Leaving Blythe River: A Novel (20 page)

Sam emerged from the tent not long after sunrise. Ethan was standing twenty or thirty feet away, wearing his jeans again even though they were still wet in the seams and the waistband. He’d been standing there for some time, scanning the valley with binoculars, hoping to see Marcus and Rio. Because to see them would be to know they were okay. To convince himself they were safe, so he could stop worrying. Or . . . well, at least so he could stop worrying about
that
.

But there were too many dips and gullies and hills to ride around and behind, and the pair might even have crested the pass by then.

In any case, he never saw them.

“You been up long?” Sam asked.

“Since about three,” Ethan said, without lowering the binoculars.

“Yeah. Well, that’s the problem, I guess, with going to bed at four p.m.”

Ethan looked around to see that Jone was up as well, and had begun firing up the camp stove for coffee. And hopefully breakfast.

“What are we having for breakfast?” Ethan asked. “I’m starving.”

“We saved you some stew,” Jone said.

“I know. Thanks. Marcus showed me where it was. But I was afraid to open the bear vault. I was afraid it might draw one into our camp. I know that probably sounds really stupid.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid at all,” Jone said. “I always try to get my food packed up and put away bear-proof by dusk. By the way. Where
is
Marcus?”

Ethan opened his mouth to answer, but Sam cut in.

“Probably out looking for a place to relieve himself. Like I’m about to do.”

“No,” Ethan said. Simply. When he realized they were both staring at him, waiting for him to go on, he added, “He’s gone.”

“Gone where?” Sam asked, impatiently, as though he’d expected just this kind of trouble.

“Home.”

“Why?” Jone asked. “Did he say why?”

“Yeah. He did. He said people who can’t get along are bullshit.”

“Can’t get along with
him
?” Sam asked. “Or with each other?”

“Either. Both. He said he used to be the peacemaker when he was a kid, but then he got sick of it. So now when people can’t get along he just walks away.”

“Shoot.” Sam spat the word down toward the dirt.

Then he wandered out of camp, probably for the reason he’d previously stated.

“To answer your question,” Jone said, “we’re having pancakes and scrambled eggs. But don’t get your mouth all set for something heavenly, because these are dehydrated eggs. You know. Powdered. They look like the real thing once you get them rehydrated and scrambled, but they don’t taste like fresh. But it’ll get some protein in you and fill up your stomach.”

“I’d eat anything at this point,” Ethan said. “I’d just rather not eat another energy bar if I can help it.”

Sam came stomping back into camp from behind a tree, as though something back there had angered him.

“Walked away? Or did he ride away? On my pony?”

“He rode away,” Ethan said. “He told me to tell you he’d put Rio in the pasture with your other horses. Why did you give him a pony? You have big horses. Why not give him a big horse?”

“Rio’s a good pony.”

“I’m not saying he isn’t. But you have so many bigger ones. I guess I just wondered because it seemed like you had something against the guy.”

In his peripheral vision, Ethan saw Jone watching. And he thought he could feel her listening. Her attention seemed almost palpable. But she did not open her mouth. She didn’t take a side this time. She let Ethan have his say.

“He tell you that?” Sam asked.

“I saw it with my own eyes. And heard it with my own ears. You were always giving him a hard time.”

“He was just being too sensitive,” Sam said. He said it in a strong voice, nearly shouting. But Ethan got the impression that he was shouting at Marcus, not at Ethan. Even though Marcus was gone. “I gave
you
a bad time, too, about being saddle sore. Jone had to jump in and stand up for you. And you don’t think I have anything against you, right? He just had some kind of a complex or something.”

“No, really,” Ethan said. “Why didn’t you like him?”

Jone poured about a quart of water from the big hanging gravity filter into the cooking pot, which she then placed on the camp stove burner. She pulled to her feet, looking nearly as stiff and sore as Ethan felt.

“Guess I need to follow suit and find me the ladies’ room now,” she said. And she wandered away.

“Damn it,” Sam hissed, half under his breath, “I’ve been waiting a long time for a thing like this. To get to spend some real time around her. I just thought this was my one chance to impress her. You know?”

Ethan limped stiffly over to the pot and crouched down to watch the water heat. Not that it’s interesting watching water heat. But he was that anxious for it to turn into coffee and rehydrated eggs.

“Why not impress her by being a patient guy who gets along with everybody?”

Sam snorted. “Yeah. Right.
That’s
what she wants. Woman drops grizzly bears in their tracks without blinking, but you figure she wants a guy who plays well with others, like they teach you in kindergarten.”

“You never know. She didn’t want you teasing me. So she seems like a fan of fair play to me.”

“Ah, I blew it now anyway,” Sam said, popping the lid of the bear vault and sorting through the packets of dehydrated food.

“I don’t know. Don’t say that. Trip’s not over yet.”

“But this conversation is,” Sam said.

That’s when Ethan looked up to see Jone walking back into camp.

“You warned me,” Ethan said, vaguely in the direction of Sam.

Ethan had just put away two cups of coffee, six big pancakes topped with honey from individual squeeze packets, and the equivalent of about four scrambled eggs.

The eggs had been okay, but only because Jone had cautioned him not to get his mouth set for the real thing.

Besides, it really wasn’t so much about flavor. Not that morning. He’d wanted to fill his stomach. Steady his nerves with protein and that feeling of fullness. Put an end to the hunger pangs that had been his constant and unwanted companion almost as long as they’d been on the trail.

It was hard to believe that had only been a little over twenty-four hours.

But Sam had warned Ethan not to stuff himself too full.

“You’ll regret it when that mule gets to rocking,” Sam had said between pancake four and five.

Now Ethan found even the prospect of climbing to his feet a bit daunting. He’d slept plenty, maybe too much. But his head felt muddy and thick. He pushed such thoughts and feelings away again, because there was no place for them. No time to indulge his discomfort.

Instead, Ethan watered the horses and Dora, one by one, leading each down to the nearby creek by its halter rope, Rufus trotting faithfully—if somewhat stiffly—behind. He left Rebar for Sam to water, because he didn’t dare get close to Rebar. While he performed this simple task, which seemed surprisingly challenging to Ethan, Jone washed up the camp kitchen and broke down the tents. Sam fed, saddled, and bridled each of the horses as Ethan returned them, and repacked all their equipment into Rebar’s canvas packs.

Ethan thought he could feel a pall, a sort of darkness, hovering over and among the three of them. Some bad feelings left over from Marcus’s desertion, and maybe fueled by a general sense of discouragement regarding their mission.

Jone walked over to get her saddled horse, and Rebar laid his ears back and lunged in her direction as if to bite her. Jone pulled herself up tall, raised one hand in a threat of her own, and looked the mule right in the eye.

“You bite me, I’ll bite you right back, you swaybacked, ornery old cuss from hell. You think I won’t do it? Just try me.”

Rebar stopped. Froze a moment, as if considering her words. Or at least the tone of them. Then he dropped his head, shook it as if shaking off a blanket that troubled him, and turned away.

Jone led her horse back into their recently vacated camp.

“I know a mule that just met his match when I see one,” Sam said. “Lemme just take Rebar down to the creek and give him a drink before we head out. Don’t blame you for not wanting the job. Plus I know you’re not gonna bite him. And so does he.”

“Why doesn’t he try to bite or kick
you
?” Ethan asked as Sam led the mule away.

“He knows better,” Sam said. And left it at that.

Then Jone came back and took hold of Dora’s reins, and Ethan didn’t know why. Was she going to ride Dora today? He hoped not. Her chestnut horse was too tall, and a little spookier than the others. Much as he’d initially complained, Dora was just about Ethan’s speed. Sam had been right on the money about that.

“Walk with me,” Jone said, leading the mule into what had so recently been their camp.

Ethan did, though he didn’t know why.

“I wonder why they call that mule Rebar,” Ethan said, still regretting the size of his breakfast. And dreading the feel of that hard saddle on yesterday’s sores.

“I asked that same question last night. While you were sleeping. Sam said that used to be the only thing that could get him to go.”

“Wait. What was?”

“Rebar. You know those metal rods they use when they pour concrete? To reinforce it?”

Ethan felt his eyes go wide.

“Sam hits that mule with a metal rod? No wonder he’s so bad-tempered!”

“I don’t think Sam did. The mule was already named when Sam bought him.”

“Oh,” Ethan said.

They had stopped walking now. Dora stood, quiet and with her head down, her left side close against a good-size boulder, one that came up higher than Ethan’s knees.

Jone reached one hand out to Ethan, but he didn’t know why.

“What are we doing?”

“I know you’re sore. Take my hand and step up onto this rock.”

Ethan did as he’d been told. Still not really knowing why. The hand helped a lot. More than Ethan would have wanted to admit. Everything hurt. It was hard to lift his leg that high and even harder to raise the rest of his body to join it. Ethan was sure he would have tumbled backward without the helping hand.

“Now go for that stirrup,” she said.

Then Ethan understood. From his elevated position he would be swinging his leg over, not up. He really wouldn’t be pulling his body upward at all.

“Oh, I get it,” he said. “Thanks.”

He found the stirrup and eased himself gently into the saddle, resisting the temptation to say “ow.” Resisting it twice, in fact. Once as he lifted and swung his leg, and again when his weight settled onto his sitting bones, forcing them against the saddle’s hard seat.

“Weather’s good today,” she said, before walking off to get her own horse.

Ethan looked up and around, even though he’d seen the weather. Even though he’d been watching it since three a.m. The sky had gone a rich light blue with morning. Not one single cloud dotted that perfect blue canvas.

He looked up at the trail, though not for the first time. It climbed the left flank of the mountain ahead of them, twisting up its sheer side. Ethan wondered how they would water their horses after leaving the snaking creek. Or water themselves, for that matter. He wondered if a horse or mule—or person—had ever walked off the edge of that precipitous cliff.

He noted occasional outcroppings of rock below the trail that might break a person’s fall if they were unlucky enough to slip. Not in a comfortable way, from the look of it.

Jone led her chestnut horse up behind him.

“I need to use the mounting block,” she said. “Such as it is.”

“Oh. Sorry. I was lost in what I was thinking, I guess.”

He pressed his calves to Dora’s sides, and the mule stepped out of the way. Ethan reined her to a halt and turned back to watch Jone mount. Jone was sore, too. Ethan could tell. It surprised him, because he thought of her as being so experienced. Maybe halfway to indestructible. But she was older. No matter how tough you are, he realized, older has to play a role.

“What were you lost in thinking?” she asked him as she landed carefully in the saddle. “That is, if you don’t mind saying.”

“I was looking up at that trail. And looking at the spots where a person could go off the edge and not fall all the way down into the valley.”

Jone shielded her eyes from the low sun with one hand and looked where Ethan was looking.

“I guess I see your point,” she said. “But it’s only a handful of places. You’d have to go off in just the right spot. There’d be some luck involved.”

“Maybe,” Ethan said.

Sam came riding up, towing the fully packed and freshly watered Rebar behind his solid bay.

“And I think if he was on one of those rock shelves he’d be pretty easy to see from a plane,” Jone added.

Sam shielded his eyes from the sun and looked as well.

“Trouble is,” he said, “you wouldn’t see what’s on there from below.”

“But we’re riding up there,” Ethan said.

“And you want to walk your mule so close to the edge that you can see over?”

“Oh. Right. Maybe I should go up that trail on foot, then. Lead the mule instead of ride her. Then I could go right out to the edge. Even get down on my belly and look over the cliff if I needed to.”