand aside and reached into the pocket with his own gloved hand. He pulled out the contents: a pouch of tobacco, a pipe, and a folded piece of paper.
    “Letter,” the man mumbled. “Children.”
    Adrik looked at the possessions, not understanding. “You have children at Sheep Camp?” he finally questioned.
    “No,” the man replied.
    The workers were ready to move the man to a plank for transport down the trail. Adrik held his hand up. “Wait just a minute. He’s trying to tell me something.”
    “He needs attention,” one surly man replied.
    “You think I don’t know that?” Adrik snapped. Turning to the dying man, he said, “Look, friend, I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”
    The man looked up at Adrik with lifeless eyes. “Letter to children.” With that he closed his eyes and stopped breathing.
    “He’s gone,” the surly man announced. “Take him to the morgue.”
    Adrik looked at the dead man and then to the letter in his hand. Stuffing the pouch and pipe into his own pocket, Adrik opened the letter.
    1898, 2nd of April.
    Jacob and Leah Barringer, in care of Miss Karen Pierce, lately of Dyea .
    The very breath left his lungs, and Adrik found himself almost gasping for air. Was it possible? Was the dead man Bill Barringer? “Wait!” he called. “I might know who that fellow is.”
    The workers paused. “Friend of yours?”
    “Not exactly.” He stuffed the letter into his pocket. Taking a better look at the dead man, Adrik scratched his jaw. It could be Barringer. He’d only met him twice, though, and there had been so many other men just like him.
    “I’ll take him down.” Adrik could only pray the man wasn’t Barringer.
    He grabbed the end of the plank from the man who held it. “You can borrow my shovel. Name’s Adrik Ivankov. Nearly everybody in Sheep Camp knows me. You can leave my shovel at the Summit Meat Market. They know me real well.”
    The man said nothing. He seemed surprised by Adrik’s rapid instructions. Adrik motioned to the man on the other end of the plank. “Let’s go.” He couldn’t help but think that he would once again bear bad tidings to Karen Pierce. It wasn’t