Stony River (42 page)

But it was not just her appealing beauty, so allusive of hopeful dreams and wistful innocence, that had held his gaze while she slept. He’d always been aware she was possessor of a charm far beyond the ordinary, and it had not mattered or moved him at all because he saw only Chantal. No, it was the fact that she had turned up there, despite the odds against her. How well he understood the compulsion that motivated her! And it had been reckless, and she had suffered for it, but she was there. She looked delicate and demure, but she had grit. She had shown herself to be more than a glamour girl enduring an obligatory confinement in the backwoods. She had embraced what it took to live in that primitive set-up, showing kindness to a surly, undeserving brother—had even taught herself to shoot, and run off someone he’d heard rumored to be a hard character with one or both feet on the wrong side of the law.

And yet it was not even that, entirely. It was because she loved the place, because her eyes shone with the wonder of that Stony River country. He tossed the stick in the fire and bent to tighten his bootlaces.

Sevana was watching him. She wanted to tell him the discovery she’d made in the night, but she didn’t know how. “Do you sleep with your boots on?” she asked.

“Up here I do. And with one eye open, and my revolver handy.”

“Why do you choose this life, when it’s so hard?”

He straightened to meet her gaze. “Wouldn’t you?”

Despite the loneliness, the hardship, the skin-tingling wail of wolves in the night canyons…to live in this vaulted world scraping up against the sun and stars if she had the chance—“Yes,” she said recklessly, “yes, I would.”

His face broke into a grin. “I wouldn’t know you if you said otherwise. And I wish you could stay.” He kicked the logs aside to make room for the coffee pot.

But Sevana couldn’t wait for coffee. Already the lightening horizon was enabling her to detect the nearer features of the land in the feathery darkness. Refusing his offer of breakfast, she gave back his coat and went to untie Trapper. Joel followed, and she could sense his helplessness in letting her go as he said: “I wish I could see you safely home.”

“I’ll make it all right,” she avowed. “Goodbye, Joel. See you—next time.” There was frustration behind the words, because there was no set time ahead to count on. The only thing she could count on with any certainty was the fact that they would never be together in that high place again, the rest of their lives.

“Goodbye, Sevana.” With his hand cupping her shoulder in farewell, Joel saw her face lifted to his—her creamy skin brushed by the apricot of the pre-sunrise sky, her hair blowing free in all the flaxen shades of meadowgrass on a late-summer day, her eyes like the tumbling little brooks of that land, so dark and sparkling they stole the focus of her face. “It was an unexpected pleasure.”

Time was slipping away, she had to tell him now. “Joel—last night—under the stars—” she spoke up even though she hadn’t framed the thought, “there was something I can’t explain. But I think it’s true, what you said—God really does walk on these high mountains.”

Joel looked at her, really looked at her, with an expression she’d never seen before. “Up here, so close to heaven,” he said quietly.

She nodded, caught in his look, full of an inexpressible feeling. Then, breaking the spell, she mounted her horse and sought his eyes a last time. “Thanks for everything.”

“You take it easy on the trail,” he warned, entertaining visions of her urging the horse forward at breakneck speed. “Let Trapper set the pace.”

“I will.” She shook the reins and started off abruptly. She knew she was leaving him standing alone in that flower-filled meadow, but she didn’t turn for a wave or a final look. She didn’t want to look back and see all she was leaving behind.

CHAPTER 27

If Joel had known at what pace Trapper would choose to go down the trail, he would by all means have told Sevana to hold him back. As it was, the stallion went for home as if he’d been away from his oat box far too long, and Sevana merely held on and let him go—thankful his sentiments matched hers so she didn’t have to be tempted to break her word to Joel. Even so, the sun was high by the time they crossed the bridge and galloped for home.

As she entered the yard, Fenn left the porch at a long stride. “Where the blazes have you been?” he demanded, looking far more angry than relieved.

“I was out riding,” she replied evasively. She slid to the ground and trailed a hand over Trapper’s mane in appreciation of her safe return.

“All night?” he said pointedly.

She drew a breath and faced him. “I went up to Stormy Pass and I meant to be back by dark, but—”

“Stormy Pass?” he interrupted. “Are you out of your mind?”

“But there was a thunderstorm, and Joel wouldn’t let me go home in it,” she finished.

“Good for him,” Fenn said. “I suppose you would have tried to ride through it, had he not.”

She didn’t answer. He knew her well, all right.

“Sevana—” Fenn said severely, taking hold of Trapper’s rope, “if you want to risk your life doing lunatic things, that’s your business. But not with my horse. Wander where you like, but
stay off my horse
, do you understand?”

“Yes, Fenn,” she said dispiritedly. “I didn’t want to take Trapper, but I couldn’t think of any other way to get there.”

“You could have stayed home and stayed out of trouble, but I suppose you didn’t think of that,” he mentioned with cutting sarcasm, and led the winded horse away to be watered and curried at the barn.

Sevana, wishing to avoid him, went for a walk directly. She was sorry she had gone against his wishes, but she couldn’t be sorry she had gone. Now, whenever she wanted, she could wander that highland paradise again in her mind.

As she roamed the woods, she spied a bush heavy with purple berries. Joel had once told her that later in the summer, huckleberries would be thick on their mountain. She nibbled at one cautiously and recognized the flavor of the dried berries he had shared with her on occasion in the pasture.

She ran back to the house for a pan, forgetting in her excitement that Fenn was at odds with her. But his truck was gone. She spent the next few hours picking berries as fast as she could, and whenever she looked up the hill, she saw just as many ahead.

Fenn still not home when she returned, she set about making a pie to appease him. It was the first pie she had ever attempted, but despite some rather significant difficulties, it came out of the oven intact and almost evenly browned. She covered it proudly with a cloth, and was peeling potatoes when Fenn walked in with a stringer of fish.

“Saw a bunch of huckleberries today,” he remarked as he began cutting off fishheads on the counter. “You ought to find some and make us a pie.”

With a broad smile she produced the pie from the warming shelf, and laughed at his evident surprise.

Bear fat made a good piecrust, Sevana had to admit. And one taste of those tangy-sweet berries made her want to go after more. She did so next morning and gathered an even bigger panful, with which she made another pie and a small batch of jam. The jam failed to set, but that didn’t stop Fenn from spooning the syrup onto his toast at breakfast or making sandwiches with it for his lunch. Seeing how he liked it, Sevana cooked a thicker batch and stored the jars in the cupboard beside the few home-canned goods already there, made by some unknown benefactor—Melanie, she had no doubt. All week she picked, until she had filled all the empty jars she could find, and they were tired of huckleberry pie.

In those days of early August, not only did the wild berries ripen, but the garden harvest began as well. Almost every day Sevana picked lettuce or green beans or carrots to serve with dinner. Although Fenn never said so, she could tell he had no objection to the vegetables on his table that cost him nothing, and were much fresher than what was available at the mercantile. And in the flowerbed, the poppies shot up on long stems to wave in fluttery scallops of scarlet, cherry, mandarin, sunflower, and cream in a tribute to Joel’s thoughtfulness, giving the cabin a colorful touch of domestication. Fenn never asked where she had gotten the flower seeds, but he guessed accurately enough, remarking critically that Joel had some mighty extravagant taste in flowers. But Sevana thought them gorgeous. She was very pleased with the success of her two small gardens.

Fenn was still getting in his firewood. He bucked up two more trees and piled the rounds in a heap by the back porch. Then, in the evenings, having already put in a full day’s work in the woods, he wielded his axe with seemingly tireless vigor, and Sevana gathered the hewn wood after him. She liked handling the concise chunks of spruce and fir, and the challenge of stacking them in stable, orderly rows on the back porch. She liked being outside in the mellow evenings, with the tang of the sapwood saturating the air. But most of all she liked working with Fenn. She was glad she could help him get ready for winter, even if she wouldn’t be there to share it with him.

And truly, winter seemed not so far away. Squirrels scolded the ringing of Fenn’s axe from the trees where they were busily cutting and dropping cones for their ground caches. Every night the sun took its burnished light from the mountaintops a little earlier, and once it was gone, the air had a new edge of coolness to it. More than anything tangible, though, it was just a sense—a sense that summer was wearing away.

Sevana found the same when she visited the river. There on the riverbank the wildflowers still bloomed amid the thriving green grass as if nothing would ever change, but there
was
a subtle change, she thought, in the season. The little clouds floating above the river corridor seemed more inclined to obscure the sun. The playful draft coming off the water was colder, the emerald light in the forest deeper. When tree shadows stretched in long lines across the water in early afternoon, she would walk slowly home again. These days she felt dreamy and she had no hurry. She felt adrift, like the season.

The twenty-third of August arrived, bringing with it Fenn’s birthday. Not having any cake pans, Sevana used the cornbread pan to make one layer at a time. Then she stacked the square cakes and covered them with a double batch of caramel frosting to hide how unevenly they had baked.

Fenn was surprised, without question, when he came home to the two-layer spice cake with the handpainted card beside it, and the special dinner of roasted venison and potatoes, glazed carrots, and garden salad. The fact that it had taken her the entire day detracted nothing from Sevana’s pleasure that he seemed to enjoy it, although he remained predictably taciturn throughout the affair. He did thank her for the fishing flies, however, and took the evening to try them at the creek—not even objecting when she went along—so that day was not at all an ordinary one.

They were back at work on the firewood next evening when Randall materialized around the house. He had a government check for Fenn’s efforts in helping locate the poacher. He shook Fenn’s hand formally, then Sevana’s. He appreciated the good work. But now he had to rush off: the footbridge over Otter Slide Creek had washed out that spring, and he was carrying boards down the trail to replace it. Of course it was really the Ministry of Forests’ job, but they were not as careful to maintain their holdings as they might be. He looked worn-out and harried as though he had a dozen other projects lined out ahead of him, all jiggeting in his brain for attention while he worked on the one—but there was also a keyed-up energy about him, as if the demands he placed upon himself produced a nervous stimulation that made him work all the harder and faster to meet each successive challenge.

After Randall had marched off with the self-assumed duties of many men balanced on his unbent shoulders, Fenn tried to persuade Sevana to take the money, or at least half of it—until she made it clear she didn’t need it or want it. So Fenn went to bed that night two thousand dollars closer to paying off his debt, and Sevana went to bed thinking it had been a pretty good birthday present for him, even if it was a day late.

On the first of September, they finished the wood. Sevana surveyed the full porch and the extra row stacked against the cabin wall before she tagged along with him to the barn. “That’s a lot of wood,” she said, proud of what they had accomplished. “Will you use it all in just one winter?”

“If it’s a hard one.”

“I bet it’s cozy here in the winter, with the fireplace and a good book and the snow coming down,” she speculated. “But don’t you ever wish you had someone to share it with?”—thinking of Melanie.

“No.” Fenn scowled to let her know she was talking too much. To make amends, she groomed Trapper while he filled the water-trough and feedbox.

One early star glimmered in the dull blue above them as they walked back to the house. It was already growing cold. Sevana made tea in a saucepan while Fenn greased his boots at the table. The mink oil gave off its familiar rank vapors. “It’s hard to get used to it getting dark so early, isn’t it?” she remarked with a glance toward the window.

“I’d thank it not to, if I could,” Fenn retorted, a strange shadow passing across his face.

She saw the look and wondered what it meant. “What time does the sun set here in the middle of winter?” she asked.

“It’s not that it sets,” he said testily. “It’s that it doesn’t come up.”