by Philip Craig
She slowed and turned off the highway. We rattled along a dirt road between pines and oak brush, pulled off it, and stopped.
“Here we are,” said Billy Jo, setting the hand brake.
I got out and looked up. The cliffs seemed to hang over me. I could see hawks wheeling in the air way up there. It was a long way to the top.
“Would it make any difference,” I asked, “if I told you I have a mild sort of acrophobia? When I stand on cliffs, I’m always sure they’re going to choose that very moment to crumble. When I lean on balcony railings, I’m sure they’re going to break right then. When I’m on the edge of something high, I always feel like the wind is going to blow me over.”
“A fine time to tell me,” said Billy Jo, putting shapely hands on her shapely hips. “If you want to see John, you have to go up there. Or you can stay here and I’ll go up alone. I can tell John what you told us. What do you want to do?”
“We manly men actually know no fear,” I said. “We just claim to so lesser mortals won’t feel so jealous.”
“It’s worked with me,” said Billy Jo. “I’m not a bit jealous. Shall I unload the horses or not?”
I eyed the horses. It had been a long time since I’d been on a horse. “These guys don’t bite, do they? Which one is Big Red?”
“Neither one.” Billy Jo laughed. “And they aren’t guys, they’re mares. Maude here is for you. We use her for a packhorse, usually. Not too smart, but not a mean bone in her. I’ll ride Matilda. Maude’s her mother, but Matilda’s got some Thoroughbred in her from her sire. Good spirit. They’re both good in the mountains. Shall we get them unloaded, or do you want to go home?”
She was about half my size and obviously not afraid of mountains or big animals. I looked at her, at the horses, and up at the cliffs. On the Vineyard, fishermen say, when speculating about future possibilities of success, “If you don’t go, you won’t know.”
“Let’s do it,” I said.
“Good. I think you’ll be okay.”
The mares were already saddled. Billy Jo backed them out of the trailer, tightened cinches, eyed my legs and adjusted the length of my stirrups, put bridles over the halters, and lashed on saddlebags.
“Food,” she said. “We’ll be up there about lunchtime.” She handed me a yellow slicker. “Tie this on behind your saddle. Weather changes fast up here, and we could get a shower.”
Except for the clouds over Engineer Mountain and the Needles, the sky was brilliant blue. Nevertheless, I tied the slicker on. Local knowledge should never be ignored. When I finished admiring my work, I saw Billy Jo slide a rifle into a scabbard on her saddle. I must have raised an eyebrow.
“My 30-30,” she said. “Just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
She waved toward the mountains across the valley. “You never know. Fellow over toward Emerald Lake swears he saw a grizzly earlier in the summer.”
“What do you usually shoot?”
“Deer. Got an elk last year, too.”
“I don’t think it’s deer or elk season.”
“I don’t plan on shooting any deer or anything else. But, you never know. Like they say, it’s better to have a gun and not need it than to need it and not have it.” She swung up onto her mare with an effortless grace. “Time to move out. Let’s see you climb aboard.”
Billy Jo and Manny Fonseca would probably hit it right off, I thought. They could sit around and swap quotations about the benefits of shooting irons. I looked Maude in the eye and told her to stand still while I got on. She did, and we started up the trail.
The trail zigzagged up through a break in the cliffs. Maude was a wide-backed, comfortable old mare, and did her best to make my ride an easy one. Ahead of me, Billy Jo rode easily, looking back at me now and then to make sure I was still there.
We climbed steadily, stopping now and then to let the horses blow. Maude began to sweat early and kept it up, but rolled along without complaint. Behind us, the valley began to fall away, and across it more distant mountains began to rise into view. We passed through a break in a rimrock and later climbed through another. The oak brush disappeared and we climbed through evergreens and white-barked aspen, whose trunks were marked in black lines by the initials and dates of previous travelers. The aspen leaves danced in the light breeze and sunlight shimmered on them.
A tiny stream had, over millennia, cut through the thousand feet of stone that formed the cliffs and had created the crevice through which we now climbed. It still flowed through the gorge, falling over rock faces, winding through tiny marshes, and then plunging on down the slope. We rose beside it and later crossed it as the gorge began to open into a more gentle vale.
Suddenly Maude’s ears were up. Ahead, Billy Jo was pointing. Three deer, heads high, were looking at us from the trail in front of us. They flicked their white tails and bounded away out of sight.
“They don’t let you get that close in deer season,” said Billy Jo, with a grin.
We came to a cabin and passed it by. Billy turned in her saddle and gestured.
“Used to be a cabin here they called Flagstaff. Old cattle camp in my grandfather’s day. Rotted down long ago. They call this new one Craig Cabin, after a local guy who loved to hunt up here. Could be that he and his friends used up more decks of cards and whiskey bottles than they did bullets, but they always had a fine time one way or another. The top is right ahead.”
We rode through an open meadow and up a ridge and hit a trail and a log drift fence. Beyond the fence, the land fell away to the west.
“They fence across these breaks in the cliffs to keep the cattle west of here,” said Billy Jo, while our horses blew. “Between the breaks, the cliffs do the job. The creeks that run down into the Hermosa start up here behind the cliffs and run off yonder.” She pointed toward a distant cluster of mountain peaks. “Those are the La Platas. They’re the ones just west of Durango.”
There were mountains flowing away in every direction. I had never seen so far except from airplanes. We rode to the right, and passed through a gate in the drift fence. My rump and legs were getting sore in spite of Maude’s easy gait. Billy Jo rode as if she and her mare were one being.
We came out into a green meadow and Billy Jo reined her mare off the trail and into the dappled shadows of a grove of aspen. She swung down, removed Matilda’s bridle, and tied her to a tree. Matilda immediately began to graze.
“Lunchtime,” smiled Billy Jo, digging into her saddlebags and bringing out sandwiches and a thermos. “I’m hungrier than a timber wolf with tentacles.”
Maude was ready for food, and so was I. I swung down and immediately felt a number of pains in places I didn’t remember hurting before. My legs did not want to hold me up. I forced them to do their job, took off Maude’s bridle, and tied her so she, too, could graze.
“Nifty knot,” observed Billy Jo.
“Bowline,” I said. “You can put a lot of strain on it and it’ll still untie easily. Sailor’s kind of knot.” I minced over to the log where she was sitting and eased myself down.
“I’ve never seen the ocean,” said Billy Jo.
Lunch was meat loaf sandwiches and iced tea. I got right into mine.
“Mighty fine,” I said after a while.
“You do seem to have worked up an appetite.” Over her sandwich, Billy Jo was watching me with curious eyes. I realized that though I was just old enough to be her father, I didn’t see her as my daughter. The air was thin and I was a bit light-headed. Billy Jo, on the other hand, didn’t seem light-headed at all. “I’ve never been on an island, either,” she said.
“I’ve never been on top of a mountain.
“After you left yesterday, I remembered the twins talking about you,” she said. “I got the idea from them that you were a lot older than you are.”
“I’ll have to talk to Jen and Jill about that when we get to their camp.”
“You don’t look old at all,” said Billy Jo. “Tell me about
your island.”
I told her some things about Martha’s Vineyard. “The highest point on the island is about a mile and a half lower than we are right now,” I said, finally, “but that’s high enough.”
“Tell me about the ocean. I’ve only seen it in the movies.”
I looked at the mountains sweeping away from us in all directions. “It’s like this. It’s huge and beautiful and peaceful sometimes, and wild and dangerous other times. And it doesn’t care about you one way or the other. I like it and I like this.” I gestured.”
“That’s how the desert is, too,” she said. “It doesn’t care, either. Men work it for its treasures, and sometimes they do okay. Other times they don’t.”
“See,” I said. “You know more about the ocean than you thought.” I gestured with my hand and it touched hers. A spark jumped. She looked at me. Her eyes were deep and dark. In the corner of my eye I saw something move in the meadow below us. I looked and saw a small wolf trotting along. Billy Jo followed my gaze.
“Coyote. They’re beginning to come back. They were nearly wiped out years ago, but now they’re back. Maybe he’ll sing to us tonight.”
Our hands were no longer touching. We watched the coyote trot out of sight. Billy Jo looked at the sun and then at me. “We’d better get going if we want to get back down to the valley before night.”
She flowed to her feet and I climbed gingerly to mine. “I may not be old,” I said, “but I damned well am a lot older than I was before I got on old Maude.”
She laughed. We bridled the mares and climbed aboard and rode on. At a place no different than any other to my eyes, Billy Jo led us off the trail and through a forest where I realized we were on a small trail. She pointed at the ground.
“Shod hoofs. A day old.”
I looked and saw hoofprints for the first time. We went through a dark spruce forest and came out into another grassy clearing. The ruins of a cabin lay fallen against the far hillside. Beside it were three tents fronted by a grill mounted on stones over a fire bed. Smoke lifted lazily from the fire bed. There were saddles over a log beyond the tent and horses were tethered on the hillside. A spring had been dug out and fenced in so that cattle could not tramp it down.
Maude whinnied and a horse on the far slope lifted its head. Two lookalike heads poked out a tent. The twins, Jill and Jen. They squinted at us, then ran out and waved.
“John Skye’s camp,” said Billy Jo. “Right where it was supposed to be.”
— 16 —
“Gosh,” said Jill or Jen, “what are you doing here, J.W.? Hi, Billy Jo.”
“We never would have guessed in a billion years!” said the other twin. “Hi, Billy Jo.”
“Hi,” said Billy Jo, hooking a nice-looking leg over her saddle horn, and smiling.
“Mom and John will really be surprised,” said one twin.
“Or did they know you were coming?” asked her sister.
“No, they didn’t,” I said. “Now, which one of you is which?”
“I’m Jill,” they both said.
“They do this to me,” I said to Billy Jo.
“No, we don’t,” said one of the twins. “My sister does, but I never do.”
“You do, too,” said the other one. “I’m the one who doesn’t. Mom says it’s not nice to confuse J.W., so I’m very careful never to do it. Do I, J.W.?”
“I’ve always liked you best, Jill. Unlike your sister, you have an honest face.”
“I’m Jen. I’m the one with an honest face.”
“That’s what I just said. Where are your folks?”
They waved toward the east. “Out there on the top of the cliffs. Probably just looking out across the valley. You want to see them? Come on! We’ll take you there!”
They didn’t bother with saddles or bridles, but ran out into the meadow, untied two horses, and swung aboard them bareback.
“Those two can ride like the wind,” said Billy Jo approvingly as she unwound her leg from the saddle horn.
“What is it with girls and horses, anyway?”
“Freud probably thought he knew,” she replied. “Control of something big and fast and powerful, maybe. Maybe having something strong between your legs and being swept away by it.”
“Aren’t controlling and being swept away opposites?”
“We’re not talking logic here,” said Billy Jo, her dark eyes looking at me from under the wide brim of her hat.
“Come on, you guys!” came the shout of a twin.
I caught myself actually running my tongue along my lips as I met Billy Jo’s eyes. It made me smile. I looked at the twins riding their dancing horses in the meadow. “We’d better go,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Come on!” said a twin, and she and her sister galloped off.
“Let’s trot along,” said Billy Jo, kicking Matilda out of her walk.
We trotted. I bounced. Pain.
“Take your weight on your legs,” said Billy Jo, looking back. “It would be a shame if you ruined yourself so early in life!”
I used my legs and tried to adapt myself to Maude’s pace. More pain, but not as much. We trotted along after the twins, who in time came galloping back to see where we were and finally trotted along ahead of us.
We passed over rolling green meadows and through patches of forest and back into meadowlands. A rounded grassy hillside rose gently in front of us. On top of it I could see two horses tied to a lonesome tree.
“Come on, J.W., gallop!”
The twins and Billy Jo kicked their heels and their mounts broke into gallops. Maude, not to be outdone or left behind, broke into one of her own. I grabbed the saddle horn and hung on and we galloped up the slope.
At the top, suddenly, there was nothing in front of us. Instead, as though some giant knife had sliced straight down through the mountain and cut away its other half, we were at the rim of an incredible cliff that fell a thousand feet to the valley floor.
I yanked on the reins and Maude slid to a stop. I felt ethereal and barely heard the laughter of my companions as they swung to the ground. Maude danced a bit and I could feel both of us staggering toward the cliff.
Then Billy Jo was at Maude’s head, patting the mare’s nose, holding her halter rope, grinning at me.
“You’ve just had the official introduction to our favorite part of the cliffs.” She laughed. “My dad brought me up here on a run, and his dad did it to him, and John’s dad did it to him, and he did it to the twins. It’s great. This little rise looks like every other one you’ve ridden over, but there’s no other side!”
I dismounted in a rush and again felt my legs almost collapse. Some invisible force seemed to be drawing me over the cliffs, and I fought against it.
“Hey,” said Billy Jo. “Relax. The rim’s twenty feet away from you. You couldn’t fall over it from here if you wanted to.”
She was right, of course. There were several yards of grass between me and the empty air that marked the edge of the cliffs. I put my will against my fear and forced a bit of it away. I made my weak legs walk me toward the rim.
In front of me a stunning panorama revealed itself. Beyond the yawning valley below, the jagged Needle Mountains rose like shark’s teeth into the sky. To their right, wave on wave of ragged mountains flowed into the distance. A thousand feet below my feet, the valley floor revealed a long lake and tiny dots that I recognized as houses. The highway was a narrow line along which moved smaller dots that I knew were cars. Hawks soared between me and the valley floor, riding the winds, gashing gold vermilion. It was an awesome view whose grandeur and wild beauty were so astonishing that for moments I even forgot my fright at being where I was.
Billy Jo walked to my side and looked out over the precipice at our feet. “When I think of Colorado, this is what I see in my mind. I can’t imagine a more magnificent sight.”
“I can’t either.” A soft wind was blowing at our backs and I felt it pushing me toward the rim. I felt light-heade
d. The limb of a small spruce was near me. I closed a hand around it.
“Everybody’s afraid of something,” said Billy Jo gently. “Personally, I can’t stand spiders. If I was a secret agent, and you captured me, all you’d have to do would be to put me in a room with spiderwebs and I’d tell you anything you wanted to know. Why don’t you sit down?”
I sat. It was good to feel the ground under my rump. I was immediately more secure. I looked at the cliffs flowing away on either side of us and dropping out of sight into the valley. I felt giddy. I looked at the horses. They were grazing within feet of the cliff top, totally ignoring it. I reached inside myself and found some more willpower and pushed against my fear. Billy Jo sat beside me and pointed here and there.
“Electra Lake. Good fishing there. Some really big trout. The smaller lake is Haviland. That’s Animas Canyon, where the train goes on its way to Silverton. Silverton’s right over behind those mountains. Old mining town. You really should go up there before you go back east. Just north of here is the Purgatory ski area. They have lifts that bring you up about this high, and then you ski down again. Do you ski?”
“No.”
“You probably water-ski, instead.”
“No. I sail, but I don’t water-ski. I don’t like fast boats. I prefer sailing.”
“I like all three: skiing, waterskiing, and sailing. Fast boats, too.” She made a gesture that took in half the world. “Navaho Lake is just over south of Ignacio. They’ve got all kinds of boats over there. I’ve been on a sailboat there. I don’t really know how to sail, but I liked it.”
A twin came along the cliff top to us. “Hi. Mom and John are down on the ledge that goes to the cave. They said I could bring you there. Come on.”
“The cave?” If there was a cave, it had to be in the cliffs. I didn’t want to get any closer to the cliffs than I already was.
“John’s cave,” explained Billy Jo. “It’s just down there.” She pointed toward a grove of trees growing precariously at the top of the cliff. “He says he found it when he was a kid up here with his father. There’s a ledge below those trees there that leads down and back this way. About three feet wide. It gets thin and bends around a corner, and then there’s this cave that cuts back into the cliff. John’s showed us all where it is. He’s very proud of it. I think he actually crawled over to it when he was a kid.”
