Leaving Blythe River: A Novel

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  A whole herd of elk galloped by, panicky and driven. Then a whole sea. Hundreds of elk. In fact, Ethan thought, they looked like a sea. Like water flowing downhill.

  And they just kept coming.

  At any given moment in the procession, elk filled the trail in front of the team at least a dozen animals wide.

  Every tenth or twentieth elk was a baby, desperately scrambling to keep up with its mother.

  The last few stragglers bolted by, and the hoofbeats grew fainter. And still the team sat their mounts and watched the herd gallop away. The elk had white on their back ends—a broad upside-down teardrop of white with a tiny flick of tail in the middle. Some of the tails twitched as they ran away.

  Another movement caught Ethan’s eye, and he turned to see two coyotes tracking the herd from behind. They appeared from behind the flank of the mountain and froze, heads down, staring at the horses and humans. Their eyes looked yellow and shifty, inherently dishonest, and their thin muzzles and painfully skinny legs distinguished them from the possibility of being someone’s dogs. Or anything domestic or tame. Ethan instinctively looked around to locate Rufus, who sat close to Dora’s back hooves.

  When he looked up again, the coyotes were disappearing behind the mountain, back the way they had come.

  Ethan wondered if his team had saved a weak or young elk by being in that right place at the right time. Then again, everybody and everything eats. Maybe they had starved a coyote with their bad timing.

  Jone rode the few steps up beside him on her chestnut and reined the horse to a halt, looking down on Ethan from above.

  “Tell the truth,” she said, flipping her chin toward the retreating sea of elk, now tiny flowing dots in the green of the valley. “Totally independent of our reasons for being here. Let’s pretend this was a pleasure trip. Would you rather be home right now, or here?”

  Ethan took the question seriously. Mulled it over for a brief time.

  “A minute ago I would’ve picked home,” Ethan said, “and halfway up that steep trail I might pick home again. Right now I’d say it’s pretty much a tie.”

  “That’ll do,” she said.

  And they rode on.

  Halfway up the steep incline, Ethan was struck by the pointlessness of the task. And not just the task of intermittently peering over the edge, either. The whole folly of being out in the wilderness, looking, overwhelmed him. It came on suddenly, knocked the figurative wind out of him, and left him feeling profoundly depressed.

  How much space did a lost or fallen human occupy? A few square feet? And how many square feet did this seemingly endless wilderness contain? How many human-size spaces actually existed out here to be searched? Or, rather, how many millions of them? How long would it take a team to look in even a fraction of them? And how long could a lost or fallen person survive while they tried?

  “You okay?” Jone asked, looking down at him from her horse. She’d been holding Dora’s reins, ponying the mule along behind her.

  “Yeah. Sure. Just winded.”

  Actually, it wasn’t entirely true. The steep climb wasn’t so much making him winded, because he was taking it so slowly, stopping above each shelf in the rock face to lie on his belly and look down. But he was wearing out nonetheless. The muscles in his thighs and calves and hamstrings had just about reached their limit. They felt both tight and trembly at the same time.

  Ethan briefly thought of mounting his mule again and forgetting the idea of checking below. Maybe even forgetting the idea of being out here.

  He stopped in the middle of the trail behind the team and waited for them to notice. It took a moment, and it made him feel panicky inside, as if he were being left behind. He didn’t know why he didn’t solve the problem by calling out to them, but he didn’t. It just felt like a task that would require energy he didn’t have, and couldn’t find.

  It was Sam who finally looked over his shoulder.

  “Why’d you stop?” he called back down the trail.

  Ethan walked a handful of tough, painful steps to catch up, so he wouldn’t have to yell.

  “How many days has my dad been gone?”

  “’Bout five, I think.”

  “Can a person survive out here for five days?”

  “Well.” Sam scratched one bearded cheek. “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Mostly on whether they’re injured, and how, and how bad. And whether they can find water. But there’s been a lot of runoff. What with the snowmelt, and then yesterday’s rain. And hail. A person could gather hail for drinking water. It melts fast. They’d just have to have something to hold it in.”

  “He had one of those hydration bladders with the sip tubes.”

  “Don’t count him out just yet, then,” Sam said.

  “You feeling discouraged?” Jone asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. He had planned to elaborate, but then he never did.

  “Want to get back up on your mule and I’ll get down and do the looking-over-the-edge part?”

  “No,” Ethan said. “He’s my dad. I’ll keep looking.”

  There was another reason to stay down with his feet on the trail. Another incentive to keep walking. One he didn’t bother to put into words. He would have been terrified to try to mount with his stiff, shaky legs, on a trail not much wider than the mule. On the drop-off side.

  He began to move his concrete muscles again, hiking up to the next spot that might have broken a person’s fall. But before he even got to it, before he dutifully dropped to his belly and peered over the edge at the top of a tree that seemed to grow out of solid rock halfway up the mountain, he knew he would see nothing but a tree. The pointlessness of looking had begun to seem permanent and inevitable.

  He looked back to check on Rufus, who looked to be having a worse day than Ethan. The dog limped along gingerly, continually falling behind. It was only the frequent stops to look over the edge that kept the team from riding away and leaving the dog behind completely.

  “Dad!” Ethan yelled out, to disguise the fact that he saw no purpose in doing so. To disguise it even from himself.

  “Noah!” Jone added in her big, deep voice.

  As if they were really doing something useful.

  By the time the trail leveled off and crossed a saddle between two mountains, Ethan’s legs no longer dependably supported him. He willed them to move at each step. Forced them, almost. They only barely responded. Every fifth or sixth step, one of his knees gave way and bent without permission, threatening to pitch him forward. But he always managed to catch himself in time.

  Sam got down and dropped the bay’s reins in the dirt, a signal to the horse to stay put. Then he walked back to Ethan. To help him mount, Ethan figured.

  Sam helped all right. He swung a big arm around Ethan’s waist—the way he’d done when he’d found Ethan stumbling home from the grizzly encounter—and lifted him right up off the ground. He carried Ethan to Dora and plopped him onto her saddle.

  Jone still had Dora’s reins, and neither she nor Sam returned them to Ethan so he could ride for himself. Ethan grabbed the saddle horn and allowed himself to be towed.

  They rode in silence for ten or fifteen minutes, picking their way through loose shale and around boulders. Ethan wondered how long it had been since they’d passed under a tree. They must have been up above the timberline.

  In time they came to a tiny mountain lake, and had to ride precariously downhill through piles of loose stones to reach the water. Ethan could hear the sound of a waterfall or cascade, but he couldn’t see it. He figured the sound must have been lake water overflowing and forming a stream, running down to lower elevations.

  He looked up to see a tight formation of pinnacles clustered together as a backdrop to the lake, still laced with snow. Beneath them the lake bore a perfect reflection of the spires on its glassy surface.

  “Don’t even bother getting down,” Sam said.

  They rode their mules and horses into the lake to t
he animals’ knees and let them drink. Jone handed Ethan back the reins, looping them behind Dora’s neck again.

  Ethan watched the mule drink and envied her. He was thirsty, too.

  When Sam’s bay had sucked in his fill and lifted his head, Sam rode him carefully ashore, towing Rebar behind. There he dismounted, and filled three of the filter bottles with lake water. He picked his way through the loose shale to a spot just behind Ethan and Dora.

  “Think fast,” he said, and a full filter bottle of water flew in Ethan’s direction.

  Ethan registered the irony of those two simple words as the bottle flew end over end. He told his arms to reach up. To at least try to catch it. And they might have obeyed, eventually. But they certainly didn’t respond in time.

  The bottle sailed by Ethan’s head and landed in the lake with a splash that spooked Jone’s horse. Then, thankfully, it bobbed to the surface and floated.

  “I’ll get it,” Sam said. “I know you’re tired.”

  He waded out into the lake after the bottle and handed it to Ethan.

  “Thanks,” Ethan said.

  Ethan raised it to his lips to drink. And stopped.

  On the other side of the lake, maybe a hundred feet away, a movement caught his eye. It was not the first time on this trip that a movement had caught his eye. And each time, his heart had missed a beat, then jumped, then hammered nearly hard enough to kill him. At least, from the feel of it. Because each time he had expected it to be a bear.

  This time it was.

  A dark-coated bear with a lighter brown muzzle was winding its way to the lake with two cubs in tow. Hadn’t Ethan read that a mother bear with cubs was the most dangerous of all?

  He opened his mouth to shout to the others, but nothing happened. No sound emerged. Ethan had lost the use of his voice again.

  He reined Dora around and kicked her desperately, and she trotted ashore.

  “Hey!” Sam called to him. “Hey! Where ya going in such a hurry?”

  Ethan gathered himself to speak. In his panic he put enough pressure behind the words—hopefully—to break the dam.

  “Bear!” he shouted.

  He put his heels to Dora’s sides again. But the mule only laid her comical ears back along her neck in displeasure and stood her ground. She was a herd animal, Dora, a member of a pack team. She did not care to ride away alone.

  Only then did Ethan realize he was trying to ride off without his dog. And that his dog might be about to go after the bears. Was Rufus really simple enough to make a mistake like that twice?

  “Sam!” he bellowed, amazed at how much voice he had just rediscovered. “Get the dog! Don’t let the dog go after the bears!”

  Ethan looked around desperately for Rufus. He found the dog chest-deep in the lake, drinking. Then he drummed on Dora’s sides again. But the mule only kicked out with her back legs in irritation, her ears more tightly pinned along her neck.

  Jone rode up beside Ethan and reached over and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Shoot it!” Ethan screamed. “Shoot the bear if you have to! You have your rifle, right? Where’s your rifle? If it comes any closer you’ll shoot it, right?”

  He could feel himself still wildly drumming his heels against the mule’s sides, trying to get her to move. She did not move. It reminded Ethan of one of those terrible dreams. The ones in which you need to run away from something horrible but your legs won’t receive the signal.

  “It’s right here,” she said, touching the stock of the rifle.

  It was tucked into a leather scabbard attached to the breast collar of her horse’s saddle. It made Ethan feel a tiny bit better to see that she had her hand on it. But in his panic he needed more.

  “But I’m not going to shoot anything,” she said. “That’s just a black bear.”

  “So? It’s still a bear!”

  “Black bears don’t go after humans unless they’re startled. Or feel cornered. Or they’re protecting their young. They’re not so dangerous like a grizzly. Look.”

  Ethan stopped kicking his mule and looked over his shoulder.

  Across the lake, the bears lowered their heads to drink, undeterred by the humans and equines on the other side. At least, now that the spooky little human had stopped shouting.

  “Oh,” Ethan said, wondering if he could calm his heart before it killed him. His voice sounded breathless. “I guess I overreacted.”

  “I guess,” she said. “Still think I should shoot that nice family in the middle of their outing? Or just the mom, because she’s big? And then what are the babies supposed to do without her? You don’t really think it has to come down to that, now, do you?”

  “Guess not,” Ethan said. “But I really, really think we need to ride away now. Like, right now.”

  “I’ll ride over the pass with you,” she said. “Sam can catch up.”

  “Wait. We have to bring the dog.”

  “Sam’s got him on a rope.”

  “But if he’s going with Sam he’s too close to Rebar.”

  “I’ll go get him,” she said, and reined her horse around and rode back into the lake.

  Meanwhile Ethan wondered how long he could shake so hard and so deeply without falling off a mule.

  “Something you should know about your dog,” Jone said.

  She was holding the end of Rufus’s long rope leash, and he was limping along beside the chestnut horse. They rode together across the ridgeline between one mountain and the next, still waiting for Sam to catch up. Puffy clouds had blown in, starkly white against the navy-blue sky. Ethan thought this place they were riding might be the highest trail point in the wilderness. He could see higher, snowcapped peaks, but he was pretty sure they were suited only for technical climbing. In any direction Ethan looked he saw a wilderness of mountains and valleys and green lake-filled meadows all the way to the horizon. Like the running wolves, it was scary but beautiful.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “What about him?”

  “He’s leaving blood on the rocks everywhere he walks.”

  Ethan pulled the mule to a halt. Then he just sat there in the saddle, unsure what to do. A situation needed his attention, but he had no remedy that he could think of. His head was mostly full of the truth that Jone had warned him about this. That he had been ill-advised to bring the dog, and he’d known it. And now it was coming back to bite him.

  “Let’s take a break and wait for Sam,” she said.

  She swung down off her horse and led him around close to Dora and held the mule’s reins so Ethan could dismount safely.

  Ethan eased his right leg out of the stirrup and tried to swing it over the mule’s rump. But it barely lifted, and he ended up kicking the mule on the back behind her saddle. She surged forward, and only Jone’s strong hand on the rein prevented catastrophe.

  “Stiffened up a little, did you?” she asked, tugging the reins sharply to insist that Dora hold still.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  Then he slowly and gently dragged his leg across her rump and down onto the left side of the saddle.

  “Ow,” he said out loud.

  He leaned on the saddle and kicked out of the left stirrup, then dropped to the ground.

  “Ow,” he said again.

  “Why are we stopping?” Sam’s voice asked.

  Ethan looked up to see him ride up on the big bay, towing Rebar, whose ears were laid back, and who looked as though he’d had more than enough of this adventure. Ethan knew exactly how he felt.

  “The dog needs attention,” Jone said. “He’s leaving blood on the trail.”

  “Oh, dear,” Sam said. He swung down. Lifted the reins over the bay’s head and dropped them in the dirt. “Hey, boy,” he said, approaching the dog. Sam got down on one knee and lifted Rufus’s paws, one by one, and looked at the pads on the bottom of each. “Yeah. His pads are bleeding. This rough shale is hard on them. It’s wearing the tough outers of them right through.”

  He straightened up, stretc
hing his apparently sore back.

  We all hurt, Ethan thought. And it’s only day two out here. Not even very deep into day two.

  Sam rummaged around in the canvas packs on Rebar’s sides and came up with a bright-red first-aid kit in a soft nylon pouch.

  “Ethan,” he said, “how many pairs of clean socks you got left?”

  “Just one more pair for tomorrow. After that I’ll have to rinse out a pair, I guess.”

  “No, tonight you’ll have to rinse out a pair for tomorrow. And so will I. We’re both donating our last clean pair to the dog. Damn him for having four feet, right?”

  He unzipped the first-aid kit and settled stiffly on a rock, pulling the dog close by his rope.

  Sam pulled a full filter bottle of water out of the pocket of his light jacket. Ethan recognized it by its purple color as the one Ethan had been holding when he saw the black bears. Apparently he’d dropped it again without even realizing. Sam lifted the dog’s left front paw and rinsed it in a thin stream of the filtered water. He shook it off and held it up out of the dirt while he unscrewed the cap on a tube of ointment, which he slathered thickly on the pads of the clean paw. Then he wrapped the paw loosely from a roll of gauze bandage.

  Sam looked up at Ethan.

  “Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Cough up the socks.”

  When all four of the dog’s paws had been cleaned, slathered in ointment, bandaged, and covered with socks—held in place with a strong wrap of adhesive tape—Ethan asked the question he’d been dreading asking.

  “Can he walk on those?”

  “If he has to,” Sam said. “Less he has to walk on them, the better.”

  “Well,” Ethan said. “Maybe it’ll discourage him from chasing bears.”

  He’d meant it to lighten the mood, but it fell flat.

  Sam just smiled sadly.

  “Get back up on your mule,” he said. “We need to move on.”

  Ethan walked to Dora, still not knowing how the dog was supposed to move on with them, and afraid to ask. Jone was holding the mule’s reins for him.