Free Murder on Ice by Ted Wood Page B

chief, open up." There was a long pause and I waited and did nothing. I didn't want to be shot with my own gun. At last the door eased open and the girl said, "Come in, Chief, I'm okay."
    It was warm inside. She had been stoking the wood into the stove as fast as it could take it, acting out of fear and cold. I wondered how much longer her supplies would have held out. I pushed the bundle of clothes into her hands. "There's skidoo pants in there—put them on and give me my parka back." I turned away and wriggled out of the parka I'd brought from the cabin. I felt uneasy in the ice hut. It was too simple a spot for an ambush. If anyone wanted me stopped permanently, they could do it now from thirty yards away in this snow and I would never know they were out there until the bullets ripped through the walls. As an ex-Marine, I know you never occupy known positions, you move on before you consolidate. That way the mortar shells come pounding in behind you, not on top.
    The girl changed smoothly and modestly, slipping into the ski pants first, then turning away to shuck my parka and put on the new one. She turned to me then, crouched on her bench, her head almost scraping the center of the roof. "How's that?" she asked perkily.
    "Very fashionable. Now wrap up your head in the blanket, then your feet, and I'll bring the machine to the front door." I turned away, glad to be wearing my own parka with the familiar weight of the gun in the right-hand pocket. If I needed more help tonight, the Colt would be there.
    I chugged the machine around to the door, turning it back to face the mainland. The girl came out, almost on hands and knees, shuffling like a Chinese bride in her constricting blanket. I sat her side-saddle on the machine in front of me, then wrapped the last folds of blanket around her feet. She nodded and slid one hand free of her parka sleeve to give me a little thumbs-up signal, and I knelt up and drove slowly back to the nearest point of the shore line, almost due west. Now that I was no longer pursuing other machines, I was more careful. Skidooing over ice can be dangerous, particularly on our lake, which is part of an ever-flowing chain connected by locks. The ice is weak in places where the current is fast. And even the flat areas can heave in pressure cracks that sometimes drift open a few feet, wide enough to swallow a snow machine whole.
    As I drove I watched for ridging that would warn me of a weak spot. When I found one I stopped the machine, leaving the girl hunched behind the windshield. "Stay there, I have to test," I said. Then I slipped my stick out of my pocket, keeping the strap around my wrist, and lay flat out on the ice to check the gap at arm's length. I tapped until I was sure there was a gap of only about six inches between the two surfaces and that the slick of new ice, perhaps an inch thick, was continuous between them.
    I got back on and told the girl "Hold tight!" then drove the machine around in a big circle, picking up speed and coming to the gap at full throttle. There was a jolt as we passed over and I slowed back to normal pace and went on watching. I was anxious to be back at the station, thinking about the case rather than my own survival.
    Nobody had been to the station since I left and my skidoo tracks were well drifted in. I wondered how much more snow was going to fall. We already had ten new inches and more was layering down every second. It was a worry. If I went out again I might get the snow machine bogged. Those things aren't magic carpets. They need firm footing or they're liable to sink right into drifts and start cavitating. It was something else to worry about but first I wondered how Val Summers and my prisoner were.
    They were fine. Val had taken the plastic seal off the thermostat and cranked up the heat a notch so the station was gloriously warm to come into. And there was fresh coffee. She hadn't slept but had been talking to the prisoner, woman to woman now the