Serabella

By Richard Davidson

Bob squinted and then relaxed his eye, staring down the sight of what surely was the most accurate rifle in the world. He had loved the gun since he'd lovingly made her, so many years ago. She was fired sparingly, and cleaned regularly. Now, it was up to her to enable Bob in getting the shot of his life.

The steel of the trigger felt cool against his finger, which was steady as the evening breeze, warning him of the few moments left when there would be enough light.

Bob had done his training in the Army, at a time when war meant something, and wasn't a simple metaphor to be used recklessly by those hungry for the benefits of pain. He had never taken his skill lightly, and held the utmost religious consideration for that deadly art to which he of his era was born.

On the other side of the mountain, there was a place Bob could only imagine for now. It's lights and sounds were not evident here, 2,500 yards from the peak of Mt. Karul. The makings of a beautiful avalanche were perched above Cimberling, and every road leading out of town was snowed over.

Bob had climbed for two and a half days to get to this spot. Three men had died to plant the dynamite that could bring the whole thing tumbling harmlessly down towards the valley that stood between Bob and his target.

It had been a magnificent day, warm enough that Bob needed to stop periodically, and remove another sweater, or scarf. Sweating at this altitude was never good, as temperatures could plummet unannounced, unplanned for, like a bear cub with a nearby mother.

The sad thing about this particular spot was that there was another peak overlooking it, and that peak didn't look all that stable, either. To Bob's eye, it had looked a bit swollen, and ready to drop, but he couldn't bring himself to mention it when old man Harper had come storming into his cabin three days earlier, crying for the lives of his two sons, and future son in law.

No, Bob had felt that good men had died to save the town, or the people trapped within it, and he accepted the fate of having to take his shot where the very sound of the gun, and certainly the subsequent explosion could possibly bury him alive, unless he was lucky enough to have a large rock crush his skull.

Bob felt strongly that it was of the utmost importance to hit his target on the first shot, for that very reason. He just couldn't be sure he would get a second chance.

Below, in the town, the mood was subdued, quietly fearful.

"Why do they build a town where an avalanche could fall?" asks a stranded tourist, who evidently picked the wrong time for a visit to Cimberling.

"Why not have some more brandy?" suggests a helpful local, who didn't feel he'd ever had much say about where towns were built.

"We've never been destroyed by an avalanche before," offers the bartender, pouring the brandy the forlorn traveler never ordered, "I trust we won't be tonight, either."

"By tomorrow the temperature will be 42 degrees," said the tourist, drinking slowly from the newly poured glass.

"Then I guess it's all up to Bob now," said the bartender softly, pouring a brandy for himself.

"It's already too late," lamented the somewhat drunk tourist, "the light has already gone."

What he didn't know is that since Bob was a few miles West, and farther away from the peak of Niwagi Ridge, the light had not yet gone. It, and Bob stood frozen, with only a slim toehold on what remained of Cimberling's last hope.

And Bob squeezed the trigger, and before there would have been time for the sound of the dynamite blast to reach him, the first rock hit his head, and rendered him unconscious. Bob faded away to blackness, in a slow spiral.

Bob awakened in a dreamlike state. It was very dark, and the air felt very close. Bob believed that had he stayed unconscious longer, he would have suffocated. He didn't know how much time had passed.

He needed to start digging, and he needed to know which direction to go. He tried to spit, so he could identify which direction his spit went, but his mouth was completely dry from his labored breathing.

He thought his face felt a bit flushed, and had to wonder if his face was pointing down, with his body above. That would make sense, he thought, but he wasn't sure, and he knew he could only expend so much energy before he would die, if he was digging himself deeper.

The point appeared moot, as the weight of the snow was pinning his arms and legs firmly. Bob was panicking, and he focused his attention on calming himself down.

He would put all of his energy into his right foot, and make a little circle with it. That was working. His ankle cramped, so he began making a little circle with his left foot. He went on this way, switching back and forth until he had made a little cave around each foot.

Just then the snow shifted, and his two little caves filled back in, and his entire body lurched forward, in the direction of his face, giving Bob a clue.

"My face is pointing down the mountain," Bob thought reasonably, "somewhere between the treeline and a straight drop of around 1,000 feet."

The snow shifted again, and again Bob was pushed forward, picking up speed as the whole mass began a small avalanche of its own. Bob's head popped out the edge of the snow, and he was looking down the very drop he had just pictured. His eyes burned from the bright light of the morning sun.

Bob would have liked to turn his head around, and crane his neck up to see if he had brought the avalanche down into the valley, or hastened its drop onto the town below, but he had problems of his own at the moment.

Looking 1,000 feet straight down a rocky cliff isn't something you can easily imagine, and Bob was unfamiliar with this feeling of incredible helplessness, his hands and feet still quite immobile.

Below, to the right, there was a small outcropping with a single, spindly pine tree sticking out of it, hardly looking like something that would support Bob's weight, if he could even fall that direction to begin with.

He was still holding his gun, and it was pointed in exactly the opposite direction. Bob surmised that the blast of his gun would most likely send him in the direction of that sad little tree, but that would be madness.

More than likely, the barrel was full of snow, and that snow might be quite packed in. The bullet could explode in the chamber, and even if it didn't, there was a pretty good chance of some major powder burns for Bob.

"I'm going to shoot myself off the side of a mountain, towards a spindly pine tree?" Bob's mind asked, painfully.

Something moved up above, and small rocks, and chunks of ice pelted Bob's face, causing him to radically redefine the word "insanity," and simply squeeze the trigger.

Nothing happened. Bob had been certain there had been another bullet in the chamber, and now he wondered if he hadn't shot off the second one as he fell the first time.

"It probably wouldn't have worked, anyway," he thought, as his last ray of hope seemed to wink out and die.

And then the snow shifted once more, and Bob was miraculously hanging by only his knees, as the snow around his body fell the obligatory 1,000 feet, and Bob watched in horror.

He held the rifle in one hand, and dug for a bullet with his other, loaded the bullet into the chamber, and clicked the lever, just as the snow released him into free fall.

He squeezed the trigger, and the blast was just enough to send him towards that lonely little pine that was the only remaining thing between him and his death. He let go of a gun he had loved for a lifetime, and grabbed hold of the tiny sapling, as his head slammed into the rocky outcropping, and held on for dear life as a warm sea of red washed across his vision, ebbing and flowing with the beat of his heart.

In order to survive, Bob would have to pull himself up onto that tiny outcropping, and find a way across the rock and melting ice of the cliff face, to where a huge snowfield spilled out onto a slightly gentler grade. It was no sheer drop over there, but it was no picnic, either. Getting down from there looked next to impossible, but getting down from his present position was absolute suicide.

The waves of red abated just a little, and Bob was beginning to get his normal vision back. He didn't even notice he had broken his nose, but the taste of blood should have been an indicator. As his head pulsed and throbbed, Bob heaved himself up, and the tiny pine tree crackled with indignation at his near-lethal abuse.

Bob sat cross legged there, for what seemed like hours, trying to steady himself for the ludicrous climb he was about to attempt. For at least twenty feet, he would have only a fingerhold, and he had serious doubts about his strength.

Finally, he began to make his way, using his feet to balance from a tiny ledge, no more than an inch thick, while he groped his way along several sharp rocks, tearing his hands up as he went.

His blood on the face of this formidable cliff was more than he ever dreamt of when he chose to make a mark on this land. It was a statement he had truly earned, though he doubted any eyes would ever look upon it. Just a tiny red smear or two, lost in an endless parade of stony cliffs and snow-capped peaks, in a near-treeline netherworld where few ever dwelt.

He had no feeling in his left foot, which was now dangling into space as he had made it to the worst twenty feet. There was no turning back now. Bob inched along with his hands, and soon his other foot had reached the end of the inch wide ledge. He swung his body to the left carefully, and supported his entire weight with only his fingers. He moved hand over hand for around three feet, and felt the knuckle of his left index finger pop. That was always going out of joint, due to a long ago injury. He found a tiny piece of rock to support just a little weight with his left foot.

He gave his fingers a chance to rest a little, and then he went four more feet, and felt frantically for a foothold of some kind, as his fingers were on the verge of giving, but found none.

He clenched his teeth, and tried to go as fast as he could, and traveled a few feet more, and then he swung his body out towards the snowfield and missed, and fell about thirty feet straight down, to where the snowfield joined the cliff face at a better angle.

"That was damn lucky," he almost had time to think, and then he began sliding face first down the snowfield, picking up speed. Soon, everything around him was a blur, as his eyes filled with tears from the cold wind, and a cloud of snow formed all around him. He didn't know how long he traveled in this manner, and then he was launched off another, smaller cliff, and into the boughs of an enormous pine.

He missed the first few branches he tried to grab, and finally got ahold of one, which promptly broke, and his face grew hot with the pain of the needles that ripped at him until he felt the icy cold sensation of the stream he splashed into, breaking his ankle on a large rock.

Bob's nose quickly filled with the acrid smell of sulfur. He was only a few hundred feet from a hot spring. He would lay his clothes out to dry in the sun, make a splint for his ankle, and soak his beaten body in the hot spring.

Nothing else mattered. Bob had a view of the valley, and the avalanche that had fallen harmlessly to his East. His shot had been perfect. Bob wasn't the least bit surprised. He doubted there would ever be a gun like that again.

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