Stony River (9 page)

He came out with a revolver. He upended one of Trapper’s hay bales in the yard, and for a bulls-eye he wadded up the red kerchief he wore under his hardhat at work and stuffed it in the hay.

“I don’t want to shoot your handkerchief,” Sevana objected.

“Don’t worry, you won’t,” he smirked. After he shut Trapper in the barn—making her wonder if he was afraid of spooking the horse, or if he thought she might hit him—he showed her how to load the gun, hold it, cock it. When he handed it to her, she almost dropped it from the weight. When she had rehearsed the sequence twice and was all set, he stood back and told her to pull the trigger. She did. The blast sent her reeling backward and she sat down hard. The ringing in her ears was so shrill she could hear nothing else. Tears smarted in her eyes from the shock.

“You missed the bale.” Fenn’s voice sounded faint, as from a great distance. “You might have hit the birch.”

She stood up disjointedly. She was shaking.

“Want to try again?”

“No.” She gave back the gun with hands that still trembled. “Don’t you have anything smaller?”

“Anything smaller wouldn’t kill a bear, it would only make it mad.” His point made, he took the pistol inside.

The sun was still high above the trees, the evening warm and inviting. The high-pitched ringing in her ears was subsiding. In a mood where she didn’t care if there were bears or not, she headed into the trees above the spring seeking her own entertainment.

The steep mountainside was wooded and brushy, and progress was slow, but she kept scrambling over logs and dodging thickets. Far above the homestead now and out of breath, she paused under three massive pines on an outcrop where the mountain, too, was pausing before going any higher.

The triad of close-standing, mammoth ponderosas with their yellow-orange trunks as straight and tall as pillars holding up the sky, were an attraction in themselves. But from that vantage she could also see a stretch of the river gleaming like molten gold far below. And the ridge opposite rose against the sky even more impressively than it did from the homestead because she could see more of it, its long, creased side drainages giving it the look of a wrinkled green blanket. But there was no sign of the snowy mountaintops she knew lay behind it.

When she left that perch she continued uphill, wanting to see how much more elevation she would have to gain before the crags came into view. The way was easier now, with a mat of pineneedles under the trees instead of brush, but she soon noticed that the sun had crept around the mountain out of sight. Deciding she should abandon her quest and start for home, she began the tedious business of descent—which to her consternation was far more difficult than going uphill, to the point she wasn’t sure she could keep from going into a freefall if she slipped. Frightened, she began angling to the side to avoid such a straight-down shot. When after many precarious minutes she thankfully reached the road, she saw that her side-sloping had taken her much further than she’d realized: she was standing within sight of the turnaround.

From there, it was a simple matter to go home. The road was in solid shadow, too, and it was none too early to be getting out of the woods. But for a minute she stood looking up the trail, thinking of the rocky view that had eluded her all evening. And suddenly she was hiking up the twisting footpath as fast as she could.

At first glimpse of Joel’s cabin, she withdrew into the trees to take her coveted look at the mountains undetected. And to her way of thinking, it was a scene that more than justified her impulsive presence there. The sun had set even on the highest crests by then, but the snow on the blue-gray planes of rock seemed to shine with a light its own against the dusky sky.

However the fact that it was twilight, albeit an unhurried, lingering one, made her stay only a minute before she slipped back to the path to hurry home. But stealing one furtive glance toward the cabin between the trees, she saw the front door standing open and Joel sitting at a desk just inside it. Something seemed wrong, though, for his head lay limply between his stretched-out arms, perfectly still—as one who had abandoned all hope in life…or life itself. An unarguable fear made her give up her desired concealment and run to him with a churning, queasy stomach.

CHAPTER 6

At Sevana’s unannounced entrance, Joel started up—and she saw his eyes were wet, with a look that did not resemble the contented shepherd of yesterday.

Immediately she realized how rude she’d been to violate his privacy, but she still felt shaken. “I’m sorry, Joel,” she said breathlessly. “I thought you were fainted—or—”

“Dead?” He passed a hand across his eyes. “I wish I was,” he said with a groan, rising to his feet. He was a big man, she realized the more, seeing him within the confines of the cabin rather than the open spaces of the outdoors. He covered his eyes again and drew a breath, composing himself. Then he took the hand away and peered down at her. “What are you doing here?” It wasn’t accusatory, just a request for information.

“I’m so sorry,” she said again, thinking she always seemed to be apologizing for blundering into his property. She stepped back to the threshold, poised for escape. “I just wanted one sight of the high peaks. I wasn’t going to come up to your cabin at all—until I saw you—”

“And thought I was a candidate for a grassy knoll,” he finished for her. “But now that you find me alive—at least physically—” the dark emotion was back in his face, “sit on the porch and take your fill of the mountains.”

“Oh, no—I already did. I’ve got to get home before it gets any later.”

“Sit down,” he commanded. “The moon is about to rise and you shouldn’t miss it. I’ll take you home myself.”

Sevana meekly sat.

After a minute he joined her on the edge of the low front porch. Glancing at him sideways, Sevana saw he had splashed water on his face, so that tendrils of hair hung wet around it. She wanted to ask why he didn’t wish to live, but now that he had collected himself, she had no temptation to bring back the look of torment to that cleanly defined face. For she knew she was looking at a man who, though whole and strong in body, was for some reason devastated to his inmost soul.

Instinctively she began talking, to divert him from his trouble. “I’ve been exploring,” she told him. “I saw the river from a point above the homestead.”

“Down at those three pines?”

“Yes. It seems everywhere I go, I discover something new! I wish I could explore everything—even those mountains over there—and see what else I would find.”

“You’d like that, would you?” He saw her look of intrigue as she gazed toward the peaks—and it seemed to impress him in some way, for he went on thoughtfully, as if he wished to show regard for her expressed desire: “You would find many things, Sevana. Just in that one mountain range alone, are ridges and valleys and lakes and creeks that would take more than one lifetime to explore.”

Now her eyes were focused on him, in wonder. “You sound as if you know it well. Have you ever been in those mountains, yourself?”

“Many times—though not many enough. Every summer I go up to the high country to pasture the sheep.”

“I didn’t know you’d been there!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t know anyone could. Those cliffs look so inaccessible, like a fortress that can’t be gotten into.”

“They look so,” he agreed. “But looks are deceiving in the mountains. Just as you can see no peaks from down at your place—in that same way, those rockfields are hiding a whole great wilderness you can’t see from here.”

“Tell me what it’s like,” she begged, thoroughly distracted, forgetting it was she who had introduced the topic as a means of distracting him.

He smiled, if faintly, at her lively interest. “It’s a different land up there, Sevana, a land all its own. The ridges are rocky and open, rising close to a sun whose fire burns cooler and brighter in the thinner air. And the climate is harsh, and the soil so shallow the trees and plants spend more energy surviving than growing—and yet the most prolific wildflowers you’ll find anywhere grow there in clumps, and patches, and whole gardens on the hillsides.”

He took interest as he talked, warmth creeping into the darkened eyes. “The wind is different, too—it blows almost continually, and it has a wilder sound. It’s the most desolate land you will ever know, but you won’t find a place equal to it anywhere else. There’s something that binds you with it, makes you forget anything else you’ve ever known.” He was looking far away, seeing in his mind the places he described, and he spoke as if in his heart he was already there.

A flame of fascination had lit behind Sevana’s blue-shadowed gaze, as she imagined such an exotic land as he’d described. “Will you go again this summer?”

“Soon as the snow melts.” Just to talk about it had substantially increased his impatience to return. It seemed to him, suddenly, that it had been a very long winter.

“I’d like to see it.” Sevana was already wondering how she could accomplish such a feat. “Is it very far?”

“It’s ten miles to Stormy Pass where I take the sheep. It’s a three-day trip with the flock, stopping for pasture along the way.”

“Is there a trail?”

“Yes, it begins at the Spruce Creek pack-bridge upriver.”

“Oh, so you
do
have bridges out here!” she said, bobbing her head happily. Just that single fact made everything seem so much more reassuring.

“What?—oh, you’re talking about the low-water crossings.” His mouth quirked at the revelation. “Yes, we may be a little rough around the edges, but we’re not totally primitive.” But he was staring at the skyline. “See that glow? The moon’s about to rise.”

Scarcely had he spoken when a sliver of light appeared on the far side of Graystone. It grew wider as they watched, its curved top rounding the sharp edge of the rock so rapidly they could see it moving. Butter-yellow and big as a picturebook moon, the oversize ball lifted free of the jagged cliffs and sailed weightlessly into the dusky-blue atmosphere.

Sevana could have sat there indefinitely in the spell of that hypnotic globe as it climbed higher and brighter, stealing the attention from everything else. But the scratchy spruce branches whispering a night song around them made her think of darkening trails with bears on them. “Do you see bears very often?” she asked, wanting to find out if the one she’d encountered was an exception.

“Not that often. They usually stay out of your way. But in these woods you can’t take anything for granted.”

“Fenn gave me a shooting lesson with his gun this afternoon, and I failed dreadfully.” For some reason she felt like confessing her dereliction to him. “It knocked me off my feet.” And then she gave a chuckle, for all of a sudden it seemed funny to her.

But Joel didn’t even smile. “What kind of gun was it?”

“Some kind of handgun. It was big and heavy.”

“It was probably a .357, or even a .44.” He picked up a spruce cone from the step and gave it a hard toss. “He should have started you with a .22 and let you work up to a bigger gun; then you would have been prepared to handle it. He did it on purpose just to scare you.” He didn’t hide his displeasure at Fenn’s irresponsible behavior. “I don’t see any harm in you learning to shoot. I carry a sidearm when I’m out with the sheep. I’ve never had to use it, but once in a while I catch a glimpse of a cougar slinking by.”

“Cougar?” Sevana shuddered, finding her list of dangers increasingly incomplete.

“Their population is on the rise. They’re commonly known to shadow people—follow them through the woods without letting themselves be seen.” He was on his feet. “On that subject, that’s why I don’t want you walking home alone this time of night. I’ll take you down on Flint.”

Sevana had no objection.

Disappearing back of the house, Joel returned astride the workhorse. “Step up,” he said, stopping alongside the porch. The horse was so high that Sevana felt a bit light-headed as Joel pulled her up behind him. “Better hold on to me,” he said, as if he sensed her insecurity—so she timidly locked her hands around his waist. It was taut in every muscle, so she knew that while he had relaxed outwardly somewhat, a tension still lay within him like a tightly coiled spring.

Flint whickered his enthusiasm at getting to go someplace that unexpected time of night, and pointed his ears forward in a show of interest as he started down the trail with a sure-footed gait. The moon was hanging before them as a celestial lantern to light their way, but before they reached the turnaround it was snuffed out by the towering ridgeline, and the trail sank into shadow. “Say goodbye to the moon,” Joel said over his shoulder. “You won’t see it from your place tonight.”

“I saw it last night,” she told him.

“It’s lower tonight. When it’s full, it rises too far south to shine into the river canyon this time of year. It’ll be September before you see the full moon again from down there.”

As they approached the homestead the moon was nowhere in sight, as Joel had predicted—but Sevana was noticing light of another kind shining from the front window, for it was past the time Fenn usually went to bed. Remembering she hadn’t told him where she was going, she jumped down with a hurried thank-you and ran to the house, leaving horse and rider to take their own departure of the yard. “I’m back!” she announced, throwing open the door.