The two of them almost fell all over themselves charming each other, and I got a helluva big lump in my throat watching the two people in the world I cared most about getting along so well. Then Clint came out, and the party really got started.
Finally we went on into the big, musty old dining room and sat down to breakfast. Miller bowed his head and said grace, probably in Clydine’s honor, just a few simple words, but it moved me pretty profoundly.
“My wife always used to like havin’ grace before a meal,” he said. “Me and Clint kinda got out of the habit since we take a lot of our meals standin’ up.”
“Let’s eat it before it gets cold,” Clint said gruffly. He’d outdone himself on the whole meal. I knew damned well he’d been at it since about four that morning. He’d even shaved in her honor.
“I’m real sorry, Dan,” he said with his eyes sparkling at me, “but I just couldn’t manage to whip up a big mess of that whatever-it-was you fixed for us that time. I just never got around to gettin’ the recipe from you.”
“All right, smart-aleck,” I said.
“Besides,” he said, “we’re runnin’ a little short of pack-horses.”
“What’s this?” Clydine asked.
They told her.
“What was in it?” she asked me.
I explained how I’d made it.
“No wonder it tasted like stewed packhorse,” she commented blandly.
I thought Cap and Clint were going to fall off their chairs laughing.
After breakfast we went on back outside.
“I figured Old Dusty would be about the best horse for the little lady,” Cap said. “That’s the one the Professor rode up there. He’s pretty easy goin’, and he’s good and dependable.”
I nodded.
“We knew you’d want Old Ned again.” He grinned.
“You’re all heart, Cap.”
He laughed and slapped me on the shoulder.
We loaded the horses in the stock-truck and the camping gear and saddles in the pickup and drove on down the driveway again, Cap in front in the pickup, then Clydine and me in my car and Clint bringing up the rear in the stock-truck.
“Oh, Danny,” she said, nestling up beside me, “I just love them both. They’re wonderful.”
I nodded happily.
“Do you think they liked me at all?”
“They loved you, dear.”
“That’s just because of you,” she said.
“No,” I said. “They can’t do that. Not either one of them. They don’t know how.”
“I guess they couldn’t, could they?”
“No way.”
“You love them two old men, too, don’t you?” she said suddenly.
I nodded. I probably wouldn’t have put it exactly that way, but that’s what it boiled down to.
The sun was very bright and the sky very blue. The whole world seemed as if it had been washed clean just that morning.
We turned off the highway and started up the long gravel road toward the beginning of the trail. When we came around that comer and caught the first full glimpse of Glacier Park looming white above us, she gasped.
“Pretty impressive, huh?” I said.
“Wow!” was all she could say.
We all stopped when we got to the road-end and went through the ritual of unloading the packhorses first again.
“Boy, did you get lucky,” Clint said as we climbed up into the truck after Dusty.
“How’s that?”
“That wife of yours. Now, I just know you ain’t been good enough to deserve somebody like her. You ain’t got it in you.”
I laughed and the little old guy grinned at me.
We led Dusty out and saddled him.
“Just ride ‘im up and down the road kinda easy like, honey,” Cap told Clydine after he’d helped her get aboard.
The three of us watched her amble the patient old horse on down the road.
“She sets a saddle well, too,” Cap said approvingly. “I think you got yourself a good one, son.”
“She’ll do,” I agreed happily.
Then Clint and I got Ned out.
The big gray glared at me with suspicion and then sniffed at me a couple times. I scratched his ears.
“I think the damned old fool remembers you,” Clint said.
“We’ll find out in a minute or so,” I said, swinging the saddle up on Ned’s back. I cinched it good and tight and then climbed on.
“Just how big a head of steam have you two let him build up?” I asked them.
Then they really started to laugh.
“Hell, boy,” Cap said, still laughing, “we worked him every day this week. We weren’t about to let him break one of your legs for you on your honeymoon.”
“Everybody’s a comedian these days,” I said dryly and rode off down the road to catch up with Clydine.
“Did you see his face?” I heard Clint howl from behind me.
Just before we left, she jumped down off her horse and kissed the two surprised old men and then hopped back up into the saddle. We rode off on up the trail towing a pair of pack-horses, leaving the two of them blushing and scuffing their boots in the dust like a pair of schoolboys.
When we stopped at the top of the first ridge to let the horses blow a little, we could see their tiny figures still standing down by the parked vehicles. We all waved back and forth for a while, and then Clydine and I rode on down into the next valley.
It was about three thirty in the afternoon when we came on down into the little basin. In spite of Cap’s assurances, I’d been about halfway worried that we might find about a thousand sheep and a couple herders up there, but the camp was empty.
She sat in her saddle, looking around, not saying anything.
“Well?” I said.
She nodded slowly. “I see what you meant,” she said simply.
“Let’s get to work,” I said. “We’ve got a lot to do before the sun goes down.”
We got down from our horses and checked the corrals. They were still sound. I unsaddled the horses and turned them loose in the corrals and then we went on up to the tent frames. It took us a while to get the two tents up, but we finally got them squared away. The moss we’d all gathered the year before was gone — deer or something, I suppose — so we got to work and hauled in fresh stuff.
Miller or Clint — one or the other — had substituted, with some delicacy, a pair of sleeping bags that zipped together into a double for the mismatched pair that we’d brought, so I modified the log bunk frames in our tent to accommodate the double bag.
The beaver had scattered our firewood, but it didn’t take long to get together enough for the night at least.
“I don’t know about you, Bwana,” she said finally, “but I’m starved again.”
I kissed her nose for her. “I’ll get right on it,” I said. I dug out the big iron grill and got a fired started.
“Clint said he had supper all packed up for us,” she said.
“Yeah,” I told her, “it’s that big sack right at the top of the food pack.”
She fished around in the cook tent and came out with the big sack. She carried it over to McKlearey’s table and opened it.
“Oh, wow!” she said. “Look at this.” She ripped down the side of the sack. “There’s a banquet in here. How am I supposed to cook all of this over an open fire? They even put in a bottle of champagne, for cryin’ out loud.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said.
“What a pair of old sweeties,” she said.
Clint had included a note, the first of a dozen or so we found tucked away in various places among the packs. It gave very specific instructions on how to fix supper.
“Well,” she said, pulling up the sleeves of the sweatshirt she’d changed into as soon as we’d gotten into camp, “now we find out if I know how to cook out in the woods.”
“I’ll drop the booze in the spring,” I said.
“Then see what you can do in the way of some chairs,” she said.
“Chairs?”
“You may plan to eat standing up or all squatted down like a savage of some kind, but I sure don’t.”
Women!
I examined the construction of Lou’s table and managed to fix up a kind of rickety bench. It was a lot more solid when I dug it into the ground.
“There’s a tablecloth in that bag over there,” she told me.
“A tablecloth?”
“Of course.”
The sun had gone down and I built up the fire and cranked up the Coleman lantern to give us light enough to eat by.
We had steak and baked potatoes and all kinds of other little surprises.
“Well?” she said, after I’d taken several bites. “Do I pass?”