“You okay?” Logan asked softly.
She looked back to him and realized he’d been watching her the whole time. “I’m well—” she fell silent and tried to reorganize her thoughts. “The story was fascinating and I was just thinking that perhaps a book on Indian lore would be more beneficial than one on wild flowers.”
Logan seemed to consider this a moment. “Why not combine them? You could have your flowers and identification information and weave in stories of the area. After all, the summer is coming quickly to an end and you’ve already done a great deal of work on the area vegetation.”
“Would you teach me more about the lore from this area?” she asked, swallowing down the depression that threatened to engulf her.
“Sure,” he said, so nonchalant that Amelia knew he didn’t understand her dilemma.
No one understands, she thought as a heavy sigh escaped her lips. No one would ever understand.
Chapter 11
A week and a half later, Amelia watched as Mary finished packing a saddlebag with food. “Mary, are you sure that you and Jonas want to do this?” she questioned quite seriously. “I mean, Long’s Peak looks to be a very serious climb.”
“Oh, it’s serious enough,” she said with a smile. “I’ve made it four times before, and I figure number five ain’t gonna kill me.”
“You’ve climbed up Long’s Peak four times?” Amelia questioned in disbelief.
Logan laughed at her doubtful expression. “Mary’s a great old gal and she can outdo the lot of us, I’m telling you.”
Mary beamed him a smile. “He only says that ’cause he knows I’ll cook for him on the trail.”
Amelia was amazed. Long’s Peak stood some 14,700 feet high and butted itself in grand majesty against one end of Estes Park. It was once heralded as one of the noblest of the Rocky Mountains and Lady Bird had highly recommended taking the opportunity to ascend it, if time and health permitted one to do so. Amelia was still amazed that her father had taken to the idea without so much as a single objection. He and Sir Jeffery had found a guide to take them hunting outside the village area. They would be gone for over a week and during that time he was quite unconcerned with how his daughters and manservant entertained themselves. After all, he mused, they were quite well-chaperoned, everyone in the village clearly knowing what everyone else was about, and the isolation did not afford for undue notice of their activities by the outside world. Logan had immediately approached him on the subject of Amelia ascending Long’s Peak, with a formal invitation to include her sisters and the Gambett family. Lady Gambett looked as though just thinking of such a thing made her faint and the girls were clearly uninterested in anything so barbaric. After a brief series of questions, in which Mary assured the earl that she would look after Amelia as if she were her own, Lord Amhurst gave his consent and went off to clean his rifle. And that was that. The matter was settled almost before Amelia had known the question had been posed.
“You’ve got enough grub here to last three weeks,” Jonas chided his wife.
“Sure, sure,” his Mary answered with a knowing nod, “and you and Logan can eat three weeks worth of food in a matter of days. I intend that Amelia not starve.” They all laughed at this and within the hour they were mounting their horses and heading out.
“Some folks call it ‘the American Matterhorn,’” Logan told Amelia.
“I’ve seen the Matterhorn and this is more magnificent,” she replied, rather lost in thought.
The valley was a riot of colors and sights. The rich green of the grass contrasted with wildflowers too numerous to count. But thanks to Logan, Amelia could identify almost every one of them and smiled proudly at this inner knowledge. She would have quite a collection to show off when she returned to England. For reasons beyond her understanding, the thought of leaving for England didn’t seem quite as appealing as it always had before. She pushed aside this thought and concentrated instead on the grandeur of a blue mountain lake that seemed to be nestled in a bed of green pine.
The Lewises’ dogs, a collie mix and a mutt of unknown parentage, ran circles around the party, barking at everything that crossed their path, often giving chase when the subject in question looked too small to retaliate. Amelia laughed at the way they seemed to never tire of chasing the mountain ground squirrels or nipping after the heels of the mule-eared deer.
As the sun seemed to fall from the sky in an afterglow of evening colors, Amelia felt a sadness that she couldn’t explain. The emptiness within her was almost more than she could bear. She thought of her mother and wondered if she were watching from some celestial home somewhere, then shook off the thought and chided herself for such imaginings. No doubt they’d been placed there by the irritating conversations of one Logan Reed. His beliefs seemed to saturate everything he said and did, and Amelia was quite disturbed by the way he lived this faith of his.
“We’d best make camp for the night,” Logan called and pointed. “Over there looks to be our best choice.”
Later, Amelia could see why he was so highly regarded as a competent guide. The area he’d chosen was well-sheltered from the canyon winds and had an ample supply of water. Added to this were feathery pine boughs, so surprisingly soft that when Amelia lay down atop her blanketed pine mattress, she sighed in unexpected delight. Staring up at the starry sky, Amelia uncomfortably remembered Bible verses from the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. Her mother had been particularly fond of these and had often quoted them when Amelia had questioned the hows and whys of God’s workings.
“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”
Her mother’s explanation had always been that Amelia had no right to question God, and Amelia remembered countering that if God’s position wasn’t secure enough to be put to the test, then He wasn’t as omnipotent and omniscient as people said. Suddenly, she felt very sorry for those words. Not because she believed in God’s existence, but for the sorrow she remembered seeing in her mother’s eyes. Sitting up, she hugged her knees to her chest and watched the flames of their campfire for a while.
You wouldn’t be very pleased with me now, Mother, she thought. The flames danced and licked at the cold night air and when a log popped and shifted, Amelia jumped from the suddenness of it.
“I’m surprised you’re still awake,” Logan said from where he lay watching her.
Amelia felt suddenly very self-conscious and shrugged her shoulders. “Just thinking.”
Logan leaned up on his elbow. “Care to share it?”
Amelia smiled and the reassuring sounds of Mary and Jonas’s
snoring made her relax a bit. “I was thinking about my mother.”
“I bet you miss her a lot,” Logan offered.
“Yes, I do. It seems like she’s been gone forever and it’s only been six years. She was sick quite awhile before she died.” Then as if Logan had vocalized the question, Amelia added, “Consumption.”
“And she was a Christian?”
Amelia rocked back and forth a bit and looked up to the heavens. “Yes.”
“So how is it that you came to believe there was no God?”
“He never listened when I prayed,” she replied flatly.
“How do you know?”
“Because my mother died.”
Logan said nothing for several moments, then sat up and added a few more pieces of wood to the fire. “Did your mother ever deny you something that you wanted?”
“Of course,” Amelia said, not understanding his meaning.
“So why wouldn’t God be inclined to do the same?”
Logan’s eyes were intense and his expression so captivating that for a moment Amelia forgot to be offended. Instead she simply asked, “To what
purpose? I was fourteen years old; my youngest sister was barely ten. To what purpose does a merciful God remove mothers from children?”
“Good question. Wish I had the answer.”
Amelia felt instant disappointment. She’d fully expected one of those quaint Christian answers like, “God needed another angel for heaven.” Or, “God had need of your mother elsewhere.” Amelia knew better. Especially since she left three grieving children and a devastated husband.
“You seem taken aback,” Logan said softly. “Did you expect me to tell you the mind of God?”
Amelia couldn’t help but nod. “Most other Christians would have. They have their wonderful little answers and reasons for everything, and none of it ever makes sense. To me, if there were a God, He would be more logical than that. There would be a definite order and reason to things of course, a purpose.”
“And you think that’s missing in our world?” Logan questioned, seeming genuinely intrigued by the turn the conversation had taken.
But Amelia felt weary of it all. She was tired of seeking answers when she wasn’t even sure what the questions were. She couldn’t make sense of her life or of her mother’s death, and therefore, to cast her frustration aside seemed the only way to keep from going insane.
“I think,” she said very softly, “that the world has exactly the order we give it. No more. No less. If people are out of control, then so, too, the world.”
“I agree.”
“You do?”
Logan smiled. “Surprised?” Amelia nodded and he continued. “God gave mankind free will to choose Him or reject Him. A great many folks refuse Him and chaos and misery ensue. They seek their own way and call it wisdom when they settle in their minds how the universe has come together.”
“But is your Christianity any different? Didn’t you decide in your own way how the universe has come together?”
“No,” Logan replied. “I decided to accept God’s way was the only way and that put the rest of my questions at rest.”
“But don’t you ever worry that you might be wrong?” Amelia asked, knowing that she was very concerned with her own version of the truth. Perhaps that was why she felt herself in a constant state of longing. There was an emptiness inside her that refused to be filled up by the reasonings and logic of her own mind, yet she didn’t know what to put in its place.
Logan stretched back on his pallet. “I guess if I’d come to God as an adult, I might have wondered if the Bible was true and if God was really God. But I became a Christian when was still very young and it was easy to believe what my parents told me about the Bible and faith. I can see where it would be a whole heap harder for you. You have a lifetime of pride and obstacles to overcome. Accepting that the Bible is true would mean that your life would change, and some folks aren’t willing to risk what that change might entail.”
He fell silent and before long, Amelia noticed that his breathing had grown deep and even. Lying back down on her own pine bed, Amelia felt more lonely and isolated than she’d ever been in her life. What if Logan is right? her mind questioned. She quickly pushed the thought away. But as she drifted to sleep it came back in a haunting reminder that followed her even into her dreams.
The next day, Amelia awoke before it was fully light. The night had turned cold and Amelia’s teeth chattered as she dragged her blankets around her shoulders and went to throw more wood on the fire like she’d seen Logan do. The dying coals quickly ignited the dry wood and soon a cheery blaze was crackling once again. It was this and not any sound made by Amelia that caused the rest of the camp to stir.
Logan was first to sit up, rubbing his eyes and yawning. Mary and Jonas murmured good mornings to each other before Mary took herself off for a bit of privacy. Jonas didn’t seem inclined to talk and Logan was already pulling out things for breakfast.
While they were all occupied, Amelia took herself off a ways in order to study the sunrise in private. At first the blackness gave way to midnight blue and then as the slightest hint of lemon coloring suggested light, it gave way to a turquoise and brightened as the sun stretched over the snow-capped peaks. How beautiful! She marveled at the glory of it all.
They quickly breakfasted and were on their way by seven, the sunrise permanently fixed in Amelia’s mind. They made good time, passing an area Logan called “The Lava Beds.” It was here that huge boulders mingled with small ones to create a strangely desolate area. They were nearing the place where Logan said they would have to picket the horses and climb, when dark clouds moved in and rain appeared imminent.
Logan immediately went to work to find them even the smallest shelter to wait out the storm. He finally found a suitable place where they would be snug under the protective ledge of a particularly wide rock shelf. Jonas and Logan picketed the horses, while Amelia and Mary carried their things to the rock. The heavens opened up, as if cued by their having found shelter, and poured down a rain of tremendous proportion. Lightning flashed around them just as Jonas and Logan came to join the women.
C-R-A-C-K! Thunder roared, causing Amelia to nearly jump out of her skin. It seemed as if they sat atop the world and the fullest impact of the storm was to be spent on them alone.
Logan grinned and eased a little closer to Amelia. Another flash of lightning caused Amelia to put her hands to her ears and press herself tighter to the wall. She felt terribly embarrassed by her childish display, noting that Mary and Jonas had their heads together talking as though nothing at all was amiss. She rallied herself in spirit and was determined to display more courage when a blinding strike of lightning hit directly in front of them with its deafening boom of thunder.
Amelia shrieked and threw herself at Logan in such a way that she feared she’d knocked the wind from him. Hearing him groan, she pulled back quickly but found his arm around her.
“Stay, if it makes you feel better. I promise, Mary and Jonas aren’t going to care.”
Amelia smiled weakly at Mary. “I’ve never been in a storm like this,” she said, barely able to form audible words.
“Logan knows how they go,” Mary replied, which seemed to offer Amelia approval for her actions.
Turning to Logan, Amelia temporarily forgot the storm around her and concentrated instead on the one in his eyes. Her heart pounded harder, while her breath felt as though it were caught around the lump in her throat. Licking her dry lips, she eased away and hugged her arms around her.Better to find strength and comfort from within than to lose another portion of myself to this rugged mountain man.
After a time the storm passed, but Logan judged by the skies that another would soon follow and the climb to the top of Long’s Peak was postponed. As they descended back down the mountain, hoping to reach the heavy cover of pines before the next storm was upon them, Logan tried to treat the matter light-heartedly.
“We’ll just try again later on,” he said confidently. “Sooner or later, we’re bound to get you to the top.”
Amelia tried not to be disappointed. In truth, by this time her emotions were so topsy-turvy that she wasn’t at all certain whether she cared if the trip was canceled or not. She rode sedately, saying very little except when addressed with a direct question. There was a great deal this trip had brought to mind and there was still the rest of the summer to think it through.
Chapter 12
F rom that day, the summer passed much more quickly than Amelia had expected. Not a moment went by when she wasn’t painfully aware that soon the snows would threaten to close off access to the plains. Soon she would be headed back to England and her marriage to Sir Jeffery. She tried to push down her fear, but it rose up like a phoenix from the ashes of her heart, threatening to slay her in mind and soul.
Her joy came in spending her days with Logan. With her father and Jeffery absorbed in their hunting and her sisters busy with the Gambett girls, Amelia found herself free to work with Mary each morning and then with Logan. She had copied down nearly every specimen of vegetation
in the area, and Logan had taught her how to identify animal tracks and to mark her position from the village using the elements around her. She thought it almost her imagination but swore her hearing had become better as she could make out sounds in the forested mountains that she’d never heard before. One day, when their water ran out, Logan had taught her how to listen for the sounds of water. Once she learned what it was that she was trying to hear, Amelia was amazed. The sounds had always been there, but she was just unaware of them. Before, the sounds in the air had come to her as a collective noise, but now she could separate the trickling of a mountain stream from the rustling of aspen leaves.
She had learned to depend more upon her other sense as well. Her sight and sense of smell were two things Logan said were absolutely necessaryfor staying alive. As they traipsed through the woods together he would often stop her and ask what certain smells were, and Amelia was quite proud to find that she was rapidly learning to identify each of these as well. Without realizing it, Amelia had spent the summer learning how to survive in the Rockies.
The bittersweetness of her circumstance, however, caught up with her one afternoon when her father sought her out.
“Amelia, we need to talk.”
She looked up from where she was jotting down notes on a strange little bird that she had mistaken for a woodpecker.
“Just a moment, Father,” she said, finishing her notes. “I’ve identified that pesky noise we’ve lived with these months. You know that pecking sound that comes at all hours of the day and night?” She didn’t wait for him to reply. “It seems that this bird is a chipping sparrow and it chips away all the time. It actually feeds its young even into adulthood when they are fully capable of feeding themselves. Isn’t that fascinating?” This time she put the pen down and looked up to find her father’s serious expression.
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