Stony River (39 page)

The dry spell was over. It rained often, and when the sun shone it was not with the intensity it had before. The nights were colder, and Fenn said they had already started the freefall back to winter. He cracked a joke about ten months of winter and two months of bad sledding, but he didn’t smile as he said it. He finished the roof of the house and started on the barn.

Sevana remembered to tell him Melanie’s message one night, that she’d said hello and about Eaglehead Dome. But Fenn turned on her ferociously. “As if I care.”

“You should,” she said from the dishpan, using her firsthand information to advantage. “You were the one who talked her into climbing. Why did you, Fenn?”

The truth and directness of her question took some of the spirit out of him. “Because she’d always wanted to try it,” he admitted with more honesty than usual. “But she was afraid the whole idea was too foolish to get involved with. I told her the only foolish part was not doing what she really wanted.”

He stood with sawdust on his shirt from the wood he’d just brought in, a reminiscent look on his face not usually seen. “She’s actually quite the daredevil. She hunts and fishes like no girl I’ve ever met. Once she hooked a dolly varden out of Snowshoe Creek, when everybody knows there’s nothing but six-inch brookies in there.” He laughed out loud at what must have been a huge joke between them at the time, until he remembered he was praising the very person he was at odds with, and swung abruptly away.

When the weather allowed, Sevana went to the pasture to work on a midsummer picture of the crags—their bare-rock heights no less incredible than when they were topped with snow. Oh, the mountains! She had looked on their secrets from afar but not discovered them. Tantalizing, inscrutable—why did they draw her so? If she went, would she know? When she was sitting alone in the pasture, the restlessness would rise, and the desire to answer their call would stir anew.

At first she knew she couldn’t go; it was only a wish. But the more she looked across the valley, the less she could think why she could not. Finally, there remained only the pure desire, with no objection to block it. For it came to her, suddenly, that she
could
go. She could ride up the trail a half-day’s journey, and maybe she would reach the wilderness. If not, she would still see new territory. And when half the daylight was gone, no matter where she was, she would turn back. It was a wonderful scheme—why hadn’t she dared to think of it before?

She rode home in anticipation, making plans. For her part, she would not leave the trail under any circumstance. Even if Trapper spooked and took off on his own, she would not go looking for him, knowing he could find his own way home. And if the trail became hard to follow, she would not continue. Still, she knew Fenn would never let her attempt it—at least not with his horse. The only thing to do was to wait for a day when he wouldn’t be home until after dark himself. She didn’t like to be underhanded, but it was the only way if she was to go—and she
had
to go.

It was only a few days later that Fenn, eating cobbler made from a can of cherries she’d unearthed in a major discovery from a back cupboard, mentioned he was hauling the bulldozer to a new unit tomorrow and wouldn’t be home until late.

“How late?” she ventured, trying to act less interested than she was.

He shrugged. “Ten or eleven. I’ve got to move it after work, so it’ll be ready to go first thing Monday morning.”

She saw her chance and laid her plans. After dinner she baked sugar cookies cut in circles with the cherry can, and frosted them when they were cool. That night she slept tense and woke often, not daring to oversleep. Well before dawn she was up and dressed. When she heard Fenn below, she went down and ate breakfast with him, reminding him there were fresh cookies and urging him to take extra food in his lunch to make up for missing dinner—while failing to inform him that she also would be missing dinner because of the mile-high ascent she was about to undertake. As soon as he went out the door, she packed a lunch.

Then she was riding Trapper down the mountain in the dove-gray light before sunrise, her blood racing with the excitement of what she was doing. She was on her way to the wilderness at last!

CHAPTER 25

The mist drifting up from the river was so cold that Sevana shivered as she crossed the pack-bridge, and wished she’d thought to bring a jacket. But she wouldn’t turn back now! It was ten miles to Stormy Pass, and she was determined to reach it if there was any possible way for her to do so.

After an hour’s steady climb in deep shade she reached the hunters’ sign, and in the first tree-filtered rays of morning sun stopped to read the official warning again. Then, elated she didn’t have to turn back this time, she urged Trapper forward.

By midmorning she broke out of the sun-hidden draws onto a bright sideslope, high above a whitewater creek roiling down the deep drainage. Higher yet at the head of the creek, stone giants frowned down at her, sternly inquiring who was coming into their land.

So silent the morning and so formidable the country, Sevana did feel like an intruder. She lost some of her brash daring and went on more timidly through that vast territory, in awe and a little fear, all the time aware of the rock sentries standing over her from their fortressed heights. And still her heart urged her upward. Each step took her closer to the land she wanted to see, and oh! she wanted to hurry, so she could realize her desire. But the trail was arduous and rock-strewn, and she had to content herself with Trapper’s measured pace. Compared to Flint he was an unimaginative horse, she felt. He seemed to have no sense of adventure, doing only what was required of him with little curiosity or interest.

Gradually the forests gave way to open slopes of beargrass scattered with isolated groups of alpine firs. Two kinds of flowering heather—bristly low evergreen mats laden with tiny rose-pink bells, and feathery lime-green sprigs bearing snowy five-point stars—perfumed the air with pungent, pinelike scents. Peaks were looming all around; it seemed she would be walled in by them. She could hardly believe she was already nearing the strongholds she had been looking up to from so far below.

The trail went on boldly through bouldered outcroppings standing like some massive if imprecise gateway, and when she had gone through, her eyes told her she had gained the pass: she had reached a rolling parkland on the shoulders of the mountains. Above that highland saddle, cliffs of elemental rock jutted to their zeniths against a fathomless sapphire sky. Sevana stopped the horse, looked at each rugged summit in turn, and solemnly, respectfully, dismounted.

But the ground upon which she alighted was not so intimidating. Little brooks sparkled across the stony soil, green grass grew inviting, and shiny-faced flowers in such number and brilliance as she’d never envisioned nodded and danced on the upsweeps in magnificent, concentrated patches of color. The wind that blew over that region sang in many different pitches, like the high and low notes of a violin. Oh, the high wilderness! Sevana stood in the bewilderment of a dream while Trapper bent over a granite-bottom stream for a well-deserved drink.

Down the sloping grassland Joel was riding, and he, too, was part of the dream. She watched him come, fixed to the spot where she stood. He looked even stronger and more beautiful than he had in memory. She forgot he was her friend and saw him as a stranger—and for the first time was unsure she should have come. As he reined up, her reservations increased: the only emotion displayed on his face was disbelief.

“Sevana!” He swung down from Flint to stand tall and imposing beside her. “How can it be you?”

She took a step back from his commanding presence. “I—I just followed the trail,” she faltered. But despite her misgivings, she had to add: “Oh, Joel, it’s even more beautiful than I thought it would be!”

Her rapt words did not melt his stern exterior. “A time or two I’ve pictured you riding into this saddle,” he admitted, “but I never thought you really would. And if I’d known you were planning it, I would have tried to talk you out of it.”

“Why?” she asked innocently. “I left at daybreak, and I still have a little time before I have to go back. If I’d known it was only a half-day’s journey, I would have come long ago.”

“Half a day’s journey under the best of circumstances—which you rarely have in the mountains,” he qualified, his black eyes scrutinizing her. “And in any case, it’s always a risk to travel in this country by yourself.”

“You came up by yourself,” Sevana pointed out, not liking to be scolded.

“And took a risk doing it. But not so great a risk as someone who’s never been in the high country before. How did you talk Fenn into letting you come?”

She looked down at the rope in her hands. “He—doesn’t know,” she said, in such a low voice he barely caught the words.

“You came up here without telling him?” He was incredulous. “What if something had happened to you?”

“Nothing did,” she said stubbornly.

“But if something had, no one would have known.”

She raised clear, resolute eyes to him. “I had to see it.”

A moment he studied her further; then finally his mouth turned up in a reluctant smile as he slowly shook his head. “Sevana, how can I scold you, when I know the call of the mountains so well myself? It’s only that I care about you. Come on, let’s get back to the sheep.”

They rode side by side up to the saddle where his canvas tent was staked, and onward to the flock grazing a windswept ridge below a craggy crown of rock. Sevana was surprised to hear Joel say that rocky crest was Old Stormy. It didn’t look anything like itself from that angle. When they reached the sheep, Joel turned Flint loose, but Sevana tied her unpredictable mount to a scrubby tree.

Hawthorn and Thistle came bounding down as soon as they saw her, and she dropped to her knees to gather them in an exuberant hug, including Goldthread when he came over more timidly. All the lambs had grown bigger and more muscular, and looked very fine and white and sleek. Even Goldthread was starting to fill out his skin, and looked sturdier and stronger.

After inquiring how they were, and seeing in their bright eyes the answer she wanted, she went to greet the rest of the flock by name—missing, Joel said, not one. Raven and Arrow were brown from head to tail from a recent dustbath, but they all looked healthy and robust. Brook and the other yearlings were perhaps the most impressive of the bunch, for in the long days of sunshine and ambrosial pasture they had grown out of their adolescent stage and actually looked quite majestic. She wondered about the bandage around Blazingstar’s front leg, and Joel said he’d gotten greedy and gone after some grass high in the rocks. He’d slipped, and cut his leg.

“Did you have to rescue him?” Sevana wanted to know.

“I did, and it was no easy task. The little fellow thought he was a mountain goat till it came to coming back down.”

Sevana smiled, but it was a fleeting expression. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed Joel until she saw him again, standing so real and substantial before her. And something about it disturbed her in the deep of her subconscious, so that she turned from him to pick a stormy-blue gentian bud.

“What is it, Sevana?” he asked, sensing her quiet air. “Do you wish you hadn’t come?”

She turned back to him. “No, I wish to stay.”

Joel couldn’t help noticing the flower she held was the exact indigo of her eyes. The blue-eyed Marys hadn’t even been close, he realized. Her eyes were the deepest blue imaginable, brightened only by the candles in them that altered with the intensity of her emotions, lighting or falling dark at her mood. But he had to smile at the defiant line of her mouth. “I could build you a house out of these rocks—but I don’t think you’d like the winters.”

“But, Joel, all this beauty!” she protested, refusing to be baited. “We can only look on it and then we must go, and it is lost to us.”

“Not lost, Sevana,” he corrected her. “Once you’ve seen this land, you must carry it with you forever in your heart.”

She thought about that. Perhaps it was so, that if you loved something, it would always be a part of you. In that way—and that way only—you could never lose the things you loved.

She looked at the flower in her hand. With its petals closed in a tight swirl, it was a plump, perfect teardrop on a straight stem—such a secretive blue it suggested black, and polished with a subtle satin luster. “Is this gentian?” She thought she recognized that startling jet-blue color from her flower book.

“Yes, mountain gentian. It’s trumpet-shaped when open, but it’s a very late bloomer.”

“It looks like a prize blue rosebud glazed with stardust,” she fancied. “It should be in some upscale department store between the jewelry and the velvet hats.”

Joel chuckled. “Maybe so, but it’s happier here, edging the streams with the monkeyflower and woodrush.”

She remembered seeing a picture of monkeyflower with its shocking pink blooms. But many of the flowers within sight she didn’t recognize. “I should have brought my flower book,” she said.

But that wasn’t really necessary, for Joel was there to identify the members of that alpine garden. There were showy magenta stalks of parrotsbeak with fernlike leaves, and clusters of alpine daisies with inquisitive yellow faces all turned the same way toward the sun. There were bouquets of shaggy asters that resembled the daisies in shape, but were a vivid rose-lavender. The reclusive sky pilot peeped out from sheltering tree branches and rock crevices, eliciting a feeling of coolness just from its ice-blue florets. And everywhere, the heather carpeted the hillsides with vibrant patches of crimson and white.