The Great Escape - Closed

[Light Ice]

This thread is closed. An audience is welcome but posts here are not.

The winters here were cold and hard and lonely. Dan Everett was readying himself for his sixth. Six years had passed. Six. They’d counted one after another in grim profile and solitude without incident. They’d tallied off one after another in a grim line, notched on the overhead tie in his barn by the blade of his skinning knife. Those tallies would remain his only written record of his time here. The journals he’d so carefully kept he was set to burn, to purge, to let free amidst what he’d hoped was a cathartic burning.

It wasn’t that he denied the power of this place. There was no denying it. The Yukon’s vast expanse had claimed lives and fortunes, hopes and aspirations, and birthed much the same in accordance with its strange will. Some died for their own stupidity, some at the hands of the natives or a drunk in the small boom towns spotting up along the coastal roads. But most? Most died by the queer misfortune of nature, the rogue storm or chill, the hard break of an ankle or the unfortunate crossing of a Grizzly or Polar Bear. Most died by no fault of their own other than the insolence or desperation that a man needed to make his life here. The Yukon was a cold, hard, and lonely place.

It was also his home.

It wasn’t meant to be a new beginning so much as a cemetery for the past. It was a cold, hard, lonely place for a cold, hard, lonely man. When she’d left him Maribelle had said, “He’s much better than you were, he loves me better. He’s stronger.” She’d looked at him with her baby blue eyes, dressed in the soft pink lace and that French Cut corset and dress that Sam Worther had bought her.

Sam Worther was nude, his prick soft for the first time since he arrived at the Everett homestead. He’d been fucking Dan’s wife for three months now, taking her savagely in the way the good Christian rancher hadn’t even attempted. He took her in the ways of the French indulgent, savage and erotic ways that she’d never known. Her ignorance, her enthusiasm for each lesson had made her the very best lover he had known. And he’d waited for this moment, too. The moment the Good Christian Rancher, Dan Everett, realized he’d been made a cuckold.

Dan’d turned from them, his heart breaking. Men weren’t meant to know that kind of hurt, or so he decided. The Good Lord had given his only son so that sins could be forgiven and that faith, good faith, would bring solace. At that moment Dan had begged forgiveness for not loving his wife enough, not loving her properly. He begged forgiveness for not providing all she’d come to need, and worse for not seeing that she needed it. He waited for the sweet relief of forgiveness, for his God to come and fill him up so the ache went away.

He waited, his back to them, his hands on his dresser. And nothing happened.

The top drawer held his six guns. The Cavalry pistols he’d worn when he fought in the war, watched his brothers die in the war, killed in the war. They were Schofield’s, big guns, their ten inch barrels so black they were nearly blue. And he’d kept them loaded. His hands worked in a way he’d not felt them work in years. But he knew their cause, knew their course. God hadn’t come to him, there would be no relief or satisfaction unless he took it. And Dan Everett took it with both guns blazing until Sam Worther’s chest was full of holes the size of grapefruits and his wife splattered with her lover’s blood. She, screaming mad with grief, heaving and retching while he ran off.

He’d run, and run well. Wyoming was his country and he hid well there, cutting his way west to Washington. On the way he’d taken three Pacific Railroad payroll coaches. They’d had just shy of thirty-thousand dollars in between them and he’d been rich, rich enough to buy a stake in the great hard place he now called home. He’d let grief over what he’d become all but eat him alive and his lack of faith grow darker. And so, he sat now in his yard splitting the logs he’d cut two days prior. The axe’s hickory handle a familiar weight in his hands.

He’d grown lazy with shaving in those six years, dark whirls of stubble thick on his jawline. Dan wore his hat low, obscuring his green eyes from those in town on his rare ventures there. He’d lost what had been the softer shape of a comfortable, if not opulent lifestyle until his body was a rangy, rugged cut of what it’d been. He worked himself to the bone, his hands rougher than they’d been in Wyoming and his lungs sharp and strong. But he’d kept working, even now, beyond comfort in order to keep his memories at bay.

[TearsoftheWorld]

Suka did not yet have a family of her own, but she would do what she could for her companions. Traditionally the women would stay at home... but Suka proved more adept at hunting than even some of the males. That skill was somewhat of a double-edged sword, as she earned both respect and scorn from the men she traveled with. Suka was beautiful, even among her own people she was remarkably stunning with shoulder length brown hair and icy blue eyes. She had very fair skin, unblemished and exceptionally soft. Traveling out in the wild, under the light of the sun, Suka had developed a healthy tan, neither too light nor too dark. There had been suitors... ever since she had come of age there were men in the village that had desired her. Yet she waited. She had refused their advances time and time again... and perhaps that had helped earn her some of their scorn.

Regardless, the situation she found herself in was somewhat honorable, if only a little difficult. The winters of late had grown even more perilous, and only the most skilled of hunters actually managed to catch some semblance of a meal. Providing enough food for an entire village seemed almost laughable...

With her fur-lined hood drawn up over her head, Suka looked out as far as she could possibly see. The heavy snowfall made it difficult to track over long distances, and growing tired she began to fall behind. Up ahead she could make out the dark shapes of the men and their faithful dogs, a small team of which were carrying a sled laden with fallen prey. The hunting party paused only for a brief moment to allow her to catch up, but upon resuming she once again lagged behind.

Only one creature kept her company through the entire trip: a beautiful huskie with bright eyes, sharp ears and a healthy, dense coat of black and white. Powerful but sleek, he remained at her side even as the rest of the hunters moved on ahead, and he remained at her side when she was left very far behind.

Akiak.

Brave.

But the cold truth of it soon set in. Although together... they were alone.

"We will find shelter soon," Suka said reassuringly, and Akiak barked at her as if he understood completely the words she spoke. Finding a suitable place to hold up in proved to be a far more difficult task as the weather only worsened, and even with her heavy clothes she began to feel winters deadly bite. Suka knew the land fairly well... but she began fumbling, both in the physical sense and in memory. When the weather finally cleared, the landscape seemed familiar and foreign all at once.

They were lost. Even Akiak seemed confused as they wandered through thick groves of frost-covered trees and over icy dunes before coming to an opening.

A house.

It was a little strange that she had not come across these premises before... but... perhaps she had wandered a bit further off the path than she realized. But regardless, the house was there. And although its current occupant might not take too kindly to an Inuit stranger wandering around, she needed to rest. Moving past the side of a large, wooden structure, Suka and her huskie came face to face with the properties owner. He looked extremely rugged but tough, as if the land itself had shaped him into the man he was now.

[Light Ice]

Whump!

The axe split a thick pine log asunder, splintering smaller fragments from it and sending the halves toppling over. Dan worked hard, his hands warm with the hickory handle between them. The trance of work, sweet and forgiving, had helped him forget about the pile of journals left abandoned beside the splitting block. The yard still had green in it, the last signs of life before fall turned to winter and the snows came. They resided in the strange time between, the very cusp of autumn when all things living began to die. His yard was no exception and save for the few patches of grass that lived it was mostly brown, flat, and barren.

He never heard them approach, that would startle him later. Dan's senses weren't the very best, but he was hard to sneak up on. She, and the dog, seemed to appear from around the barn on a breeze. They stepped so light, so fluidly, that for a moment he caught himself appreciating the grace of it all. The moment faded quickly and his hands lowered the axe. They were beautiful.

There was something fresh in them, unthreatening. It was the only reason his hands didn't find the worn grips of his Schofields, didn't draw them forward to do their deadly work. The cold truth was that they were Indian. Inuit, they'd been called. Natives to the Yukon. And the danger was very real. He was almost certain there were more in the trees, hunters and warriors keen on setting upon him.

Dan looked her up and down, the intensity of his gaze keenly appraising the beauty's sleek form. He was surprised to see the bow she carried.

There was simply no chance they'd let this one far from the village. It was an impossibility. He had seen what they had considered beautiful before, seen men in the mining town miles away take them as wives. She shamed them, shamed them all. The soft features of her face were so distinctly refined, so flawlessly smooth, that his eyes kept drawing back to her. Dan Everett was staring. His only comfort was in the very real chance she was used to it, or expected it.

But why the bow, why was she out here so late? A raiding party wouldn't risk an autumn night. It was how a man lost toes, how companions got lost. They certainly were less prone to it than the settlers and miners, but they respected the wilds all the same. And to send a girl as lure? It seemed too deceptive for their means, too indirect. Nothing made particular sense.

He tore his eyes from her and scanned the trees. It was getting late. It was getting cold, and quickly. Already the sun hung low on the western treeline, beginning to slip beneath it. In an hour, perhaps less, the temperature would drop twenty degrees into dangerous. The only answer that he could form was that she had stumbled across him and that she was alone. Even then the chance seemed too great, too obscure.

The dog barked, once. A staccato burst that wasn't entirely threatening. Dan looked from it to the girl once more.

For a long moment he found no need to speak. A minute, perhaps two passed. It was he who broke the silence then, collecting his rugged frame in a feral crouch that saw the axe's form left leaning against the stump he used to split his wood. A rough hand stretched out, curling fingers in beckon to the dog.

"Handsome thing." He offered, uncertainly. The sharpness of his stare quick to return to the girl