“Yeah. As far as your mother goes, Dean, I did love her at the time.”
“Much as you love Krysty?”
Ryan hesitated. “No. I can’t lie to you about that. Krysty’s special. The best.”
Dean smiled at him, his teeth white in the moonlight. “I knew that before I asked you, Dad. But I’m real glad that you loved Rona. Means a lot to me.”
“I know it.”
Lemuel muttered in his sleep, turning over, the empty bottle clinking, his stinking coat crackling as he moved, releasing more of its foul miasmic stench.
“Best get to sleep, if you can breathe,” Ryan said. “Could be a long day tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Guess so. Good night, Dad.”
Ryan reached out and squeezed the boy’s small hand in his. “Good night, son.”
Beyond the circle of red-orange light from the dying fire, death waited.
Chapter Thirteen
They passed the ruined site of the township of Basalt around ten in the morning, heading steeply up an even more narrow and dangerous trail, some of the time traveling alongside what Lemuel told them was the Fryingpan River.
“Leads up toward Turkey Lake.”
“You wouldn’t see many turkeys at this height,” Ryan said.
The skinner slapped his leg, roaring with laughter. “Got me there, outlander. Turkey comes from the water being a kind of a mix of blue and green. Some good reader and writer said that this was something to do with a turkey, and the name’s stayed ever since the long winters.”
“Blue and green,” Ryan said, puzzled at the odd naming. “Fireblast! It was called Turquoise Lake, not Turkey. Turquoise. Mix of blue and green.”
THEY WERE MAKING good time through the tundra. The higher they climbed, the colder it became and the more they could see the tens of thousands of acres of virgin forest stretching below them.
Breakfast had been just after dawn, with a pink mist hanging between the ridges of rock ahead of them. More bacon and more beans and more bread, washed down with a coffee sub that was at least hot and sweet.
Dean returned to the wag, scrambling over the tailgate, after hopping off the side to take a piss. “Think we’re going faster than if we’d been walking, Dad?”
“For sure we are.”
“You looking forward to seeing Harmony, Dad?”
“Krysty never talked much about it. Some about her mother, Sonja, who taught her how to use the special Earth power of Gaia. And she often mentioned her uncle, Tyas McCann. Not much else beside that.”
Dean took a deep breath. “Air tastes good up here.”
“Should be healthy for you. And there’s not been too much predark rad sickness or bad hot spots in the high mountain country of the Rockies. Most of the nuking around here was short-term, ground-zero stuff.”
“Look. There’s a moose. Use the Steyr and kill it, Dad. Good roasting meat for tonight if we haven’t reached the school. Go on, quick, before it reaches that grove of larches.”
Ryan reached instinctively for the rifle, slung across his shoulder, then checked himself. He watched the big animal lope across the bracken, its hooves kicking up splashes of silvery water at every step. “No. We got plenty of food. Never kill for the sake of it or the fun of it.”
BY NOON THEY’D REACHED a point where the trail had been cut across the face of a steep cliff, where the old road had been carved away by an ancient landslip.
They had bare rock to their left, and a drop of a couple hundred feet to a hanging valley below them on the right side of the wag.
“Only wide enough for one wag,” the boy said, peering doubtfully over the side of the rig. “What happens we meet another wag coming down?”
“Just hope he’s smaller than us,” Lemuel replied, grinning at Dean. “No, there’s a few spaces cut out of the rock, for passing. No problem.”
“Be a good place for an ambush,” Ryan said. “Get much trouble like that on this trail?”
“Not much. Way back in the old days there was still some mining up here and there used to be big trains with oxen or mules. They used to get whacked so often they carried up to twenty shotguns with them. That was then.”