Chapter 12

By mid April, the temperatures moderated. There were some days that the interior of Alaska was above freezing. It was daylight about ten hours a day growing longer as the middle of June approached them. Horace was depressed that Nicole would soon be leaving. She had confessed to him that she had shot and killed a man the night he rescued her from her downed plane. It didn’t matter to him. Just how she acted around him was what was important to him.

“I know I never said it,” Horace told her one night as they sat together with her in his lap. “But I love you,” his eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, baby,” she said softly, kissing his neck. “I know that and I feel the same love that you do.”

“Then why do you have to leave?”

“I have to go and face the music for what I had done. If you hadn’t reported the fact that there was a plane crash here and that I was on it, maybe we could have gotten away with it.”

“I had to,” his tears ran down his cheeks.

“I know you did. I don’t blame you. We still have a few weeks until they come for me. Until then we can still have our nightly fun. I look forward to you and me doing hanky-panky. Let’s go to bed now. I’m a little on the horny side and there’s only one thing that will relieve my distress,” she licked his tears away from his jaw.

Ten days later they heard a helicopter overhead. Nicole looked out the window. She didn’t see the craft at first but saw the snow being swirled around. Then the thing landed. The three individuals inside waited until the blades stopped rotating before some man leaped out looking like a sheriff from the wild west.

He wore cowboy boots and hat along with his handlebar mustache. He waited for his deputy to reach him. Both held rifles at the ready. They tried opening the door but Horace had the beam across it.

“Open this door, I’m Captain Horner of the Barrow Police,” they heard a voice from outside. Nicole leaned over and kissed Horace on the mouth her tongue twirling around his. She was the one who backed away then nodded for her lover to let them in.

“Open this damn door,” Horner shouted. No sooner he said it Horace swung it open. Nicole stood in the middle of the room with her hands folded femininely at her belted jeans.

“Well, well, well,” Horner smiled. “Here is our killer.”

Nicole nodded as the deputy grabbed her hands to cuff her. “Do you think I can put a coat on before I am handcuffed?” she asked politely.

“Let her put on her coat,” Horner grumbled.

“She slid into the white leather fur trimmed coat and then pulled her boots on. The same white ones she wore when her plane went down.

“Did you know she was a fugitive from the law?” Horner asked Horace.

“Yes, I did.”

“Cuff him too,” he ordered the deputy.

“FOR WHAT?” Nicole challenged the sheriff.

“I’m afraid you do not have any jurisdiction on me,” Horace snapped.

“I am a government employee and you will get into trouble with the feds if you make me abandon my post.”

“He had nothing to do with it,” she rose to defend him. “I crashed not too far from here and he rescued me. If you haven’t heard, Alaska had the second worst winter in its history. There was no way to get to me until today.”

“Forget the runt,” Horner sneered. He got what he wanted. “Take her out to the chopper.”

“HE’S NOT A RUNT. IN FACT HE’S MORE OF A MAN THAN YOU EVER WILL BE,” Nicole shouted at the arrogant man.

“I doubt that,” Horner pretended to be bored. “Let’s go!”

Horace broke down and wept as the helicopter took Nicole away from him. He felt like his heart was breaking. The only woman in his life was being taken from him. He sat on the bed with the faint smell of her perfume and sex still lingering from last night. She must have had a feeling that this was the final night they’d be together because she was insatiable and made love to him until this morning. It was a time he would never forget.

In the copter, Nicole was quiet. She wiped a few tears away with her shoulders since she was cuffed with her hands in the back. Horner sat in the front where the pilot was heading north to Barrow. The deputy reminded her as one of the Darrel’s on the Newhart show. He was as stupid as he looked. She glanced at him with an icy stare as he kept eyeing her beauty. She couldn’t wait until she got into a her cell to be out of his sight.

In the weeks ahead Horace just went through the motions of gathering weather information, temperatures, barometric readings, and humidity then sending them in by the high band radio. His broadcasts were for anyone listening in for climate conditions.

He was despondent. He ate little, worked little, slept little. Nicole was not there to keep him company and make love to him. He enjoyed their hours of conversation, reading of books, and of course lying in bed keeping each other warm. There wasn’t any problem until she literally crashed into his life. He was lonely but content. But now that she had come to him the loss was staggering. What would he ever do without her.

Nicole was fun. After recovering from her abrasions, contusions and the pains that plagued her; she showed him a sense of humor and a love he would never know again. He was tempted to get his one bottle of Jack Daniels and put on one hell of a drunk but thought better of it.

Liquor didn’t agree with him. He wouldn’t get a hangover for a day. It was more like a week. So he put that aside. He couldn’t go on without her but he knew he had to. At least until the end of May when they would come and relieve him for his two months vacation while the government did things around the cabin to make life easier for him.