Cherish the Dream

by Kathleen Harrington

  On the twentieth of October, in a maze of cols, peaks, and boulder fields, they began to encounter small streams that would shoot out from under the high snowbanks, run for short distances in deep chasms, and fall from one escarpment to another until they fell like sheets of rain across the face of the gorge beneath. The trekkers came to the edge of a precipice and stared awestruck into a valley over a mile below them.

  Theodora stood beside Blade and peered at the scene of grandeur. Through aeons of time, a gigantic canyon had been carved into solid granite by the elements. Steep cascades and free-leaping waterfalls fell from the cliffs of hanging valleys on either side of the gorge. Across from the amazed travelers, a mountain peak had been sheared in half, its smooth granite face dropping straight down to the floor below. All about them, rounded domes stood against the sky in majestic splendor.

  “My God,” she whispered in awe as she reached for Blade’s hand. “This must be the most wondrous place on the face of the earth.”

  The men crowded to the edge of the cliff to stand and gaze in rapture. A valley more than seven miles long and of unprecedented beauty spread beneath them. Locked in snow, it lay in pristine loveliness between two sheer granite walls. It was studded with monoliths. Like bridal veils, cataracts fell fifteen hundred feet down its rocky sides.

  “Look at that dome over there,” she said, pointing to the other side. “How in the world could it have ever been formed?”

  “Mebbe by an earthquake,” Zeke conjectured. “I heard tell Californee has big’uns. By gor, mebbe one was so big, the front half of the mountain jest fell down.”

  “More than likely this entire canyon, including that half dome over there, was formed over countless years by glaciers,” Blade replied. “Look at the scars across the face of the rocks. Like they’ve been gouged out by the hands of giants.”

  “Look over there to the west, chérie,” Chardonnais said, standing beside Theodora.

  She gazed in the direction of Louis’s pointing finger. A great waterfall streamed directly out of the winter mist of clouds topping a snow-covered peak.

  “Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?” Her voice was filled with wonder.

  “There can’t be anything on earth prettier than this, Madame Roberts. Ask the capitaine. I will bet he has never even read of anything that beats this, and he has studied the whole world in those books of his.”

  But Blade was already busy making plans with Conyers, who’d just returned from another unsuccessful attempt to find a route down the western face of the mountains.

  “We’ll follow the ridge westward,” Blade explained. “Looks like we’re caught between two chasms. We’ll keep moving along the top till we find a spot where we can start to work our way to the valley below.”

  Blade turned back to Theodora. “How are your eyes?” he questioned, tender regard for her softening his proud, chiseled features.

  Blade had been covering her cheeks with ashes from their fire each morning to relieve the dazzling reflection of the sun’s rays against the snow. The afternoons were bright, and the sun had shone with enough warmth to slightly melt the top of the snow. Each night, the snow would freeze into a firm sheet on top, and the glare in daylight was nearly intolerable.

  “I can see fine, but one of the troopers is almost blind,” she said, leaning against Blade’s secure bulk and placing her mittened hand on his wide chest. She tried to keep the fear from her voice. Since he’d first made love to her that bitterly cold evening, she had clung to him every night, drawing her own strength from his limitless courage. As he’d kept her warm through the long winter nights, so he’d protected her in the days of arduous travel. And his unceasing care had bound her to him even more deeply than his passionate lovemaking. Without words, he had shown her that she could meet the challenge of the mountains. She strove daily to prove his faith in her was not mistaken, matching his iron will with her own firm resolve to best the elements, to survive. She knew now that what he said was true. They belonged together.

  “I talked to the soldier earlier.” Blade slipped his arm around her. “He’ll ride today. Someone can lead him. Just be sure you keep that charcoal on,” he warned her.

  She looked up into his jet eyes and laughed. “You have this strange penchant for blackening my face.”

  His eyes crinkled as his devastating grin split his dark beard. “How you can be as pale as you are and still survive amazes me.” He shook his head in mock reproach. “Little white woman big trouble. But worth it.”

  Careful to avoid the charcoal, he kissed the tip of her nose. “Did you talk to Haintzelman?”

  She nodded, thinking of the lieutenant’s face and hands, blistered as if burned by a fire. His eyes were swollen shut and his lips cracked and bleeding. “I made up more of my infamous salve for him. You should have heard him complain about the smell when I smeared it all over his burns.”

  Blade chuckled softly. “Having once been a recipient of your evil-smelling remedies, I can appreciate his complaints. I’m only sorry you have to consume your precious samples for medicine instead of saving them for your journal. Does it bother you?”

  For the past two weeks, Theodora had used her knowledge of herbs and plants to concoct salves, ointments, syrups, and teas to ease the suffering of the trailblazers. The men had started calling her “Doc Roberts,” and Blade had complained with a wry grin that his shelter smelled more like a pharmacy than a honeymooners’ boudoir.

  She shook her head at him. “You know me better than that. No botanical specimen is more important than a man’s health and well-being. Besides, you can take me back to your village next summer so Picking Bones Woman can help me find some more.”

  Blade lifted the edge of the woolen shawl that was wrapped like a scarf around Theodora’s neck and chin. He pulled it higher and tucked it tight. “You can plan on it, princess.”

  Out of habit he reached inside his heavy coat, then patted his empty shirt pocket. “This has to be the greatest deprivation of all,” he complained with a rueful grin. “Giving up food isn’t too bad, but going without my seegars is really annoying..”

  “Why don’t you borrow some of Zeke’s tobacco?” she suggested.

  “He’s been out of it since before we reached the summit. There isn’t a man in the party who wouldn’t trade his evening portion of horse meat for something to smoke or chew.”

  She clucked her tongue in admonition. “It isn’t good for you anyway, nahyam. Didn’t anyone ever tell you it would stunt your growth?”

  He looked down at her from his great height, the delight he felt at her calling him “husband” glowing in his midnight eyes. “My grandmother claimed it was why I never grew to be as tall as my father. But I know that’s a lie.”

  “Why?” she asked in disbelief. “Jacques is almost seven feet tall.”

  He grinned like a mischievous boy. “Yes, but my father told me once that he’d been smoking since he was eight years old.”

  She shook her head, trying without success to keep from laughing. “But think how tall the two of you would be if you’d never begun.”

  From his spot at the front of the column, Wesley Fletcher watched the couple as they stood in each other’s arms and laughed like schoolchildren. The sight of them together sickened him. He’d hated Blade Roberts from the moment he’d learned the half-breed had bested him in their rankings at the academy their first year. He’d been certain the only way a stupid, lazy Indian could outscore him was by cheating, but he’d found no way to prove it.

  The breed had dogged his career ever since. Their first campaign with Colonel Dodge had been a fiasco for everyone but Roberts, who knew about the danger of tainted water on the plains and tried to warn the others. Roberts had received a commendation when they’d returned, while he’d suffered a black mark on his record .

  Then there’d been the skirmish with the Comanches a year later, when Roberts had ridden into the midst of a battle and saved a wounded man that he himself had
left to the mercy of the savages. Fletcher ground his teeth in fury, remembering the way the half-dead private had stared at him with accusing eyes as he rode into Fort Gibson behind Roberts. It’d taken a mouthful of lies to convince his superiors that he’d truly believed the man dead before he left him alone and surrounded by hostiles. He’d narrowly missed a court-martial that time.

  But nothing had been as bad as watching the half-breed seduce and win that blond witch after he’d tried so hard himself to impress her with his phony Southern gentleman behavior. Christ, he’d bent over backwards treating her like royalty, when all he’d really wanted to do was throw her down and ram it in her.

  His patience was running low, Fletcher admitted to himself, blowing on his icy fingers before replacing his buffalo-hide mittens. The mountain men he’d hired back at Horse Creek had been worthless fools. If Big Joe Shrady hadn’t died of injuries from his fight with Roberts, he’d have murdered the idiot himself. The same as he’d killed his partner. That stupid fool had gotten so liquored up he couldn’t even shoot an unarmed woman.

  Fletcher cursed softly to himself. Since his unsuccessful attempt to turn the expedition back after they’d first entered the Sierras, he’d had to wait and bide his time. He couldn’t afford to do anything more until they found their way through these blasted mountains. Like all the others, he needed Roberts to survive. But as soon as they discovered the pass, he’d make his move. This time he wouldn’t leave it in the hands of incompetent hirelings. And this time he wouldn’t fail.

  Chapter 29

  “Capitaine! Capitaine! I’ve found a pass!” Louis Chardonnais came into view on the crest of a rise. He held his hands to his mouth and hollered at the top of his lungs. “I’ve found a way down!”

  Shouts of excitement rose from the exhausted travelers as the joyful news was passed down the line.

  Blade stood beside Conyers, who had just arrived to report that he’d once again come back empty-handed. “Wait there, Louis,” Blade called, and turned to the others. “O’Fallon, get Guion. I sent him to the back of the column to let Twiggs and Theodora take a look at the cuts on his hands. Zeke and I will go on ahead with Chardonnais. You two join us on the double.” Trudging as fast as he could through the snowbanks, Blade reached Chardonnais, breathless in the high altitude. Louis had dropped down on his butt in a drift and, with his arms propped across his bent knees, rested his head on them. The deep creases on his weathered face were now concealed by a dark, shaggy beard, and the once well-trimmed mustache reminded Blade of the frost-covered tusks of a walrus hanging down on each side of his mouth. But his deep brown eyes retained their twinkle.

  “I found it!” he exulted. “It’s steep and it won’t be easy, but I think we can make it, bourgeois.”

  Blade clapped the winded man on his back. “Good work, Louis. Catch your breath, and then you can take us there.”

  Chardonnais scrambled to his feet on wobbly legs. Two pairs of fur-lined moccasins had cracked and split over the weeks in which he’d scouted ahead, and there were now pieces of green horsehide tied around his feet with twine. But because of his natural strength and resilience, he was in better shape than most of the dragoons, some of whom had been forced to wrap their feet in pieces of blankets and even the tails of their buckskin shirts. “Let’s go,” he panted. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we’ll be out of these devil mountains.”

  Blade and Zeke followed Chardonnais’s lead. They walked in his footprints, trying to stay on the trail he’d already blazed. For the five days since they’d first looked down on the magnificent canyon, they had followed its northern ridge, continually seeking a passage to the floor a mile below. The way had been rough and wearisome. One after another they’d conquered hills of drifted snow and ledges of sheer rock. Each morning Blade had sent out small parties of scouts, who’d returned in the evening tired and discouraged. The steady upward climb, the freezing cold, the blizzards, the half rations just the very effort it took to move forward each day—had taken a terrible toll on his men. Many of them suffered from snow blindness, their vision so poor that, time and again, they’d fall and roll in the snow, cutting themselves on rocks and brush. Some were so discouraged that they pleaded to be allowed to lie in the snow, where they’d fallen, and drift into a sleep from which they’d never wake. They had reached a point of desperation. Blade knew that their situation would be hopeless unless they discovered a way out soon.

  “Here it is, Capitaine,” Chardonnais said, his shoulders heaving with exertion. He pointed to the west.

  “Holy Moses,” Zeke exclaimed. “Would ya look at that!” They had arrived at the brink of the range’s westernmost edge. Beneath them they saw an almost perpendicular drop. Taking out his spyglass, Blade gazed at the plain nearly three miles away. It stretched westward to the horizon, and from their great height it looked golden and hazy in the distance. “There it is, men. California!” Blade grinned with happiness. “By God, we’ve made it.”

  Zeke looked at the straight drop in front of them. “Sure as shootin’. All we gotta do is sprout wings an’ fly down.”

  Guion and O’Fallon joined them, puffing as they came. “Faith, and it’s a sight to behold. Sure and we’ve come to the end of the world.” O’Fallon grabbed Zeke, lifted him up over his head, and twirled him around, ignoring his yells of outrage. With the scout’s slight build and his own beefy frame, the sergeant carried him about as easily as a child, despite the long weeks of poor diet.

  “Careful, Sergeant.” Blade laughed. “We don’t want Zeke to reach the floor of the canyon without a rope.”

  His Irish eyes shining with delight, O’Fallon set the mountain man down and moved toward Chardonnais.

  “Sacré bleu,” Louis exclaimed. “Take one more step near me and you will be the first one over the cliff.”

  All five laughed with the heady glee of deliverance. “We’ll camp here for the night, Sergeant,” Blade ordered.

  “Tomorrow we’ll begin our descent.”

  That next morning squads of men were sent out to probe the face of the cliff. Everyone worked in a state of euphoria, despite the fact that they were weak from cold and lack of food and suffered from altitude sickness. In the past weeks they’d faced temperatures that sometimes dipped twenty degrees below zero and had beaten a trail with spades and mauls through snows ranging in depth from six feet in the open to as much as a hundred feet in the sheltered draws. But they had survived.

  Julius and Theodora continued to treat the injured and lame while the men searched for the path that would lead them safely down. At midday, Blade came back to walk her into a stand of trees, giving her privacy for her personal needs, though he was never out of earshot. Just as she was about to return to her husband, Theodora saw a sight that stopped her heart: Antilocapra americana.

  She caught her breath in the frosty air. In the timber on the slope above her, only a short distance away, stood a male pronghorn antelope, his branched horns rising up against the clear, cold sky. He stood absolutely still, upwind and looking away from her. On the far side of a small meadow was the female, waiting for his signal to come across.

  Theodora dared not move or call Blade. The slightest sound would send the pronghorns leaping away to safety. Slowly, slowly, she lifted the carbine her husband insisted she carry everywhere she went. Since entering the mountains, she hadn’t once practiced shooting, for the fear of avalanche was always present. Could she do it? Trying to remember everything her husband had taught her, she braced the butt against her shoulder, sighted down the barrel, and squeezed the trigger.

  The blast of the rifle echoed in the still winter afternoon, and Blade was instantly at her side. Knocked backward by the recoil, she’d fallen into a deep, powdery drift, and she thrashed around, trying to regain her footing. He lifted her out and yanked her behind the nearest tree. His face was ashen as he searched for any sign of blood on her. Holding his carbine ready to fire, he glanced up the snowy slope.

  “Well, I’l
l be damned,” he said. He lowered the weapon and came out to stand beside the juniper. “Would you look at that!” He turned and grinned at her, admiration glowing in his eyes. “We’ve had a veteran scout and two seasoned mountain men out hunting every day for three weeks, and my little New England bluenose shoots the first fresh meat. Why didn’t you tell me you’d become a crack shot? I’d have sent you out with Conyers and Chardonnais days ago.”

  Bursting with pride, she peeked out from behind him. There in the snow was the fallen pronghorn, its horns making a dark crisscross pattern in the powdery whiteness.

  “Sometimes I even amaze myself,” she confessed.

  Together they burst out laughing, then charged up the slope to the fallen antelope.

  During the dangerous quest to find a way to the valley below, Corporal Overbury tripped and fell against a pile of jagged boulders. He fractured his arm and was carried back to Julius and Theodora. She gave the injured man some hot tea made from herbs to help lessen the pain, but Overbury still had to bite on a leather belt to keep from screaming in agony. The broken bone had punctured the skin, and after Julius set it, Theodora sewed the torn flesh together, just as she’d seen Snow Owl mend Blade’s wounds that summer. Through the surgery, Theodora willed her hands to be steady and her legs to support her. Only after the task had been completed did she allow herself the consolation of plopping down on a buffalo robe spread on the snow. She lowered her head to her knees and fought the faintness that enveloped her. Gradually, she felt the queasiness pass and stood up to resume her work.

  Julius had just started to make a sling for the patient when Lieutenant Fletcher came up.

  “The captain wants y’ to join him right away, Miz Gordon,” he told her. “He wants y’ to see the scenery from that ridge over there. I’m t’ take y’ to him.”