Eva had protested the fact that the men hadn’t given her a pack to carry, but the men had looked at each other and then proclaimed that there wasn’t anything left to carry—almost as if they had planned it that way.
“Yes. But he’s a cute gunslinger. More young Clint Eastwood than Jack Palance,” Eva replied, loud enough for Quinn to overhear as he walked slightly ahead of the other two.
“Hear that? She thinks I’m the cute one.” Quinn added. “Guess that makes you scraggly ol’ Lee Marvin.”
They all chuckled at that one. They had been joking like this for a while, as the terrain was becoming more and more bleak and depressing. They had seen no signs of any kind of life. No plants or trees grew in this part of the Himalaya. The mountains were a palette of muted brown and gray colors—when they did actually show through the ice and snow. As they progressed along the barren winter landscape, they encountered the brown less frequently as the drifted snow became more difficult to negotiate, often getting waist deep.
After a night camping, they moved on again. By the middle of the day, the level of accumulated snow was decreasing, and the browns and grays were more apparent once again. The three lunched by a frozen river, and soaked in the sun, which was warming in spite of the altitude. The conversation focused on guessing the origin of their dehydrated packaged food.
When they had finished and Quinn and Johnson had packed the gear and hefted their backpacks, Eva sauntered off ahead of them as they neared the frozen river. Earlier, Johnson had suggested a way through the hills that followed a valley on the other side of the river. When Eva reached the edge of the stream, she took a tentative step on the surface of the ice, finding that it held her weight nicely.
“It should be fine. We’ll go across one at a time though,” Johnson told her.
She was about three quarters of the way across when Quinn and Johnson watched her plunge clean through the ice, and into the rushing waters below, disappearing instantaneously.
“Not good,” Quinn said calmly as he began sprinting toward the ice. Curtis was right behind him, running hard. Quinn lunged from the shore landing on his knees on the ice about ten feet downstream of the spot where Eva had gone in. He frantically swept the snow aside to find that he was right on top of her. She was moving fast, being slid along the underside of the ice by the current. Quinn hacked at the ice above her with his ice ax, but the ice was too thick at this part of the river, and he was barely making a dent, as small chips and flakes of ice flew in an arc behind each swing. She was moving too fast.
“I can’t get her, Curtis! She’s getting away!” Quinn was nearly panicked. The strain in his voice was apparent to Johnson, who was already sprinting along the edge of the stream, past Quinn. Johnson was anticipating where the current would take Eva, and trying to get there first.
“Move your ass, Quinn!” Curtis yelled. Quinn was up and chasing Curtis along the bank. Curtis was well ahead by now, and removing his pack. He clipped a carabiner to his belt, and tossed the pack onto the ice as he kept running. Quinn could see that the neon green and pink climbing rope from the pack was spooling out as Curtis ran. The other end was now clipped to Johnson’s belt. Then Quinn watched in awe of his friend, as Curtis leapt from the riverbank and pulled his knees to his chest in mid-air. Curtis Johnson executed a perfect cannonball directly into the center of the frozen stream, and crashed through the ice, leaving behind a nearly perfect, round hole in the surface. He disappeared and Quinn understood as the climbing rope quickly slithered into the hole.