Edna Ferber: Fanny Herself

19. CHAPTER NINETEEN (continued)

She nodded. He turned abruptly. The snow hid him from sight at once.

"Here lies Sarah Cannon. Lay to rest and died alone, April 26, 1893."

She sank down, and pillowed her head on her arms. She knew that this was the end. She was very drowsy, and not at all sad. Happy, if anything.

"You didn't really think I'd leave you, did you, Fan?"

She opened her eyes. Heyl was there. He reached down, and lifted her lightly to her feet. "Timberline Cabin's not a hundred yards away. I just did it to try you."

She had spirit enough left to say, "Beast."

Then he swung her up, and carried her down the trail. He carried her, not in his arms, as they do it in books and in the movies. He could not have gone a hundred feet that way. He carried her over his shoulder, like a sack of meal, by one arm and one leg, I regret to say. Any boy scout knows that trick, and will tell you what I mean. It is the most effectual carrying method known, though unromantic.

And so they came to Timberline Cabin, and Albert Edward Cobbins was in the doorway. Heyl put her down gently on the bench that ran alongside the table. The hospitable table that bore two smoking cups of tea. Fanny's lips were cracked, and the skin was peeled from her nose, and her hair was straggling and her eyes red-rimmed. She drank the tea in great gulps. And then she went into the tiny bunkroom, and tumbled into one of the shelf-bunks, and slept.

When she awoke she sat up in terror, and bumped her head against the bunk above, and called, "Clancy!"

"Yep!" from the next room. He came to the door. The acrid smell of their pipes was incense in her nostrils. "Rested?"

"What time is it?"