Stony River

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To the Kammerzells of the Kootenays,

where this story found a beginning so long ago.

CHAPTER 1

Deep within the alpine ranges of western Canada, like a hermit of the mountains, is found one solitary town, the tiny settlement of Cragmont. Here between steep forests on the shore of a serpentine lake, the town receives the Stony River as it comes rushing and tumbling out of the high country. Here also, the sun has to climb high into the sky before it shines above the sharp peaks that overlook the town, and often in winter it doesn’t shine at all. But the handful of hardy folk who live beneath those imposing crags take the days of shadow along with the days of sunshine, as part of the land in which they live. And even in the howling snowstorms of the long winters, when the mountains vanish into clouds for weeks at a time and the river lies frozen and silent, they choose to stay, finding in that rugged land their own peculiar delight.

It was toward this seclusive hamlet that Sevana Selwyn was traveling one afternoon in late spring, having come more than halfway across the country from a large eastern city. She had begun the journey by train, then continued on a variety of buses, for there was no direct route to her destination. The final bus she had boarded late that morning was a chalky-blue vehicle of obvious vintage dubbed the
Selkirk Stage
. Its eight blue-leather seats had been sparsely occupied to begin with—and now, the bus having passed through a few scattered outposts earlier in the day, Sevana was the only passenger still aboard.

She was presently holding onto the seat in front of her and staring with wide eyes as the bus veered and bounced over washboards and potholes in a dirt road ever disappearing just ahead. Hoping to take her mind off the perilous route, she looked instead at the rockbound cliff rising vertically outside her window, and the knife-edge range jutting up across the finger lake, and found little to console her. The land itself looked perilous, built on an up-and-down scale with nothing level in it except the lake. She felt trapped-in by the constricting mountainsides, and—with every uninhabited mile—more isolated. Even knowing a town lay somewhere up ahead, she couldn’t escape the feeling she was being cut off from civilization. The stifling pressure in her lungs subsided only when the rock wall declined, and the mountains stood back far enough to make a toehold for the buildings of a town.

“Cragmont, B.C.,” the driver announced, with the formality of someone arriving at a big city with a busload of people, instead of this diminutive village and Sevana his lone rider. He pulled the rattletrap bus to a stop in the vacant lot beside the mercantile.

Cragmont! Sevana felt her heart begin to race as she half-stumbled to her feet. She had been so impatient to get here, and yet now that the moment had finally arrived, it had come too suddenly for her to be ready for it. Hurriedly collecting her hand luggage and portfolio, she stepped forward to thank the uncommunicative man in whose hands her life had rested the better part of the afternoon. “This must be a long drive for you to make every day,” she added—which sympathetic sentiment caused his nut-brown face to register in a transitory smile.

“Oh, I don’t drive this road every day, miss,” he said, with the barest shake of his long black braid. “Only when there’s somebody to take or get, and that hasn’t been more than ten times yet this year.”

“Is that so!” Sevana was taken aback. More all the time, Cragmont was looking like the end of all things to her. “You—you must be glad for that.”

“I don’t mind it any in the summer, miss,” he assured her calmly. “It’s only in the winter it sometimes gets a little nip and tuck.”

Sevana gave the solemn, dreamy-eyed man a stricken glance. That road in snow and ice—! As she stepped down into the undiluted May sunshine, she was thinking how lucky she’d been to make the trip in good weather. Then, standing in her summer-blue dress and matching jacket of the newest city fashion, she cast an expectant look about her. There was not a soul in sight on the graveled street.

The driver unloaded her trunk and set it against the board-and-batt siding of the store. “You got folks coming for you, miss?” he returned to ask in his reserved way.

“My brother,” she replied, with a little smile for his solicitude. “He said he’d meet me.”

The man nodded, seeming satisfied by her answer. Politely wishing her a good day, he got in the bus and turned it around in the direction he’d come. And watching him go—even in the consternation of being left alone in that deserted, end-of-the-earth town—Sevana did not for one minute envy him the crooked road back.

When the
Selkirk Stage
had been lost from view, Sevana looked around her again. Only an extensive line of snowtopped mountains gazed back at her silently from across the lake. Not knowing what else to do, she resorted to the bench in front of the mercantile, which some industrious woodsmith had axed whole out of a single, stout log. Sitting straight and proper on the hard-back seat, she continued to scan the street with watchful eyes.

It was easy to suppose that Fenn had been detained at work: almost anything could have come up. But deep inside she had an odd little fear he wouldn’t come at all. He had never contacted her concerning the summer, although she’d written him several letters herself. The plans had all been arranged by their father, and Fenn had been at odds with him for years. Perhaps, she thought, looking down at her polished fingernails in dismay, this was a way Fenn had chosen to show his disregard.

She was considering this unsettling possibility when a wiry, elfin man tied into a grocer’s apron hobbled out of the store on a wooden leg to see who had come in on the bus. He bobbed his head in a friendly way and said something to her with a shy grin, but she didn’t understand him. “Excuse me?” she asked, determined to listen more closely.

Again he spoke, and from the inflection of his voice she knew he was asking a question, but the words were garbled. Then she realized he had some sort of speech impediment, and quickly, to prevent embarrassing him, tried to guess what he was saying. “Yes,” she said, smiling as she prepared to take a blind stab, “I’ve just made the trip from Toronto.”

He nodded in pleased recognition, as if she hadn’t been too far off the mark, and asked something else—so close to words she could almost catch it. Once again she tried frantically to form the sounds into some kind of meaning. “Yes,” she said brightly, nodding and smiling the more. “It was a long trip, but it was interesting. I’m going to be staying here for the summer,”—volunteering some general information in the hope of hitting on the answer he was looking for. And this time she decided to ask him a question. “Is this your store?”

The grin on his thin face became wider, and he dipped his head modestly. “Yes, yes,” she thought he was saying.

“I’m expecting my brother.” She felt it was up to her to take the lead in the conversation. “I hope you don’t mind me waiting here.”

He spoke a few words, motioning freely with his hand that no, no, he didn’t mind at all. Then he asked another question and looked at her expectantly. She had to ask him to repeat it. And this time she thought she caught it:
“Who’s your brother?”

“My brother?” she asked, proud of her job of deciphering. “Fenn Selwyn is my brother.”

His smile faded and he looked confused. He spoke some mumbled words back to her as a question.

“Yes,” she said encouragingly, “do you know him?”

He nodded, but he seemed upset. He scratched his sparse, mouse-brown hair and said something else, still missing his grin. When she didn’t respond, not knowing how, he limped back inside, wagging his head and muttering to himself. Even though Sevana couldn’t make out the words, his reaction to Fenn’s name hadn’t been lost on her, and after his narrow back with its sharp shoulder blades had retreated through the doorway, she studied on it.

As the minutes continued to pass, Sevana began to question outright what she would do if Fenn didn’t come. It was frightening to think of being stranded out there, so far from anywhere. But in the midst of these alarming contemplations, she put up her head boldly. She was not afraid of anything, she told herself;—she could not be. Whatever was ahead, she had to meet it squarely. There was no place behind her to go back to.

A ragtag old man came rambling up the street just then, wearing a baggy canvas coat and a misshapen felt hat pulled low over silky wisps of white hair. A black-and-white dog followed at his heels. The oldtimer propped his walking stick against the storefront and turned to take in the sight of Sevana sitting primly on the bench, focused attentively across the lake so as not to be found staring indecorously at the wild-looking stranger.

“You like them mountains?” he asked gruffly.

Sevana was surprised he had spoken. In the city, people on the street addressed each other only of necessity, never for mere conversation. But being confronted so, a reply did just then seem a necessity. She turned her head and met piercing gray eyes in a face almost as cragged as the ranges opposite. “Yes, I do,” she said courteously, although her mind had not been on the scenery. She thought he must be looking for some kind of compliment on his town, so she offered, “They’re very beautiful.”

He glowered at her from under bushy gray brows. “Oh, they’re a sight today, all right,” he said querulously. “No rain or fog hiding them, no blizzard wind blowing. ’Tisn’t always like this, you know. Folks come here in summer and they think we live in heaven, but they don’t know how rare ’tis for a clear day to see ’em.”

“How long have you lived here?” she asked, wondering why he stayed if he didn’t like it there.

“All my life. Left once or twice, but never for long.” His eyes continued to burn into her without trace of warmth or human friendliness. “You here visiting?”

As she was sitting not ten feet from her luggage at the corner of the building, she could only answer, “Yes.”

His scowl darkened, like a rain cloud passing across a rocky escarpment. “You’d better build your cabin right here,” he warned her fiercely, stabbing a twisted finger toward her face, “’cause you’re never getting out.”

“I beg your pardon?” she said with a gulp.

“You’ll get used to it here and you won’t want to leave,” he rasped in his abrasive voice. “If you do leave, you’ll be wishing yourself back.”

“Is that so?” She tried to laugh to show she wasn’t unnerved by his odd behavior.

But as abruptly as he had spoken he vanished into the store, leaving behind the obedient and well-mannered border collie—who sat by the door and stared at her politely but unwaveringly the whole time she remained there.