by Jade London
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The small fire crackles merrily, a small bloom of hot yellow flickering bravely against the onslaught of cold and encroaching shadows. I extend my hands to the flame, warming my numb fingers. My ass and thighs ache from untold hours in the saddle. Cold is a state of being, a fact of my existence; a chill has sunk into my bones, its claws biting into my very marrow. Even my warm clothes cannot keep out the relentless, penetrating, frigid air.
I am too cold to be afraid of the man sitting to my left, a man who has not spoken a word in so long that I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve forgotten what speech sounds like. I am too cold to be curious about where we are headed—the place he calls “home”. And I’m so cold now I am no longer afraid of the journey, or of the unknown.
Being cold is just about all I think about…but with nothing else to do but ride and keep up with this man all day I had nothing to do but think. My thoughts often strayed back to that miserable room and those wicked men. Thompson, the man in charge, was the worst—him and that sister of his. While I do not like being out in the freezing cold, it’s better than spending another day in their company.
We crossed the open plain, riding hours past nightfall, until we reached the tree line at the foot of the mountains. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, leading us unerringly in a specific direction. In places I could tell that the path had disappeared, but he was undeterred. He’d veer around any obstacles, big or small, only to return to our original heading.
“How do you know where we’re going?” I had asked, eventually.
He was passing by a thick, towering fir tree as I asked the question, and he reached out with a hand and tapped a finger against the bark. There was no other answer, just that single terse gesture. As I passed that same tree, I saw what he’d referred to: a blaze gouged into the bark with a knife, hard-angled gashes forming the initials CK, with the down-stroke bar of the K elongated to form an arrow, indicating direction.
“C-K?” I had queried.
He continued on several paces after hearing my question, his shoulders swaying with the huge animal’s gait. He hadn’t turned to face me, instead speaking as he ducked under a low hanging branch.
“Conrad Killian.” He’d fairly grunted it, his voice so low and deep it sounded like an avalanche heard up in the high mountains.
He hasn’t spoken since.
Now, hours after that exchange, we’re sitting side by side around a tiny but hot campfire. The fire is so small I could almost cup it both of my hands; he could probably cradle the entire campfire in one of his broad paws.
Our fire is built in the lee of a downed pine tree, the roots upended out of the earth, acting as a reflector for the fire’s heat, and a block against the ever-present wind. The horses are tied a few feet away, munching noisily out of nosebags tied to their halters. We’d eaten a small meal of some dried, jerked meat, and hard, crusty bread. Nothing fancy, assuredly, but better than nothing. Mercifully, the snow that threatened earlier on never really materialized.
And now…?
We just sat.
He did not stare into the fire as I did. Rather, he sat angled away from it, leaning a shoulder against the bulk of the downed tree’s root ball, glancing now and again into the darkness, scanning, alert, listening. His hands were busy with a pile of rawhide sliced into long thin strips, which he was plaiting into a rope, his thick, blunt fingers nimbly braiding the half a dozen or more strands together. His rifle stood near to hand, butt in the dirt, barrel leaning against the roots, and his gun belt was spread out just beyond it, handles facing him for easy access. He didn’t seem particularly worried about anything, just…alert. Ready for anything.
“You oughta sleep.” His words abruptly broke the silence. “Even longer ride come sunup.”
He stands up, setting his busywork project aside, and walks over to retrieve my saddle—or rather, the saddle of the horse I’m riding on this journey. He hauls it one handed over to me and sets it down a few feet away. He stalks back to the pile of gear and brings me a horse blanket and a thick gray wool blanket rolled up into a tight cylinder and tied with a length of rawhide. He tosses the horse blanket near the fire, and then unties the knot on the blanket roll and passes that to me, too.
“Saddle makes a decent pillow,” he explains, as he resumes his seat just outside the pool of light of the fire. “And the horse blanket will help keep out the cold underneath you.”
“What about you?” I ask, wrapping the wool blanket around my shoulders.
Really, I don’t much care what he’ll use for a bedroll, because he did buy me after all, but it is wickedly cold out here.
He eyes me with the ghost of a smirk on his lips, the expression on his face sarcastic. “I won’t be sleeping.” He shakes out the pile of strands and resumes braiding. “These parts, you best keep watch.”
Something about the last statement combined with his constant watchfulness stirs the fear in my gut. “What’s out there to watch for?”
“This is the wilderness, sweetness. There’s more to watch for than I’ve got words.” He gestures at his rifle and gun belt, “Nothing’s gonna bother you. Not while I’m here.” He doesn’t say this arrogantly, just with a total surety of his own abilities.
There’s nothing to say to that, so I lie down on the cold hard ground, settle my head against the icy leather of the saddle, wrap the blanket tight around my body, and close my eyes.
Yet, despite my exhaustion, sleep is not swift in coming.
I crack my eyes after an indeterminate amount of time spent trying to sleep. His eyes glint brown in the firelight, and they are fixed on me.
He glances down at his plaiting, then back at me. “What’s your name?”
“Now you ask?” I can’t help the vitriol in my voice. “After purchasing me like a prize steer and then hauling me across the wilderness without a word?”
“Don’t owe you any explanations, sweetness. Got my reasons for what I do, and that’s all you need to know.” A pause, a glance at his work, and then he looks down at me. “You don’t want to tell me? Ain’t no hair off my chest. I’ll just call you Susie, then.”
“Susie?” I remain bundled under the blanket.
“Had a dog named Suzie, when I was a boy. Sweet little thing. Dumb as a hammer, but sweet.” He doesn’t look at me when he says this, but there’s humor in his voice.
He’s baiting me.
And damn him, it’s working.
“I’m Hannah,” I tell him. I shouldn’t tell him my name, but I do. “Hannah Tavistock.”
He just nods. “Hannah, then.” Another long, but not entirely uncomfortable silence. Another glance at me. “Can’t sleep?”
I shake my head. “I’m tired, but I just…” I shrug. “Just can’t.”
“Happens. ‘Specially out here.” He sets his plaits down. “You read?”
I nod slowly, and he rises, crosses to his saddlebag and digs out a small but thick leather-bound tome. He moves to stand over me, extending the book to me: Collected Works of The Great Thinkers.
At my lifted eyebrow, he scowls at me. “Don’t give me that look. Bet I’ve read more books than you have. That book there has got Plato, Euripides, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Bacon, Aristotle, plus some translations of them A-rab thinkers—Averroës, Avicenna, Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi. More than I can remember.
“Not much to do ‘round the fire at night on those long drives ‘cept read. Com
e across a fellow with a book you ain’t read, you trade.”
I sit up, taking the book. “Thank you.”
I try to get comfortable, and then I choose something to read. He plaits, and I read, and we pass the time like this.
At some point, I begin to get so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open. So I lay down, rest my head on the saddle, and fade effortlessly into sleep.
* * *
He shakes me awake while the sky is still lead-gray. “Time to move on.”
I was in a deep sleep, so I sit up slowly, stretching the kinks out of my body, and reminding myself of my situation.
By the time I’ve made it to my feet, he’s got the horses saddled, the gear packed away, and the fire buried. Last to be packed is the blanket, rolled up tight and tied off, fastened behind his saddle. He produces a canteen from somewhere, hands it to me and I drink deeply. I find the water icy, achingly cold, recently drawn from a nearby stream. In fact, I hear it burbling now, a small, faint trickling not far away. I remember hearing it, last night, but only now does its presence register.
We mount up, and as he leads us away I glance back and see that the campsite has been struck so well I wonder if it was ever there in the first place.
We ride, and after an hour or so he hands me a few pieces of jerky and another hard-tack biscuit.
The hours pass, both more swiftly than I would have expected and more slowly. We don’t stop for lunch, just eat more jerky and biscuits in the saddle.
Besides those four words spoken to wake me up, he says nothing else the entire day.
We’re climbing now, moving steadily upward, leaning into our saddles. Here and there, the horses have to scrabble and jump to get over the rocky ground. In other places we have to angle around an outcropping. Either way, it’s slow going.
Up at this altitude the trees grow stunted and twisted, thinner, shorter, few and far between. By sunset, the valley is spread out beneath us and I can see the stream glinting silver in the fading daylight, gleaming between the gaps in the trees. We’re following the water’s path, roughly, keeping it to our left as we ascend.
The air up here is thin, and I don’t feel able to gather a full breath. It’s hard on the horses, too.
We’re approaching a clearing in the trees when he tugs his horse to a stop, gesturing for me to do the same. Hooves crunch quietly in the sparse snow and the leaves beneath, and then all is silent but for the ceaseless soughing of the wind.
Slowly, quietly he withdraws his rifle from the scabbard on his saddle and tucks the butt to his shoulder. I squint into the clearing, but I can’t see what he sees.
A long tense moment of silence, and then I hear him let out a soft breath—
BOOOOM!
The rifle bucks against his shoulder, and I start in the saddle; the horses are unmoved, unsurprised. I watch as a shape bolts across the clearing, runs half a dozen steps toward the far tree line, and then crumples. A deer, I think. Three hundred yards away, easily, if not farther.
He replaces the rifle, rolls his spurs against his horse’s side, and we’re moving again, trotting across the wide clearing. Golden-red sunlight bathes the field of snow, highlighting a jutting outcropping of jagged stone, as if the bones of the mountain itself protrude through the skin of dirt and ice.
He halts beside the corpse of the deer and swings down out of the saddle. He lifts the heavy body easily and tosses it across the back of the horse, right over the saddlebags and blanket roll. The red seeping wound, just behind the deer’s front foreleg, drips blood onto the horse’s rump. Instead of riding now, he grabs the horse by the reins and leads us out of the clearing and back into the forest. He’s scanning now, but with purpose, as if looking for something in particular. He’s eyeing the tree trunks carefully, I think. He spots it at the same time that I do, another CK carved into the tree, another arrow pointing the way.
He follows his own marker, which brings us to a place where the mountain bellies outward in a thick bulge of lichen and moss-covered stone, a sheer vertical face of stone a hundred of feet high, and extending out of sight in both directions, mimicking the subtle curve of the mountainside. Following this outcropping brings us higher and higher yet, and now we’re out of the tree line altogether, exposed to the air, with the bulk of the mountain beneath us and the valley spread out like a map in every direction, sunset bathing it golden and red and orange. It’s a breathtaking vista, but we don’t stop to admire it.
We spend another fifteen or twenty minutes following the outcropping, and then he stops. The mountain is on our right and, on our left a steep embankment, which falls hundreds of feet away to the stream far below.
He walks directly toward a spot on the side of the mountain. A cave. The opening is high enough to admit the horses and, as I enter, I see that the cave is no small hole carved into the side of a mountain, but rather the opening of what I think must be a massive series of caverns. The cave is huge, some thirty feet wide, ten or fifteen feet from floor to ceiling, extending back into infinite darkness. Sounds echo and fade after long seconds. Each scuff of a foot, each whicker of the horses bounces and distorts sound in the space. The sunlight is fading so the only light is what’s provided by the opening of the cave, which is little enough. He seems to know what he’s looking for though, digging in his saddlebags for a match, and then rummaging on the cave floor.
The match flares, and the flame touches a curling piece of tree bark, catches, spreads to a pile of tinder—all small twigs and chunks of bark. Within seconds, the fire is flickering bright yellow, and immediately he places a few smaller branches on it, setting it to burning higher and hotter. I notice, now, the stack of logs and branches along one wall, another smaller pile of tinder material beside it.
“You must use this cave a lot,” I remark.
“Not just me. Trappers, miners, traders, the old mountain men from when the Europeans were first exploring this area. The Spanish and the French explorers both knew of it. ‘Course, the Utes have used this cave for hundreds of years.”
“So did you leave this wood here? Or did someone else?”
He shrugs. “Traveler’s courtesy, I suppose. Use the wood, then leave more behind. It’s a handy spot, for a lot reasons. One of the last sheltered places to spend a night before you try the pass, or the first after you’ve crossed it.”
Once the fire is going, the horses are unsaddled and given feed bags, he hauls the deer out beyond the cave mouth, draws a knife from his belt, and drags the blade from throat to rectum, scoops the guts out, sets them aside. He makes short work of the rest of the skinning process, stripping the deer of its hide, and cutting huge chunks of meat away. He drags the skinned, gutted corpse of the deer off into the woods, far enough away that scavengers won’t bother us. He returns with blood-red hands, meat, and the animal skin.
He builds up the fire a bit more and then places a few thick, flat-topped stones at the edge of the fire, in among the coals. Once the stones are hot, he sets the meat on them. The smell of roasting venison fills the cavern, and my stomach begins to rumble.
While the meat cooks, he sets the deer hide on the ground, then places a corner of it on his knee and begins scraping at the underside with his knife, carefully and thoroughly removing every last speck of fat and flesh from the hide. I watch as he works.
Later we eat, and the meat is delicious, juices trickling down my chin, bursting with flavor.
Night is thick beyond the cave, and I can just barely make out a narrow strip of sky speckled with twinkling stars, and the scrap of the waxing moon.
Much later, as I’m drifting into sleep, Conrad stiffens, and then gingerly sets aside the hide he’s still working on. Noiselessly, he buckles his gun belt around his waist, ties the holsters to his thighs. He sits down and lays his rifle across his lap, angling himself so the act of lifting the rifle will bring the barrel to bear on the cave mouth. He’s utterly still. The horses’ ears twitch and swivel. One of them whickers, a low murmur.
&n
bsp; We hear the answering grumble of a horse, from beyond the cave.
“Hello!” A man’s voice calls from the mouth of the cave. “Might I share your fire, friends?”
Conrad tugs back the hammer of his rifle—click-CLICK. “Come on in, but do it slow.”
“No need for that. I’m friendly enough, if you are.” He sounds genial and friendly.
Perhaps a little too much so. My gut twists and I sit up, scooting closer to Conrad, wrapping the blanket around my shoulders.
Hooves snick and clack on the stone of the cave floor. Leather creaks, and then the newcomer comes close enough to be lit by the firelight.
He’s tall, but still an inch or two shy of Conrad. Lean, hard. Blond hair shows beneath a hat brim, and he’s clean-shaven with the exception of a few weeks growth on his top lip—he must be trying to grow a mustache. Late twenties, early thirties, a bit well dressed and well groomed for the wilderness. His gaze is icy blue, reflecting intelligence and something darker, harder, frightening, and unwelcome. A single holster sits on his right hip, the belt sitting a bit higher on his waist than Conrad’s, and his holster isn’t tied around his thigh. He has a rifle tucked under one arm, which he slides into a sheath on the saddle. His horse is a lean, lithe-looking dun, and there’s a massive pack mule behind them, long ears flicking and twitching.
He doesn’t approach the fire right away. Just stands there staring, assessing. Eying Conrad, his rifle, and his revolvers. He’s looking at the deerskin and the leftover meat still laid across the roasting stones.
“Bitter cold,” he says, after a minute. “Be glad to warm up.”
Conrad eyes the man, his gaze hard, not exactly welcoming. His rifle is still cocked, and I notice he’s shifted his position so he’s ready to propel himself to his feet. Does he expect trouble? Or is he merely prepared for it? No way to know.
“Sit you down, then,” Conrad says. “You’re welcome to the venison, if you’re hungry.”
“Sure am, and my thanks.”
