Crow Mountain (15 page)

H
ope and Cal lay on the bank of the creek for a long time, until their breathing had steadied. Buddy licked Cal's face until he was shoved away and flopped on to the grass, whining and trembling. Finally Cal, still flat on his back, pulled his BlackBerry out of his hip pocket and squinted at it in the sun.

‘Shit. Dead. The water.' He let his arm drop out to the side, useless phone in his hand.

Hope checked her pockets. Only the diary was in there. ‘Mine must have fallen out when we crashed.'

Pushing himself up on his elbows, Cal put a hand to his head and winced. ‘Anything broken?'

Hope made a quick check of herself. ‘Just bruised, I think. What about you? You were out for a while.'

‘Dad says Crows are made of saddle leather. Think he must
be right. Oh Jesus, look at your face.' He put his hand to her cheek. ‘You've got one hell of a bruise coming there.'

She began to cry. Then he was holding her tight and talking in his quiet voice. ‘Hey, hey, it's OK. We're OK. We got out. And I know this land. There's no need to worry, we'll be fine.'

Hope bit back something that might have been a hiccup or a sob, nodding.

With both hands, he smoothed her hair back from her face. ‘We'll be OK. We just need to find some shelter, a little food, and wait it out. They'll realize by nightfall the day after tomorrow that we're really overdue, even if we had gone to the Mercantile. Then they'll raise the alarm and people will come and look for us. Dad knows the trail I took. Come on.' He helped her up, brushing both of them down where the dirt stuck in patches to their wet clothes. Looking around, he got his bearings. ‘I think we head out this way and try and hit St Mary Lake by nightfall. We'll overnight there and then somewhere, not too far from the edge of the lake, is an old cabin my grandparents used to visit in the summers. We call it Crow Mountain, though that's not its official name. The cabin is probably a wreck by now, but it might be a roof over our heads until they head out to find us. And there's good water there. Plus, it's the most likely place for Dad to think to look for us. I hope.' He held out his hand.

They set off towards the trees, Buddy at their heels. As they headed into the shaded forest, the air cooled and Hope began to feel cold. She rubbed her arms to keep warm.

‘As soon as we get to the lake I'll make a fire, but tonight's
going to be pretty cold. There's not much I can do about it.'

Hope trudged after him, bramble stems scratching her legs. The forest was alive with sounds and smells. The creatures among the trees weren't too interested in the humans in their midst. Every now and then, deer froze in the undergrowth, or crashed out in front of them. The first time, Hope shrieked, but after that she managed to bite her lip. Her face ached down the right side. And her shoulder. The trembling that had come on after they had escaped the crash was now only kept under vague control by keeping in motion and her hands jerked when she held them out in front of her. As she was watching them, Cal looked over his shoulder to see if she was keeping up.

He turned, taking her fingers in his warm grip. She could feel a tremor running through his arms.

‘It's just shock, Hope. If we keep moving, and keep you as warm as we can, it'll wear off in a couple of hours. I'm shocked too. See? It's natural.'

She nodded. Keeping hold of one of her hands, he led her through the trees. The light began to fail after a little longer. Hope's heart sank at the idea of night. The darkness was closing in around the undergrowth in charcoal smudges. Perhaps her eyes weren't working properly. Her feet and ankles were sore from her wet socks and boots.

‘It's not far now,' Cal said, just as Hope stumbled and fell to her knees, knocking her left one badly and scratching her right leg. Instantly his hands were under her arms, lifting her up and holding her tight. ‘I promise. Just a little further.'

She nodded, too numb with cold and misery to say anything. It could have been five minutes or an hour later when the trees began to thin, and suddenly they were beside a huge lake ringed by mountains. The whitecaps sparkled in the evening sun. Cal led her down to the lake's edge and sat her down on a rock.

‘Stay there. I just need to fetch a few things.'

Hope didn't respond. She was almost comatose with cold and shock. Cal skirted around the water's edge, looking here and there for things, returning, placing them in neat piles and then disappearing again. Buddy never left him. Usually Hope could see Cal's pale shirt in the undergrowth, or Buddy outlined against one of the massive pines, but when she couldn't see them, panic seeped through the shock and she started to shake again. After a little while, he had a good pile of dry wood, what looked like a pile of moss and fungus, and a lot of dried grass and twigs. He dropped to his knees.

On a small rock the size of a fist, he made a pile of the dry fungus and a little of the moss. Pulling a stone from one pocket, and his clasp knife from another, he struck sparks from the rock with the knife. Hope noticed his hands were still shaking.

‘Damned flint was the hardest thing to find in this light,' he muttered.

The sparks flew over and over again, but the breeze was carrying them. Hope shook herself, got up and came to kneel by him, cupping her hands around the moss.

A few more tries and the moss caught. Hope cupped it
carefully, protecting it from the wind, as Cal added shred after shred of grass, waiting until they had a small pile burning before adding the thinnest twigs and brush. Even Buddy had drawn close and was staring, trying to understand why the flames were the centre of such attention. Cal chanced adding the first of the larger sticks. It took almost straight away and he breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Once it's really going, it'll be fine.' The breeze was helping now, rather than killing it, and soon the fire was crackling merrily. Hope was still bone cold. She sat back on the rock. Cal came to sit next to her, shoving his boots off. ‘Yours too,' he said. ‘They need to come off. And the sweater. Better get as much dry as we can.'

Hope obeyed, handing over her things without a word. Although the cardigan had still been damp, exposing her chilled arms to the air made her shudder. On the other side of the fire were more rocks, sticking straight up from the bank, forming a shelter of some kind.

‘Here. It's out of the wind.'

Hope picked her way carefully over the stony ground and sat, her back to the rock, knees pulled up.

‘Buddy, come.' Cal ordered the dog to lie on Hope's cold feet like a furry blanket, and then hugged her against his side, a long arm around her. She looked at the fire and their wet things spread in front of it. The gun was in easy reach of his left hand.

‘Hope we don't need that,' she said.

‘So do I. Only two rounds in it,' he muttered.

Night had fallen around them. Periodically Cal got up to feed the fire. Once, he disappeared into the undergrowth and Hope heard him take a pee. They were both stiffening up, cold and wrenched from the accident. The fire cracked and, all around, the forest shifted and stirred. Then, from somewhere far off, there came an eerie howl, drifting across the water before fading out. Hope sat bolt upright. So did Buddy. From the other side of the lake, their side, the howl was answered. Then again, and again, until it seemed they were surrounded by the noise. Hope put her hands over her ears with a pained cry, desperate to block out the sound.

‘Hope? Hope, listen to me.' Kneeling in front of her, Cal tried to lift her chin, putting his arms around her head when she shied away. ‘They won't come near the fire. Really they won't.
Listen
to them, it's beautiful.'

Eventually she nodded, taking a deep breath, breathing in his reassuring warmth. ‘OK,' she said, as another burst of echoing howls rang out around them. It was another hour or so before the wolves became quiet. Hope finally dozed against Cal, and after what seemed like a lifetime, dawn began to creep over the ridge at the eastern end of the lake, striping the shifting surface of the water with red and gold.

The fire was still flickering. Cal got up slowly and went around checking all their things. He handed Hope her socks and boots. The boots were damp, but nothing compared to the blistering wetness of the day before. She pulled on the socks for warmth and put the boots back by the fire for the last few minutes.

‘There should be water around here and I don't want you to get dehydrated. I'll be back in a minute, OK?'

‘Can't we drink the lake water?'

‘I prefer it running. Back soon.' He went off along the lake's edge.

Hope sat, watching the sun rise. She pulled the diary from her pocket and checked it. It had survived the crash without any damage and didn't feel damp. To pass the time, she opened it and turned to where she'd left off.

Soon, Cal was back with Buddy, kicking out the fire. ‘I found water.'

His arrival made her jump, startling her out of the diary. She got up. ‘Cal?'

‘What?'

‘I . . . this diary . . .'

‘What about it?'

‘The stagecoach has just crashed into a gulch, which is filling with meltwater. The bridge gave way beneath it.'

She held it open on the page of the crash description. He read the passage and then returned it to her, silent, walking off back the way he'd come. Hope followed him to a small tributary and drank, feeling gritty and clammy, and splashed water on her face. Still in silence, they made their way back along the edge of the lake.

‘What do you think?' she asked finally.

He stopped to look at the landscape, and avoided an answer. ‘I think . . . that at the moment we need to get on the other side of these trees, higher up, so that I can see the
ridgeline. Pops used to tell me to look for the crag above the cabin. It's distinctive. If we find that, we'll find the cabin. Are you up to a climb through the forest?'

‘Do I have a choice?'

He didn't answer, but led her along an animal track of some kind, through the undergrowth that was sometimes as high as her shoulders. After an hour or so, they came to a small clearing, where a stream had formed a pond. It was full of bright green plants with spear-shaped leaves.

‘Look,' he said, ‘breakfast.'

He reached into the mud beneath the water. Sleeve pushed above his elbow, he rummaged around, pulling out a small piece of plant that looked like a cross between a potato and a cocktail sausage. He dumped it, muddy, on the bank while he fetched more. When he had a pile, he rinsed them off in the pond water, then held one out to Hope.

‘What is it?'

‘Duck potatoes.' He bit into another with a snap, crunching it like a radish.

Hope laughed. ‘I'm good, thanks.'

‘They're starchy and they'll give you energy.' He kept on holding it out. Taking it, Hope studied it for a while before taking a cautious bite from the edge. It tasted like raw potato, which wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either.

‘Want more? There's plenty,' he said when they'd finished them.

Hope shook her head and scratched Buddy's ears. ‘What's he going to eat?'

Cal rolled his eyes. ‘Anything, given half the chance – I'm not worried about him.' He looked through the forest again. ‘Push on?'

She steeled herself, and got to her feet.

Two hours later, they broke the cover of the forest and found themselves on a scrubby hillside full of shale and patches of grass and flowers. After a dramatic rise, a mountain ridge towered above them, crags and peaks forming a black and grey, horizontally striped range. Cal led them west, rifle slung over his shoulder, studying the range all the time. After a few minutes, he pointed. ‘See, there? The square one with the black cap? That's where we're heading.'

Hope's heart sank. ‘Got it,' she said as brightly as she could manage.

They set out.

‘We'll find some water and take a rest. Then, if I'm right, we'll be able to cut in a littleways and hit something called the Loop Trail. That'll take us within a few hundred metres of the cabin. And the walking will be easier. Maybe we'll even run into some hikers or a ranger, though it's a little early in the season.'

‘How far have we walked, do you think?'

‘Seven miles perhaps?'

They found a stream not long after, and sat to drink and rest. The sun was directly overhead and the day was warm. Hope lay on her back, looking up into the blue. Cal lay down next to her. They were quiet. High above them, a huge bird
wheeled, emitting a screeching cry, like a ping of sonar bouncing through the mountains.

‘Bald eagle,' Cal said.

‘This isn't much like Hackney, you know that, don't you?'

‘Hackney? Thought you lived in London.'

‘Hackney is in East London. It's busy and dirty and it has great coffee, cafés and people. It has a lot of people. And bicycles. And parks. There are squirrels. Oh, and there's Hackney Marshes. That's more birds though. Small birds. Like the size of my hand.' She held up her hand, palm up against the sky. ‘Not ones like flying doors.'