never was much hand at readin’ the faces of womenfolks, nor understandin’ their
ways. I go at ’em too gentlelike, I suspect. Sometimes it’s better to use the
rawhide manner.
Anyway, when I turned in the saddle she lifted a hand at me, and I got to
thinking maybe I should fetch up to her door when my way led down the mountain
again.
The trail I wanted was best found riding out of Animas City, but I figured there
was no point in showin’ everybody what was on my mind, so instead of taking off
up Junction Creek I went up Lightner Creek and found my way by game trails over
to where Ruby Gulch opens into Junction.
It was mighty pretty country, forest and mountain and a trickle of water here
and there, some of them good-sized streams. I scrambled my horses up a slope
onto a point of the mountain that gave me a sight of country to see over. It was
open a mite, there on the point, backed up with scattered aspen and then a thick
stand that climbed up the point behind.
There was a place just back of the point where a big old spruce had been torn up
by the wind. Where its roots pulled free of the soil there was a kind of hollow
where the grass had begun to grow. In the grass where no trees grew, I picketed
the horses, stripped the gear from them, and went about putting together a mite
of fire. The wood I chose was dry, and it burned with almost no smoke, and after
I’d eaten I set on the point between two trees where the branches hung low and
shadowed me.
For over an hour I just set there, a-listening to the evening. There was
sunlight on the mountain across from me, but it was high up, toward the crest of
the ridge. There was stillness in the canyon below, and a marvelous coolness
coming up.
Somewhere an owl spoke his question to the evening, and the aspen leaves hung as
still as you’ll ever see them, for they move most of the time.
It was a mighty fine thing setting there getting the feel of the night, a kind
of stillness like you never felt anywhere else but in the far-off wilderness.
There was no vanity here, nor greed, there was only a kind of quietness, and the
thought came upon me that maybe this was how pa wanted to go, out on some rocky
ledge with the whole world falling away before him, a gun in his hand, or a
knife—the love of the world in his guts and the going out of it like an old wolf
goes, teeth bared to his enemies.
I never was much to mind where my bones would lie once the good Lord had taken
my soul. I had a feeling maybe I’d like to leave myself upon the mountains, my
spirit free to lean against the wind.
Death never spent time in my thoughts, for where a man is there is no death, and
when death is there a man is gone, or the image of him. Sometimes I think a man
walks many lives like he does trails. I recall a man in a cow camp who was
a-reading to us about some old battle the Greeks had fought a time long ago, and
suddenly I was all asweat and my breath was coming hard, and I could feel a
knife turning in my guts.
The man looked at me and lowered the book and said, “I did not know I read so
well, Sackett.”
“You read mighty well,” I said. “It’s like I was there.”
“Maybe you were, Tell, maybe you were.”
Well, I don’t know about that, but the shadows came down the canyon and the
trees lost themselves in it, crowding all together until they were like one big
darkness.
And then I heard in the darkness a faint chink of metal on stone.
So … after all, I was not alone. Something, somebody was out there.
The butt of my gun felt cool in my fist. I did not draw my piece; I just sat
there, listening. There was no further sound, and, softly as a cat walks, I went
from there and back to my camp.
My fire was down to coals.
I brought the horses in closer, picketing one on either side of me, and then I
went to sleep. Nothing, man or beast, would come near without a warning from
them, and I was a light sleeper.
Once, in the night, awakened by some small sound, I lay for a time. Overhead I
saw a great horned owl go sweeping down some mysterious channel of the night,
piloted by I know not what lust, what urge, what hidden drive. Was it simply
that, like me, he loved the forest night and liked to curve his velvety paths
among the dark columns of the spruce?
I am one with these creatures of the night and of the high places. Like them I
love the coolness, the nearness of the stars, the sudden outthrusts of rock that
fall off into the unbelievable vastness below.
Like them, sometimes I think I have no sense of time, no knowledge of years,
only the changing of seasons but not the counting of them.
And then I was asleep again and awake with the faint grayness of the morning.
Out of the blankets, I glanced at the dead coals. No fire this morning, no smell
of smoke for them if they hadn’t got the smell last night. Hat on first, like
any good cowhand, then boots, and then the easy, practiced flip of the gun belt
about my waist. Stamping to settle feet into boots, saddling up, loading the
gear without sound, spreading the fire. It had left no coals, burning down to
the softest of gray ashes.
A few minutes to smooth out the earth where my boots left tracks, a scuffing up
of trampled grass. A good tracker would know there’d been a camp, but time would
be needed to tell who was there or how many. In the saddle then, and riding
between the trees to the north.
Where Heffernan Gulch came into Junction Creek there was a bend in the canyon of
Junction that shielded me from downstream observation, so I took advantage to
find my way across Junction and up the trail along Heffernan Gulch.
Almost at once I saw it. A deep cut in an aspen, a notch cut with an axe—not a
blaze—pa never liked the glaring white of a new blaze. “If you want to follow my
trail, boy,” he used to tell me, “you’ve got to look sharp.”
It was his notch, and to make it sure, another one fifty feet along, “All right,
Ap,” I said, “this is the trail. This is the one we’ve been looking for.”
Ap’s ears flickered around, then ahead, pricked, interested. We walked on.
Occasionally I glanced back. As far as I could see there was nothing. Yet what
might be sheltered under those trees?
There was one more notch on that trail, and I came near to missing it. The tree
was big and old, a spruce, and it was tumbled on its side at the trail’s edge. A
casual glance caught the old notch there … and after that there were no more
trees.
The trail showed no recent signs of use. Rocks had rumbled down from the face of
the mountain, but there had been no big slides. The appaloosa picked his way
delicately over the fallen rock, the buckskin following.
The trail grew steeper. Far above I could see the outer rim of the cirque that
was Cumberland Basin. Above me loomed Snowstorm Peak, more than twelve thousand
feet high, and before me and on my left was Cumberland Mountain, nearly as high.
Both mountains were bare and cold, towering a thousand feet above timberline,
their flanks still flecked with patches of snow or long streamers of it that lay
in crevices or cracks.
Turning up the collar of my jacket, I hunched my shoulders against the cold
wind. The trail was narrow, a drop of hundreds of feet if a hoof should slip.
Here and there were patches of ice—dark, old ice, and old snow as well.
In places, my knee rubbed the inner wall of rocks. Further along, the mountain
slanted steeply away, but here it fell sheer from the trail to a long, steep
talus slope that ended finally in the tree line, a ragged rank of stiff and
noble trees making a bold stand against the destruction that hung over them.
Glancing back, I caught a movement. A rider came out of the trees far below me,
and then another and another.
They didn’t look familiar, and neither did their horses. With my field glasses I
could have recognized them, but what was the point? When they caught up, if they