Bearstone

by Will Hobbs

  They stood face-to-face in the middle of the field.

  “I want to try again,” Cloyd said, looking away.

  Walter shook his head in wonder.

  “Please, I’ll do better,” the boy pleaded, thinking he’d been turned down.

  “My goodness, Cloyd, of course you can. Maybe I can do better, too.”

  The boy pointed toward the orchard with his lips. “I’m sorry about the trees.”

  “I see you are. Both of us was hurt bad. I like to think, though, that the hurt you get over makes you stronger. Now let’s get you taken care of. You look like something the cat spit out.”

  Cloyd smiled wearily, and they walked down to the house. He showered, ate some sandwiches, and went upstairs to bed. When he woke up, Walter had his clothes cleaned and dried for him. Cloyd asked what work he should do next. Walter explained that he was leasing out the farm and wouldn’t be working it anymore. “I’ve been thinking up a storm today, Cloyd. I don’t have that much time left in my life—I’m old enough, I oughta be able to do what I really want. Farmin’ was good to me, but now it’s time to quit. I ain’t a mule turnin’ grist. What I’m tryin’ to say is, do you remember how I’ve got a mine up in the back country?”

  “The Pride of the West?”

  “That’s right. Remember how I said I’m gonna reopen it someday? I’ve been sayin’ that for years. Well … now, I figure, now’s the time. I’d need your help gettin’ up there, of course, but if I remember right, you were always askin’ about the mountains. I think it might do us both a world of good to get up into that high country. How would that suit you, Cloyd?”

  “Will we take the horses?”

  “Of course. No roads in there. We’ll have to pack in everything.”

  Cloyd beamed. “Can I ride Blueboy?”

  “You bet. I’ll ride that sorrel mare.”

  “When can we go?”

  “It might take a couple-three weeks to lease out the farm, get everything ready, and tie up all the loose ends. Tomorrow’s the Fourth of July, so that still leaves us a good while up there before you have to be back in school. But before we get too serious about anything, let’s take a day off. They got a rodeo up in Pagosa on the Fourth every year. I’m thinkin’ you’d really enjoy it. You’re about due for a payday—maybe you could spend some of your earnin’s. And I’d get a chance to take those hot mineral baths they got there. Always does wonders for my bones.”

  Cloyd spent the afternoon riding Blueboy up the river and telling him the news about the mountains, over and over and over.

  Today was the big day. Cloyd and Walter had been up since four in the morning shuttling the packhorses, mining equipment, food, and camping gear to the trailhead at the end of the road up the Pine River. It was midafternoon, and thunderclouds were gathering over the mountains. On their third and last trip to the trailhead, they stopped in Bayfield to buy a few last-minute supplies. Walter bought a fishing rod for Cloyd, and hooks and salmon eggs. “Used to be good fishing on the Pine—bet it still is. If the trout don’t like the salmon eggs, you can dig worms with the camp shovel or catch grasshoppers. Maybe you can catch us some fresh dinner now and again.”

  They drove up the river road. Cloyd could hardly believe he was finally going to the mountains. A few miles north, Walter pulled off by the Pine River Cemetery. He told Cloyd he could wait a few minutes or come along. Cloyd looked in on the saddle horses in the gooseneck trailer, Blueboy, and the old man’s sorrel mare, while Walter walked into the little cemetery. Then he caught up with the old man in front of a pair of graves.

  At the far end of the plot was centered a single stone. Cloyd recognized the name Landis. Underneath there were two names, and one of them was Walter’s.

  “Why is your name on this?” Cloyd asked in undisguised confusion.

  Walter scratched the thick white bristles of his beard. It was almost grown out again. “All they have to do is put the date on. Makes it easy.”

  Cloyd picked dandelions and piled the flowers on the grass. He thought about Walter in a box under the grass. “Do you have any relatives?”

  “There’s a few still around. My brother’s on the Animas River down in New Mexico, and my wife’s kin are back in Missouri.”

  Suddenly the wind began to blow. Cloyd looked up from the gravestones and saw the black clouds racing toward them from the mountains, where lightning flashed and rain hung in dark layers. He was chilled in his T-shirt, but he wanted to hear Walter talk. “Are people still alive after they die—like they say?”

  “I don’t know, really. Lots of folks believe there’s life after death, but nobody knows for sure. Maybe your life is all there is. But that’s plenty, ain’t it? Make it good while you have it, is what I think, in case there ain’t nothin’ extra.”

  “Live in a good way. That’s what my grandmother says.”

  “That’s a fine way to put it.”

  The clouds overtook them and darkened the Pine River Valley. Thunder rumbled more frequently. A long bolt of lightning struck a few miles upriver, the concussion and unraveling thunder following behind. “Comin’ our direction,” Walter remarked with some anxiety.

  Cloyd didn’t want to cut off this talk with the old man. It was important. They could always run for the truck. “How come you stopped here—to talk to your wife?”

  “Well, in a way. To tell her I’m goin’ back to the mine, I guess.”

  “But she can’t hear you.”

  “Prob’ly not, but it’s more a matter of respect.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Showin’ honor for her. I wouldn’t do something this important without consulting her if she was alive. Matter of fact,” he chuckled, “I wouldn’t be doing it at all. But seeing the circumstances, she won’t mind. She’d say, ‘You go up there with Cloyd to that mine of yours and find your gold.’”

  “But she isn’t alive.”

  “No, that ain’t right. Somehow, as long as I’m alive, she is too.”

  “Like she’s a part of you?”

  “People get like that, Cloyd. That’s what’s special about people.”

  The wind stopped abruptly, and Walter had that claustrophobic feeling he got when the air pressure was dropping fast around him. “Say, we better shake a leg,” he said, and turned from the grave.

  The old man wasn’t much for running, but he shuffled along as briskly as he could. They were barely inside the truck when the wind and the rain struck. “Let’s wait her out,” Walter said. “No sense driving in this.”

  Cloyd reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the bearstone, set it on the dashboard. “I want to tell you a secret about this,” he said.

  Walter appraised the stone up close, the turquoise bear he’d nearly destroyed in anger. “It’s some piece,” he said. “Forehead’s dished out like a grizzly’s, and this bulge here on the back, it’s almost like it’s a hump.”

  “I found it with one of the Ancient Ones—a baby—in those rocks up there, above your farm.”

  “In the cliffs? A burial? Why, if that ain’t somethin’.”

  “Bears are special for Ute people—they bring strength and good luck.”

  “All the more reason you’ve got yourself something special here,” Walter said. “Think how old this stone must be. This blue bear’s a real treasure, Cloyd.”

  “When I found this, I gave myself a secret name. The Utes used to do that—they kept it secret except for one other person. You’re the only one I’ll ever tell my secret name to. It’s Lone Bear. That’s what it is—Lone Bear.”

  Walter conjectured what it might mean, the name Cloyd had taken for himself. It seemed like an awfully lonesome name. He wondered if the turquoise piece would bring the good luck the boy was hoping for.

  “You know, Cloyd, some of that good luck just might rub off on the Pride of the West.”

  Walter roused Cloyd when it was still dark in their camp at the trailhead. By the light of the gas lantern they set to work
sorting their gear into eight loads for the eight packhorses. After sunrise Cloyd brought the horses into camp from the meadow by the river where they’d been hobbled overnight.

  The packhorses stamped their feet and shied from the wooden frames lifted toward them. The packing dragged on all morning. Cloyd could hardly believe all the gear they were taking with them. Two groups of backpackers left up the trail while they were working. Finally the last knot was tied, the riding horses saddled. Cloyd and Walter led their animals to the wooden gate between the parking lot and the beginning of the trail.

  “What’s this sign say?” Cloyd asked.

  “Weminuche Wilderness Area. No motorized vehicles beyond this point.”

  Cloyd looked up the trail and saw it climb through a dense stand of pines. The trunks weren’t far enough apart to allow even a jeep through. “Why do they have to say that?” he asked.

  “Why, that means motorbikes, I suppose, and snowmobiles in the winter. Good thing, too. Our horses are spooky enough without having to contend with motors. That ‘Weminuche’ there, that’s the name of the Utes who used to live up here.”

  “I know. My grandmother said that’s us. We’re the Weminuche.”

  “Well, now ain’t that somethin’.”

  And then they were under way, each leading a string of four packhorses. Walter rode in front on his sorrel mare; Cloyd followed on the big blue roan.

  The canyon soon narrowed, and the trail climbed well above the river. Cloyd found himself looking down hundreds of feet into pools so clear he could see the stones on the bottom. Above them, rockslide paths fell through the spruce and aspen forests from the peaks. As high as they were, these peaks weren’t the towering, jagged ones he’d seen from the cliffs that first day at the farm. Before long, he would stand on top of one of the very highest and look out over the world.

  The farther they worked their way up the Pine, the more Cloyd marveled at the steady gait and sure-footedness of the roan. And when the horse had a chance, he’d swivel his eye back around and catch sight of the boy. There was something Cloyd had been turning over and over in his mind and now, he decided, was the time to ask the old man about it. “Is it true, like he said, that horses don’t care anything about you?”

  The old man hitched himself up in the saddle and halfway turned around. “You mean like Rusty said? Don’t pay no mind to his talk. He just hates to agree with anybody. It’s just the way he is.”

  “But is it true?”

  “I’ve always puzzled on that, same as you. Horses appreciate good treatment and a steady hand, but it’s a fact they don’t go out of their way to fetch your slippers. Maybe some really do care. I’ve had one or two that made me think so, but it seems like you never know for sure. What do you think?”

  “Oh, I was just wondering.”

  Cloyd was mostly disappointed with the old man’s answer. As they rode, he continued to turn it over in his mind. He leaned forward and patted the roan. “Blueboy,” he thought, “you’re not just any horse. You and me, Blue, you and me.”

  The roan rolled an eye back and snorted loudly.

  The next day the horses labored up ever-steeper grades as the river fell in leaps from the high country. Cloyd watched his string carefully as they crossed the tricky scree slides of fine rock that ran below them all the way to the river. Several times during the day they forded swift creeks that fed the Pine; with little urging, the roan crossed them easily. The others behind accepted his leadership.

  Late in the afternoon they climbed out the canyon onto a large meadow, astonishingly green with knee-high grass and ringed by mountains that stabbed far above the line where the trees stopped growing. A small stream here close to the Continental Divide, the Pine River wound quietly in delicate meanders through the meadow. Waiter said they’d lay over a day or two before they went up Snowslide Canyon to the mine. Cloyd was happy to make camp. As he’d been riding, he’d seen the trout darting through the riffles between the pools. They set up the sheepherder tent in the trees at the meadow’s edge.

  At first light Cloyd was up digging worms in the black soil underneath the trees. On the meadow, he sneaked up on a pool and let his bait drift into a likely spot. In a moment the rod carne alive in his hands, and he launched the flashing trout into the air and over his head. A large cutthroat trout in its orange-red colors lay gasping in the grass. It was the first fish he’d ever caught and the beginnings of a meal for him and the old man. He remembered his grandmother saying that when the Weminuche lived in the mountains, some of the men were so skilled that they could catch fish with their bare hands That didn’t seem possible. But now he knew how they must have felt when they caught the lightning-fast trout, however they did it.

  Midway up the meadow Cloyd caught his second trout, and then his third at the upper end where the stream came rushing out of the trees. He’d discovered the fishing was better if he kept trying new water than if he stayed with one hole, even if he could see plenty of trout there. It seemed they would strike pretty quick, or not at all. He decided to look upstream in the trees for another good place to fish. After walking around the rapids through a thick spruce forest, he found an even bigger, more promising meadow above.

  As Cloyd began to fish the upper meadow, white clouds boiled up out of the blue sky and quickly turned dark. The wind started to blow, but he was too excited to notice the wind or the clouds—he was landing trout. Several miles from camp, at the far end of the upper meadow, he caught his seventh. As he slid the new-caught fish onto the stringer he’d fashioned from a willow branch, he shook with cold and realized the temperature had been dropping for some time. He’d been out fishing longer then he thought. Without the sun it was hard to judge the time, but it could be past noon already. He saw the clouds spill down the mountainsides toward him, dark and loaded with moisture. A few more pools, maybe one more fish, and he would collect his trout and head for camp.

  Lightning broke loose and thunder rumbled, not too far off. A cold wind rushed down the meadow. He wished he’d worn more than a T-shirt, but he hadn’t thought he would be out long. He knew he’d better run for it; the storm was about to break. As he picked up his stringer and started out, lightning cracked barely upstream. The shock wave and his surprise threw him to the ground. Glancing back, he saw the big spruces bending under the weight of the wind, and hail angling down with terrific speed.

  Cloyd thought he could race the hail into the trees between the meadows and nestle in under a good roof of branches. He ran for the trees with the rod held high in his right hand and the stringer of trout in his left. He ran with a laughing heart because the hail was already pounding the meadow behind him, and yet at full speed he would outrun it just in time.

  With no warning his right leg sank to the hip, his chest and face struck the ground, the rod and stringer of fish flew. In the tall grass, he’d failed to see the narrow trench connecting the stream with the pond where beavers had built one of their domed lodges.

  Pain coursed through and through his leg. He was sure he’d hurt it badly. With his weight on his left knee, Cloyd dragged the right leg out of the beaver run and lay on his left side, watching the wall of hail advance down the meadow. He had to wait for the pain to clear. Lightning ripped the meadow simultaneously with its deafening thunder. A heartbeat later the hail struck, stinging him and bouncing all around in the grass. Within seconds he was drenched and started to shake with cold. His T-shirt and jeans clung to him; they offered no protection. The feeling went out of his fingers. He lay motionless, unable to think.

  In minutes the meadow was carpeted with a layer of hail. All of a sudden, it was winter. Cloyd had seen hailstorms in the high desert, but not like this one. Here the air itself had turned freezing cold. Shaking now from fear as well as cold, he forced himself to think. Managing another hundred yards to the trees meant nothing now. He had to reach camp, the old man, and a fire—or freeze to death. He tried the leg. It could take some of his weight. Nothing was broken.

>   Cloyd knew he had to start out immediately, but somehow it seemed important not to leave the rod and the fish behind. They couldn’t be far. As he raked through the hail-flattened grass with his sneakers, he realized he couldn’t feel his feet. There was the rod. He scooped it up and clamped his fingers around it. Lucky for him it wasn’t broken. And here were the trout, stiff and staring.

  Then he ran as best he could, shaking, tripping, falling. The hail turned to cold and steady rain. Something told him that he had no chance in the woods, the way he came up from the lower meadow. He had to find a trail. Was there a trail? He hadn’t seen one all day. Maybe there would be one on the far side of the meadow, across the stream.

  Cloyd couldn’t feel the icy water as he plunged across the Pine River holding up his rod and reel and his fish. In fact, he’d stopped shaking and couldn’t feel anything at all. His body was getting too cold, much too cold.

  Across the meadow he found a trail and hastened wildly down it. After a while he was in the trees. The trail fell sharply, muddy and slick, turning this way and that. He veered through dark shapes as if in a dream. No sign of the lower meadow and the old man, and the cold was squeezing the life out of him. Through the dark trees, off the trail and down by the stream, a small patch of orange caught his eye. His mind dismissed the image, but as he stumbled forward, the idea of the orange color slowly worked its way to the surface. It was a tent. Cloyd stopped and stared through the trees at a trace of blue smoke hanging in the dark branches above the tent.

  He could barely move. It took him a long time to reach the orange tent. Now he stood dumbly by the remains of a fire. There was no fire here, only a bit of blue smoke curling around the soggy stub of a log.

  Cloyd faced the tent. “I need help,” he said thickly.

  Someone lifted the tent flap—a young man with glasses and a dark beard—and cursed in surprise. The man came out of the tent, took away the rod and the fish, and forced him to the ground and inside the small orange tent. Cursing softly, the man said not to worry. He rummaged through a sack, muttering something about long johns.