Firestone Hot Springs and them of us that's too weak

this time, colt briggs led @Sadey and @Lonesome Dove with a sense of direction and purpose. they'd come down from those damned mountains only three strong, but he'd be cursed himself if he was losing another again.
and the others, well. briggs knew they'd be along directly.
reno was well. red wasn't dead. nothing could kill gun. and dagur was born to the life like he had been birthed inside a camp itself.
"west," down from the ridge and into a flat plain of snow. forced to camp in the shadow of the mountains for that night, colt had stayed up into the small hours on watch.
then off again, west till colt felt their direction from the creek had become too direct.
and so he pushed them into a southwest wanderin' only sadey might understand, though by the end of it lonesome would too, the cold camps and cold meat they ate to keep from spreading blood, the water they drank to fill bellies cramping with hunger. 
colt bypassed the gorge but sent the gang up along the narrow banks until whitewater smoothed to something travelable. then "in," a half day's scent of paws washed away by the frigid water. one-eared colt, bringing up the rear, turning from time to time to look, to scrub his tongue across yellow teeth before he turned back, keeping sadey and dove in sight.
paws aching, they rested on the banks of that cold river. in the morning they pushed on, taking turns walking in the frozen scrub at the edges of the water, mingling and erasing scents.
snow rose and stung his face. another storm. he found a chunk of rock against which he meant to hunker until it passed. then up again, always forward.
and they were indeed rewarded, rewarded by a holy thrum of heat through the icy air. pushing toward it, pushing on, until the snow suddenly fell and their steaming breaths stood melting in a place of hotness, an oasis in the middle of dropping temperatures and an oncoming blizzard threatening to scour the flatlands.
the wind howled outside the wall of stone studded by steam-wreathed pools.
"here."
his crimson eyes roved over them for word or for injury.

Sadey had pushed and followed. Her body ached, over and over again, but she did her best to keep up. Ole Colt was mindful to keep an eye out on them all this time. He looked mighty strange only one ear, and she wondered how he was adapting to it, but she daren't ask. There was a more feral wildness to her old messmate, and she was afraid she pushed to hard. A absolute storm of hell would fall on her heard.

However, there was the fact too, that her body just hurt, and it took almost all of her energy to keep moving. He pushed them at an unforgiving pace. If she wasn't careful and didn't pay attention she'd back to being laid up. Finally, they made it and she curled up next to a hot spring, and didn't move. Just her eyes moved to and fro. As the frost sloughed from her fur and her paws and her whiskers.  

She turned grey eyes towards Colt and watched him with silence. Though she did offer him a head nod. She moved to get comfortable. The other two could come on over if they wanted, but she was laying down.

The rattlesnake did not speak.

It was not as if she couldn’t. She knew her words existed in the space beyond her thundering heart. But she had no need for them.

Colt pushed them hard, but she had gone beyond pain in the dark, in her small spaces where small lives took form. The ghoulish gouges in the skin of her face were healing well, though the scabs would crack if she moved her mouth too much, so she did not. Her tail was a different story, the once long counterweight now shortened into a rabbit like stump.

Still, she did not speak, she did not complain, she just marched with eyes like a wild thing, mouth set in an emotionless line.

It was only when she was released that her eyes would turn from watching to the two with her. Those eyes like a wild thing, the eyes with their wide, haunted expression, before she would settle nearby to Sadey. The rattlesnake did not rest, though, and sat curled, poised, twisted into a striking position as she had been every time she laid down since finding the remnants of the Gang.