by Will Hobbs
“Why can’t we?”
“We’ve got to play it safe. We’re two days from help. Those drill heads make a mighty small target for a sledgehammer. Once I saw a Fourth of July drillin’ contest up in Silverton that really made an impression on me—now this is a true story. The object of the competition was to see how deep you could drill in fifteen minutes. These two bull-strong Cornishmen took their turn havin’ at a six-foot-thick slab of Gunnison granite. The man on the sledge, early on in the contest, he’s working at a good fifty-blow-per-minute pace. Of a sudden we see his hammer stopped up in the air. We realize he’s just hit his partner’s hand, and the crowd groans, but the hurt man yells, ‘Bring it down! Bring it down!’”
“What did that mean?”
“He didn’t want to quit even though he’d been hurt bad. So the sledgeman resumes hammering. We see the hand go red, the man’s face showin’ it’s all he can do to keep the bit turning. His blood is mixing with the water flushin’ out the dust. Every time the hammer comes down, the crowd is splashed with bloody water. Then it’s time for the hurt man to take his turn with the sledge, and still he won’t quit. When the hammer’s up in the air, the blood runs down his arm until it’s red all the way to the shoulder. That man never gave up until the timer gave the signal. Then he fainted dead away.”
“He died?”
“No—blacked out.”
“Did they win?”
“No,” Walter said thoughtfully, “they didn’t come close. But they finished. Couldn’t pay men to do that no more. Then again, there’s fools like us doing it for free!”
To Cloyd it all seemed impossibly strange and dangerous. But he would work. If he worked as hard as he had making the fenceline, he wouldn’t feel the strangeness or the danger. And this time he’d trust in the old man and not blow up like before.
After seven days of bone-rattling drilling they were ready to blast. As Walter wished, Cloyd waited outside while he placed the dynamite in the drill holes and set the timing on the fuses.
Cloyd was exhausted. The cold had sapped all his strength. The work had been repetitive, painful, endless. In a pretty place he could enjoy working; in the mine he’d endured it only for the sake of the old man. At first they’d taken long breaks outside, down by the creek where they could lie in the grass, eat, and rest. But as the days went by, Walter stretched the working hours and made the breaks shorter. Close to the blasting, Cloyd could tell the old man didn’t want to break at all or even sleep. He was so excited, he wanted to work through to the end to see what he would find.
At last all was ready. Walter came out of the mine to make sure Cloyd was standing well clear of the portal, then went back inside to set off the charges. After awhile he came running out of the tunnel with a wild look in his eye, and yelled, “Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!”
Cloyd smiled. The expression on the old man’s face made it all worthwhile. Then came the waves of concussion as the charges rumbled inside the mine and dark clouds of smoke and dust poured out the entrance.
It was some time before the air cleared enough for them to reenter the mine. Cloyd was surprised to see how little progress the blast had made. No more than four feet. Walter knelt and examined piece after piece of the rock freed by the explosion. He’d hoped there might be at least some good silver ore for them to take home, but he was disappointed. “Poor makin’s,” he said. “Weak silver. Not even worth packing out for assay.”
They had nothing to show for their long days, Cloyd thought. But then, he’d never really believed they’d find anything. Now they’d have to shovel all the broken rock into the car and drop it over the edge of the dump outside. It would take many loads to clear out the tunnel for work on the next round. Yet Walter turned to the hand-mucking with new enthusiasm. “Next time we’ll turn up something better,” he said. “We’re after gold anyway. You talk to that lucky bear of yours. This is still a promising vein, and silver can lead to gold.”
Cloyd was convinced they were wasting their time, but he said nothing. He’d been trying to hide his feelings from the old man. Somehow there hadn’t been any time for him to go fishing. Somehow, after the first few nights, there was no time set aside to sit around the campfire in the evenings. There’d only been time to work, eat, and sleep.
Shovelful by weary shovelful, he helped Walter muck out the tunnel. The bigger rocks he had to grapple with and lift by hand. Once the ore car was finally filled, they had to wedge its wheels to a stop every few feet, or it would speed out of control and hurtle over the dump down to the creek.
Each night, he’d noticed, the cold seemed to bite a little deeper. The fragile high-country summer was beginning to lose out to winter. He fretted that he was losing his chance at the peaks. It took them a whole day to clear the mine. The prospect of starting all over again on the next round of drilling was worse than the work itself. Six or seven more days of spine-wracking torment to endure before they’d be ready to blast again. Before long, he knew too well, they’d have to leave the mountains, and then school would start. His precious time in the mountains was being used to take the inside of one apart and move it outside. He was trying hard, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold up.
Three, four, five days of the second go-round passed. Cloyd worked in a trance, trying to concentrate on turning the bit between blows. There was only the penetrating cold and the hiss of burning acetylene in his headlamp, the numbing feel of cold steel in his hands, the stinging shock of the blow, and the harsh reports of the hammer rattling up and down the confines of the mine. It was enough to drive him crazy.
More and more, Walter begrudged himself the time it took to eat and sleep. He had to see what the next blast would turn up. He’d come up with fresh calculations and convinced himself he was closer than he’d thought to the contact, that artery of high-grade gold ore which would lead him directly to the heart of the mountain. His old obsession had taken over and he’d forgotten about the boy, about Cloyd’s great desire to see the high country. He’d forgotten what he told Susan James, that the trip wasn’t so much for the mining as the chance to introduce the boy to the mountains.
Though it had lain dormant for almost forty years, the great illness of his youth—gold fever—had blossomed in its most virulent strain and invaded all his faculties. He’d slipped into the assumption that their enterprise was as exciting for Cloyd as it was for himself. Until, that is, they neared the second round of blasting. In a moment of clarity during their midday break he happened to read the boy’s face. He realized he’d made the boy a prisoner of sorts again and must set him free at once. But he had to do it in such a way that Cloyd wouldn’t feel compelled to stay and help out. He himself had no intention of quitting with the contact so near.
A stratagem came to mind. Not one his wife would have approved of, or he either under ordinary circumstances. It deviated by a substantial margin from the truth. A white lie, he told himself, for the boy’s benefit. “Well, Cloyd, I’ve had it,” he said disgustedly.
Surprised, Cloyd looked up and saw the disappointment all across the old man’s face. “How do you mean?” he asked.
“Like they say in the oil business, it’s a dry hole. We’re wasting our time.”
“But you won’t know until you blow it up again and see.”
A logical objection, Walter thought. He’d have to counter with bogus expertise. “Oh, I’ve been looking at the powder we’ve been fishing out of the drill holes with those spoons. Indications are bad, mighty poor. I figure we ought to give it up before we shoot what’s left of the summer. Didn’t you want to climb one of these mountains, maybe that Rio Grande Pyramid?”
“Maybe the gold’s just a little farther,” Cloyd insisted.
“Maybe. But chances are slim to none. If we quit now we’ll have a little time—maybe a week—before we have to head back. Now what about that Pyramid? Let’s get you some food packed, go over some maps—why, you could be ready to take out in the morning.”
&n
bsp; “Aren’t you coming with me?”
For a moment, Walter was so touched that Cloyd would want him along, he almost abandoned his plan. Though he lacked the wind for climbing at high altitude, they could ride together and set up a base camp before the boy set out alone. But even more he was relishing the next blast and the treasure it might break loose. “My lungs couldn’t take the thin air,” he said. “That’s close to fourteen thousand feet. I might have a fit or somethin’.”
“We wouldn’t have to go so high up.”
“No, Cloyd, Fd rather stick close to camp here and just enjoy myself pokin’ around, lookin’ at the scenery, brewin’ coffBlueboyee and whatnot. You take Blueboy—you’re better off on horseback as far as you can go. Take a packhorse too. Park your horses in the trees before you climb up above timberline.”
Suddenly Walter was spooked. He shouldn’t be letting the boy go off alone in the mountains. It was never a good idea, no matter how experienced you were. Yet he’d done it often enough when he was young. “Stay off of those peaks when the weather’s comin’ on. You know what that’s about.”
“I’ll be careful,” Cloyd promised.
Mile by mile Cloyd rode up the gentle meadows of the Pine. As he saw the Rio Grande Pyramid gradually nearing, his confidence grew. He rode with beauty all around him. He rode on a powerful horse who was his friend. “Hey-a, Blueboy, hey-a!”
Cloyd’s spirit was free and had all the running room in the world. There was no limit to where it might go or what was possible. “Hey-a,” he sang. “Hey-a, hey-a, Blueboy.”
The roan tried to break into a trot, even into a run, but the packhorse held him back. Cloyd could tell that Blueboy was taken with the morning’s wild spirit; this day was made for the two of them. He dismounted and tied the packhorse to a tree, a little ways off the trail, and then he walked back to the roan and said, “Let’s run, Blue, I mean really run.”
And then they ran streaming through the meadows of the Pine. Cloyd and the horse were one, and they were flying through the wind and the light, while all around him shone the mountains and the trees and the river. Cloyd grinned as they ran, and then he broke into a smile. His teeth caught the wind. He couldn’t stop smiling all the way up the meadow. This day was different. It was as if he was coming into a new world all bright and shining, and it was made for him.
They rested at the end of the meadow, and they drank from the stream. The roan was delighted with the meadow grass and tore at it as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks. Cloyd lay on his back in the grass and watched the trees on the hillside sway in the wind. He wondered if trees could feel. He decided that they could. They liked to wrap themselves in the air, sway with the breeze, and let the air soothe their branches and every little needle.
Back on the horse, he leaned forward to speak. The roan swiveled an ear back. “Want to?” Cloyd whispered. “Want to, Blue?”
The roan exploded into a gallop, and they ran all the way back down the meadow. Then he collected the packhorse and continued on his way to the Pyramid. After several miles he had to leave the trail and strike upward through the dark spruce forest. There were no trails where he was going. Blueboy and the packhorse labored in the rapidly thinning air as Cloyd guided them through the deadfall. Up, up they climbed. After a few miles Cloyd rested them on a bench where waterfalls spilled into a string of beaver ponds. The horses grazed while Cloyd ate his lunch. Contentment seeped through and through him. This place was almost enough, he felt so good. The peak, if he made it, would be surplus to store against the future. He resolved to see as much of the mountains as he could. Besides the Pyramid, he was taken with two other names: Ute Lake and the Rincon La Osa, “the corner of the bear.”
As he climbed again, the spruces huddled in clusters, squatter than they grew below, and grassy slopes led to a world of wildflowers. He left the last of the trees behind and rode through windblown waves of reds, yellows, and blues. He could almost reach out and touch the Continental Divide. That’s where, as Walter had explained, rivers bound for different oceans started out within spitting distance of each other.
He rested the horses while he took it all in. Here he was in the high, treeless world patched with snowbanks as far as he could see, the spongy, delicate, windlashed birthplace of rivers. A lone giant, the Pyramid loomed above and only a few miles away. He wondered if it could really be climbed. Close at hand, a spectacular formation in the Divide caught his fancy. It was called the Window, and it was so close he could see birds flying in the wide gap between its sheer walls. They were small birds, and they seemed to be flying loops for the sheer joy of it. They come to play, he realized. The air must pour through there like anything.
He noticed a bit of an elk trail leading to the Window across the steep scree slides of fine rock. On the spur of the moment he said to the roan, “You want to stand in that Window, Blueboy? I sure do.” He tied the packhorse and rode the roan toward the Window. He wanted to stand between those towering walls and feel the air currents, see the birds up close, and look over the other side.
They started across the elk trail. Once out on the scree slope, Cloyd thought the elk that cross it must be very surefooted, or very brave. The fine rock slid under the roan’s hoofs, and the steepness of the slope underneath them began to worry him. Maybe it’s a mountain goat trail, he thought. Yet there was no place to turn around, no choice but to keep going forward.
They inched across the dizzying slope until they reached the Window, and then the roan balked about going up. “We’re almost there,” Cloyd encouraged him. Then he chuckled, and said, “Don’t you want to stand on that windowsill?” With a jump, the roan gained the rock ledge and they were standing right where Cloyd wanted to be, in between those sheer walls like towers. He watched the swallows put on a show. He could even see the rainbow in their wing patches. To the north, across the Rio Grande country, a whole new world had opened up. It seemed like the wilderness had no end.
If only the old man could see us standing here, he thought—me and Blueboy in the Window. I wish my sister could, my grandmother, and Susan James. But especially the old man. What a wonderful day, he thought. And there’s not a cloud in the sky.
Cloyd thought about the Pyramid. There was still time to climb it today. Tomorrow the weather could turn bad.
He realized it would be harder for the roan to step off the windowsill than it had been to scramble up. He could fall. Besides, he liked the idea of riding through the Window, and so he did. He rode through, and then he looped one of the towers until he gained the ridgetop and picked up a thread of a trail. The slope was awful steep, but it wasn’t all scree like the one he crossed before; there was quite a bit of grass on it. Halfway down, the roan pulled up and held his ground. In front of them, a spring popped out of the mountain and made a little bog on the slope. Cloyd didn’t know why the roan wouldn’t go across. The horse was looking around, but there was no passage above or below the muddy spot. “We don’t mind the mud,” Cloyd said. He smacked his lips and kicked the horse forward. “C’mon, Blueboy, you can do it. You can do it, Blueboy.”
The roan tried the mud and eased into it. Afterward, Cloyd remembered how the horse glanced back at him, as if for reassurance.
The roan took another step and was into the mud all the way up to one of his front shoulders. His other three legs were scrambling, scrambling desperately for footing, but the one leg was trapped, and Blueboy was falling.
In the moment the horse went down, it was all a blur. Cloyd knew only that he was about to be crushed. He barely managed to free his feet from the stirrups and to lunge uphill as the roan fell on its side.
Cloyd was pinned in the mud, and all around his head were the four hoofs of the roan. He saw the horseshoes and even the nails in the horseshoes.
Cloyd saw Blueboy tense and prepare to kick. The roan had to kick for balance, to resist the pull of the slope underneath him, and when he did, he’d crush the boy’s skull. Cloyd thrashed with all his might to free himself,
but he was completely mired.
Their eyes met, in a moment Cloyd would never forget. Blueboy was poised to kick, and then he saw Cloyd’s head there, and then he didn’t kick, not at all, but slowly, slowly, rolled over on his back. All four legs arced away from the boy, and then Blueboy tucked his legs in and tumbled down the mountain, slowly at first, then faster and faster like a trundling boulder.
The roan lay at the foot of the scree slope several hundred feet below. Full of dread, Cloyd freed himself from the mud and worked his way down to the horse. Blueboy was alive, but how badly hurt? His breathing came in spurts; he wasn’t getting up. “Maybe you’re okay,” he told the horse, without believing it might be so. “Maybe you’re okay. You gotta get up! Are your legs broken? Are you all busted up inside?”
Cloyd made the roan stand up. He was amazed to see Blueboy get up and then walk. He kept talking to the horse; he was so relieved and thankful. After a little while, he led Blueboy down to the tundra grass. Somehow, there were no broken bones, nothing to show but a few scratches. Somehow, they’d both lived through it. He led the horse down and around the base of the slope and back up to the packhorse.
Cloyd found a camp barely into the trees, by a trickle of a stream running off the snowbanks. There was no way he was going to try to climb the Pyramid this day. Brushing the dried mud off his clothes, he marveled at the sacrifice his horse had made. He shouldn’t have taken Blueboy where he did. He wondered if he would climb the Pyramid at all; he wondered if he should even try. Maybe he should just get back to the old man while he was safe. He didn’t really know what he was doing anyway. He’d almost killed the horse, could’ve got killed himself. What did he need to stand on the top of a mountain for anyway? Cloyd brooded through the long evening, finally crawled into his sleeping bag, and fell asleep by the fading fire. In his dreams, the horse kept falling over and over all night. He woke up, freezing in the cold night air. He should have pitched his tent. He wished the day would come.
