“Yeah. Blacksmith like his father before him. Decent kind of a man, but a few nails short of a horseshoe, if you get my meaning, brother.”
“Yeah.” He finished his second cup of coffee and sighed appreciatively. “Best be hitting the trail. Thanks again. To both of you. For everything.”
“Take care,” Joanna called from the kitchen. “Y’all come back and see us, y’hear?”
THERE HAD BEEN FROST during the night, and Ryan’s boot heels rang out on the road bed as he walked back through Leadville, heading north for a while.
The same young lad with the round moony face was painting the gate he’d been working on the previous day, and he gave Ryan a wave and a broad smile.
“Lords, but I know you, mister.”
“You told me how to get to the Palace Hotel.”
“Right, I did. Where you headin’ now, mister? Nothing that way but snow and mountains. Why, yes, s-u-n spells snow.”
Ryan grinned, touched by the lad’s good nature. “I’ll take care. You have a good day now.”
Another wave of the hand and he walked on, past a ruined building, reaching the point where the highway forked.
It was a lovely morning, bright and crisp, and he whistled to himself, stepping out in time to the music, a rousing old marching tune.
A recently erected wooden sign pointed left to Redcliff and the interstate, right to Climax and the pass east.
As he turned right, he segued smoothly into, “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” breaking into song as the road climbed. ” ‘She wore it for her lover who was far, far away.’ ”
RYAN HAD THE DETAILS of the map firmly in his head, and he knew that he would soon have to strike off right, toward the east, and hope to find his way into the next valley across. That would then bring him up to Fairplay.
Before leaving Carl and Joanna’s eatery Ryan had bought some food for the journey a couple of crusty new-baked rolls, filled with egg, salted beef and tomato, a thick slice of some deliriously moist walnut bread and some small peaches, with a flask of fresh milk.
He stopped and sat on a ridge of bare rock, enjoying the warmth of the sun, eating lunch, admiring the beauty of the mountains that circled him. It had been easy walking, despite the elevation of eleven thousand feet.
A large crow, its feathers so shiny black they shone blue-green, had perched on a rock a few paces away from him. It watched the man with its head on one side, yellow beak ajar, button-bright eyes staring intently at him.
Ryan broke off a corner of one of the rolls and flicked it underhanded at the bird, which hopped sideways and effortlessly caught it. Throwing back its head, it then pecked urgently at a few spilled crumbs.
“You must be the bird when people talk about a distance being as the crow flies,” Ryan said.
The crow saw there was no more free lunch coming, and it flapped ponderously away, giving out a melancholy cawing sound as it circled a hundred feet above Ryan, eventually flying off toward the south.
THERE WASN’T MUCH LEFT of Climax. A few stone chimneys still stood, and a couple of pack-rat cabins, thrown together from the ruins of other, grander buildings. There was little sign of life.
As Ryan passed the last of the wretched dwellings, a half-naked barefoot child of indeterminate sex ran outside, holding a stone as big as its fist. The child heaved it toward Ryan with an expression of such extreme malevolence that he recoiled and half drew the SIG-Sauer. But the rock fell short of him, rolling into a narrow gully.
“Fuck away, outlander,” the child screeched, giving him the finger.
Ryan returned the gesture. “Yeah, and your mama too,” he snarled, lifting the dark eye patch to reveal the raw, weeping socket. He looked so frightening that the child started to bawl and ran back into the hut.
The incident kept Ryan in good spirits, and he walked at a fast clip toward the cutoff to the east.
RYAN ENCOUNTERED a fair amount of snow as he plodded on, finding it harder going. A dusting lay over everything, including the narrow, winding trail, as well as larger and deeper pockets in the shadows where the sun never shone.