As Jerrod fed a piece of clapboard into the flames, she sat down across from him in the grass.
“Jerrod?” she said. He glanced up. “You think it’s a load of shit?”
“What?”
She cocked her head toward Emmett and June, who were a little ways off, on their knees, facing the ghost town, heads bowed in meditative poses.
“I don’t know. They aren’t quite as kooky as I imagined they’d be.”
Abigail pulled off her gloves and extended her hands toward the flames.
In the distance, the outline of Abandon formed an eerie profile in the dusk.
Scott walked over, followed by Lawrence and the Tozers.
“What’s up?” Jerrod asked.
“I was just listening to the latest report on my weather radio. . . . Doesn’t look good.”
“You’re kidding,” Lawrence said.
“This early-season storm was supposed to plow through New Mexico, and now the track is farther north. Not particularly cold, but it should be all snow above nine thousand feet. As you know, Abandon sits at eleven.”
“How much they predicting?” Lawrence asked.
“One to three feet. Winter storm warnings are already up. Supposed to start late tonight.”
“So what does this mean?” June asked.
“Means we should pack up our shit and make a beeline for the trailhead.”
Jerrod looked up. “You aren’t serious.”
“Actually, I am.”
“Hike back in the dark?”
“Maybe we get only halfway. Be better than postholing all seventeen miles in a meter of powder.”
“You don’t know that it’s gonna be that bad.”
“Don’t know that it isn’t.”
Jerrod looked at Emmett. “You paid a hefty chunk to come out here and shoot this town, have Lawrence give you the rundown—”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Scott asked.
“I’m talking to our client. Maybe he should make the—”
“My client. Don’t know if you forgot, but you work for me, bro.”
Emmett said, “We have to leave?”
“If this storm really winds up,” Scott said, “hiking out will be a bitch. We didn’t bring snowshoes or skis. You ever tried to walk in three feet of snow?”
“Let them decide, Scott,” Jerrod said.
Scott shot him a glare, then turned back to the Tozers.
“Look, I suggest we get the hell out of here, but if you want to stay, see what happens, I guess that’s an option. What do you think, Lawrence?”
“Their dime, their permit, their choice.”
Emmett glanced at his wife, then back at Scott. “This is our last chance to shoot Abandon this year?”
“Yeah, it’s late in the season and a miracle there’s not more snow already. We don’t do it now, you won’t be able to get back here until next June or even July, depending on how bad the winter is. And that’s assuming you get another permit.”
She got a glass for herself, and when she’d filled it, Bart raised his, said, “Joss, here’s how. May the coming year—”
“For Chrissakes.” She swallowed her whiskey—one long, deliberate tilting of the glass. Bart drained his. She poured again.
“Joss, love, wish you could’ve seen Abandon when it was a roaring camp. In ’89, night like this, there’d of been fifty men here, miners coming off shift, card games, whole flock of whores.”
“It’s all over now, huh?”
“Yeah. All over. All gone. The whores, the opium, the fun.” He clinked his glass against hers and they drank. He replenished their tumblers and they drank and he refilled them again. Soon his face had flushed and gone blotchy and the burst capillaries stood out like tiny red worms, so that his nose resembled a rotting strawberry. Lines of sweat rolled down the dome of his great bald head.