Stony River (35 page)

“Stormy Pass,” Joel acknowledged.

But there was no holding the sheep back. Deciding their master wasn’t coming, they went on without him. “Guess I’m off,” Joel said wryly as his flock disappeared down the road.

“Till snow flies,” Fenn said, the prospect of losing his only neighbor for the summer making him unusually cheerful. He loosened his axe from the round.

Joel turned to Sevana as she stood despondent, the ends of her hair lifting listlessly on the breeze. “Take care, Sevana. Enjoy the river for me.” He shook her hand with warmth.

This couldn’t be the end of all the days they had spent in such pleasant company. How could it be over—just like that? “I will,” she said faintly. “Have a good trip, Joel.”

“I intend to. And if I don’t see you before, best of luck in Lethbridge. I’m sure I’ll soon be hearing of your climb to fame and fortune.”

“Or my level path to mediocrity.” Right now it didn’t make much difference, one way or the other.

“No, not you.” His incalculably dark eyes held hers one moment more. Then he was off after the sheep at an unhurried pace, knowing he would catch up to them soon enough.

Going to the wilderness! While the hot dusty air blew back in her face, Sevana contemplated the cool springtime into which they were heading, and her heart was going with them. Then she realized Fenn was watching her as she stood staring discontentedly down the empty road.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to live like that?” she asked, turning to him in a concerted effort to appear unaffected by the loss of her most cherished friend.

“Up in the high country, you mean? This, from the girl who misses her curling iron?”—for he had once witnessed her unsuccessful attempt to heat that particular object on top of the stove.

“I do miss it. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to try that kind of life.”

“It might be fun,” he drawled, “if not for often being cold and wet and hungry.” He set a new round in the road.

“Still, I should like to wander the high mountains,” she said covetously.

“Sevana, you are a dreamer,” Fenn stopped work to say in derision. “I ought to lock up that horse of mine, before you take a notion to ride into the wilderness and vanish altogether.”

“I’d come back,” she insisted, hands on her hips.

“You don’t see that it’s a hard life.” Fenn was unwilling to tolerate her idealism. “You see the mountains as pretty scenery, and don’t know they are inhospitable and treacherous and can easily cost a man his life.” He raised his axe and struck the wood a ringing blow.

An instant she regarded him speechlessly. He was right, of course. Her few experiences in them had already proven that much to her. Soberly she went to gather the sticks he had splintered across the road.

CHAPTER 23

Sevana had made the shortbread a day early for Joel’s trip, but that night she went into full production, making stacks of cookies and brownies for all the loggers. She packed them in a box and sent it off with Fenn Monday morning over his muttered threats that he wouldn’t play Saint Nick to a bunch of cretins. At dinner she asked if the crew had liked them. “They liked them, all right,” was his inelaborate reply.

But when she went out to the truck to get his tape-reel to measure the picture frame she was making from the thick bark of the firewood tree, she found the box still on the front seat. She returned to the house highly indignant. “You didn’t give the cookies to the crew,” she accused him, while he sat tediously inverting a new pair of leather work gloves with pliers so the bulky seams would be on the outside—an invention of his now copied by the entire crew.

“They’ll get eaten,” he said, fazed neither by his crime nor her disappointment in him.

“I didn’t make them all for you.” It had been a lot of work, and she was still incensed.

“They don’t need cookies,” Fenn said. “They have a cook at camp who keeps them stuffed to the gills with that kind of thing. Fine soul by the name of Cleaver Dan.”

“That’s not the point.” But then she clammed up, knowing it was impossible to make him conform to her wishes. She let him keep his precious stash, and later was even able to look back with amusement on his hoarding of all those cookies like a disobedient schoolboy.

When he was starting on the second glove, she asked, “If there’s a cook at camp, why don’t you eat your meals there?”

“The company’s not handing out free food,” Fenn retorted. “They take it out of their paychecks and it’s no small amount. And they ship cases of surplus food to these out-camps, so there’s not always a lot of variety.”

“You don’t exactly have a smorgasbord up here.” She missed what she had always regarded as common foods—beef, chicken, pork, fresh milk and cream, summer fruits and vegetables…the list was almost endless.

“True. I did eat with the crew the second winter I was here, when the road slid shut and there was no way to get to town for two months.”

She looked up from the bark she was holding at right angles while the glue dried. “You were snowed in for
two months
?”

“That’s what I said. There was plenty of food in camp, but it was all pretty much the same. The only fruit on hand were cases of canned pineapple and plums. There was a big bowl of one or the other for breakfast, and every night Dan made plum or pineapple pie. By the end, we never wanted to see either kind again.”

Sevana was stuck on the thought of being stranded out there for half a winter. She felt isolated with the road open and in good shape between there and Cragmont. “Have you ever been snowed in since?”

“A couple of times, but not as long. We get avalanches every winter, but Hawk’s equipment can usually dig them through. But ever since that winter, I’ve kept food on hand for the possibility.” His inside-out gloves ready for morning, he emptied the teakettle into the washpan and turned to his nightly ablutions.

A few days later, a slight figure sitting straight-backed on a brown quarter horse rode the five miles to the logging camp under a hot morning sun, balancing a box in front of her. She dismounted in front of the mess hall where a small sign decreeing ‘NO CAULKS!!’ was posted by the door. The door was open, so she walked in. Words were exchanged with Cleaver Dan—a burly, balding man mopping the hardwood floor, who modestly introduced himself as possessing the ability to drink more beer faster than any other man in camp; and she returned without the box. Just as mysteriously, a note appeared on Fenn’s porch next day while she was rock-hopping up Avalanche Creek. It said,
THANKS FOR THE GOODIES,
and was signed by all the crew but Fenn…who, if he’d caught wind of the affair, chose to remain ignorant of it—at least for all appearances.

The hot spell had been long, and the sun merciless in its heat: day after day it burned in a cloudless sky. The little creeks tumbling down the side draws were reduced to less than half their volume, and ran clear rather than foamy-white; the ferns edging them were less vibrantly green. The forest litter crackled underfoot when Sevana strayed into the woods.

Because of the increasing fire danger, the logging crew went on hoot-owl shift, working at night and early morning when the woody fuels were not so combustible. It was a grueling schedule that saw Fenn leaving for work at one in the morning; but he bore these predawn departures stolidly, without complaint—perhaps he preferred them, in finally hitting upon an hour when he could have the house to himself. For Sevana kept to the old schedule, finding the days long enough already. The heat made the hours drag—and she missed Joel’s company.

Every morning she watered the thirsty gardens, then ran down seeking the welcome shade of the leaning cedar. The river was only a whisper now, and barely covering the rocks it ran over, but it was more beautiful than ever—winding through the valley in a wide golden band, its multicolored stones set in it like sun-catching jewels.

One afternoon while the sun was beating down upon the thin water as if bent on evaporating it all, Sevana rolled up her jeans and waded in. It was not very cold. She found a stout stick to steady herself on the slippery stones, and with it she crossed the river. Even at its deepest the water reached only past her knees, and the current was barely noticeable.

After that, she waded the river almost every day. She enjoyed the different perspective from the opposite bank, which was really just a narrow strip of rocks and grass sandwiched between the water and the nearly perpendicular mountainside. And it was while exploring that far bank one afternoon that she found—almost stepped in—a strange metal contraption in the grass. It didn’t look like the pictures she’d seen of Mr. Radnor’s traps, but she thought it had to be some kind of trap just the same. She stared at it in disbelief. After all this time, had she finally stumbled onto an important find?

Just then Fenn appeared on the other shore with his fishing pole, already home from another early day of work. She waved to him excitedly, and wanting to share her discovery, splashed straight into the water toward him. The current was faster and deeper than where she usually crossed, but she forged ahead—while Fenn, fishing pole poised in mid-air, stood watching.

In the middle of some rapids now, Sevana placed each step carefully, feeling the current trying to knock her feet from under her. She began to wish she’d gotten a stick. Almost losing her balance, she halted to stabilize herself. “Fenn?” she called, “could you throw me a stick?”

Fenn located a good-sized one and tossed it out to her. She reached up to catch it, but the sudden motion caused her to slip, and she fell headlong into the water while the stick bobbed away. Gasping for air, she surfaced, but was unable to regain her footing on the slick rocks. The current was starting to carry her downstream as she tried to recapture her equilibrium, thrashing to keep her head above water.

Seeing her predicament, Fenn threw down his pole and splashed in, his extra height and weight allowing him to combat the current easily. He walked downstream of her, snatched her up, and carried her back to shore.

“Nice going, Sevana,” he said bitterly as he set her down. “My boots are going to take two days to dry.”

“I’m sorry, Fenn.” She was breathless and distraught, shaking the water out of her face. “I thought I could make it. I’ve crossed downstream from here lots of times without any trouble,” she added in her own defense.

“Downstream the river’s wider—which translates into
not as deep
, if you want to bother with logic,” he retorted. “What the blazes were you thinking?”

“Fenn—you’ll never guess—I think I found one of the poacher’s traps over there.”

Even Fenn was startled by the announcement. “You sure?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

He looked down at his clothes and grimaced. “Guess I can’t get any wetter.”

“We can go downriver to cross.” She was already starting that way.

“I’m crossing here. You can hang onto me.”

Sevana could hardly believe it, but after he’d waded into the current he held out his man-sized hand to her. Holding to it tightly, she followed his lead through the swift water. Only when the water was shallow again did he let her go.

On the other bank she showed him the trap. He got down on a knee to examine it without touching it. “It’s a trap, all right. Freshly set and baited, and the right size for an otter. But it’s not an ordinary trap, it’s a live-trap.”

“You mean, like the mousetraps I wanted—so they won’t be harmed?”

“Yes—he’s catching them alive, stealing not just pelts but the whole animal.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe for a fur farm. Or maybe he’s just an idiot who doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. All I can tell you is that it’s absolutely illegal.” His jaw was set like someone ready to swing a punch. “I’d like to get my hands on that so-and-so and ask him where he gets off, thinking he can come in and steal our otter. We’ll leave this as we found it and go give Randall a call.”

They crossed the river again where it was not so fast, Sevana with an exhilarating lightness of heart. No longer was she plagued by doubts about Fenn’s innocence. The indignation in his face, his willingness to call in the authorities, his outrage that someone was poaching on the river, told her he would never do the same. He was a true sportsman who respected the law and took his privileges seriously, would never do anything to jeopardize them.

After Fenn changed his wet clothes at home—coming downstairs in a pair of old boots and grumbling because they gave him blisters—he drove to camp to call the constable on the base radio. But predictably, the always busy Mr. Radnor was in another part of his territory. The constable thought he would be back in town that evening or the following day. Not to be put off, Fenn left a message to be delivered if the warden could be found sooner.

He was frothing with impatience when he arrived home, ready to take matters into his own hands and hunt down the poacher himself. “Maybe we could drive to town and leave a note at Mr. Radnor’s house,” Sevana suggested, trying to distract him from what sounded to her like a very bad idea. “Does he have a family?”

Fenn gave a snort. “What do you think? No one could live with his vigilance, his attention to detail, his perfect standards. The crew wishes he
would
get married, so he’d knock off a little on the job-is-my-life thing, but no way that’s going to happen.”