by Gwen Moffat
‘And they stay at the hunting camp?’ She was politely interested.
‘No, ma’am. That’s private; it’s Gunn property.’
‘Have the bears done much damage?’
‘Bears? At the cabin?’
‘That’s why your father is up there: repairing the roof where they tried to break in. Didn’t he tell you?’
‘We didn’t see him. The cabin isn’t right on the trail. You can see it but it’s a hundred yards or so below. The trail stays high. I knew he was planning to come in with the blankets and stuff so I wasn’t surprised to see someone was around. There’s a horse tied outside.’
Val and Clyde left for the homestead. Miss Pink and Sophie checked to make sure no shoes had worked loose and untied their mounts.
‘I take it there’s no word of Jen,’ Miss Pink observed.
‘Val didn’t mention her. I did ask whom she’d met and she said no one. No one at all.’
‘Clyde said they didn’t leave the trail to speak to Charlie although they saw someone was at the cabin.’
‘He was inside — or somewhere.’ Sophie was vague. ‘Val says his pack-horse was loaded ready for off, so he had to be inside — except that the stallion didn’t seem to be around. Val wanted to keep ahead, not have Charlie with her string, not with that spooky animal along. If it’d been me I’d have stopped and let Charlie go first. Now we’re going to run into him. When we do, we get as far off the trail as we can. And we’ll dismount. I don’t want any accidents. I’ll tackle him about Jen when we get home. This is no place for a fight.’
They continued, alert for movement ahead, but nothing materialised, not even a deer. The canyon could have been empty of life and it was strange to find the ground levelling off, to emerge to flowery meadows, and see a cabin below them with a loaded pack-horse tied outside a small corral. At their appearance it neighed shrilly.
‘Where is the stud?’ Sophie murmured. ‘The cabin door’s closed but Charlie can’t be far away; that packhorse is ready to go. It must be at least half an hour since the others passed. Charlie could have seen the bear — ah, that’ll be it! The brute came back and he’s gone after it.’
‘I’d have thought you’d need a steady horse to go after bears.’
‘True, but you can’t chase them on foot. Bears can run fast. We’ve not heard a shot, though. A shot would resound for miles in this canyon.’
‘Are you going down there?’
‘No point. He’s away somewhere and it’s not my cabin. I’ve no interest in it.’
A mile or so further they came to a small lake cupped in a grassy basin and reflecting the sky. The still water was soothing after the constant rush of the river. They watered the horses, tethered them and moved away, carrying their lunch and cans of beer.
‘This is perfection,’ Miss Pink exclaimed, making herself comfortable on a log, popping a beer can. A family of teal patrolled the reeds, bees were loud in the flowers, the slopes were drifted with lupins and Indian paintbrush. A thought struck her and she looked round uneasily. ‘What about the bear?’
‘We haven’t seen him so he’s made himself scarce.’ Sophie wasn’t concerned about bears; she was miles away. Miss Pink opened the lunch box from the Rothbury’s kitchen and inspected the filling inside half a baguette: ‘Salami, ham, cheese, tomato… have you got the same?’ There was no reply. ‘Anyone home?’ she asked mildly.
Sophie turned to her, blinking. ‘How long has that horse been there?’
‘Where do you see a horse?’
‘Back there: at the cabin. The packhorse. Didn’t the ground look bare, where it was tied? That animal’s been there longer than half an hour.’
‘You can leave a saddled horse for hours.’
‘Not a loaded pack animal. I’m going down there. No, don’t panic; I mean when we go back.’ She became aware that her friend was waiting to start lunch and her effort to change tack was obvious. ‘This is Chef’s special Submarine,’ she said, opening her own box. ‘The bread’s home-made, the mayonnaise is his secret recipe. I figure it’s white wine, Dijon mustard and sour cream.’
‘It looks scrumptious. I’ve been wondering: why does Charlie have to bring supplies in to the cabin? Why not leave them there?’
‘They have to take everything down after hunting finishes because of thieves.’
‘You mean bears?’
‘Paul Skinner, actually — oh, I shouldn’t have said that! It’s like this: we’ve had a rash of thefts over the last year or two; nothing’s left in any of the hunting cabins that could be stolen. Charlie maintains Paul Skinner is the thief but then Charlie would. I’ve no time for the guy but I have to admit he does get a raw deal. Why, there’s even a rumour that he killed his second wife. Yes, you may well look shocked. But Carol Skinner did throw herself in the river — well, she was found washed up way below Irving. She was an alcoholic and the last people to see her said she was drunk in a bar close to the river. They say she went out to the car-park and no one saw her again — alive. They found her body two days later.’
‘Where was Skinner when she was drinking?’
‘He was in a bar in Ballard twenty miles upriver. And he had alibis. But the rumour goes that she could have reached home and he put the body in the river at Ballard. I heard the story first from Charlie; in fact, it would never surprise me to know Charlie started it. It’s just the kind of joke he’d enjoy. Oh, forget Charlie, we’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves.’
They ate in silence. The surroundings were idyllic and Miss Pink might banish the thought of Charlie’s twisted sense of humour, but the image of that cabin wouldn’t go away — and Jen Jardine going to meet her grandfather there — and the packhorse standing, waiting to go but so glad to see other horses, neighing wildly as they passed…
*
The horse didn’t neigh when they returned. It wasn’t there. ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ Sophie breathed, then suddenly expansive: ‘Charlie had me worried there; I mean, he’s an old man now — and that stud! The guy’s asking for trouble coming in here on his own. He should have brought Byer with him, but it was Byer’s day off yesterday, Saturday; he’d have gone to town. However, no harm done. I wonder if he did go after a bear. We didn’t hear a shot but then, if he was miles away, maybe we wouldn’t.’
Miss Pink murmured agreement. They had stopped and she was staring at the bare patch where the horse had been tied.
‘We’ll give the landslide a miss,’ Sophie went on. ‘We can go out by way of Benefit, show you a ghost town.’
That suited Miss Pink, anything to avoid the landslide and that dizzy drop to the river. In the event, the alternative wasn’t much better. They climbed to the rim by a line that went straight up: no zigzags; worst of all, no resting places. Once on that slope, you were committed — and the mare was no climber. She lunged and pushed, trying to shoulder past the grey, throwing her head, her eyes wild. The slope was scattered with stunted pines and Miss Pink was slashed and whipped by branches. Once her knee struck wood but there was no time to take breath, to feel pain. At one point, her hand slipping on the wet horn, she gasped, ‘I can’t stay on!’ and ‘Nearly there,’ Sophie called jauntily.
They came over the lip of the escarpment and stopped, mare and rider shaking uncontrollably. Miss Pink stared at her companion, speechless.
‘You came up that nicely,’ Sophie told her. ‘I forgot to tell you she’s inclined to throw her head when she’s going uphill. I knew you’d enjoy it, being a mountaineer.’
A narrow path took off through the sage and prickly pear. They were on a wide shelf, still part of the canyon with more crumbling cliffs above, but the trail now mercifully safe; no abyss immediately below, no lethal slopes to traverse. They passed through a belt of big trees, walking quietly on pine needles, and came to a slope where the trail rose gently. At the top they were at last clear of the canyon and ahead there was grassland with aspens in the gulches and, at the head of a shallow depression, a cluster of woo
den buildings. Beyond were spoil heaps and a dirt road.
Smoke rose from a chimney. ‘Hello, someone’s in residence,’ Sophie remarked, halting. ‘Horses in the corral too.’ There was no response. Miss Pink was slumped in the saddle, her feet dangling, easing her aching knees. If Sophie were proposing to go visiting she could go alone. ‘Right,’ she said, reading the signs correctly, ‘we’ll give it a miss, come back another time. Besides, I want to get home, find out what happened when Charlie met Jen — if he’s talking,’ she added grimly.
They skirted the ghost town and picked up a trail that took them to the swing bridge. When they passed his house it looked as if Clyde had come and gone, his door closed and his pick-up absent. On the other side of the creek smoke was rising from Byer’s chimney. At Val’s ranch a solitary horse hung its head above a pile of hay, the picture of exhaustion. There were panniers on the ground, a packsaddle, a tarpaulin, a sprawl of tack.
‘Hi, you guys!’ Val emerged from the barn. ‘This is Charlie’s packhorse. It came in some time ago, must have followed us down.’
‘The one that was outside the cabin’s gone,’ Sophie said. ‘You’re right, this has to be the same one.’
Val took a halter off the packsaddle and held up the frayed lead rope. ‘Broke free,’ she said. ‘Maybe that old bear spooked it. So where’s Charlie? Did you see any sign of him at the lake?’ Sophie shook her head. ‘Nor the stud?’
Sophie said meaningly, ‘We figure the packhorse had been standing there rather a long time.’
They thought about it, all three knowing that Charlie might have wounded the bear and was following its trail to finish it off; on the other hand, the stallion could have thrown him. Charlie could be in the canyon. He could be below the trail.
‘There was no sign of him anywhere,’ Miss Pink said. ‘I mean, nothing to show that the trail had given way.’
‘We turned off for Benefit,’ Sophie pointed out.
‘But we went up the length of the canyon,’ Miss Pink insisted. ‘There was no mark even at the landslide.’
‘We would have noticed,’ Val put in firmly, ‘Clyde and me. But there needn’t be any sign of the trail collapsing, his horse could have jumped off; that animal spooks at shadows.’
‘Why would he be on the home trail when he’s left his packhorse at the cabin?’ Sophie asked and Miss Pink was reminded of the endless, often fruitless speculation that arises with the first indication that a mountaineer is missing. ‘I figure he’s upstream of the cabin,’ Sophie insisted. ‘But then again, if his horse threw him, where’s his horse?’
Miss Pink said quietly, ‘Is it possible he could have had some kind of medical problem, like a slight stroke, and he forgot all about the packhorse? He felt ill and came out to the ghost town as the nearest place to get help? Someone was there.’
‘I wonder if those people are on the phone —’
‘Someone’s at Benefit?’ Val put in. ‘Who?’
‘We’ll call Sam, he might know.’ Sophie was taking the initiative. ‘I’ll go to Edna, see if by any chance Charlie’s called home — from somewhere, anywhere; if he hasn’t we’ll send Byer up to the cabin, see if Charlie left any indication… Val, you call Sam, ask him who’s at Benefit and get their number, then you call them. And ask Sam to contact Bret Ryan, find out if he knows anything.’ She glanced at Miss Pink meaningly. ‘Melinda, will you explain about Jen and Charlie?’
‘What the hell!’ Val gaped. ‘Jen? And Charlie? What’s going on?’
‘She’ll tell you.’ Sophie mounted her horse and cantered down the drive. Val turned to Miss Pink, wide-eyed and angry.
There wasn’t much to tell because she left out the essence of Jen’s telephone call, shrinking from being the one to tell the mother that her daughter had been pregnant and had gone to her grandfather for assistance. She said only that Charlie had fixed a meeting at the cabin for some time yesterday. And that was that, she assured the stunned woman; this was all she knew and there had been no subsequent developments — again to her knowledge. That, at least, was the truth.
Val wasted no time asking what Miss Pink knew of her relationship with her daughter, she flung indoors to telephone Sam Jardine. Miss Pink started to unsaddle. She took her time and was still rubbing the mare down when Val emerged to say that no one had any news of Charlie, but that Sam said Bret Ryan had rented a cabin at Benefit and was to start work for him this coming week. Miss Pink looked expectant and Val went on reluctantly, ‘Sam says our daughter is around, somewhere.’ She assumed an air of nonchalance. ‘She could be with Bret Ryan, even at Benefit — that is, if she isn’t with Sam himself.’ She hardly knew what she was saying. She looked out across the canyon, then her gaze travelled upstream to where the cabin would be and her eyes came back to the older woman. She looked terrified.
Guessing the reason for that terror Miss Pink said, ‘The most likely explanation is that the stallion threw your father.’
‘I hope so.’ Val stared at the other, her eyes unfocused. Was she trying to find a connection between her daughter visiting her grandfather and the man being missing at this moment? She said dully, ‘Edna says Charlie hasn’t phoned home. Sophie says I have to call Byer, send him up to the cabin.’
Miss Pink glanced at the sky. ‘It’ll be dark soon.’
‘He’s got a couple of hours of daylight and then there’s a moon. Maybe he won’t find Charlie but if the stud’s anywhere near the trail he’ll come to the other horse; horses hate being on their own out there.’
She called Byer and then announced that she was going to Glenaffric. Miss Pink guessed that she wanted to question Edna regarding Jen’s telephone call. She left in her pick-up and Miss Pink, grateful for the chance to relax, dehydrated after a hot day, found beer in the refrigerator and collapsed in one of the porch chairs.
Alone, she became aware of her isolation. There was no house in sight, although she could see the cottonwoods round Byer’s place and the tip of the roof that would be Clyde’s cabin. He’d left very sharply, she mused, he could hardly have taken time to shower and change after he’d helped Val with unloading.
There was a pounding of hoofs in the dust, the click of steel on stone and the grey appeared. Sophie slid down and eyed her uncertainly. ‘This is turning out to be a problem,’ she said.
‘How is Edna?’
‘Difficult to tell. She’s a fluffy person until there’s a real emergency, then she goes quiet. Val will stay with her. We’ll go home; there’s nothing we can do here.’
Miss Pink was taken aback. ‘Don’t bother about me. Shouldn’t we stay, in case?’
‘In case of what? If he comes in under his own steam: walking because his horse broke its leg, whatever, then that’s fine. If he doesn’t come in, or the horse comes in without him, there’s nothing we can do until daylight. If he’s on the trail Erik will find him. If he’s off it, he could be anywhere. We have absolutely no idea where to start looking.’
Miss Pink had to accept this. With all those gullies and buttresses dropping hundreds of feet to the river the terrain was rougher than in the mountains proper. You can get out from a big cliff and study it through binoculars but there was no way you could study the Black Canyon — and moonlight only deepened the shadows. She got up stiffly and went to give Sophie a hand with her horse.
*
They parked the Cherokee and entered the Rothbury by the back way, a route that took them past the open door of the kitchen. A thickset woman was talking to a man in whites and, catching Sophie’s eye, made a gesture to detain her. ‘Pat,’ Sophie murmured. Miss Pink had the impression that Pat Kramer had been watching out for them.
Introductions were made as they moved along the passage. Russell’s wife was no beauty but her make-up was deftly applied, her thick hair well cut and rinsed silver, while her frock in shades of blue was expensive and chic. She looked powerful rather than heavy and every inch the successful businesswoman, except that at this moment she was obviously ill at ea
se.
The lobby was empty, although the restaurant hummed with activity. Pat lowered her voice as she faced Sophie. ‘What happened?’ she demanded. Miss Pink’s brain raced, looking for connections.
‘We don’t know.’ Sophie showed no surprise. ‘Byer’s gone up the trail as far as the hunting cabin.’
‘There’s no sign of Charlie’s horse?’
‘Only the pack-horse. That broke free and came down alone.’
‘But Val and Clyde were there last night. I don’t see how, if they were all camped together —’
‘They weren’t, Pat. Val was several miles upstream. Charlie was on his own.’
‘Oh.’ The woman turned to Miss Pink. ‘I’m not a backwoods person.’ She sounded apologetic. ‘I envy all you intrepid ladies. The Black Canyon has this reputation, isn’t that so, Sophie? You have to be very brave to have gone in there today.’ This to Miss Pink again.
‘How did you know we were there?’ Miss Pink appeared embarrassed, saying the first thing that came to mind.
Pat looked from her to Sophie. ‘My husband — Russell — you met him? Of course you did’ — she sounded arch — ‘you were in Irving with him. He went to Billings on business. We have an apartment there. Val called him.’ There was a pause. ‘They’re friendly,’ she added carelessly. Another pause. ‘And Russell called me.’ Her tone changed, became brisk. ‘But you must be exhausted. Let me get you something to drink.’
Sophie declined for both of them. They needed showers; she’d let Pat know if there was any news.
They were quiet in the lift but as soon as they closed the door of the apartment Sophie said, ‘You worked it out?’
‘Not really. I’m not taking things in. Tell me.’
‘When Russell goes to Billings “on business” Clyde joins him. Pat knows, of course; I told you they have a good relationship, she and Russell. Val knows too. Clyde has to come home now in view of Charlie being missing so Val called the Billings apartment from Glenaffric. Evidently she got Russell just. Clyde hadn’t arrived yet. Russell called Pat. Now do you see?’