Slate Creek Read online

  “Like I said, some of ’em don’t take to swift water. What happened?”

  “I could see . . . we weren’t going . . . to make . . . the same spot.”

  “So you turned her?”

  “I guess I did. I thought you hollered ‘Come ahead.’ ” Simon wiped his muddy hands on his trousers.

  “I said ‘Give her her head.’ Well, you learned a cold, wet lesson. They can see what’s under the water a lot better than we can.”

  “I like bridges.” Simon tried a weak smile.

  “Next time you’ll be fine. Just remember to let her go. She’ll carry you across.”

  “She all right?”

  “Sure. Up there browsing, waiting for you to quit acting like an otter.”

  “Did you see my rifle?”

  “And saddlebags.” Reed stuck out his hand. “Here, stand up and make sure everything works right.”

  Both of his knees hurt and he looked at the brown-green blotches his trousers had picked up from the mossy boulders. Simon shook his right hand, then squeezed it with his left. “Tingles.” He grimaced.

  Spud came bounding along the bank from downriver. He barked when he saw Simon and then shook vigorously, the water flying off his head and neck.

  “Rough ride when the current has you. All kinds of things get banged up. You’ll find some more sore spots in the next couple of days, guaranteed. Let’s get up on the level and you can change clothes.”

  With his wet clothes draped over the panniers, Simon followed the pack train into the canyon. The creek water ran white, smashing to foam as it hurried across the rocks to join the river. Cottonwood, aspen, and willow grew alongside short pointed stumps, evidence of dam-building beavers. They traveled through a narrow entrance that started to open up after a quarter-mile. Soon they were riding through a wide meadow, the creek meandering placidly, tamed by the width of the streambed.

  Simon rode silently, in awe of the steep canyon walls rising to impossible heights, the stoic peaks naked to the winds and timeless. “Look at that, Justin.”

  Reed turned in his saddle and looked back.

  “Up there.” Simon pointed to the jagged skyline at the end of the valley.

  The ridge broke perfectly to form the shape of a gun sight. Reed reined the train to a stop and Simon rode past the mules.

  “That’s amazing,” Reed said when Simon pulled alongside. “Give you something to admire when you get your place set up.”

  “You mean we’re here? Uh, I mean, this is the place?” A flush of anxiety swept over him as he stared up at the heights of the mountains around him, their sheer majesty pushing down on him.

  “The place is anywhere you want to stop. I’ve never been up here. It is impressive.” Reed smiled at him.

  “I don’t know how to describe it,” Simon said.

  “Well, you can look it over real good. Pick a spot that suits your fancy. You lead and I’ll bring the mules.”

  Simon moved past Reed and rode slowly up the valley, Spud ranging ahead. Several side canyons cut away, dry beds now, but all showed signs that massive amounts of water ran down them from time to time. One particularly wide one drew his attention.

  “Wait a few minutes. I want to ride up this one a ways.”

  Reed nodded and dropped enough slack in his reins to allow his horse to grab a mouthful of grass.

  Simon turned up the creek bed. A few rocks lay mixed in with the dirt, and from bank to bank, the channel spread over sixty feet wide. It wound its way into the side canyon, gradually rising for almost half a mile, then started to narrow abruptly. Dried mud, with some splatters stuck ten or twelve feet above the ground, plastered the uphill sides of the trees. Six-foot-tall tree stumps, bare roots and all, lay jammed against rock outcrops, and standing timber, their tops not sharp and pointy like beaver falls, but broken off, ragged and splintered. Another two hundred yards, and the channel narrowed to the point of being impassable. Going back downstream, the mud marks were even more apparent, and he could see in his mind’s eye a torrent of slurry, smashing downhill, carrying rocks heavy enough to crush trees. Again, the sense of being overwhelmed raised the hair on his neck.

  “What’d you see?” Reed pulled his horse’s head up as Simon rode out of the side canyon.

  “I can see I’m going to have to be real careful where I put my place.” Simon looked around with new eyes at the wide creek bed of the main stream. The man-high boulders that lay strewn across it took on a chilling significance. “Let’s ride on some more.”

  The canyon angled right, narrowed by half, and then opened up again. The gun sight could no longer be seen, the massive formation lost in the towering peaks that loomed above. The creek bed now contained a confusion of splintered trees and massive blocks of granite. The water twisted and turned, rushing to clear the obstacles and then rest in the slower meanders lower down. They continued on, and another meadow greeted them, this one over a quarter-mile wide and nearly flat. Simon reined his horse in, and took a slow look around at the peaceful setting. Distance muffled the sound of the rushing water at the far end as it tumbled down the rocks of a narrow defile. His gaze continued right to a pair of magnificent spruce trees. They were as alike as any two trees could be, and stood about seventy feet apart and over a hundred feet tall. Twins, rooted at the same time, and raised in the same ground, destined to keep each other company for as long as they lived. Simon had found his place.

  CHAPTER 9

  The next morning Simon watched Reed make his way out of the canyon, north along the edge of the meadow. Several emotions struggled for supremacy. Still in shadow, his new friend turned and waved from the bend in the valley. Then he was gone.

  “Well, Spud, I guess we’re here.”

  The dog looked up at him for a moment and then turned back to stare toward the spot where the man and mules had disappeared. He rumbled a low, almost private, growl and turned away. Simon walked over to the pile of goods unloaded the day before and stared down at what he had to work with. He sat on the folded canvas and grappled with the feeling currently in ascendance: inadequacy. He wasn’t scared, though the sharp edge of fear glinted, ready to cut his tenuous hold on peace of mind. How soon would the dreaded snow fly? The crisp morning felt good.

  He had plenty of food and he’d seen signs of deer. Or was it elk? What could be so hard about digging a hole, and putting up a few logs for the sides and something to cover the top? He had a stove. Reed had said, “Food and fire.” There’s the food and look around . . . wood everywhere. But . . . He sat down and stared up at the eastern horizon, and the slender wedge of doubt slipped in.

  Simon was lost in thought, the random kind where nothing lingers for more than a moment and one idea has no relationship to the next, when the sun crested the ridge and took him by surprise. An overwhelming emotion exploded in his consciousness and awe banished his disquiet. The jagged rock edges of the sheer cliffs soaring into the eastern sky melted in the dazzling brilliance of the rising sun. The memory of a similar experience flooded back, and he raised his face to meet the light. A feeling of warmth spread through his body, a heat that came from within, the source deep and guarded jealously, exposed rarely.

  Simon sank into himself, the sensation warm and fluid. He closed his eyes and absorbed the energy he felt streaming across space; took it, fed on it, and lifted from the earth. Euphoria drafted him up, and he drifted, gently rocked in a cradle of bright light. All sense of the flesh left him, and he became as mist, shifting and spiraling through the treetops, sighing with pleasure. Simon dissolved into thin air, a part of everything . . . and nothing. Time stopped.

  His head snapped forward and his teeth clicked together. Spud lay beside him asleep, and the sun now stood well off the horizon. Simon shook his head, slightly confused, then stood. His eyes were drawn to the east side of the meadow by a vague feeling of being watched. He studied the shadows and saw nothing. But still . . . he shook his head in dismissal.

  “Time I looked this place
over, Spud. Got a lot of work to do, and I don’t think I have a lot of time to do it in.”

  He saddled the horse and headed out the way he’d come in. The day before he’d noticed a curious stand of trees on the eastern side of the valley and cantered the mile to reach them. Tall, slender, and perfectly straight, their clean, branch-free trunks begged to be used. Once into the closely packed grove, he realized he’d seen something like them before, only in a different setting. Walks Fast’s teepee. These were the trees used to create that structure.

  “Perfect for building a roof,” he muttered. “Lay these sideby-each, and it’d be better than sawn boards.”

  He wrapped his hands around one, and then another. There were many the same size, and he felt pleased with himself for having solved one problem already. Leaving the copse, he rode back toward his meadow, his eyes on the larger trees covering the hillside. By the time he’d made his way back to the twin spruces, he’d identified enough trees to supply the logs needed for his dugout. Spud, anticipating Simon’s intentions, bounded on past the pile of supplies, and they headed toward the narrow end of the canyon.

  First the smell hit him, and then he saw the ocher side hill; the hot springs, exactly as Walks Fast had described. A steady seep of water flowed from the bank, across the grass, down a gentle slope and into the creek some two hundred yards away. Simon dismounted and hunkered down by the narrow stream. Cautious, he felt the water. It was warm. His horse browsed the grass eagerly.

  “Perfect pasture, don’t you think, Spud?”

  The dog wagged a mute response, and padded over to the sodden bank.

  “I bet this’ll stay clear of snow in the winter.”

  Spud ignored him and sniffed the rusty mud.

  “And I bet we could grow stuff here. Look at the grass and those bushes. Got to remember to order some seeds when Justin comes back.”

  Simon poked around in the mud below the bank and stuffed twigs into the streaming fissures in the rock. Then, he scratched a skillet-sized hole and watched it fill. A short distance away, he dug another reservoir, then created a channel to connect the two. And watched the second one fill.

  “You know, Spud, a little work and I could have a bathtub with warm running water. What do you think of that?”

  The dog, sound asleep in the sun, ignored him.

  “Humph, some company you are.” He went back to expanding his miniature canal system.

  Simon glanced up at the sun and winced at its high angle. Hurriedly, he cleaned the mud off his hands and started the trek back toward his campsite, leading his horse. The air smelled heavily of pine and the indefinable something that belongs to the mountains. Do rocks have a smell? He stopped and took a deep breath, eyes shut to enhance the sense. He heaved a sigh of pleasure, and opened his eyes to look directly at a small deer, not forty yards away.

  She looked back, ears turned fully in his direction. Torn between the desire to simply admire the beautiful creature and the primal urge to kill it, he studied it for several seconds. Then he made a move toward his horse and the deer snorted once, took five or six stiff-legged hops toward the shelter of the trees, and stopped. Simon had his rifle to his shoulder when the animal started walking away and he pulled the trigger. The tawny-red creature dropped to her knees, then toppled sideways, her sleek side marred by the perfectly placed shot. Simon’s charge of elation chilled almost instantly as the deer raised its head, and then lowered it slowly to the ground. It didn’t move again.

  Spud took off, heading straight for the fallen animal.

  “Hey! You get back here.”

  The dog nearly piled up getting stopped. He turned to look at Simon, confused.

  “Leave it alone. Sit!”

  Simon walked past his dog and approached the deer. A small hole just above its elbow seeped crimson. He poked the deer in the side, the hide soft and pliable.

  “Now we get to see how much attention I paid when Dad butchered a steer.” He puffed his cheeks and sighed. “And me without a knife.” He mounted his horse, and galloped to his campsite.

  The chore of eviscerating the small deer was not that bad, but it wasn’t that tidy either. By the time he’d finished, he had blood everywhere, had managed to cut through the hide in a dozen places, and had a lot more hair on the meat than he would have liked. Flies materialized out of nowhere and swarmed all over; on him, the deer, the gut pile, and the ragged hide. Simon got tired of swatting at them. He stepped back and surveyed his work. Drawn, hung, and skinned, the small deer presented a spirit-damping sight swinging aimlessly in the light breeze. He went over and laid his hand on the shiny muscles of the shoulder.

  “Damn it!” The heat he felt came as a surprise. “Looks like I didn’t think this out, Spud.” He shook his head in disgust, and started to cut a haunch from the purple and white carcass.

  He scooped the last shovelful of dirt over the wasted deer. What would have been an easy task in Nebraska had turned into a two-hour job in the rocky soil of the mountains. Finished, he leaned on the short-handled shovel.

  “Makes me wonder if I can make a dugout in the next week or so,” he mused.

  Spud went over and sniffed the burial site.

  “Come on, let’s go cut a few roof poles before the sun goes down. Then we’ll have liver for supper. Sound good?”

  Simon found that cutting the slender trees down was more easily done with the bucksaw than an ax, and it left a finished end. In the last four hours of the day, he laid down nearly twenty trees, each three to four inches at the butt. That was over half as many as he thought he’d need. He threw a rope around six, and dragged them back to camp. The sun had been gone nearly an hour when he turned the horse into the rope corral. Busting up firewood used up about all the energy he had left.

  The liver came cold from the creek, and the strips of red-brown flesh seeped pink fluid as he sliced them off. He floured each piece before he dropped it into the eighteen-inch black skillet, and soon the whole pan steamed with a muted sizzle. Spud sat across the fire, tongue lashing out to catch his drool.

  “Smells good, huh?” Simon poked absently at the strips a couple of times, then started to mold his fritters. The extra skillet sputtered grease as he coated the bottom with a piece of bacon end. He laid the cakes in the glistening pan, put a lid on, and scooped some hot coals over the top. “There, fifteen minutes, and we can eat.”

  Hungry as he was, he found no pleasure in the meal. Every bite brought the sight of the pitiful carcass to mind, squandered and lying in the dirt. The food in his mouth turned to a tasteless lump, and he scooped his plate clean on the ground. Spud looked at him, head cocked, hesitant.

  “Go ahead. I can’t eat it,” Simon said. “Or that either.” He threw the rest of the meat to the dog and looked at the single deer leg hanging from a nearby tree.

  The dog pounced on the meat, wolfed the strips down in a few hasty gulps, and sat back down. He studied his master and licked his chops.

  Simon went to his saddlebags and came back to the fire with a small book. He sat down, steadied the opened journal on his knee, and wrote on the first page.

  July 24, 1873. I am Simon Steele. I arrived here in the White Cloud Mountains on July 23, 1873. It is my desire to live here in peace. Today I killed without thinking. That will not happen again.

  He closed the book and stared at the fire for a long time before he got up and went to his bed to lie down.

  He found the blackness of the forest that covered both sides of his canyon disconcerting. He rolled over on his right side, eyes wide open. His gaze sought the peaks and the solace of something he could center on. All he could see was more black, the peaks simply an absence of stars.

  “Spud?” he whispered. “Come over here.” Then, he cleared his throat self-consciously, and said in a normal voice, “Spud. Come here.” The vague outline of his dog rose from a spot by the supply pile and came toward him. “Lie down.”

  The pressure of the dog as he settled by his legs and the anim
al’s warmth raised his spirits, and Simon’s body gave up to fatigue.

  CHAPTER 10

  He paced off fourteen feet along the hillside, set the last rock down, and stepped back. With his eyes closed, he tried to imagine what his new house would look like. He couldn’t. The two rocks that marked the corners of the back wall were set up the hillside, and for the life of him, the image of a square box sitting level wouldn’t form. The size of the wedge of dirt he had to move did.

  “That’s a lot of dirt, Spud. And if the ground here is like it is where I buried that little doe, I’ve got my work cut out.”

  Simon figured eight logs’ high would be enough. The trees he had mentally marked the day before were all about a foot in diameter, and he thought a twelve-inch log, fourteen feet long, was about all he could manage by himself. That made thirty-two logs. Simon wished he had Zahn there to help. The solid timberman had made it look so simple back at Fort Laramie. Simon strapped his ax to the back of the saddle, and got on the horse.

  “C’mon. Let’s get started.”

  Stripping branches from its neighbors, the first tree fell heavily to the forest floor, showering Simon with pine cones. There was something satisfying about the heavy dull thud, a certain finality. Simon sat on his butt for a minute to catch his breath and grinned at the dog. “See? Nothing to it.”

  The trees were so straight and even, he was going to be able to get two logs out of each tree. With his ax, he measured off fourteen feet, the three-foot handle perfect for the task. He chopped a small notch and measured the second log. There were very few branches to swamp, and in an hour he had the two logs lying end to end. He sat on the ground, and drank long from the canvas bag. A steady chittering drew his gaze to squirrel-tail semaphore; the agitated twitch telling him he wasn’t welcome.

  He smiled at the little animal. “Someone told me I’m supposed to listen to you fellas. Tell you what, let me finish here, and I promise I’ll be a good neighbor.”