Page 21 of Working for the Mountain Man

She crouches and gets it without my asking twice.

"There's a drain marker over here," she says, stepping carefully toward the edge of the shoulder. "Partially buried. Is that in the original repair log?"

I walk over.

She’s right, the original survey had a secondary drain marker that we logged in October but is not in the photo file.

"Good catch," I say.

We’re packing up when the wind changes. It’s just suddenly coming from a different direction, harder, and the snow that has been falling steadily starts moving sideways instead of down. I check the sky and then check the road behind us.

"We need to go," I say.

She doesn’t argue, which I’m grateful for. She closes the file folder and tucks it under her jacket. We get to the truck fast. I get it turned around on the narrow road, which takes longer than I want with the shoulder soft on both sides, and we start back down. The visibility has dropped by half in twenty minutes, the trees are loud with the wind, and the radio is cutting in and out.

Then I see it, a tree, not small, across the road in front of us. It must have come down while we were at the site, too much ice weight on the upper branches, the whole thing down sideways across both lanes.

I stop the truck and get out. I walk to the tree. It’s not a small-branch situation, it’s a full trunk, three feet through, sitting on both shoulders and going nowhere without a chainsaw and a crew.

I radio down, even though the signal’s bad, I manage to get enough signal to get through.

I walk back to the truck. Elsie’s watching me through the windscreen, and I can see from her face that she understands what’s happened.

"We're not going back," she says when I get in.

"Not tonight."

She is quiet for a second. "What do we do?"

"There is an emergency maintenance cabin. About half a mile back toward the site. Road & Ridge keeps it stocked for situations like this."

She looks at the road ahead, which is getting worse by the minute. "Of course there's a creepy storm cabin," she says. "Why wouldn't there be a storm cabin?"

"It's not creepy," I say.

"That is exactly what someone says about the creepy cabin."

My lips twitch at her words. "It has a stove and blankets and emergency supplies. It’s practical."

"Sure." She pulls her jacket tighter. "Lead the way."

We make it to the cabin in the truck, barely. The access track is unmarked and I only know about it because I’ve used it twice in fifteen years, but it’s there. The cabin is there at the end of it, a squat stone and timber structure that has been sitting at the edge of this ridge since before I started on the crew.

I get us inside. There’s one room, with a low ceiling, an old iron stove, a woodbox beside it with dry timber, there’s a narrow cot along one wall, with a folded blanket on top of it, along with shelves with emergency rations, a first-aid kit, stored water, a hand-crank radio, and a toolbox.

I get the stove going first, the wind hits the door behind us. Thankfully, the fire takes, slow at first, but then it takes off and I know that as long as I keep it feed, it’ll last all night.

I turn around and see Elsie standing in the middle of the room, looking around the space of the cabin.

"Well," she says, voice a half step too bright. "This seems like a terrible idea."

She’s right, because outside the storm is getting worse and inside there’s not much space, I can reach her within two steps.

I’m in tight quarters with Elsie for the night and I have a feeling that tonight could change everything.

Chapter 7

Elsie