Free The Descent From Truth by Gaylon Greer

trunk of a small evergreen. Got it!
     
    Arresting his fall caused his body to swivel. His legs dangled over the edge of the shelf. Not enough strength left to pull himself up with one arm, but if he turned loose of the backpack it was bye-bye Freddy.
     
    His fingers and forearm burned from holding onto the sapling. He couldn’t hang on more than a few more moments. Then both of them would splatter on rocks along the river at the bottom of the gorge. Praying that the evergreens were close enough together to keep Frederick from slipping between them, he flung the backpack up onto the shelf so that the boy, on his back, slid across the snow behind the tree line.
     
    Using both arms, he muscled himself back up. He reached for the next shrub and then the next, pulling until he was behind the protective row.
     
    Frederick regained his breath before Alex did. The boy’s howl announced his survival.
     
    “That’s it, kid,” Alex shouted as he rested for an additional moment. “Let it out. Tell the world we made it.”
     
    With Frederick once more strapped to his chest, he cut down, stripped, and sharpened a slender evergreen. Using the makeshift pike as an anchor, he worked his way along the face of the gorge. An hour later, he stood on the bank of the frozen river. Frederick must have worn himself out howling and kicking on the way down the wall of the gorge. He seemed content now to loll in the pack, his head resting against Alex’s chest.
     
    Alex tested the ice with one foot and then put his full weight on it. It seemed solid. Holding his homemade pike parallel to the frozen surface, he took a deep breath and ventured farther out. If he broke through, there was a chance that the ends of the pole would lodge on still-solid ice and give him a shot at climbing out of the water. Not that it would do much good. Water-soaked and with no source of heat, he and Frederick would freeze to death in short order. The thought kept him moving as fast as he dared on the slippery surface. Only when his feet were solidly planted in snow on the far shore did he breathe easily once more.
     
    Scaling the opposite face of the gorge proved less tricky than descending the first, both because this side was less steep and because he had perfected his technique with the sharpened pole. But gravity working against him made it more physically grueling. Barely able to navigate on shaky legs, he reached the top, collapsed in the snow, and rested until worry about waning daylight propelled him to his feet.
     
    With the pale sun dropping behind mountain peaks, he snowshoed along the shoulder of U.S. 50, almost too tired to move. He heard the roar of an approaching snowplow and fired off his flare to alert the driver, who would be concentrating on keeping the plow’s blade against the concrete highway. As the plow approached, Alex stood in its path and waved his arms.
     
    “You folks all right?” the driver asked after ushering him inside.
     
    “Just cold and tired.”
     
    “Where’s your vehicle? Anybody in it?”
     
    “We were in a cabin on the rim. Hiked down. Do you have a phone I can use?”
     
    The driver handed Alex a phone. “Summit Texaco’s about seven miles. I was just talking with ‘em on the radio.” He put the snowplow into gear. “Road’s clear behind us, so whoever you’re calling shouldn’t have any trouble picking you up.”
     
    Frederick seemed to have recovered from his outrage during their trek. Alex cuddled the little boy in his lap with one hand while using his other to punch numbers on the phone to contact Silver Hill. Flanagan came on the line, and Alex gave a bare-bones outline of events.
     
    “Great job, Bryson,” the supervisor said. “Don’t talk to anyone. Koenig’s people will decide how to break this to the media and the cops.”
     
    The snowplow operator had let the vehicle slow to a crawl. Mouth open, he shifted his eyes repeatedly between the road and his passengers. “That’s the