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D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E
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almost certainly already set in. All he'd have to do is lie there.
Get comfortable, to the extent it was possible. Let sense and
feeling fade away. But what if an opportunistic wolf or coyote
came along? A pack of them would gratefully make a Christmas
dinner out of a man Long George Francis's size: all six feet and
six inches of him. He didn't want to be awake for that.
That left only one option.
He thought about the spiffy nickel-plated .45 he'd left in the
smashed-up roadster.
Damn that gun, he probably thought.
That left his pocket knife. Somehow, in the cold and the dark,
with no Christmas lights in the distance, no sound but the howl
of the wind, Long George Francis gathered up the sheer will to
stick himself deep in the throat with the small blade. Then, even
as blood now rushed down into his wool coat, the first warmth
he'd felt since leaving the smashed car, he stuck himself again on
the other side of his neck. Better not to leave anything to chance.
BLOOD
NOW
RUSHED
DOWN
INTO
HIS
WOOL
COAT,
THE
FIRST
WARMTH
HE'D
FELT
SINCE
LEAVING
THE
SMASHED
CAR...
