Stony River (12 page)

“Oh.” She was glad to have the mystery explained, even at her own expense.

As she wrestled with the resistant fabric, the broad ridge was shining above her in the late evening sun—a million overlapping tree points honeyed by a deep yellow glazing, and the dusky draws smudged with navy-blue shadows. She looked up in admiration of the show-off sight, and pricked her finger for her inattentiveness. “Fenn,” she asked, holding the wounded appendage, “have you ever been across the river?”

He glanced up in annoyance from his book. “Of course I have. I’ve been on every trail around here.”

She became very enthused. “So you’ve been in the high country, just as Joel has?”

“What of it?”

“Joel says it’s like no other place. What do you think of it?”

“Good place to be alone—wish I was there now,” he said shortly.

“But tell me what you’ve seen,” she persisted, not to be discouraged.

“You’d have to see it yourself.”

“I’d like to, if only I could!” She said it with such feeling, Fenn realized his mistake at once. Promptly, to deter the formulation of any such rash plan, he changed his tactics.

“Look, Sevana, it’s no different on that side of the river. If you want to know what it’s like, take a look around you.”

“But isn’t it different way up high?” she persisted. “The mountains look so mysterious, as if they’re guarding riddles, and they call us to discover them—if only we knew how.”

“The only thing calling you is your own obscure imagination,” Fenn said irritably. “Where do you get such half-cocked ideas?”

Sevana dropped the subject. But still, with the ranges standing so prominently above her, always there to see, it was impossible not to wonder about them. And she thought again how much she would like to make the journey to the high country for herself.

When Fenn closed his book, he remarked, “Game warden might be up to talk to you sometime.”

“To me?” The statement made no sense to her. “Why?”

“Somebody might be trapping illegally along the river.”

She still didn’t see the connection. “How should I know anything about it?”

“Just because you’ll be out here this summer, and you might see something. Nothing’s been proven; there’ve just been a few reports from people driving the road—a stranger walking along the river carrying something that looked like a trap, and dodging out of sight as if he didn’t want to be seen.”

“What do they think he’s trapping?”

“One witness described the trap being about the right size for an otter, so that’s what the warden’s betting on. Otter or mink.”

“I thought otters lived in the ocean.”

“Not river otter.” Fenn tried to curb his impatience. “Only thing wrong with the warden’s theory is that nobody traps in the summertime. Other than that, he might have a case.”

“Why don’t they?”

“Because the animals have shed their winter fur and their pelts aren’t worth anything.” He was pained at having to state the obvious.

Sevana didn’t ask any more questions, but she was of the opinion that if the game warden did show up there, he would be wasting his time. Except for Fenn and Joel, she hadn’t seen a single soul—lawful or otherwise—since she’d come.

After Fenn went inside, Sevana stayed where she was to finish her laborious handwork, while the line of shadow crept slowly up the valley wall like water rising in a great tank. A thrush pierced the solitude with a shrill, drawn-out note. After a long interlude, another thrush answered on a lower pitch. Then other thrushes joined the unhurried refrain, some high, some low, never the same pitch, until the forest rang with their disparate one-note calls—so that Sevana paused to listen to the unusual, soul-haunting chorus.

It had been a different sort of day all around, she reflected, with Fenn at home. She had asked him why he only got one day off each week, and he’d replied summer was the time to be logging, and he got plenty of time off in winter to make up for it.

Accordingly, Fenn was up before daybreak on his workman’s schedule. He scrambled a pan of eggs, and toasted homemade bread directly on the stovetop—a procedure that caused the dense little slices to harden unapologetically into rock. But he spread the petrified slabs with butter and ate them without complaint. Sevana, gnawing at her own flintlike toast, guessed that anyone who ate pancake-and-mustard sandwiches wouldn’t be bothered by much of anything else.

After sawing up the rest of the loaf for his lunch and adding slices from the block of cheese stored on the melting ice in the refrigerator, he was out the door—the only member of his crew to boast hemmed trousers, and fortified with an arsenal of small, indestructible sandwiches and huge, crumbling cookies. And Sevana, with a scheme so grand it offset the emptiness of his leaving, put together a knapsack and rode Trapper to the meadow to begin a picture of the high mountains.

CHAPTER 8

Joel leaned against the stout pine in the upper pasture and wondered why he’d ever responded to that letter. It had seemed innocent enough on the surface. She’d just wanted to meet him for dinner in Cragmont while she was in the area—or at least within a hundred miles or so—for a photo shoot. Just because they were old friends, and that’s what old friends do—get together when they have the chance, and catch up on things.

They had been very polite at the inn over their moose steaks, mature adults handling their past relationship maturely…but the walk they had taken afterward on the lakeshore, the secluded little cove—and she had been in his arms, and they had kissed as though no time had passed since their original love affair. Yes, they had caught up on things all right, things that were supposed to be put away once and for all, wounds that had scarred over and tried to heal; and now he was lost again in that tremendous, overshadowing love over which his common sense had no control. He knew now that he shouldn’t have gone to meet her, because he couldn’t resist her—no matter what his mind decided he could handle. But truth was, he wasn’t sorry he had gone. The only thing he was sorry about was that he couldn’t have more of her kisses, because that’s what he craved with all his being.

When Sevana appeared below to wave gaily up at him, he laid down his chisel and marked her progress as she began the final climb, stopping now and again to greet the lambs who came frisking down to meet her. He smiled involuntarily at the sight of her. He would take anybody’s chatter right now to drown out the tumult in his mind—circling in his thoughts like those persistent horseflies that bothered the bucks. And this young girl, with her eyes as deep blue as a summer’s late twilight and air of total innocence, frolicking with the lambs like one herself—she could remind him that not all was ruin and damnation: there were some people who weren’t living in the wake of their heedless actions and unlawful desires. Some people still thought life was fresh and full of possibilities. Well, he wasn’t going to disillusion her. Maybe she’d be one of the lucky ones. Maybe, even, some of her clear-eyed wonder would rub off on him, and he could again see the world the way he used to.

“Morning, Sevana,” he called to her. “Coming up for another look at the mountains?”

“Yes.” And looking up to meet his dark, smiling eyes, Sevana realized her memory of him—good as it was—had not done him justice. “I brought my paints,” she said, sinking breathlessly into the grass. And just as the first time, her heart lifted to be in that beautiful place, with the meadow falling away beneath her and the snowcrested pinnacles reaching to touch the sun. “Oh, it’s all still here, just as it was before!” she exclaimed thankfully.

Joel had to smile a little at that statement. “Did you think it would vanish?”

“It was so good, I was afraid I had only imagined it,” she confessed—knowing even as she said it how foolish it sounded.

But it didn’t seem foolish to Joel, and he didn’t question her meaning. Instead he lightly touched the bruised spot on her elbow. “What happened there?”

“Oh—” She had forgotten about it. “I fell the night we had the lightning. It was so dark I couldn’t see. That was some storm, wasn’t it?” She opened her knapsack and began taking out the acrylic paints she had chosen because they dried so much faster than oils.

He seemed oddly relieved by her answer. “Yes, it was.” That same storm had passed over his cabin and he had gone outside to watch it, daring one of those white-hot bolts to strike him, knowing there was no answer, no solution to his dilemma—had even been disappointed when he’d escaped unscathed. He picked up a queerly shaped instrument from among the brushes she’d laid in the grass. “What’s this?”

“It’s a palette knife for mixing colors. But you can also use it to paint with, for special effects.”

“I’ve often wished I was an artist,” he mused, turning the bent knife over in his hands. “Sometimes I try to describe the things around me, and I’ve often thought if I could just seize a paintbrush and put down what I see, it would be far more satisfactory.”

“Why, are you are a writer?” She produced a canvasboard and a pencil.

“I just keep a journal—mostly of the weather. Someday, though, I’d like to write about this land I’m still learning to know.” He returned the palette knife and picked up his chisel. “If you’re going to be industrious, so should I.”

“What’s that going to be?” she asked, her eyes on the block of hardwood in his hand.

“A scroll for a violin.” When she still didn’t understand, he explained, “I’m a fiddlemaker.”

“You make violins?” She tapped her pencil on the canvas as she tried to comprehend the surprising answer. “How do you know how?”

“Taught myself.”

“Isn’t it difficult to make something so precise?”

“I have all the tools, and I know exactly how it must be. But it does take a lot of time.”

“I’ve never met a fiddlemaker before,” she remarked—adding with a little laugh: “But I’ve never known a shepherd before, either.”

She began her sketch while Joel made minute cuts in the wood. He acted all right today, she thought. Whatever had disturbed him so profoundly the last time she’d seen him, he seemed to have gotten over it—or at least been able to push it down so it didn’t interfere with his ability to function.

When the pencil outline was in, it was time to mix paint for the sky. But instead of picking up the tubes of cobalt and ultramarine, she found herself staring at Joel’s capable, long-fingered hands as they skillfully shaped the scroll. She wanted to find out more about his life, particularly the very recent past—what had happened after the first time she’d seen him to deal him such an emotional blow. But she started at the other end, where she thought it would be safer. “Where did you grow up?” she asked, to the bent head with the unruly dark hair.

He looked up keenly. “In the Yukon. In a little settlement north of Dawson called Mammoth Creek.”

“The Yukon! Why way up there?”

He continued to work as he spoke. “My father’s a prospector—been looking for gold his whole life.”

“Has he ever found any?”

“Not much. Just enough to keep him in whisky—but that’s enough for him.”

“Did you like it up there?”

“Liked the country,” he answered slowly. “The endless winters and endless summers, each in their own way. But the town was a good sight short on law and order—full of men with no regard for anything but their own skins and their precious claims.”

“Your father, too?”

“My father was among the worst of them,” he said briefly.

Something in his manner told her that even here, at the beginning, were things he would rather forget. She sat silent, yet brimming with so many unanswered questions that Joel looked up and smiled, as if sensing her repressed curiosity. “My father’s led a reckless, scattered life, Sevana,” he said, almost gently. “He’s never had a wife—nor even anyone he truly cared for.”

“Oh Joel, I’m sorry. Did he raise you himself?”

“I wouldn’t say he raised me, exactly,” he hedged. “He did hire an Indian woman to look after me when I was little, since my—well, since the saloon girl who was my mother didn’t want anything to do with him or me. But mostly he left me to grow up on my own. But there was an old man up the creek, who took me in for a meal sometimes when my father forgot to come home—he could fiddle up a storm.” He smiled in remembering. “I used to watch him by the hour. He was the one who taught me how to play. He always told me that not all people were like those crazy goldminers—and he was one himself!—and I would do well to work hard and save enough money to leave that place. That’s what I did, too. I took every odd job I could find, and got out of there as soon as I was out of school. And you know, I’ve never once missed it or wanted to go back.”

Even though she sensed he had long since overcome whatever hurts he’d encountered in his earlier life, Sevana ached for the young boy growing up unwanted and alone. “How did you come to live here?” she asked quietly.

“Came down to B.C. looking for work,” he replied. “Logged in Cragmont for a while, and came up this river every chance I had to explore. Thought how much I’d like to settle here, and when I heard of this half-section being sold, I put down money without a second thought. Built my cabin that same summer. I’ve been here seven years now, and it seems this has always been my life.” He paused, many unspoken thoughts written in his face. “There have been other things I’ve wanted, things maybe not meant to be—but I’ve never wished myself away from this place.”