Chapter 3
With a pink dawn breaking over the sage desert and the mountains in the distance already showing snowy peaks, Zach thought he’d waked into the heaven of his oldest dream—wide-open spaces of beauty and rigor, no sign of human habitation or contamination (except for Nick’s truck kicking up dust ahead on the twisting gravel road). Allison was curled into a ball on the passenger side, her head on a pillow against the door. “Wake me when we get there,” she’d said two minutes into the hour-long trip, though the twists and turns and ruts and potholes would pretty much guarantee she’d not be able to sleep. Gina sat between them, leaning eagerly into each turn and slope, her nose twitching excitedly at all the new smells.
Zach slowed a little to get out of Nick’s dust and afford himself a better chance to survey the broad new landscape revealing itself in all directions. From the spine of hills they travelled along, he could look to the east at an endless plain of sage desert, glowing pale grayish-green in the dawn light. How could anything not the ocean stretch for that far? He could start walking into the sun and go for days without crossing a person or house. How could land be this big? And to the west, between these low hills and the lurking shadows of the Wind River Mountains in the far distance, the land took on shape and variety—two stark buttes thrust up from the valley floor like altars, twisting thin lines that must’ve been roads but looked like marks made by a child with a stick, a meandering stripe of dense green that must’ve been a river in the middle distance, then low beige hills undulating into a dim horizon claimed by the mighty mountains. This was a different planet from the close confines of his childhood in the Connecticut River valley, where every inch had been repeatedly marked by human touch or footprint, including his own. Here those marks, where they existed at all, were few and far between. Here was room for new marks, press of flesh against that which had only known the touch of God.
Nick’s truck, now nearly a half-mile ahead, slowed then turned right onto a black asphalt highway. He stopped in the middle of the highway to wait till Zach had turned onto the pavement, then raced ahead at what seemed warp speed after the slow bouncing trip along the gravel road. The now familiar endless expanse of sage desert bounded the highway on both sides, and the only signs of human activity besides the asphalt were the long lines of barbed-wire fencing occasionally broken by entrances with cattle-guard grates. A few miles ahead, they passed a low diner and gas station to their left, then crossed a bridge over a narrow river with thick brush along its banks. A quarter mile farther, Nick turned left and crossed one of those cattle guards and began kicking up dust again on an even narrower and more deeply rutted track than the one earlier. They crossed a one-lane wooden bridge over what must’ve been the same river they’d crossed on the highway, curled over a low hill, then descended a long slope down toward an oasis of green in the midst of the gray desert. By then, they’d abandoned any hint of road and were simply driving across the desert, stirring up sagebrush and tumbleweeds as they went. Zach couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to them and their van if heavy rain turned this dry firm desert into a quagmire. But he quickly forgot this fear as Nick circled around a clump of scraggly trees and pulled alongside a wagon with a tin roof glinting in the early sun.
Nick was out of his truck and checking out the wagon even before Zach pulled alongside the pick-up and cut the engine. He looked to Allison, whose head was buried deep in her pillow. “Wake up sleepyhead; we’ve arrived at our honeymoon paradise.” Gina was jumping on his lap, sniffing out the open window and pawing at the handle. He opened the door and the two of them—dog and master—half-fell, half-stepped out into the desert morning.
Nick poked his head out the wagon door. His bulk filled the entire opening and he tilted his head to one side to keep from hitting it on the door jamb. “In better shape than I expected. Roof is tight, no mice nests, even got firewood.” He gestured toward some sticks and small branches next to the pot-bellied stove with a rusty stovepipe sticking out the roof. He jumped to the ground, skipping the two narrow steps up into the wagon. “Tires are flat.”
Zach looked at the cracked rubber tires on rusty rims—all four flat and sunk into the sandy soil.
“But then I don’t guess you’ll be going anywhere.”
Zach smiled. “Nowhere else to go. Nowhere else to be.”
Nick looked at him for a long moment. Zach wished he could see his eyes, but they were masked by his reflector sunglasses.
Allison appeared from behind the van, still clutching her pillow. She seemed a little wobbly in the brittle clear air.
“You O.K. Sweety? Look a little pale.”
She smiled. “Still waking up, Uncle Nick. Not quite used to these frontier hours.”
“You’ll get used to it out here—no way to sleep past dawn, no way to stay awake past dark.”
“Guess I will.”
Zach said, “Look.”
The others turned to see Gina locked tight as a statue, on point about fifty yards away beside a clump of low bushes.
Nick grinned. “Grouse.”
Sure enough—a dozen pigeon-sized birds suddenly flushed from the bushes and flew off low and fast in all directions. Gina, her training still in place despite the strange environs, held her ground but looked around as if to ask, “What do I do now?”
Zach waved his arm, a signal that freed her to continue her hunt.
Wyoming Page 3
