““We can give her a try,’ I said quiet. “Not much else we can do.’
““Horses are shot, Boone,’ he replies, “I ain’t goin’ to kill no good horse for those lousy coyotes back yonder.’ So we got down and walked, our saddle-bags loose and rifles in our hands.
“Then we heard them on the trail behind and we drawed off and slipped our saddles from the horses and cached them in the brush. Cow Hollow, Son, and that’s where we made our stand. We had a plenty of ammunition, and we weren’t wasteful, making shots count. We hunkered down among the rocks and trees and stood them off.
“Morning left us and the noon, and the high hot sun bloomed in the sky, but it was late fall, and as the afternoon drew on, a cold wind began to blow.
“They come then, they come like Injuns through the woods after us, and we opened up, and then suddenly Johnny was on his feet, he’s got that old Winchester at his hip and he shoots and then he jumps right into them clubbing with his rifle. He went down, and I went over the rocks, both guns going, and that bunch broke and ran.
“I fetched Johnny back, and he lay there looking up at me. “Good old Boone!’ he said. “Get the girls and get away. Go to Mexico, go somewheres, but get away!’
“He died like that, and I sat right there and cried. Then I covered him over gentle and I slipped out of Cow Hollow and started up the trail toward the high peaks.
“It was cold, mighty cold. The sun came up and touched those white peaks and ridges ahead of me, then the clouds covered her over and it began to snow. I walked on, and the snow stopped but the wind blew colder and colder. We was getting high up, I passed the timberline here on Tokewanna and crawled into this here place.
“Son, I can’t see to write no more, and there ain’t no more to say. I guess I didn’t say it well, but there she is. You can read her and make up your own mind. This here I’ve addressed to your mother, care of that sheriff down there. I even got a stamp to put on so’s it will be U.S. mail and no one’ll dare open her up.
“Be a good boy, Son, love your Ma and do like she tells you. And carry the name of Tremayne with pride. It was honest blood, no matter what you hear from anyone.”
He was stiff from the cold, but he rolled over carefully and folded the letter and tucked it into an envelope. On it he placed his stamp, and then scrawled the name of his wife, in care of the sheriff. From his throat he took a black handkerchief and fastened it to a stick so its flapping would draw attention. Near it, held down by a rock, he left the letter.
Then he crawled out and using his rifle as a crutch, got to his feet. He still had ammunition. He had no food. He discarded the almost empty canteen. For a long time he looked down the cold flank of the mountain into the dark fringe of trees. Far away among those trees flickered the ghostlike fingers of fire, where men warmed themselves and talked, or slept.
Something blurred his eyes. His head throbbed. Pain gnawed at his side and his leg was stiff. How long he stood there he did not know; swaying gently, not quite delirious and yet not quite rational. Then he turned slowly and looked up, two thousand feet, to the cold and icy peak, silver and magnificent in its solemn grandeur.
He stared for a long time, and then he began to climb. It was very slow, it was very hard. He pulled his old hat down, put the scarf lower around his ears. To the left there was a ridge, and beyond the ridge there would be a valley.
He climbed and then he slipped, lacerating his hands on the icy rocks. He got up, pushing himself on.
“Marge,” he whispered, “Son…” He continued to move. Crawling…falling…standing…he felt the snow, felt his feet sink. He seemed to have enormously large feet, enormously heavy. “Never aimed to kill nobody,” he said. He climbed on…wind stirred the icy bits of snow over the harsh flank of the mountain. He bowed his head, and when he turned his face from the wind he looked down and saw the fires below like tiny stars. How far he had come! How very far!
He turned, and looked up. There was the ridge, not far, not too far…and what was it he had thought just a moment ago? Beyond the ridge, there is always a valley.
The Moon of the Trees Broken by Snow
* * *
COLD BLEW THE winds along the canyon, moaning in the cedars, whining softly where the sagebrush grew. Their fire was small, and they huddled close, the firelight playing shadow games on the walls, the walls their grandfather’s father built when he moved from the pit house atop the mesa to the great arch of the shallow cave.
“We must go,” the boy said, “there is no more wood for burning, and the strength is gone from the earth. Our crops are thin, and when the snows have gone, the wild ones will come again, and they will kill us.”
“It is so,” his mother agreed. “One by one the others have left, and we are not enough to keep open the ditches that water our fields, nor defend against the wild ones.”
“Where will we go?” Small Sister asked.
They avoided looking at each other, their eyes hollow with fear, for they knew not where to go. Drought lay heavy upon the land, and from north, south, east, and west others had come seeking, no place seeming better than another. Was it not better to die here, where they had lived?
The boy was gaunt for each day he hunted farther afield and each day found less to hunt. Small Sister and his mother gathered brush or looted timbers from abandoned dwellings to keep their fires alight.
The Old One stirred and mumbled. “In my sleep I saw them,” he muttered, “strange men sitting upon strange beasts.”
“He is old,” their mother said. “His thoughts wander.”
How old he was they did not know. He had come out of the desert and they cared for him. None knew what manner of man he was, but it was said he talked to gods, and they with him.
“Strange men,” he said, “with robes that glisten.”
“How many men?” The boy asked without curiosity but because he knew that to live, an old one must be listened to and questioned sometimes.
“Three,” the Old One said, “no more.”
Firelight flickered on the parchment of his ancient face. “Sitting upon beasts,” he repeated.
Sitting upon? What manner of beast? And why sit upon them? The boy went to a corner for an old timber. A hundred years ago it had been a tree; then part of a roof; now it was fuel.
They must leave or die, and it was better to die while doing than sitting. There was no corn left in the storage place. Even the rats were gone.
“When the light comes,” the boy said, “we will go.”
“What of the Old One? His limbs are weak.”
“So are we all,” the boy said. “Let him walk as far as he may.”
“They followed the path,” the Old One said, “a path where there was no path. They went where the light was.”
On the third day their water was gone, but the boy knew of a seep. At the foot of the rocks he dug into the sand. When the sand grew damp, they held it against their brows, liking its coolness. Water seeped into the hollow, and one by one they drank.
They ate of the corn they carried, but some they must not eat. It would be seed for planting in the new place—if they found it.
During the night snow fell. They filled a water sack made of skin and started on.
With the morning the snow vanished. Here and there a few seeds still clung to the brush. Under an ironwood they rested, picking seed from the ground. They could be parched and eaten or ground into pinole. As they walked they did not cease from looking, and the Old One found many seeds, although his eyes were bad.
“Where do we go?” Small Sister asked.
“We go,” the boy replied, but inside he felt cold shivers as when one eats too much of the prickly-pear fruit. He did not know where they went, and he was much afraid.
On the ninth day they ate the last of their corn but for that which must be kept for seed. Twice the boy snared ground squirrels, and three times he killed lizards. One day they stopped at a spring, gathering roots of a kind of wild potato that the people to the south called iikof. His mother and the Old One dug them from the flat below the spring.