by Vella Munn
Turning in the saddle, he spoke to Shannon. “It’s going to warm up more. Even with the rain, we’ll get at least another ten degrees. That’ll help.”
She nodded and gave him a quick smile. Still, her eyes telegraphed her concern. He wondered if she knew how transparent she was. “I can’t keep thinking,” she said. “What if his granola bars get wet? I wonder if he’ll eat them anyway.”
“He will.” He leaned forward to make it easier for his horse to climb a short hill and then explained that most people out like this wound up eating anything and everything that was remotely palatable.
“What happens when he runs out of food?”
“Then he gets hungry.”
“Then, hopefully, he’ll get serious about hustling back home.”
It was more complicated than that. Still, he held back from spelling out those complications to her. The tightness around the corners of her mouth made it clear that she knew how serious things were. Yet, she wasn’t making impossible demands on him or allowing fear to have the upper hand. He wanted to thank her for that, to compliment her self-control.
He also wanted to draw her attention to the wind’s fragrance, the messages spread by birds and insects, the rhythm of nature to her.
He didn’t ask himself why.
“What are you looking for?” Shannon asked when it seemed that Cord had been gazing around him forever.
“For patterns,” her ex-husband said, the words coming slow and soft. “My grandfather called it the spirit that moves in all things. Once I’ve found the pattern, the rhythm here, I’ll know what the spirit is telling me.”
Did Cord really think she would buy that business about patterns and spirits? Yes, she’d heard him mention such things in the past and had tried to understand what he was saying, but he talked about insight and instinct, making what he did sound like philosophy, not tracking. And, she could now admit, for too much of the time they were together, she’d been so wrapped up in her own life that she hadn’t truly listened. She—they—had been so young.
“What is the spirit that moves in all things telling you?” she asked as a gust of wind shook the nearby trees.
“That this is a people place, a part of nature that has been touched by many and changed.”
She looked around her. As far as she was concerned, they were in the wilderness. There weren’t any buildings, chimney smoke rising in the air, livestock. Yes, Arapaho had been scarred by ski trails and lifts, but there weren’t any nearby and they were idle this time of year. The trees grew so thickly here that even without the rain and ground fog, it would have been impossible to see more than a few feet beyond the trail. She felt completely isolated from the rest of the world. How could Cord say that the wilderness had been changed by mankind?
But Cord knew things, sensed things no one else did; she had no doubt of that. And when he spoke this morning, she listened to the words, the sound, the energy in him, and used those things to keep from losing her mind.
“Does being in a people place make it more difficult for you?” she asked.
“It’s going to make finding Matt take longer. His spirit is mixed in with the spirit of others.”
“Spirit? I guess that’s as good a name to give what you’re looking for as anything. Is that how your grandfather referred to—to... I don’t have a word for what you’re talking about.”
“Not many people do. Gray Cloud had a unique way of describing the wilderness, mystical almost. I’ve held on to his descriptions because that’s better than anything I could come up with.”
“Like the way he gave credit to the Great Spirit for everything,” she offered, almost without knowing she was going to say the words, words she’d never forgotten. “I remember you telling me that Gray Cloud believed that in nature everything lives in harmony. That an ant is as important as a bear.”
“And that we must see with our hearts and that the wind speaks to us and in the wilderness there is only the present.”
“The present,” she echoed. “Time, as we think of it, had no meaning for your grandfather, did it? ‘The rhythm of nature is slow, steady, and has a beat all its own. The ground itself has a heart, and if one knows how to listen, he can hear it.’”
“You remember more than I thought you did.”
She concentrated on the gentle, deep-throated question and asked herself why those lessons and more had stayed with her all these years. She wanted to tell Cord that she’d never forgotten Gray Cloud’s wisdom and had, almost instinctively, incorporated some of it into her life. But they’d come to the first steep rise in the trail. Before much longer they’d leave behind the civilization Cord still sensed. Then, hopefully, he’d be able to put his unique skills to work and find their son. He’d hear the earth’s heart and it would tell him what he needed to know. Maybe she’d be able to listen with him.
Listen to a heartbeat that didn’t exist? What was she thinking? Had fear for Matt unhinged her? Or was Cord somehow responsible?
Repositioning herself in the saddle, she wondered why she felt uncomfortable when usually she could ride all day without becoming weary. The rain hadn’t changed its gentle, almost lazy cadence, thank heavens. Because they were surrounded by trees now, she could hear the wind’s song as it eased its way through the treetops.
She and Cord hadn’t been married more than a few weeks when she first heard him speak of the sound the wind made as a ballad. Back then she’d held on to his every word, awed by his knowledge of what took place beyond roads and telephone wires. His understanding of her, at least her body, had been just as complete. He’d played her as the wind plays with the treetops and her body had sung to him.
When it went wrong between them, she’d forgotten that there were things he knew more about than any other human alive.
At least, she’d thought she’d forgotten.
Here, in his world, as she joined in his effort to find their son, too much was coming back to her.
She felt like crying, like singing. And she wished there weren’t so many years and silences between them.
Cord stopped, reining his horse gradually and gently. He straightened, seeming to lift his body fully off the mare’s back, then cocked his head to one side. The gesture was all it took for Shannon to know he wanted her to listen, as well. Gradually the sound came.
Frogs. Dozens and dozens of frogs. They sang their discordant notes with full-throated joy, proclaiming their delight at having it rain. Up until that moment she had been thinking about the creatures, and the boy, who must be seeking shelter from the drizzle.
But some, like frogs, embraced rain.
“Do you think the frogs know we’re here?” she asked.
“They know,” Cord explained. “But we don’t represent a threat to them.”
She chuckled at that. “Matt loves it when the ones who live in the pond behind our place start croaking. Sometimes, when they get going while he’s trying to fall asleep, he leans out his window and yells at them to shut up.”
“Do they?”
“For a moment. Then they start up again. He had a frog for a pet once. He brought it flies and kept water in its bucket.”
“What happened to it?”
“It died. I told him it would, but he had to see for himself the consequences of his intervention.”
When she looked at Cord, he was nodding, the movement slow and unconscious and so graceful that she felt it deep in her belly. “I’m glad you gave him the experience, although I doubt that the frog would agree. That’s how we all learn. At least, the best lessons. Not because someone tells us, but from doing something ourselves.”
“I agree,” she said, shaken by the depth and breadth of his comment. “Since then, Matt’s never wanted to control another wild animal. He doesn’t even like it when orphaned or injured animals have to be penned up until they’re ready to be re-released into their environment. I don’t think he’s ever going to hunt.”
Cord didn’t hunt. Once he’d been off
ered an incredible sum of money to guide some wealthy hunters with more determination than savvy, but he’d refused. He hadn’t offered her an explanation of why he’d made that decision. She hadn’t needed one because she knew he believed that no amount of money could atone for putting an end to a wild life.
Because she needed to free herself from yet another memory, she asked Cord if he knew that Matt wanted to be a search and rescue expert when he grew up. Her words turned Cord around again.
“He told me that, but I thought he might be saying it for my sake.”
“He means it.” Cord was backlit and nearly surrounded by forest. It was almost as if the trees had taken claim of him, as if he’d given them permission to do so. If she didn’t keep her eyes on him, he might slide away into nothing like morning mist when the sun hits it. “He thinks the world of you—you must know that. Of course, he tends to idealize what you do.”
Cord’s mouth tightened. “And he thinks he knows more than he does.”
He wouldn’t if you’d taught him the way Gray Cloud did you. But that was unfair. Cord had lived with Gray Cloud. Cord didn’t see enough of his son. As for whether that bothered Cord, she couldn’t, say. “Most children are like that. So dam cocky. He’ll learn from his mistakes, unfortunately—we all do.”
“Do we?”
“Yes,” she said without giving herself time to think. “If I hadn’t been so tied up inside myself when we separated, I would have done some things differently.”
“Like what?”
“Like—” Was she ready for this? No matter. It was too late to turn back. “Like asking you to live closer so you could be with Matt more.” Matt. That’s who she needed to think about, not what couldn’t be changed.
“You want that?”
“That’s not my decision, Cord. It’s yours.” Because trees grew close to the trail here and he had to concentrate on where he was going, she found herself speaking to his back.
“I did what I had to,” he said.
What did he mean by that? She hadn’t pushed him away, had she? “I’m surprised you didn’t go back to your grandfather’s cabin.” If he needed quiet, he’d tell her. Otherwise, talking was better than listening to what insisted on going on inside her. “Oh, I know it’s barely habitable the way it is, but it could be fixed up. It shouldn’t be that hard to get electricity to it, or phone service. Still—” She weighed the wisdom of saying anything, then plunged ahead. “I rather like it the way it is. Rugged. Primitive.”
“Hmm.”
Hmm wasn’t enough of a reply to hang a conversation on. Still, although he would probably prefer it, she didn’t feel ready to retreat into silence. “You heard from the local historic society, didn’t you? I know they’d love to buy it and turn it into some kind of landmark.”
“I talked to them.”
“And what did you tell them?” she asked, although she’d bet everything she had that she knew the answer.
“That I can’t give up the only thing that remains of the man who raised me.”
That admission, so intensely personal from an intensely private man, sent a chill through her. Fighting to keep her reaction from him, she told him that was what Matt had said his response would be.
“I’ve taken Matt there a few times,” Cord said. “What about you?”
“A few,” she acknowledged. Her thoughts spun away from their conversation and settled in the past. Cord had taken her to his grandfather’s cabin the day after she’d told him about being pregnant. A few days later he’d told her that she was the only girl he’d ever wanted to show the log walls and shake roof of the little place Gray Cloud had built. He’d admitted he’d wondered if she’d laugh at the not-quite-square sides, or if she could possibly understand why he’d been content growing up in a place without electricity.
She hadn’t laughed. Instead, she’d run her fingertips over the sleek peeled logs his grandfather had lifted into place more than fifty years ago. She’d bent, taken a deep breath, and then told him she could smell pitch and pine and hoped that the aromas would never fade. Finally she’d touched the corner of the handmade kitchen table where Gray Cloud had carved an eagle in flight. “I wish I’d known him,” she’d said. “There’s so much of him in you.”
They’d made love on the sagging old mattress Cord had always slept on, two kids still discovering the wonder and excitement and fear of sharing themselves with each other—and the consequences of surrendering to that wonder. He’d held her and pressed his hands over her full breasts, then brushed his lips against her belly. Although he said nothing, his eyes had told her that he was just beginning to grasp that his child was growing inside her.
When their lovemaking was done, he’d stood naked in front of her and it was all she could do to keep from losing herself in the sight. His long, dark hair had sheltered him somehow and those incredible eyes of his had looked both trapped and awestruck, and she’d known he couldn’t decide whether to run for freedom or stay.
In the end, he’d pulled her against him and awkwardly told her that he’d be there for her and their baby. Nothing about that afternoon had faded from her mind. She’d given up hoping it would.
Today the memories were stronger than they’d ever been.
They were giving the horses a breather and Cord was giving Shannon a brief sketch of what country he’d covered last night when his walkie-talkie squawked to life. Afraid it might be the sheriff with news he didn’t want to share with her if at all possible, he thought about moving away from her before answering, but that would only make her suspicious, only drive more of a wedge between them.
“Cord. It’s Hallem. Kevin’s father. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get in touch with you. Thank heavens, you left this receiver with Shannon’s parents.”
“That’s where you are?” he asked. “You have news?”
“Maybe. Hopefully, although I’m not sure it’s the kind of news you want to hear.”
He watched as Shannon moved closer. He read fear and determination in her eyes. “We’re both here,” he told Hallem. “What is it?”
“I’ve been grilling my son. Unfortunately for him, I know him better than he wishes I did. He was keeping something to himself and it was eating him alive, something that’s going to make things easier for you to round up that kid of yours.”
Shannon gripped his forearm with so much strength that it tore his attention from what Hallem was saying. Glancing at her, he now saw hope swimming in her eyes, hope and a giddy, unrestrained, too fragile joy.
Before he had to ask Hallem what he was talking about, Kevin’s father continued. “The boys had a fight, all right, and that’s probably why Kevin was so slow to fess up. He didn’t say so, but I know he wanted to see how much trouble Matt could get himself into because no one had a clue where he was. Unfortunately, you’ve got a lot of backtracking to do. Cord, Shannon, if we can believe Kevin, and I believe we can now, your son is determined to climb Copper Mountain.”
Chapter 6
Copper. Although he’d climbed the well-known skiing mecca numerous times, today Cord thought of it not as one of the most popular winter sports centers in the state, but as untracked miles punctuated by steep climbs, uncertain footing and, maybe, men with killing on their minds.
“Why would he do that?” Shannon asked Hallem while Cord tried to clamp down on emotions that threatened to get in the way of what he needed to do.
“My guess is, he wants to prove himself, Shannon,” Hallem replied, his voice fading a little. “Apparently our sons had a heated disagreement about Matt’s ability to walk in his dad’s footsteps.”
The mountain extended twelve thousand feet above sea level and although it literally swarmed with people in the winter, this was summer. Except for the very occasional hiker, it would remain essentially deserted until the snows began to fall. Deserted except for those determined to take advantage of the isolation to bring down one or more of the wild animals that called the area their home. The need
to get back in touch with the sheriff to share what he’d just learned pounded at Cord, but he forced himself to wait. He would protect her from knowing everything. He couldn’t give her her son, but he could do this.
“Did Kevin say any more about how much food Matt had with him?” he made himself ask.
“It sounded like a lot, at least it would be if he wasn’t expending so much energy. I wish I could tell you more than that, but I really think I’ve gotten everything out of Kevin this time. He did say that Matt had his determined look on.”
Cord knew that look. He’d seen it first when, at ten months, Matt had decided he’d had enough of crawling and was ready to walk. Matt’s commitment to his goals, whether they were wise or not, made Cord’s heart swell with pride. He walked a fine line between reminding Matt of life’s dangers and pitfalls and letting his son know he trusted him. Most of the time his trust in his son’s judgment was well placed.
However, there was no question that Matt was out of his element this time. Not only had the boy seriously underestimated the amount of time it would take him to climb Copper, but he hadn’t taken the weather into account. Nor had it occurred to him that he might not have the mountain to himself.
After thanking Hallem for his information, Cord turned, looking for Shannon, then stopped. She stood maybe a hundred feet away, her back to him. She’d finally put on a jacket. It followed the lines of her body nearly as faithfully as her blouse did. Her long, dark hair lay in a submissive coil along her spine. Her jeans seemed to have shrunk. They hugged her legs and hips, challenging him, nearly distracting him from what he’d just learned and what was ahead of them.
I’m sorry. I never wanted our son to try to prove himself this way. If anything happens to him—
“Shannon, it’s going to take us at least three hours just to reach Copper.”
