The Outlander (14 page)

The old man smiled and bowed and took up the paper message and the coin.
“Thank you, gentlemen. Come again.” He continued to nod and smile.
“We'll send this off right away.”

But the two men did not move to the door — they were waiting to see
the message sent. Suddenly, one of the telegraphs erupted with a spatter of coded
clicks, the metallic voice of an unknown operator. With a start, the old man beetled
over to the youngest girl.

“No mistakes, please,” he said fiercely and put down a
transfer form. It was addressed to a magistrate in Toronto.

Father, found and lost her stop Mountain range impassable stop Will
hire guide.

The telegraphist put her fingers to the hammer and began.

A LONE EAGLE
drifted in lazy circles, studying some
unseen curiosity. The widow stood shivering at the edge of the camp. An inch of wet snow
covered everything. Her boots were wet. The air so clear she could see through the trees
to the range beyond, white-capped and running in a palisade away to nothing. The eagle
was floating overhead now, its wings black, the pale head angled to watch her. Then it
vanished in a green blur of trees, followed in a moment by specks of sparrows, shooting
after the monster, peeping in triumph, as if they themselves had driven it off. A
vigilance committee that lets the thief simply pass through town and be gone. The widow
followed their progress, hollow-eyed and pale. She watched until all that was left was a
flat white sky.

That morning, she had returned from checking her empty snares to find the
camp not only empty but vacated. She had stood at the perimeter, blinking in disbelief,
more shocked by William Moreland's absence than she had been by the sudden sight
of him, standing there over her as she expired, his hands on his hips. This was more
unreal. Her small pile of belongings had been collected on a fallen log to keep them
dry. He had left her the pipe after all. The tent was gone, the fire cold, nothing was
hung on the trees or
strung from ropes between them. She discovered
that he had left her food, some rabbit meat, a handful of coffee grounds, and a letter
explaining his inevitable flight. The letter was so filled with expressions of love that
she wondered for a moment whether he had meant it for someone else.

Now she sat alone as the sun set, rain settling on her hair, and read each
word again in stunned disbelief. This time her mouth didn't move. It was like he
was whispering in her ear, but meaninglessly:
Love . . . adore . . . union of our
spirits
. Then, at the end:
I cannot stay. It is too much for a solitary man
to change
.

Too much, yes, it was too much. There was no sign of him, and yet, when
she looked, he was everywhere. Their footprints, both sets, had mackled the uneven
ground, hers on his, his on hers.

How cruel now that she had really seen him, touched him. That he had been
real, not another phantasm drifting greyly among the trees, a little gasp of loneliness
from her afflicted mind. But a beautiful face, and a voice not merely familiar but in
her bones. The Ridgerunner was gone, and she could still smell him on her hands.

She turned the paper over. There were two words there:
Head
west
.

Which way was west? She knew, at least, the sun rises in the east and sets
in the west. She looked up: no sun. Trees hove into a dark spiral above her, and beyond
that, black needles of rain were coming in from heaven. There was no west, no north, no
earth beneath her feet. Her face streamed, upturned, her eyes pressed shut. An enormous
sob shook her. She folded his letter and slipped it beneath her clothes to keep it dry,
though the paper had been folded in rain, and brought rain with it, slowly foxing as it
lay against her breast. The
widow staggered to their recent bed,
the pressed concavity where their tent had been. She did not make a fire, but lay on the
carpet of needles, cocooned again in her fur coat.

The air grew cold and still. Snow fell through the cedars and covered her,
covered everything else, until the whole night world was only snow, and she but a ripple
in it.

ALL THE NEXT
afternoon the widow followed a stream
downhill, stepping from rock to bank along its meandering edge. For two days she had
been sneezing, and now her lungs were congested. She moved slowly and her back ached.
From time to time she was obliged to hold her saddlebags close and lean out to spit,
though she looked about her before doing so, as if some scandalized neighbour might be
watching. Moss clung to the pates of riverstones, water droplets suspended among the
green fibres, gleaming even in the shade. It was a steep incline and sometimes the widow
went slewing on the loose earth, wheeling her free arm. The hiss of a waterfall reached
her long before she found it, water curving over the final brow, beyond which rock and
earth and grass dropped off in a sheer cliff. She peered over the edge to see the white
stream drill off several shelves below. A pale rainbow was blown over the sloped and
craggy rock face, and she looked beyond to see a meadow far below. Streaks of some
purple flower ran through the distant green surface.

The widow would have to find another way down to the meadow. So she went
back upstream a little, where she sat abruptly and wept, face in her hands. And when she
was done, she sat in silence with her nose completely blocked and her eyes unfocused and
downcast. She crouched like a dog and drank from the stream, kissing the surface and
sucking the icy water up. Then she took off her boots and put her
feet in. A strange burning sensation at her toes . . . and yet the water felt icy at her
ankles. Curious, she pulled out her left foot to inspect it. The skin of the heel was
yellow and appeared thickened, and there was a red rim around it. The toenails were
dark. Her right foot was just as bad. Were her feet frostbitten? Or partially so? She
rubbed gently at the sallow skin. It was like rubbing sand into her flesh. And yet when
she stood and walked, even in bare feet, they felt no worse than the rest of her. Some
muscles hurt, her lungs ached. The widow's slim shoulders were especially sore
from carrying all her things. As she went back upstream, she bent from time to time to
snap wild rosehips from their stems and collect them in her pocket, for the rabbit meat
was getting high, and she didn't know how long it would last.

Halfway down the incline she paused to lower her bags so she could wave
the dark cloth of her pants and cool herself. As she descended, the scent of the meadow
below came to her in gusts and hints. Her knees trembled from exertion. She had stopped
sneezing but still coughed and spat great gouts of yellow phlegm. It was as she bent to
do this that she looked down to the meadow and saw a figure far below. The figure wore a
light, wide-brimmed hat and sat mounted on horseback, holding another horse by the
reins. He was looking up. Was he looking at her? Had he seen her? A wheeze came and went
deep in her lungs, but there was no other sound. The figure remained motionless. She
thought perhaps one of the horses was kicking at flies on its belly, but they were so
far away she couldn't tell for certain.

Without knowing why, the widow ducked down suddenly and crouched like a
spider on the ground. Her breath came
fast, and it puffed up the
dirt near her face. A rock outcropping stood between her and the watcher in the meadow.
For many minutes, she didn't dare peek over it, but when she did, the figure was
gone. The widow sat up, white-eyed. She hadn't decided what she would do when she
found herself near people again. Suddenly it came in at her in a rush: People going out
to church, streets, houses, carriages, the crack of rabbit hunters' guns in the
fields. Police.

She pressed her face against her grimy palms. She knew she could no more
retreat back into the mountains than she could go back home — not to her father,
and surely not to the cabin. She froze, her fingers pressed to her eyes, and saw again
the open door of her cabin, the laundry hanging from the line as if everything were all
right. At twilight, the trees utterly still. Herself looking back through the open door
into her own dark house. She had stood alone in the clearing, to all appearances a woman
waiting to hear a sound from within the house, perhaps to hear someone calling for her.
But she knew no sound would ever come.

The widow gathered up her things now and hurried along the path on
trembling legs, choosing any fork that would take her away from the man on
horseback.

NO MORE THAN
half an hour later she found herself in a
clearing in the trees, the expanse of purple meadow flowers ahead of her, and the man on
horseback regarding her from his mount. She took a step backward, as if she could
withdraw before he saw her. But it was hopeless. He'd followed her progress down
the rock face and come to wait at the place where he knew she would emerge. He was
Indian, and sat on a very basic saddle atop a massive, scarred bay. Two braids
came down over his green shirt front, and his face was shaded by
the wide, uneven brim of a felt hat. His expression was one of amused curiosity, and the
widow suddenly knew what kind of figure she must cut: a girl with wild hair, grimy face,
fusted saddlebags, muddy silk purse, and torn boots. She held the fur coat against her
hip like a load of laundry. The man's other horse was being led by its halter and
it nickered at her. The widow's mouth fell open.

“That's
my
horse!” she croaked, her voice
ragged with disuse. And indeed, it was the little roan, starved and sway-backed, far
less beautiful than its ghostly imagined counterpart, now watching the widow with
strange, flecked eyes. She had never noticed before that its eyes were flecked.

The man said nothing and his expression didn't change. He turned
both horses and started across the meadow.

“Wait!” she said. But he didn't wait for her.
“You! Do you speak English? Let go of my horse!”

The little ensemble went on through the sunny grasses, the horses'
tails swishing tiny insects up from the heads of flowers. The widow staggered after
them.

“Thief!” she squawked. “Come back!”

She was quickly falling behind. “Let go of those reins!” she
called out in desperation.

And to her surprise, he did let go of them. But the mare continued
following him, nudging the rump of the animal before it, only occasionally looking back,
reins dangling, to see the widow far behind, struggling along through waist-high
grass.

BY EVENING THE
man had started a fire and made himself
some coffee and was frying meat in a pan. The widow sat at
some
remove, glowering, the delicious smell killing her. He did not look at her or speak, but
she noticed that no matter where she went around the little camp, he never turned his
back to her. She had collected her mare with only a little difficulty. Around its
forelegs the man had affixed a hobble. As she approached, the mare kept backing up,
moving just out of reach and jerking its head away. But finally it allowed itself to be
captured, and she stroked its head and cooed into its face. She curried it with moss and
twigs, but the experiment failed; it only made the grey hide streaked and dirty. She
looked over at the man's bay horse. Its coat gleamed. He must have taken the
horses to a river and run them through it.

At last light, she found herself inching closer to the fire. He now lay
with his head propped on his saddle, fingers laced across his belly. She could see his
eyes under the hat. They were watching her now, not as amused as before. Something about
her worried him. Had he seen her coughing and spitting? Of course he had. It was likely
he'd seen her long before that, standing atop the waterfall. A strange shame
filled her and she could not meet his eyes. The idea that she had been wandering like a
troll above the waterfall, while someone gazed up at her — it was a horrible
thought. She began to retreat into the dark when his voice came to her.

“How'd you get separated from your horse?”

To her astonishment, she understood him. He had no accent she could
detect. In fact, his voice was much like her father's, a nice voice. She
didn't reply at first. She would not tell this stranger that she had lost her mind
before she had lost the horse. Finally, she settled on the most transparent answer.

“Wolves,” she said.

He nodded under his hat. “Truth is,” he said, “I
don't know why I was waiting for you to come down out of there. I should have been
home days ago. I guess I was curious. And I thought it'd be a man.” The fire
hissed and glowed at his feet. The soles of his boots were lit by firelight and she
could see the crisp stitching in them. “Did you come from Frank?” he
asked.

She stayed silent.

“Sparwood?”

She shook her head.

“All right, then. Where?” He propped himself up on an elbow.
Unfortunately, she now had his attention. The widow's addled mind stuttered away
from the truth. Could an Indian get her put in jail? Probably. Would this man want to
put her in jail? Impossible to tell. She lied and gave him the name of the next biggest
town to hers. Strangely, this seemed to shock him.

“Granum? Are you saying you came through that pass?!” he
pointed into the dark trees behind her.

“What pass?” she said.

“Those mountains there. You came right through them?” She
nodded.

“Well, that's something.” His grin was huge. “When
I tell my wife that a stupid white girl just wandered through that pass . . .” He
chuckled and lay back down again.

She sat cross-legged, elbows on knees, her cheeks burning with fury. He
didn't care one bit about her. She was a funny story he could tell people. He
hadn't offered her any of the fried meat. And she would be damned if she'd
ask him for some now. The fire settled suddenly and a corona of infernal fireflies
exploded upward. The widow tossed another branch
across the glowing
mass of it and glowered at the man as the green bark steamed. The warmth was gorgeous,
and her withered lungs ached with each breath.