The End of the Line by Stephen Legault

minus the frozen corpse of Deek Penner.
    â€œWhat’s the time?” Durrant asked as he pulled on his coat. Charlie fumbled in his coat and found his pocket watch. He held up seven fingers. “Hungry?” asked Durrant. Charlie nodded. “Alright, son, then let’s go see what Holt City has to offer.”
    Charlie checked the stove and added another wedge of pine, while Durrant made preparations to depart the cabin. He tucked the Bulldog into his left coat pocket and the Webley into the holster Durrant wore over his trousers but concealed beneath the bulk of his greatcoat.
    â€œYou know how to shoot?” Durrant asked when he saw Charlie eyeing the revolvers. Charlie nodded. “Your old man teach you?” Charlie shrugged his shoulders. “You got a shooting iron in that little sack of yours?” Charlie looked down and shook his head.
    â€œThis not speaking thing is going to get pretty old, soon, son. You and me might want to address that at some point.”
    Charlie grabbed the slate that he used to write messages on. He drew the chalk from his pocket and wrote in short, staccato strokes. He held it so that Durrant could read it. “We’re quite the pair.” The Mountie looked at the boy who had returned to preparing to leave the cabin. “We’ll see about that,” Durrant said. “We’ll see.”
    Charlie pushed open the door with his shoulder and stepped into the morning’s cold. He and Durrant walked from the cabin into the new day, just set to dawn.
    Durrant looked around. The foreground was dominated by mounds of snow and the ramshackle affair optimistically called Holt City, but beyond that tiny enclave in the wilderness the pale white faces of the mountains loomed. The men faced west as they emerged from their shack, and Charlie pointed to the implacable wall of a sheer mountain above the valley floor, its broad vertical flank plastered with wind-whipped fresh snow. The peak’s long, jagged summit was capped with a glacier whose thickness Durrant could scarcely speculate at. The entire range was tipped with light the colour of faded roses, as the sky above slowly progressed from indigo to pink to blue.
    â€œLord Almighty,” Durrant finally said, after they had stood for a full minute absorbing the grandeur of the sight before them. “That is the most beautiful thing I believe I’ve ever seen.” As they stood in the arctic cold, looking west at the Continental Divide, the sun broke over the rounded peaks behind them, and the rose-colored light crept down the face of the peaks high above the valley floor.
    With Charlie in the lead the two made their way towards the confluence of the two rivers. The company mess wasn’t difficult to find: a long, narrow log building, its boards chinked and cracking in the bitter cold, two chimney’s belching thick smoke into the blushing morning air. It sat on the south side of the Pipestone River tucked up against another spread of tumbledown cabins and a massive staging yard where fuel wood was piled thirty feet high and dwarfed by rafts of sleepers, the heavy cross-ties used in railway construction. Stacked in steps that reached up more than fifty feet, the sleepers were each more than eight feet long and weighed as much as one hundred and forty pounds. The cross-ties extended for several hundred yards beyond the barns and stables.
    Durrant stepped to the door of the mess hall and pulled it open. The room was dark and warm in contrast to the bright, frigid morning. As the two men stepped inside the clatter of forks on tin plates and the rattle of conversation slowly ebbed, so that when they had closed the door behind them, it was nearly silent.
    â€œLooks like you’re not the only one whose tongue the cat got,” muttered Durrant to Charlie, whose bright blue eyes smiled as they made their way along the outside wall to the far end of the room where breakfast was served. At a