The thrashing in the leaves was so close now that the sound wasn’t even echoing anymore. He kicked the buckskin sharply in the ribs, and digging its back hooves into the ground, the horse charged forward, lurching so close past one side of the open gate that he had to lift his leg to keep from crushing it.
Ca-rack and something whunked into the trees ahead to one side of him. He kicked the buckskin harder, forcing it faster across the clearing, his holster thumping against his leg. He saw Claire and Sarah galloping up through the trees and the trees were looming closer as he heard another ca-rack, a simultaneous whunk, and this time something was punching against his back nearly jerking him off his horse as he leaned close to the horse’s neck, frantically kicking, thinking, your knapsack, it’s all right, you’re not hit, they only hit your knapsack, and then he was into the trees, galloping up after Claire and Sarah, and there was another ca-rack, another whunk, this one just past him into a tree, bark flying, but it didn’t matter because the trees were too dense now for them to get a shot at him anymore and he was riding hard up toward the sound of hooves thudding and for now he was safe.
The light changed almost immediately. He glanced up through the dark bare branches of the trees, expecting clouds, and saw instead that the sun was already half down behind the western crest of the mountains far off to the right up there, swollen, flooding the forest with red. A half hour till dusk, and then an hour till dark. They had to get as far off by then as they could. He could hear where the two horses were thudding up ahead of him to his left now, and he reached to where the trail turned up that way, easing off on the half-blind horse, letting it pick its way carefully. The trail straightened, angling higher, and he needed to lean forward, clutching the saddle horn as the horse surged up over the top, jostling him, picking up speed across another open level toward Claire and Sarah galloping. He saw Claire kicking her horse, hooves pounding into the sparse brown grass, clods flying, Sarah’s pinto following, and he was kicking his own horse faster toward them, gaining, coming up behind, and then they were all three together, angling to the left across the level toward another trail up through the trees.
They took it one at a time, Claire leading, Sarah in the middle, and then they were up on yet another level, angling left again, always left. It was the way he had practiced with them, the way he had shown them on the terrain maps he had bought in town. If somebody came, they needed to get as far up into the mountains as fast as they could, and the route they were taking was the only way.
Two levels up they finally saw it, a sheer wall of rock that showed clearly on the terrain map and the narrow wash of boulders and shale and rotting timber that was the only way up through it. The map hadn’t shown whether they could climb it though, and this was the farthest he had come to scout, clearing some of the timber, charting a route, and he knew it was a chance but it was their only chance and they needed to take it. The next route up over this cliff was twenty miles to the right.
They came galloping up to the base of it, reining hard, dismounting. The horses couldn’t have kept up this pace anyhow. The sun was almost down behind the mountains, the air suddenly cold and gray, and his eyes were watering from the rush of the ride as he rubbed his sleeve across them, staring up past the cliff walls on both sides toward the gray-white tangle of rocks and timber that stretched up the quarter-mile wash in front of them.
“My jacket,” he told Claire. “In my knapsack. You and Sarah put yours on too.”
It was a brown woolen jacket with a hood. He had chosen it to blend with the autumn color of the mountains, Claire’s and Sarah’s the same, and the moment he finished buttoning it, feeling the sudden heavy warmth against him, he grabbed his horse’s reins and started up through the fallen timber, crisscrossing, working as hard and as fast as he could, first this way and then that, the horse struggling to hold back on him as he stopped to let it find a better footing before he urged it farther on. He slipped, scraping his face against a boulder, righting himself, tugging steadily on the horse’s reins, glancing back to make sure that Claire and Sarah were keeping up, that they weren’t in any trouble. Claire was doing fine but she wasn’t getting much speed, held back by Sarah in the middle who was having problems scrambling up herself, let alone leading a horse behind her.
“Daddy, I can’t make it!”
“You’ve got to. Take your time. Take it one step at a time.”
And then she was angling nearer, and he started up again, working this way and that, past boulders, in and around mazes of timber, shouldering logs painfully to one side. He glanced back toward where they’d come through the trees. Nobody. He looked up ahead, and the top of the wash seemed as far away as ever.
Keep moving.
“Daddy!”
He looked back, and Sarah was leaning exhausted against a rock.
“Don’t stop,” he told her. “You’ve got to keep moving. We’re almost there,” he lied.
And little by little she pushed herself off from the rock, struggling with the horse, and then the horse reared up, almost kicking her as she fell out of the way between two boulders, and the horse struggled to turn in the narrow space and lunge back down the slope.
“Don’t move,” he yelled to her, tying his horse to a log, scrambling down toward her. “Don’t move. Tuck your legs in.”
He was coming down fast, jarring his shoulder against a stout branch on a log, holding himself, wincing, as he made it down, one hand out now to quiet the horse, saying, “There now, there now,” settling it, for the first time noticing the echo of his words.
“It’s all right now. Come on out,” he told Sarah, and she was crying, frightened, exhausted, and he should never have tried to make her lead the horse up in the first place, a miracle that she had got it up even this far.
“We’ll leave one horse here for now. You’re coming up with me,” he told her, holding her, and then to Claire. “Tie yours. Bring the pinto. I’ll come back for yours as soon as we make it up there.”
He didn’t have time to quiet Sarah much, just to dry her tears and kiss her once, holding her, and then he was helping her up to where he’d tied his own horse, sending her on ahead, Claire working up with the pinto behind her, the bay standing tied farther back down there, looking blankly around, confused, alone.
Maybe it was because she was frightened or maybe in a kind of hysterical shock from when the horse had nearly kicked her, but Sarah made it to the top well ahead of him and at least she was safe, and wanting to have someone up there with her he worked even harder up through the rocks and timber, reaching a barren open stretch near the top, hooves clattering on the smooth weathered stone slope, up over the top into wind and scrub grass and a seemingly endless sweep of trees. Sarah was slumped down against a boulder, her face white, breathing hard, the wind blowing through her hair. He touched her going past, tying his horse to a nearby tree, slipping off his knapsack, rushing back to the edge, and Claire was just then coming up over the top. He pointed warningly toward Sarah behind him, rushing on past, down the slope toward the horse they’d left behind. A jumble of rocks spilled out from under him, bouncing down the slope toward the horse, nearly hitting it, flying past as the horse tried to rear up and avoid them, and he needed to take things slower, glancing now at the horse, now at the tree line down there, expecting any moment to see the red of their hunting shirts as they ran up onto the level.
No, he thought. Night coming, they’ll go for horses first. They won’t try to come for us on foot.
But he kept glancing toward the tree line anyhow and then he was even with the horse, gentling it, untying it, working as fast as he could with it up the slope. They were eating when he finally came up over the edge, and it was all he could make himself do to tie the horse with the others before he slumped down beside them. Chocolate bars. He was so tired, so in need of quick energy, that he hardly tasted the sugar of the caramel and chocolate at all, just chewing, swallowing one, biting into another.
“We made it.
I can’t believe we made it.”
But they really hadn’t, he knew that. This was only the first step, and if they were ever going to get away, they’d need to keep moving longer, faster, farther up into the mountains.
He reached over to stop Sarah from taking another candy bar.
“Better save them, sweetheart. We’re going to need them all before this is done.”
He looked down at the blood on his hands from where he’d cut them on the boulders, wiped them on the grass, stood and walked over to the edge of the cliff, peering down past the clearing toward the trees.
No one.
“Let’s get moving,” he turned and told them.
“Already?” Claire said. “But we only just sat down.”
He pointed up to where the sun had disappeared entirely behind the mountains. The light around them was pale, turning into darkness. “We’ve still got maybe a half hour before we’ll need to stop anyhow because of the dark. We need to use all the time we’ve got.”
He reached into his knapsack and took out a terrain map, studying it, barely able to make out the contour lines in the dusk. “There’s a stream up through these trees. About a mile. Let’s see if we can reach it.” Then the wind gusted harder, blowing dust and leaves, and he looked out toward the east where black clouds were hulking in the last light on the horizon.
“Storm coming maybe,” he said.
But it never did, and the horses were still so tired that they needed to be walked, the three of them leading their horses up through the shadows of the trees into the stillness just before night.
5
At first he thought that he’d misread the map. They’d gone at least a mile now, and there was still no sign of the stream, and the trees were closing in on them in the fast-fading light. He led Claire and Sarah into a small clearing that would have been perfect for camp with another small clearing joined to the first by a small game trail that was like the narrow part of an hourglass, and the second clearing was partly free of leaves, patches of mountain grass showing through where the horses could eat, and he wouldn’t need to use the sack of oats he’d tied to the saddle horn on the buckskin when he was saddling it.
The light was so bad now that he decided they’d have to do without water for the night and use this place anyhow when he heard it. Hardly anything at all, just a faint trickle, but it was enough, and tying his horse to the limb of a tree, he pushed through bare branches, and there it was, a stream just wide enough that he couldn’t step across. It rounded this edge of the clearing, running smoothly down to a different section of the lowland they’d just come from, and he knelt in the cool stillness, stooping to rinse his hands and cup cold water to his mouth.
“Is it all right to drink?” he heard Claire ask behind him.
He was just then tasting it, cold and sweet and pure, cupping more to his mouth, rubbing his wet hands all over his face, turning to her. “This far up it almost always is. You just need to make sure it’s running and there isn’t any scum on it. Mostly the trouble comes in the spring when you get snow melted with red algae on it. That stuff will hurt you, give you cramps so bad you’d swear you were going to die.”
From one of his books, he remembered.
He almost smiled.
“Come on and try some. You too, sweetheart,” he said to Sarah beside her.
They didn’t move.
“I know it seems strange, but this isn’t like the streams near town. I wouldn’t drink that water myself. But this. This is all right. Believe me.”
They still didn’t move, so he turned again to the stream, easing down onto his stomach, dipping his face in, his nostrils aching with cold water as he drank. When he sat up, shaking his head, his wet hair dripping, he saw them drinking uncertainly beside him.
“It tastes funny,” Sarah said.
“Of course,” he said. “You’re not used to water that doesn’t have a lot of chemicals in it. This is the real thing.”
“But it’s dirty. I can feel something gritty against my teeth.”
“That’s just a little silt. It’ll give you roughage.”
“Give me what?”
“Nothing,” he said and smiled. “Just drink some more. Get used to it. This is the only kind of water you’ll have for awhile, so whether you like it or not, you’ll need to get used to it.”
“But where does it come from?”
“Up on top some place. Snow melting, lakes draining.” And then thinking of the lakes. “You’re going to see things you’ve never dreamed of before.”
“It tastes kind of sweet.”
“There, you see, now you’re getting the idea. Come on. We’ve got a lot of work to do. It’ll soon be so dark that we won’t be able to move without bumping into each other.”
He led them back up the rise through the trees into the clearing, and the dark was upon them enough now that it was distorting everything, making the campsite seem wider, larger.
“Here,” he told Sarah, handing her the three canteens from the saddles on the horses. “Take these down to the stream and fill them.”
“You forgot to fill them when you stored them with the saddles in the shed?” Claire asked.
“No, I didn’t forget. I deliberately didn’t do it. I figured the horses would have enough weight to carry at the start and I knew there’d be plenty of water up here anyhow. Besides, the water would just have gotten stale from sitting in them so long. What are you waiting for?” he asked Sarah.
“I’m scared.”
“To go back there alone?”
She nodded.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. If anybody comes, you’ll be able to hear them in plenty of time to get to me.”
“But what about animals?”
“You’ll hear them too. Anyway it would only be deer or elk. This time of year the bears have all settled in for the winter. Go on. There’s a lot of work to do and we’ve each got to do our share.”
He waited until she started off, and then turned to the buckskin, uncinching it, slipping off the saddle. “Better uncinch the other horses,” he said to Claire. “Arrange the saddles for pillows where there’s a place that looks comfortable for us to sleep.”
“What about a fire? Shouldn’t we see to that before anything?”
“No,” he said and turned to her. “No fire. Not until we absolutely need one.”
“But how will we cook?”
“We won’t. Not tonight. In the morning if we’ve got time and we can build a small fire that won’t make much smoke, then maybe. But not tonight. There’s too good a chance they got their hands on some horses faster than we expected, and if they’re anywhere around up here, they’re liable to see the light from a fire and come over.”
They looked at each other, and then the pinto began tugging at where its reins were tied to the branch of a tree and Claire went over to it.
“What do you want for supper?” she asked quietly.
“We don’t have much choice, do we?”
“That’s right,” she said, uncinching the pinto’s saddle, slipping it off and carrying it awkwardly past him toward the base of a tree. She didn’t look like she was going to say anything more after that, so he just said “Help your mother” to Sarah coming up through the trees with the canteens drooping heavily from her arms, and taking the coil of rope from the buckskin’s saddle on the ground, he led the horse out of the clearing, along the narrow game trail into the second clearing.
There were three ways to do this, he knew. He could tie the horse by a long rope to a tree, but horses got curious the same as people, and if there were some smell on the other side of the clearing that the buckskin wanted to investigate, it would only get frustrated from not being able to go there. As well he could hobble its hooves together, tying the front ones to the back, in which case the horse could move just a little with each step, eventually getting over to what interested it but just as likely to get frightened, try to move too fast, fall and break a leg. Wh
ich left the third way, and he had to search the edge of the clearing for a while before he found a fallen log that was big enough that the horse wouldn’t get into the forest with it but small enough that the horse could still drag it around, and tying a makeshift halter around the horse’s head, he tied the other end of the rope securely to the log. Then he slipped off the horse’s bridle, easing out the bit, and let the horse sniff the grass, smell the air, before it finally settled down to eating.
Water, he thought. I forgot to let it get at the water.
So he led the other horses to the stream and let them drink their fill before he took them over to the next clearing and anchored them each to a log the same as he had done with the first. Then he came back with a canteen and his hat, filling the hat, letting the buckskin drink repeatedly until he needed to come back with yet another canteen, and finally the horse had drunk enough. He looked around at the little he could see of the clearing, the horses in separate parts of it, eating, occasionally lifting their heads to sense the air. The pinto made a low flat rumbling noise in its throat, but it didn’t seem nervous, and he guessed that they were going to be all right. The only thing that could go wrong was for them to get tangled in each other’s rope, but he didn’t see how he could prevent that. All the same, he waited with them.
A moon was coming up. He couldn’t see it yet, but he could make out the change in the night, a chill white glow that was spreading over the horizon. Somewhere close, a few crickets had started. He didn’t understand how they could still be alive up here with the cold coming on,. He took a deep breath, suspecting that it came out in frost, and then at last turning, he started back to camp.
“You’re not eating,” he said when he came across the clearing toward them. They were sitting on the ground, propped up huddled against their saddles. In the dark he could make out only the vague white of their faces.
Testament Page 10