Plus, when Gabe took over their father’s ranch, he’d still have to work with Leo and Nard. She didn’t want to jeopardize that working relationship. She waved him off with the rest of them, steeling herself for the trip ahead of her, seeing it as the real test of getting back on the horse, completing a trip in the backcountry without letting Nard scare her away. This trip would be the final proof of her strength.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gloria’s voice was already hoarse from trying to talk to Leo. She’d had to leave because she relied on the shuttle back to the outpost and knew the last one was about to leave the valley. She didn’t want to be stuck at the Lodge, and she certainly couldn’t bum a ride from any of the people she’d just been calling idiots for the last hour.
At the outpost stop, she tossed her backpack out of the shuttle, taking deep breaths, trying to calm down and convince herself to go all the way home. She could just walk past the Aspens and keep on going. She should cool down, sleep on the events of the day. She was in no shape to talk to Kristine. It wasn’t her fault the horse was dead. She wasn’t the one who booked these trips, made the choices. Her pack settled onto aching shoulders, she trudged down the road trying to ignore the outpost, thinking it better to get back, take a shower, and relax before she saw Kristine. However, Kristine stood at the corral watching the stock, one booted foot hitched up on the rail, the picture of cowgirl charm.
She stopped and closed her eyes, struggling to be rational. When she opened them, her eyes immediately found Kristine’s. Wave and keep walking. Tell her you need to clean up, and you’ll be back later. Something in Kristine’s gaze kept her rooted. She must know already, she thought. In all the evenings she’d walked over from the campground, she’d never found her out at the corrals watching the stock.
“Hear you had a hell of a day,” Kristine said, breaking the silence.
“You could say that.”
“Hungry?”
“No. Actually, I’m not,” Gloria responded crisply.
Kristine nodded. “Understandable after seeing Cisco out there like that. Want to talk about it?”
Did she want to talk about it, Gloria seethed. No, she didn’t want to talk about it. She was finished talking. She wanted to do something about it. “I’m pretty pissed about it.”
“Why don’t you take that ridiculous thing off. You look like a pack mule standing there. Come on in. Have a beer, at least.” Kristine walked to the road and held the pack. Gloria let her take the weight, slipping out of the shoulder straps.
“Heavy,” Kristine observed.
“I thought I’d be down there a while, but with that carcass, there’s no point in trying to do any conditioning with my bear.” Once inside the cabin, she sat down and accepted the beer.
“Sol said he’d bet anything your bear didn’t kill that horse.”
Gloria couldn’t help it, she exploded. “No, your idiot boss killed that horse, sending it down there without any kind of instruction. How can he be so stupid? How can you people take these idiots out into the backcountry, take in food no backpacker would ever carry and just offer it up to these animals. Do you bother telling them how to tie up their food? Do you do anything at all to try to maintain the wildlife?”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Kristine said. “How is this about me?”
“You pack people in every day. How prepared are they to coexist with the wildlife when you leave.”
Kristine looked like she was trying to choose the right words. “Leo made a bad call with Cisco. But I’m sure the packer who left him down there tried to teach them how to deal with him.”
She’d been prepared for Juanita and Leo to disagree with her, but hearing Kristine defend her boss crushed her. “So it’s their fault. Not your boss’s.”
“He always thinks about profit first. Hell, we used to joke that if he could get a saddle on a deer, he’d call it a mule and send it down the trail. He’s running a business.”
“I can’t believe you’re defending him. Don’t you at least care about the horse?”
“You learn to not get attached to stock.”
Gloria shoved her beer back into Kristine’s hand and got up to leave. She’d heard enough.
“Where are you going?” Kristine said, setting both bottles down on the floor.
“I can’t talk to you right now. I just spent an hour being ignored by Leo, and, I don’t know, I thought maybe you would really listen to me. How is this not bothering you?”
“He keeps the Lodge going. He manages to care for all this stock, all of his employees. He’s providing a service to people who wouldn’t be able to see the backcountry if not by horseback.”
“You ask about my bear research like you’re interested in what I’m trying to do, yet you don’t have any problem with how your boss works when he makes my job a hundred times harder.”
“What happened down there wasn’t the bear’s deal,” Kristine insisted. “Accidents happen, all part of the ‘rugged backcountry experience.’ They’ll get it all cleaned up, and everything goes back to business as usual.”
“It’s negligent the way he sends these people out,” Gloria shot back.
“Maybe the bears pay your paycheck, but they don’t pay ours.”
Gloria felt like she’d been sucker-punched. Her body radiated with heat she was so angry. “You don’t care at all.”
“Can you prove that what Leo’s doing caused the mess down there?”
“What the hell do you think I’m trying to do here this summer?”
Kristine frowned. She looked at her, looked away, and then began laughing.
Gloria could not recognize the woman in front of her. “Do not laugh at me,” she said, a hard edge in her voice.
Kristine quieted, and her expression grew serious. “Go to Rosalie Lake and check out the trip from hell that’s camped there. If you’ve got a problem with what Leo allowed down at Fish Creek, what’s going on up at Rosalie will make you shit yourself. I’m sure you’ll find a dozen guys drunk off their asses paying no regard whatsoever to the backcountry.”
By the time Kristine was finished relaying all the details Sol had given her, Gloria felt physically ill. She stood again, shaking. “How can you laugh? How can you sit there and do nothing?”
Kristine stood and walked to Gloria. She put her hand on Gloria’s forearm. “I’m sorry. I know that it’s the world to you. And believe me, I worried about it once. I used to fight them. I had all of these ideas. They dismissed every single one of my ‘college’ ideas. I stopped fighting, stopped trying. It’s so much easier to just do my job.”
Gloria pulled her arm away. She couldn’t take it. Her intuition about needing to cool off had been right. Trying to talk to Kristine had just taken her beyond boiling. Without looking back, she picked up her pack, shrugged into it and walked out of the door. She was fired up enough that she actually considered walking past her camper and straight out to Rosalie. Exhaustion won that fight, however, and she stopped to sleep in her own bed. She left at first light, dressed in the same clothes she’d slept in and worn the day before.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kristine expected to see Gloria a few days later at Rosalie on her way to pick up a trip due to come in from Gladys Lake. While they hiked home, she would pack in their camping equipment and remaining supplies on the mules. She only needed two mules for this, so she’d left the yard much more quickly than the team that was packing out the cursed group. She’d already passed her group hiking out, and was nearing Rosalie. Kristine was ready for Gloria’s anger, but she was in no way prepared for the scene at the Rosalie camp.
The team coming to pick them up was at most an hour behind her, yet two campfires still burned, all of their tents were still assembled, and garbage lay strewn all over the camp. Although it wasn’t her problem, she reined Digger in.
“Hello!” she hollered.
A scruffy face poked out of the nearest tent. “Is that all the mules you’ve got? They sent us i
n with a lot more.”
“I’m not your packer. He’s on his way, but I wanted to let you know, he’s going to expect you packed up. You have a lot of work to do here.”
The man surveyed the mess of food. “This isn’t our fault. This huge-ass bear came through here and tore up all of our food.”
“Well, you’ll have to clean it up. Bulk up those campfires and burn it. When you drown the fire, you’ll need to pull out the trash, but it’ll be a lot easier to pack up than this is.”
He emerged from the tent to face her. “Didn’t you hear what I said? This isn’t our fault. A grizzly bear did this. Let him come back and finish up.”
“We only have black bear in the area.”
“This bear was definitely not black. He was brown, and he’s been in some fights. One of his ears is all messed up.”
“Black bears can be brown in color. In any case, it’s your responsibility to keep food away from all bears, although to a grizzly, you are the food.” She smiled tightly. “You will have to dispose of this before your team will take you out.”
“She’s the one who allowed this to happen,” the man said, jutting his chin past Kristine.
Kristine looked over her shoulder and found a very tired, very angry Gloria staring at her. Kristine’s stomach clenched. The softness of their intimacy was long gone. At their last meeting, she’d responded to Gloria’s rant poorly, having been in turmoil from Nard’s bombshell. Gloria’s anger still radiated from where she stood. Gloria’s expression held her responsible for the mess because she had defended the work practices at the Lodge. She returned her head to her job. “More likely, she’s the reason your tents aren’t in shreds. No one leaves until this campsite is picked clean.” Though she was curious about how the bear had managed to trash the site, she thought it best not to linger. She aimed an apologetic smile at Gloria and tipped her hips in the saddle, setting Digger’s feet into motion.
She’d heard enough about this group to be grateful that she didn’t have to spend the day working with them, and she’d already meddled enough in sending the duffel and Gloria their way. Her own work went smoothly at Gladys Lake, as she found her campers’ gear neatly stacked by a campsite that showed no evidence of their stay, following the backcountry creed: Leave only footprints. She soon found herself heading back down the trail toward home. Stopping at Rosalie was nowhere on her agenda. Her own party was well on their way to the outpost and would be expecting her, but she couldn’t help assessing the other team’s progress as she rode back through. What she saw made her slam to a stop.
“You’re not riding doubles on those horses,” she shouted across the campsite.
Takeisha stepped away from the rider whose stirrups she’d been adjusting. In front of the rider sat a young boy.
“This is how we came up,” she explained. “Both boys rode double with their dads.”
Kristine clenched her jaw in anger. The boys were at least eight years old and certainly big enough to handle their own horses.
“Well, he’s not riding home that way. Dad, you can walk and let your son ride. I’m sure he can handle Grumpy. But it’s way too dangerous for you to go down the switchbacks like that.”
“I’m riding. I didn’t pay to have to hike,” the man said.
You didn’t pay at all, Kristine thought. Last year’s mules, and your stupidity paid. Now you want to add more to your tab?
The man Kristine had spoken to earlier agreed. “We were fine on the way up, and I’m not letting my kid ride alone.”
Kristine swore under her breath, trying to figure out how to talk some sense into the group.
Brian was mounted up with one string waiting, Beetle and Bailey full of their typical nervous energy at the back of the line.
“We’ve got this, Teeny,” the new guy called.
Kristine gritted her teeth, wondering who she had to thank for that. Glancing in his direction, she saw that he already had most of his mules loaded and ready to go. He wore a gray felt hat so tall-domed that he had to have chosen it for the height he thought it added. She felt petty to let his appearance bother her but noted that he would have been better off getting his lift from some good cowboy boots instead of the soft-soled work boots he wore that were completely inappropriate for the saddle.
She swung off her horse and quickly tied him to a tree. “You have not got this,” she growled. “I told you this morning those two babies need to be split up.”
“Everything’s fine, just fine,” he insisted.
He sounded exactly like Nard. Steaming, she looked for help from Brian and Takeisha. Having worked with both before, she hoped they would listen to her. “Takeisha, you can’t take doubles down that big switchback. Make someone walk, the dad, the kid. Make them both walk and loose herd them down, but don’t let them go doubles. You’re asking for trouble if you make them carry that much weight. And Brian, I’ll take the babies. I’ve got a short string.”
“They’re good,” he insisted, looking to the other packer.
“The guests are already all worked up over their camp getting trashed. Just let us get them out. We’ve got this.”
“And you are?” Kristine asked, pinching the bridge of her nose, feeling the frustration Gloria must have felt the last time they’d talked.
“Judd.”
“I hope you’re as right as you are stupid, Judd.” As she walked back to her own horse, she stopped by the two men riding double with their boys. “Look, if I were on this team, you’d be walking out of here. Takeisha, here, is nicer than I am, so she’s going to let you ride. But when you get to the end of Shadow, one of you walks down that staircase. You boys,” she said to the little ones, “you’re old enough to ride on your own, you hear? I want you to be safe, okay?”
Digger stood in his signature hole when she returned. She took her time kicking the dirt back into place, hoping that Brian would change his mind about his string. He didn’t, so she swung aboard and spurred Digger down the trail, hoping to put a good distance between herself and the group. She let the horse have his head, enjoying the feel of him pounding down the trail. Smoke and Scooter kept up with him until the short stretch of granite trail along the tributary of Shadow Lake. Hearing the clatter of their hooves on the granite reminded her to take care and not be rash. She reined Digger in.
The quiet around Shadow did its trick again, smoothing out the anger she’d felt up at Rosalie. She recalled what she’d told Gloria, realizing that her argument about money holding the highest priority held true in this situation as well. Of course Leo would have the boys ride double. He wasn’t making any money from this trip, and the two horses that should have been carrying the boys were for sure earning him money on another ride today. No use in letting her own blood boil over his business thinking. At the switchbacks, water roared past her on its way from Shadow Lake down into the canyon to join the San Joaquin. As she came to the end of the switchbacks, she glanced up over her shoulder wondering how far back Takeisha was with her riders.
Brian and his string of five mules were roughly two hundred feet up already halfway down the switchbacks, and Takeisha had just crested the top of the trail with her riders. Kristine took a deep breath, trying to control her anger at the sight of the doubles sitting atop their horses looking smug and entitled. She wished she was closer where she could yell at them to stop their foolishness, but now that they were on the rock face, there was no stopping, no getting off. The trail was too narrow.
Digger danced in place, anxious to keep moving, but Kristine kept him reined in, watching with dread. Her heart lurched as one of the horses tripped on the steep stairs. Even from a distance, Kristine could see how hard the little horse was working and how the rider was making his job harder. “Give him his head,” she whispered to herself. Shouting would have done no good. The horse stumbled again and fell to its knees. The boy pitched forward on the horse’s neck. “Give him his head and stay put. Stay put! Stay put!” she yelled in vain, hearing her father’s
voice telling her to never quit a wreck.
Struggling to regain his footing, the horse lurched forward, pitching the boy off onto the rocks. As his father attempted to dismount on the downhill side of the trail, his horse scrambled on the sharp rocks trying to keep his balance, but he lost his footing and pitched off the switchback, taking the rider with him.
Kristine leapt from her own saddle and began scaling the switchback, climbing from pass to pass like a ladder.
The horse rolled down a switchback, landing on the rider. She saw his momentum leaning for another roll. “Brian!” Kristine screamed. The cowboy whipped his head around to look above him as the horse rolled, losing his rider but continuing down the mountain. “Move, move, move!” she shouted as the horse tumbled right at Brian’s string. But he was frozen, his mules all in a line on the trail when Grumpy smashed into them.
Tied together, the mules scrambled to take the impact of the horse, and Brian held tight to the rope he’d looped around his saddle horn.
“Let them go!” Kristine shouted. “Drop your lead! Drop your lead!” She pulled her knife out of her belt as she reached the mess of animals writhing frantically between levels of the trail. She sawed at the leads that connected them. As they came free and rolled, she prayed that they could find purchase on the trail and that they wouldn’t reach her own stock. The third mule in line lay on the trail, and without the weight of the babies pulling from behind and below, stayed put. She cut his lead and swatted the second mule, hoping he and the first mule could make it back to the trail above where Brian sat, stunned.
“Dismount on the mountain side and leave your horse. See if you can get those two up onto the trail.” She slipped on the rocks. On blood. She didn’t know who was cut or how bad it was. She didn’t know whether to pull packs off or try to get the animals to the trail with their loads still on. Below her, she saw gear. One of the baby’s packs must have come undone on its own, littering the hillside. She continued scaling the mountain in between the switchbacks to reach the rider. He groaned, which was good. He wasn’t dead. But bones poked through ripped jeans. Kristine stood stunned for a moment at a loss for what to do. They needed help. That was clear. She wasn’t going to get this rider out on a horse. She hollered up the mountain, “How’s the boy?”
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