On the Edge

Yesterday morning, I came across a story written by my long-deceased acquaintance, TC, in 1990. I never knew his last name.  He gave it to me one afternoon while we were rebuilding a radio station in Reno.

After rereading it, I realize he used “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert W. Service, as a template, which I find ingenious, because he turned it into a Nevada tale. I spent most of yesterday rewriting and correcting grammar and spelling, and adding dialogue.

And now, I want to share it with you. I might expand on it come 2026.

On the Edge

Nevada is a land that makes its own rules. Stay long enough beneath its hard blue sky and you’ll stop wondering at the odd things it holds, ghost towns left to the coyotes, miners chasing shadows of silver, travelers swearing they’d heard voices on the wind.

Still, there was one story the old-timers told with a kind of caution. It concerned two prospectors, a bitter night, and a promise a man had no business making.

Ray Dalton and Milo Crane weren’t seasoned hands. They were lean on experience but rich in stubbornness, the sort who believed the next ridge might carry the shine they were hunting. That winter found them in the hills north of Elko, camping light, working hard, and trusting luck more than skill.

Then the cold came down out of the Ruby Mountains, sharp and sudden.

It froze the sagebrush into rattling bones and turned their coffee thick as tar. Nights were long, the wind mean, and the dark seemed to press close enough to hear your thoughts.

Ray weathered it. Milo struggled.

By the time they reached the Great Basin, Milo’s usual grumbling had faded into something tighter and more serious. His lips were blue, his eyes hollow, and when he spoke, his voice carried the weight of a man who knew he was losing ground.

“Ray, if I don’t see morning, I want your word on something.”

“You’re not dying,” Ray said, though he wasn’t certain.

But Milo gripped his sleeve with a strength that didn’t match his condition.

“Don’t put me in this frozen ground. I couldn’t stand the cold in life, and I don’t want it in death. Burn me. Promise me that.”

Ray sighed. Promises are easy when a man expects the dawn.

“All right,” he said. “You have my word.”

He wasn’t long in regretting it.

Within the hour, Milo slumped forward, still as stone. Ray knelt beside him, watched the slow silence settle, and muttered a tired, “Well, damn.”

He tried the ground. Frozen. Tried for wood. None was worth the striking. A promise, though, sits heavy on a man.

His lantern threw a pale circle as he paced the camp, and in that circle he found a rusted relic half buried in the sand—an old refinery furnace from a camp that hadn’t seen life in twenty years.

It was a poor idea, but it was the only one he had.

Ray hauled Milo over the sand with a kind of apologetic determination, packed the furnace with every scrap of burnable material in their camp, and put flame to it. The fire caught fast, roaring up through the chimney, hungry and bright against the cold.

Ray stepped back, rubbing warmth into his hands, wondering if this counted as honoring his word or breaking it in some cosmic way.

Then he heard a cough. He froze.

“Milo?”

Another cough answered him, followed by a raw voice full of irritation.

“Ray… it’s too damn hot in here!”

Ray stumbled backward, heart thumping, while Milo fought his way upright in the furnace, dazed and thoroughly thawed.

They spent the rest of the night wrapped in blankets, arguing in low, hoarse voices, Milo insisting he’d only been “mostly” gone, Ray insisting he’d come far too close to keeping his promise.

By morning, they were both laughing about it, the kind of laughter men use when fear has just passed over them.

Nevada didn’t say a word about the matter. The desert rarely does.

It keeps its secrets buried deeper than gold or silver, and it was just one more odd truth lost beneath its silent sky.