by Ann Gimpel
Cara grabbed his left wrist, probing for a pulse. She felt his gaze on her as she repositioned her fingers, then moved them a third time, finally picking up the barest thread of a heartbeat. Meeting his eyes, she nodded; a hint of a smile curved her badly chapped lips. Gratitude and relief flooded from him, and she grasped his hand. “Maybe you don’t have to,” she began, but resignation in his eyes stopped her rush of words.
“I do. A bargain is a bargain. They let me live. You too. That was part of it. I said they had to let you go.”
“You did that for me?” Her heart clenched, and she grappled with his sacrifice, not feeling worthy.
He nodded. “You’re a decent sort, Cara, and a gifted climber. You just need to believe in yourself. It’s not your fault Ruth and Chris were idiots.”
The reverberation from the wing beats escalated, almost as if the kites were becoming impatient. Pulling gently, John extricated his fingers from hers. Moving close, he gave her a quick kiss and then turned to wend his way down the talus-littered mountainside. “Thanks,” he called back over one shoulder, sounding almost cheerful as he picked his way down a route marked by kites that had landed in groups of twos and threes. “If they let me go, I’ll find you.”
Raising a hand in farewell, Cara watched him go. Tears welled in her eyes and tracked down her sooty face. “He’s right,” she said to whatever mountain spirits might be listening. “I am a good guide, but I need to shuck all that baggage. It’s been like a millstone mired to my soul for way too long.” Latching onto the power in her words, she felt lighter than she had in years.
She had plenty of daylight to make the top of Kearsarge and set off at a brisk pace across the talus to intersect the well-worn trail. A scant hour later, she stood atop the pass. “I can see,” she exulted, looking down towards Onion Valley. “The fire must have swept north and missed the trailhead. That means I can get out.”
Whistling softly, giddy from her unexpected reprieve, she pulled her headlamp out of the pocket she’d stuffed it into earlier. Settling it into grooves in her helmet so she’d be ready when night fell, she trotted down the trail. As she hurried along, she considered what to tell the authorities. Ruth and Christopher would be simple. Sad, but easy. She was less sure what to tell them about John and finally settled on a variant of the truth. He’d insisted on finding his own way down.
Cara felt strangely at peace. I can move beyond my past. I know I can. It was me who gave it so much power. From now on, I’ll be finding my own way too. Just like John. She mouthed a silent prayer of thanks to her client and hoped the kites had guided him to a Sioux Valhalla where someone was tending his shoulder. Cara quickened her pace. For a time she worried whether the Sheriff would believe her about John, but she couldn’t do much about that one way or the other.
She’d just passed Flower Lake, only a couple of miles from her car in the Onion Valley parking lot when she heard steps behind her. It had seemed odd she was the only one on a highly used trail, but Cara figured everyone else had scurried from the high country in the wake of the fire. Since it sounded as if whoever was behind her was running, she stepped to one side to give them plenty of room to pass.
It was getting dark, and she flipped on her headlamp. Once stopped, she realized how bone-weary she was. Her ankle bothered her, and she was hacking black phlegm from all the smoke she’d sucked down. Soon, she promised herself. I can drive a few miles, pull off, and sack out in the back of my car.
“Cara!”
“John?” She turned and stared up the trail, incredulous when his unmistakable, long-legged figure loped toward her. “But, how?” She flicked off her headlamp so she wouldn’t blind him and started back up the trail, sweeping him into a hug. “I am so glad to see you,” she cried, holding on tight. “Oh my God, your shoulder. Did I make it worse?” Backing away, she bit her lip in consternation.
“No, you didn’t hurt me.” He grinned. “Told ’em you’d get into trouble if I wasn’t there to back your story about what happened to Ruth and Chris. They understand about White Man’s law.” He grimaced and spat. “So they helped me catch up to you, after they fixed my shoulder.”
“Who?” She would have asked more, but he shook his head.
“Uh-huh,” he laid a finger across her lips. “I can’t talk about it. Come on. Maybe we could cook something after we get to your car. I’m hungry.” He draped an arm around her and faced her back down the trail.
Questions rose and fell as she walked, the yellow pool from her headlamp illuminating the trail ahead. She kept them to herself. It’s one of the mysteries. Same as the mountain gods who protect climbers and fools. I’ve always believed in them, so why not this? Finally, she looked over at him. “I know they let you go to bail me out, but can you stay afterward?”
He laughed. “Yeah, Cara. I think so.”
~~~~~~~~
Through a Glass Darkly and was originally published by Sam's Dot Publishing in October 2011. I miss them. They gave several of my stories good homes.
If you enjoyed Cara and John’s story, I have great news for you. I took the bones of this tale, made some significant alterations, and spun it into a full-length urban fantasy romance titled Fire Moon, Alphas in the Wild book four. Here’s a link for more information and a generous download sample.
A Run For Her Money
My name is Sara Holcomb and I’m a Ranger for the U.S. Park Service, a post I’ve held for better than twenty years. There are those who say I should have transitioned to a desk job long ago, but somehow I don’t think I’d like that nearly as much. See, I’ve loved the backcountry ever since I was a little girl, probably because my daddy was a Park Ranger too. He used to tell me stories about the forest creatures from the saddle we shared while he patrolled Yosemite Valley. I’m sure you couldn’t get away with dragging your daughter along on horse patrol now, but things were different back then. Another thing is I don’t really like people all that much, so wandering the trails in the national parks is about as perfect a job as I’m likely to get...
Her forehead furrowed in thought, Sara read over what she’d written as she absent-mindedly swept a strand of greasy hair out of her eyes with grime-crusted fingers. It didn’t stay put, though, and she found herself looking through the lank, black strands again almost immediately. “Well,” she muttered, “this doesn’t have to be a literary masterpiece. I’m just writing this so people will know what happened to me if they find my body.”
She cleared her throat to flush the thought of her possible death out of her mind and picked up her pen again. That was one of the good things about the Muir Hut, there were lots of pens and paper as well. Too bad some desperate traveler had chopped up the only table and burned it for firewood years before. The Park Service debated replacing it, but in the end they decided not to. If one table could burn, a replacement might meet the same fate. Besides, it wasn’t easy to get supplies to the beehive shaped stone hut sitting atop twelve thousand foot Muir Pass.
Blowing air out through her pursed lips, Sara frowned as she considered what to write next. She’d planned to dive right into the meat of things, but whoever read her journal really needed to know how she’d ended up trapped in the Muir Hut so they could understand all the rest.
...I’m getting ahead of myself here. I’ve been stationed at the McClure Meadows Ranger Station for the past few summers. Sometimes there’s another Ranger with me, but usually there’s not. The Park Service has had some cutbacks in recent years. McClure Meadows is in Evolution Valley, and it’s my favorite of all the backcountry stations. It even has a geothermal spring so I don’t have to heat water for baths. At ninety-six hundred feet, it’s below timberline, so there are lots of trees around it—not just granite and shale. Incredible wildflowers dot the meadows all summer.
About six days ago, I got a radio call for help late in the day. A climber was stranded on Mount Darwin and things weren’t looking good. I put in a call for the rescue chopper and Jake and I—that’s my coal black s
earch-and-rescue German Shepherd the Park Service finally agreed to let me keep in the backcountry—packed up what we thought we’d need and started on the five mile trek to Evolution Lake. It was pretty much a mess when we got there. Suzy, the missing climber’s wife or girlfriend, was hysterical and it took me over an hour to get anything useful out of her, like which route her significant other had taken. By then the chopper was circling to land. There are some flat areas at the south end of the lake that are perfect...
A chill seeped into her from the cold, stone floor. Sara changed positions. As she rubbed feeling back into her butt cheeks, she wished again for the missing table. She could have sat on it. A stone bench leaned against the wall of the hut outside in bright sunshine, but it was safer if she didn’t go out there. Benches lined the hut’s walls inside too, but they probably wouldn’t be much warmer than the floor. Stone was a real heat sink unless it had a chance for the sun to warm it. She gazed back over what she’d written and shrugged. Pushing to her feet, she stretched, rotating her torso first in one direction, then in the other.
Fingers pressed against the ceiling, she blessed her height and her strength, shaped by years of grueling, manual labor. She could do anything a man could and she was proud of that. Though frequently the object of admiring glances, she’d been very selective in that regard. The occasional co-worker had possibilities but, while the Park Service said relationships are fine so long as you’re not in a direct line of command on paper, Sara didn’t think they were especially open-minded in that regard, so she’d kept her dalliances brief and private.
Sometimes it was a lonely life, but it was the one she’d chosen. Her hours and time away from home wouldn’t have played well with most men, anyway. Children were out of the question. Not if they ever wanted to see their mother.
“Crap, my thoughts are really wandering,” she said wryly as she reached down to stroke Jake’s soft head. When she’d come to her feet, the Shepherd did as well. “Not much point in telling whoever might read this about the rescue,” she went on, talking to her dog. “The climber was dead when I got to him, so the main problem was figuring out how to get the poor son-of-a-bitch out of there.” Jake whined as if he understood exactly what she was saying.
The actual extraction had taken hours. The SAR volunteers—God only knew where they’d been trained—had been less-than-useful. They were competent enough as climbers, but one began puking at the sight of the dead guy’s mangled body, and the other had a hell of a time forcing himself to actually touch the corpse. Since she ended up doing most of the packaging-up of the body herself, Sara was exhausted when she slithered down the last steep talus slope above the southern end of Evolution Lake. Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since she’d started on the rescue mission, and she was surprised she was still capable of sentient thought.
In the brief time she’d been high on Mount Darwin, autumn had attacked the aspens around Evolution Lake with a vengeance, and fall colors blazed from every hillside. That was the way things happened above ten thousand feet. Winter lasted a really long time, while the other seasons came and went in the blink of an eye.
After feeding Jake, she’d keyed her radio to report in, finding a small pleasure in hearing Lonnie’s cheerful voice. He was her boss, and he ran the dispatch service from Park Headquarters.
“How’s it going, pumpkin?” he’d asked. In his sixties, Lonnie didn’t pay much attention to the latest governmental directives about not using words that might be construed as sexual harassment.
“Not bad,” she replied. “But I’m tired. I’ll camp here tonight and head back to McClure tomorrow.”
“Now that you mention it,” he drawled, “think you might have enough energy to run up to the pass?”
Sara didn’t feel like running up to the pass. It was another four miles and fifteen hundred feet of climbing. “Uh, not really,” she murmured. “At least not tonight.”
“Come on, Sara,” he’d urged. “We’ve been getting some odd reports from that area. I’d like some firsthand beta. You move fast. You could be there in well under two hours.” There was a pause, then Lonnie added, “It won’t even be dark by then, princess.”
Maybe it was the princess that did it—her father used to her that. Sara gathered what she thought she and Jake would need for a few days, stashing the rest behind a boulder pile. Then she shouldered her pack and struck out for Muir Pass. Lonnie was right, she did move quickly over the trails, her long-legged stride capable of eating up over three miles an hour uphill, more if she was coming down.
Distracted as she replayed the tragedy on Mount Darwin in her mind, Sara was surprised how quickly she reached the hut. Lonnie had been right; it was still twilight. Plenty of time to get herself situated.
Sara dragged herself back to the present, settled back to her spot on the floor, and picked up her pen again.
...The extraction was long, but uneventful. No point in describing it here. Once it was over, my boss sent me to Muir Pass to check on reports he’d been getting of unusual activity. While I wasn’t anxious to do more traveling that day, I do know how to follow orders. Jake and I reached the hut around six-thirty. I pushed open the door and, as always, was greeted by whichever of the resident rodents chose to take a stand. Jake made short work of them while I shoveled last season’s snow into poly bags so we could melt drinking water. Dredging my tent out of my pack, I smiled at the small, satisfying clicking sounds the segmented poles made as they nested into one another.
So much of this is automatic I’m surprised I even noticed. What did grab my attention, though, was Jake. While he sleeps next to me after I turn in, he usually prefers roaming about when I’m getting our camp set up. Not that night, though. Oh, he started wandering all right, but before I was even done with the tent, he was back by my side whining, with his ears back and his tail tucked low. “What’s the matter, boy?” I asked, but of course I didn’t get an answer.
Some of you reading this might wonder why I didn’t just bed down in the hut. Well, huts are always, always cold. It’s actually far warmer in my down bag and my double walled tent than in a stone hut. In a winter snow storm, I might use one of the widely-spaced huts that dot the Sierras, but never in the summertime or autumn.
Just as I was settling in to melt some of the snow I’d gathered for water and dinner, the light—or what was left of it—began to look really odd, all flickery with iridescent fingers reaching down out of the sky. Searching for a reason, I glanced upward and froze. Right above Jake and me was this really large thing that could only have been a spaceship. It was oblong with blue and green lights lining the long sides, and white lights at either end. It was huge, maybe over two hundred feet, though it’s hard to measure things when they’re in the sky. Jake clung to my side like a shadow as I stared upward in utter and absolute disbelief. He head-butted me toward the open door of the hut, so I told him he could go inside if he wanted. Pretty silly to tell a German Shepherd that. They’re trained to die by your side, so, naturally, he didn’t go anywhere.
The ship altered course. It had been heading pretty much due east, but it began circling and getting lower and lower. In the meantime, I’d grabbed my radio but, for some odd reason, I couldn’t get anything out of it. Usually, high places like the pass have great reception. I checked the battery indicator and it said eighty percent, so that wasn’t the problem.
At first, the ship looked exotic and, well, fascinating. I majored in ecology and wildlife management eons ago. As I studied the ship, I tried to tap into some of that scientific training to figure out how something that non-aerodynamic could fly.
I should probably tell you I’m—or, I used to be—a helicopter pilot. I got my training during a brief stint in the military right after college. I’m pretty sure that’s why the Park Service hired me in the first place since they were short of Rangers who could fly back then. Anyhow, I’m getting off track here. I’m not sure how long I spent gawking up at the thing in the sky. It was mesmerizing i
n a weird sort of way.
As it got lower and lower though, I began to get scared. Really scared. At one point I crooked my fingers into a sign against evil I haven’t used since I was a child. Then one of those unnatural light beams sweeping the ground found a pica and vaporized it. One minute the little guy was there, looking hopefully at me as I pulled dried food packets out for dinner. The next he was gone in a poof of smoke, leaving this icky burnt smell.
Well, that certainly mobilized me. I dove through the door of the hut and huddled next to Jake on one of the benches. I did leave the door open a crack, though, so I could still see. As soon as I was inside the hut, the damned thing altered course again. It stopped circling and resumed its easterly trajectory, despite being, probably, a thousand feet lower—too low to clear the passes next to either Wallace or Echo Cols. Even though I willed it to crash, I’m sure it didn’t. I would have heard something...
Sara skimmed over what she’d written. She wanted to make sure she hadn’t missed anything important, at least up until the ship appeared. Laying the paper aside, she shivered. It was nearly as bad reading as it had been to live through.
“And wouldn’t it have been nice,” Sara asked herself rhetorically, half-tucked inside her sleeping bag, with Jake beside her on the hut’s floor, “if things stopped being creepy then?” They hadn’t, though. Another shudder racked her and she drew her arms inside the bag, trying to get warm.
Right after the ship was out of sight, she’d retrieved her mostly-erected tent and shoved it sideways through the door of the hut. Once it was upright on the stone floor, she’d gone back outside and tossed her other belongings—scattered on the dirt, snow and rocks—after the tent. It didn’t take a genius IQ to understand there was something about the stones of the hut that masked her presence from whatever was in that ship.