“Then we’re not that far from Harmony.” Krysty clapped her hands. “We always said we’d visit my old home if we ever got close enough, Ryan.”
He nodded. “Other thing that’s important to remember is that the school we’ve been talking about for Dean is also up in these parts.”
“Harmony first, lover.”
Ryan looked directly at her. “No. Come too far to change on this. The school I’ve heard of that takes young boys as kind of lodgers”
“Boarders, is the word you seek, old friend. Bed and board for the lad. Do him the world of good. Some Latin and less Greek and cold showers and a flogging every morning.”
“Doc!” Ryan exclaimed. “No need to talk like that and try and put Dean off.”
“It was a jest,” the old man replied. “A small jest. Though I must confess that such a regime did me no harm.”
“Why can’t we go to Harmony first?” Krysty persisted. “All of us go. We could mebbe meet old Uncle Tyas McCann, though he’d be good and white-haired by now.”
“How about your mother, Sonja?” Mildred asked. “Will she still be living?”
Krysty shook her head, tears welling in her bright green eyes. “Likely not. She was not well when we parted. And we parted on poor terms.”
“Where are the two places, exactly?” J.B. asked, taking in several deep breaths. “I’m certain it should be possible to visit both.”
Ryan was stubborn. “No. I’ve set my heart on Dean getting something partway to a decent education. And that comes before everything. You can all go on to Harmony, and I’ll meet up with you there.”
“I’d like to see Harmony, too, Dad,” Dean said. “Couldn’t we just”
“No, we couldn’t just anything! Much more of this and I’m goin’ to start becoming a bit angered. This school is for a year or so at the most. When we all come to take you away again, then we can all go to Harmony together. It’ll be something for us all to look forward to.”
“Oh, Dad, why can’t”
“Fireblast!” Ryan punched his right fist into his left palm. The shout of rage sent crows circling noisily into the air, like black tumblers, from the tall trees at the edge of the clearing.
“Sorry, Dad,” Dean said, shuffling his feet in the carpet of pine needles that lay thickly around.
The fit of temper sidled away as quickly as it had come. “All right.”
“Still nobody told me precisely where the school and Harmony ville are set,” J.B. said.
Ryan considered. “From what I’ve heard of the school, it’s on the back road to Leadville, off old 82.”
“Harmony’s that direction.” Krysty closed her eyes as though she was visualizing a map. “We can go some of the way together. Harmony wasn’t far from a small ville called Fairplay, high up at the head of a steep trail.”
“That’s above Breckenridge, isn’t it?” Mildred asked. “I was taken up that way to ski when I was about thirteen. My father’s brother, Josh, took me there. The skiing was all right, but it was triple snobby around there in winter.” She slipped into a mock “mammy” voice. “Lordy, but yo din’t see many of us pore nigras up there, and dat’s de troof.”
Ryan was already regretting his outburst of temper at his son and at Krysty, and was now looking for some way of trying to build bridges.
“My recollection of being around here with Trader is that there are backcountry trails south from Glenwood Springs, then heading east, up and over the high country towards Leadville. In summer you could get the wags over a dirt road towards Breckenridge. So mebbe we can go some of the track together.”
Krysty smiled at him, the bright morning sunshine highlighting the vivid scarlet of her hair. “Sounds good to me, lover.”
THEY CLOSED THE SEC DOORS to the redoubt, but only after a lengthy discussion between Ryan, Doc and J.B. about the leaking water.
Hundreds of gallons had come through the open doorway, bubbling past the pile of rotting deer carcasses, washing against both sides of a large, frost-splintered boulder, then trickling over the lip of the hillside and vanishing among the trees.