by John Larison
* * *
—
We set out the next day only when we was good and ready. Our course led up the ridge and we climbed higher than I’d ever been before.
We stopped where a sheet of snow ended, where winter was still turning to spring. Ingrid drank from the trickle pouring off the snow. From there we could see past tree line, all the way to the top of that mountain. I recognized its craggy summit. It was one of them peaks I’d spent my whole life looking at from afar. It had been the edge of the world to me then, but here I was only a day from home and standing within rifle distance of its top.
I recalled that morning so long ago when Noah had sat out under the stoop, his boy-legs reaching for the rail. We looked upon those rocks and he guessed them to be no higher than a grown man. Now I saw them to be as tall as fifty of our barns stacked one upon the next.
The enormity of this country settled on me then. Pa and Ma traveled four months to reach our valley, a hundred and twenty days. Noah had been gone five years.
Up until then reconvening with my brother had been a simple fact of this journey. I hadn’t given the how much thought. Just follow the news like I’d follow tracks in dust and eventual-like I’d find him at trail’s end.
Now there was no escaping the expanse of my foolishness. In a land as wide as this one, how was a lone girl to find a single man? Let alone an outlaw who made his living by not being found?
I sat down on a rock to catch my breath.
* * *
—
By the end of the fourth day I’d eaten down the stores to only pemmican. Ingrid was eating the best graze of her life, thick green grass at every stop. But I dreamed of a mercantile in the mountains, just some front where I could get biscuits and preserves and maybe some bacon.
The fifth day we come into a gulch wet with spring and cut our first horse tracks. I leaned to check. They was shod, and some days on. We fell in line. I knew Blairville had to be somewhere uphill. From there we could pick up an easy trail along the rolling counties.
I wondered as we rode if Noah himself had been up this gulch years before. My hungry mind dwelled with my brother, the possibility of the two of us stepping on the same dirt.
It wasn’t Blairville we rode into but a camp of miners working the stream. Ingrid had them first, by scent. We rode up onto a ridge of aspen for a safe look.
Six men and two wall tents, a cooking fire, a long table built beside the stream. A rifle leaned against the table. Looked like an old Springfield. The men was carrying buckets to one end of the table and letting the water run down the length. I didn’t see any horses, which struck me as queer.
I saw a blue coffeepot on the fire and a Dutch oven, and there had to be food. I imagined a whole storehouse of food inside the tents. Not just biscuits but ham and potatoes. So much grub I could eat until I fell asleep and then start again.
I patted Ingrid on the neck. “What you think?”
She looked off up the valley.
“Reckon you right.” I wasn’t ready to put my manhood to the test, especially not on six lonely miners who might smell a woman like a hound smells a hare.
I dismounted and led Ingrid through the aspens until a bend in the valley allowed us to drop down unseen.
* * *
—
The hunger didn’t let up, and come the seventh day we still hadn’t found a town or mercantile. In late morning we come to a fold in the hill. The draw wasn’t much but I could see stub willow and lush grass, and I had myself an intuition. Ingrid picked up a trot when she saw that graze.
There wasn’t no mining in this draw and the water ran like ice. I looked for trout first but didn’t see none. So I set Ingrid to grazing and started up the willow with the pistol. Willow is something I trusted from home to hold edibles. I was hungry and I always shot my best when I was hungry.
Yet nothing stirred from the willow.
There was a mess of rocks on the treeless hillside, and I thought about the rock chucks back home that hide from the sun in such stuff. It was still a good way up but I took it slow.
Soon enough I saw them, grouse as big as fry hens. One stood up from its bed and I drew quick and shot its head clean off at close range. That sent the flock into the air. I tracked one, winged it, and lined up on a third flying straightaway. It gave up a mess of feathers and fell all the way down in the willows at the bottom. The winged one was on the run below me and I drew and took a moment. The first shot missed, so I gave chase. The second bullet rolled him and he quivered before going still.
From starving to flush in a breath.
Ingrid was looking up from her graze. I hollered to her, and she bucked her head. We was some happy people now.
Right there I started a little fire of dead willow. Once the feathers was off, I flipped the guts out and ran a green switch up and through. That I put on two stakes over the heat where I could turn it slow. I salted the meat from a small pouch I’d carried from home. The bird dripped juice into the flames, and when I ate I laughed with gratitude.
* * *
—
We dropped into the next valley and found the creek flowing red. It wasn’t the water but the rocks themselves. They was stained. Ingrid wasn’t much for crossing that water. She wouldn’t drink a sip. So I didn’t neither despite a mean thirst.
Farther along we saw the red coming from the mine shafts. They shone on the mountainside like black mouths and red tongues. The whole place put me at unease.
Toward afternoon, we come to a junction. I could see trails heading up three creeks, two of them heading more or less west. I checked my shadow and thought hard about direction.
Soon after we saw a man on foot leading mules our way. He was alone, and this seemed as good a moment as any to try my manself. We waited a step off the trail while he walked down into the valley bottom and to us. Even from a distance I could see the Mexican in him. His mules was loaded down, the cargo covered in tarpaulins, yet he walked.
“Howdy,” I hollered when he got fifty yards out. I shown my hand.
He kept coming without a word.
When he got inside ten yards and still hadn’t looked at me, I said again, “How do you do?”
It became clear to me then that this man intended to walk right on by without so much as looking at us.
I put Ingrid in his path and his eyes studied the birds. I could see the hunger in his face. His man was delivering provisions for the mines yet he wasn’t supplied even a riding horse.
“What you got to eat?” He didn’t respond. I put fingers to my mouth.
He shrugged. “No comida.”
I tapped a dead bird. “Which trail for el norte?”
He thought about that. Then he pointed up the steeper of the two trails. “Too much, pero el norte, si.”
I tossed him the bird because he was hungry and I was full. He looked at it there on the ground.
I said, “Cooks up good enough.”
He lifted the bird and tucked the lead rope under his arm to free both hands. He took to squeezing the critter, checking it. I reckon he figured it must be ruined by lead, but this was the one I head shot. He studied me with a queer look. He nodded, and I understood that to be a thank-you. Then he gestured at the other trail. “Farther but more easy.”
He set to work starting a twig fire while Ingrid and me rode on. We stopped along the ridge for a look back. The valley was without a tree, just rubble and willow and gray slabs of rock. At its heart three creeks the color of fire met and vanished into a black gap between the mountains. Where the creeks met grew a shaft of willow smoke.
He never doubted I was a man.
* * *
—
If that trail was more easy, I’m glad I never saw the other.
It led along the water, then up on cruel switchbacks, and broke out on top to a world of rock
and snow. The fog took us in. There was no seeing the cairns left by earlier travelers. I did my best by dead reckoning but the terrain got me twisted.
It was evening when we found the path down, and we both lightened. I had begun reconciling myself to the fact we would spend the night upon that peak, no fire for me and no graze for Ingrid and no sleep for either of us. So when we found that trail, Ingrid broke into a trot and I let her.
We rode into a grove of pines the likes of which I’d never before seen. The ground was soft, old needles with mushrooms sprouting through. It was the first time we’d been off rocks all day. It was like walking on a mattress. I was sleepy by then and so was Ingrid. This forest felt like a place we could let down our guard.
I didn’t see the men until they hollered to us. I don’t know how Ingrid missed them.
Across a thin meadow was a tarpaulin lean-to and two men before a small cooking fire. They had a skinned-down deer hanging from a tree, the firelight flashing on it, and I could see a hindquarter roasting above the flames. A man was waving us over.
Ingrid threw her head.
“Get, girl.”
She didn’t. I assumed it was because of the deer. I often wonder how this life might’ve gone different had I trusted Ingrid and just kept on down that trail.
One of the men hollered, “That animal of yours needs some discipline.”
I crossed my hands over the horn.
“You come down from there by your lonesome? You can’t be more than fourteen years old.” The one speaking wore a thick moustache. His nose was too big for his face and his skin was scarred with pocks. He had a big Dragoon pistol tucked in his belt. A Dragoon by then was an old-time pistol, and I had only seen them carried by dirty drunkards. I didn’t require Ingrid to take another step toward these men.
“A whole group of us coming,” I said in a voice too deep.
“At this hour of the day?” I reckon they figured I was a boy playing the part of a man.
The other one was clean shaven and middle-aged. His hat was off and he had blond hair and a thin face. His Spencer repeater was within reach. He poked the venison with a silver blade. His eyes paid me no mind.
Their horses whinnied, and Ingrid got to backing away.
The moustached man with the Dragoon said, “Care to join us? We’re about to feast on this here roast. Room to roll out a bed, if you care to. Hobble her up with the others. They might teach her a thing or two about heeding her master.”
I tipped my hat like a man, and let Ingrid spin us and trot back to the trail. The moustache man called after but we kept on.
We rode until it was too dark to see. We paused in a cluster of young pines and as a precaution watched our backtrail. We held for a good while, then carried on in the moonlight until we hit the next meadow. It was so dark I had to ride with an arm across my face to protect against wayward limbs.
The meadow had been grazed down by cattle, but it would do. By the creek I rolled out my bed and started a cooking fire. I could hear Ingrid chomping in the darkness, her lips working at fresh starts near the ground. Soon the last bird was sizzling. When the moon emerged a pair of coyotes opened up from the timber.
The air was warm. We’d been in cold country since leaving home and I was on bad terms with my smell. After eating I shed my hat and my coat, my shirts and pants, and tiptoed about that creek until I found a soft spot where I might lay and rub myself clean.
The coyotes howled again, this time a touch closer, and I wondered what words they was saying with them calls. Pa always claimed that critters each got their own language and men who can make sense of their tongues got all manner of sentries about them. He was the one who taught me to know the approach of the bear by the caw of the raven, to look for a lion at the silence of the squirrel.
Took some minutes before I realized Ingrid wasn’t chomping no more. I stood from the water. “Girl?”
She kicked the earth in the warning of her kin and so I knew she was on to something. I grabbed for my pistol and listened.
I pulled on my pants and boots and then my shirts, first the small wool I had cut to contain my nubs and then the flannel overtop. I did this right quick. I was finishing my belt when I heard a stick snap and looked up and there was the figure of a man in the moonlight, fixed on me. The man with the Dragoon.
“Look at you. Queer breed that washes up in the cold of night.”
My pistol was in my hand, and I held it away from my body so that he might see it silhouetted against the silver water. “’Preciate you moving on.”
“Name’s Carl. What’s yours?”
I didn’t answer.
“What? You too simple for a name? Or you fancy yourself royalty and above some friendly conversation with a fellow traveling man?”
He pulled a bottle from his back pocket, took a swig, and offered it to me. It glinted in the moonlight. “Let me tend to your fire while you put up your feet and help me with this here bottle.”
I waited a moment then said firm like Pa would, “I prefer you move on, stranger.”
“Or what? Come on now. Don’t you got no mountain hospitality? We the only folks for twenty miles, minus my mule-face relative and he don’t count. This is lonely country and I’m offering you a drink. You got enough friends in this world you can turn this one away? What if I happen to know something that could make you a million dollars? Huh?”
I could see Ingrid now in the meadow, watching this man and blowing steam. I took that as confirmation he had come alone.
He sat down beside my fire and took another pull. “Put that pistol away, for chrissake. Makes me nervous to see a boy your age wielding a Yankee-issue Colt. You seen what that ol’ thing will do to flesh?”
I didn’t answer. I was still working out what to say to this man who wouldn’t leave. I stood some distance back from the fire but the cold of the creek was in me now.
“Let me guess. Your pa fought in the war and after he died you ended up with his pistol? Don’t look so surprised. You ain’t the first kid I seen with his daddy’s Colt. Ah, kid. You’re just like a thousand others. Hate to be the one to say it, but you ain’t special. This country will eat you up. You could die tonight and nothing would change, not a thing.”
He smelled his fingers. The fire glinted in his eyes. He patted the Dragoon in his belt. “This here pistol come by way of cards but before that it belonged to a dead injun. That savage had wrapped it in hide and there was brass studs in the grip. Smelled like a skunk. What kind of fool treats his pistol like that? That’s why they couldn’t hold this place. That’s it right there. No thing is more important than its purpose. What’s your purpose, son?”
“I ain’t your son.”
“There we go. Good to know you got words. What’s your work? See, I’m trying to be friendly. Go on, sit. I see you got the chill. It’s your own damn fire. You ain’t afraid of a little conversation, is you?”
I sat. I rested the Colt across my thigh.
He pointed at the remains of my bird. “Mind?” He reached and tore free a drumstick and smelled it. “Trade you for some tobacco?”
“Eat it on your ride back.”
He took a big bite. He spoke as he chewed. “Your Colt and my Dragoon could’ve knowed each other in the war. Ever consider that? My pistol killing the owner of yours, or the other way? These instruments got stories to tell. My relation and me be headed up past the company land. We hear there’s new gold. Idiot or not my relation has a connoisseur’s taste for the ore. We have that in common. He was born in fifty-one and me in fifty-two along the American River. Ever hear of it?”
“Nope.”
“Californy. We was born couple years too late. Forty-eight was the year for getting it. By fifty-one the Chinamen was thick as fleas and the Mexicans was everywhere you wanted to be. No, forty-eight was the year for it. Pa said he could kick the stream bo
ttom and clouds of gold would drift on. If there’s a rush for metal I’m there. You got the fever? What’s your business?”
“Cattle.”
“Cattle. You don’t say? You ever consider mining?”
I didn’t answer.
“Now is the time. It’s starting again. It’s like forty-eight right now if you know where to be, and I do. We’re gonna pan the first weeks and save our scores and then buy up all the labor we can—I won’t hire no Chinamen, I got principles. I’m gonna sit back while the injuns do the lifting. You know you can get a brave to work all day for a meal? Makes me think we killed them off too quick.” He flicked the remains of the drumstick into the fire.
“You good with that Colt? You don’t look like you ever swung a pick before but you hold the Colt like you ain’t afraid of it. I bet we could find a purpose for a cattle boy.”
When I didn’t answer, he cocked his head. “I don’t see no cattle here.”
I thought on the fly. “I’m after a bounty.”
He laughed. He filled his mouth with liquor and passed it back and forth between his teeth before swallowing. “Who you hunting, Mr. Bounty Hunter?”
“Harney.”
“Noah Harney?”
“That’s the one.”
He lost himself in laughter. He laid back with it and convulsed.
“What’s so funny?”
He sat up and brushed himself clean and give up a last couple chuckles. “Just so typical is all. How many boys your age think they hunting Noah Harney? How many on this very night is claiming to be a bounty hunter? Shee-it.”
I took up the last shreds of my bird and commenced finishing it.
“You’re either way behind or way ahead of all the other bounty hunters on Harney. Last I heard he was holed up in the red rock country. So which is it, behind or ahead?” He looked on me and drew from his liquor. “I bet your old man threw you out. Am I close?”