Elizabeth Lowell - Only His

Gusts of wind tore aside the falling snow, unveiling a lid of clouds across rugged mountains whose very tops were still hidden in mist. For the first time Caleb saw an end to the climb…but not soon. There was at least another mile to go, another thousand feet to climb on a ghost trail slanting across broken rock, clawing up and up until finally the last ice-shattered ridge was climbed and melted snow flowed west, not east.

Caleb reined in and dismounted. Ishmael and Deuce were within two hundred feet of him. The mares were more spread out as they struggled upward. The last two mares were lost in the veil of snow that the others had climbed free of. Caleb waited, but no more Arabians appeared. Then the wind wailed and pushed aside more curtains of snow, revealing two mares a mile below, laboring slowly up the trail.

Ishmael walked the last few yards to Trey, then stood head down, blowing hard, fighting for each breath in the thin air. Caleb helped Willow down, supporting her with one arm while he loosened the saddle cinch. When the wind was still, steam peeled away from the horses in great plumes and the rasp of their labored breathing was loud.

«I’ll — walk,» Willow said.

«Not yet.»

Caleb swung Willow up onto Trey, tied Ishmael on a long rope, and fastened it to Trey’s saddle. Caleb took the reins and began walking up the trail, leading the big horse. Willow looked over her shoulder, saw Ishmael following and Deuce limping not far behind, and prayed that the mares would be able to keep going.

The route became steeper, the snow deeper, until Caleb was sinking in to his knees at each step. The horses were no better off. Every few hundred feet Caleb stopped and let the horses blow. Even Trey was feeling it now. He was breathing like a horse that had been run hard and long. Willow couldn’t bear to listen. She knew her weight was making it worse. Despite the stabbing pain in her head and the nausea that stirred in her stomach, she started to dismount.

«Stay put,» Caleb said curtly. «Trey is a lot — stronger than you are.»

Caleb’s words were spaced for the quick, deep breaths that still couldn’t satisfy his body’s hunger for oxygen. He was accustomed to altitude, but not to being more than eleven thousand feet high. The thin air and days of hard riding had worn him down as surely as it had the horses.

By the time they reached the base of the last, steep pitch, Caleb was stopping to catch his breath every thirty feet and the horses were strung out for miles down the trail. The clouds hadunravelled into separate patches nestling between ridges. In the distance, rich gold light glistened where the late afternoon sun poured into valleys between cloud-capped peaks.

Trey stood with his head down, his breath groaning harshly, his sides heaving. He might be able to walk farther, but not carrying even so light a weight as Willow. Caleb loosened the cinch and pulled Willow from the saddle. He put the heavy saddlebags and bedroll over his left shoulder, supported Willow with his right arm, and began to walk up the trail. He paused only once, sending a shrill whistle over his shoulder. Trey lifted his head and reluctantly began walking once more.

Wind had blown away the snow to reveal the rocky bones of the mountain itself. The rocks were dark, almost black, shattered by the weight of time and ice. The ghostly trail vanished, but there was no doubt of their destination. Caleb fixed his eyes on the barren ridge rising in front of him, blocking out half the sky. He barely noticed the receding clouds and the thick golden light washing over the land.

Willow tried to walk alone. She managed it for twenty breaths, then sixty, then a hundred. She thought she was still walking when she felt Caleb’s arm tighten around her waist, all but lifting her. Vaguely she realized that she would have fallen without his support. She tried to apologize.

«Don’t talk,» he gasped. «Walk.»

After several racking breaths, Willow managed to take a few more steps. Caleb stayed beside her, breathing hard, supporting her, urging her on. Together they struggled up the steep, stony ridge, hearing nothing but their own pounding heartbeats and the rasp of their overworked lungs. Every few minutes, Caleb would pause long enough to send another shrill whistle back down the trail, calling to Trey and Deuce, who had outpaced all the mares.

Caleb shifted the saddlebags and bedroll to his other shoulder, caught Willow up again, and resumed walking. He stopped for breath every thirty steps, then every twenty, but even that wasn’t enough for Willow. The long days of riding, the uncertainty, the fight with theComancheros, the altitude, everything had combined to rob her of strength.

Grimly, Willow struggled onward, trying not to lean on Caleb. It was impossible. Without his strength she wouldn’t have been able to stand.

«Almost — there,» Caleb said.

Willow didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her steps were only inches apart, more stumbling than true walking.

Caleb looked up at the route ahead and remembered with unnatural clarity the words his father had written in his journal to describe BlackPass: Steep, rough, and colder than a witch’s tit. But the pass is there all right, for any man with spine to take her. Up and over the Continental Divide, climbing until you’re looking in God’s eye, high enough to hear angels sing, if you can hear anything but your heart pounding and your breath sawing.

Without warning, Caleb and Willow were there, standing on the brink of heaven, heart pounding and breath sawing and angels singing all around. Caleb’s arm loosened around Willow, allowing her to slip to the ground. He dropped the saddlebags and bedroll next to her, sank down, and pulled her against his chest.

She slumped gratefully against him. For a long time she fought desperately for breath. Finally her breathing slowed. She realized that Caleb was cradling her, gently stroking her hair and cheeks, telling her again and again that the worst was over…they had finally reached the highest point in the pass. She gave a long, shuddering sigh and opened her eyes.

Caleb saw the color returning to Willow’s skin and felt a relief so great it was almost pain. He gathered her even closer, shifting around until she was looking toward the setting sun. The clouds were all but gone, reduced to incandescent golden banners flying from the highest peaks. The snow that had fallen was already melting, threading back down the mountain peak in silent black tears.

«Look,» Caleb said, pointing.

Willow looked at a hand-sized patch of snow that blazed nearby in the dying sun, weeping tears of gold. She watched a drop form and slowly separate from the still-frozen snow, falling away in the first instant of its long journey back to the sea.

The water was flowing west, toward the setting sun.

Willow awoke with the sun in her face and the sound of Ishmael’s frantic whinny ringing in her ears. Heart pounding, she sat up suddenly. It took her a moment to remember where she was — in a tiny hanging valley on the western slope of the Great Divide. The whole valley was barely three hundred acres of grass surrounded on three sides by steep, forested ridges. The fourth side fell away so sharply that the stream was as much a waterfall as a cascade.

«Caleb?»

No one answered Willow’s call. Belatedly, she remembered that Caleb had left long before first light, riding Trey and seeking the four mares that hadn’t found their way into the valley by moonrise. She had wanted to go with him, but had fallen after she took three steps. He had carried her back to the blankets. She had dreamed she was following him and had wept each time she awakened to find herself alone and her mares lost.

Now Willow could sleep no more. She crawled out of the bedroll, picked up the shotgun Caleb had left for her, and went to see what was bothering Ishmael. The angle of the sun told her that it was mid-afternoon. She had slept all night and most of a day.

Ishmael snorted and tugged against his picket rope, whinnying wildly.

«Take it easy, boy,» Willow said, glancing in the direction the stallion was staring. «What is it?»

The stallion’s call split the silence again.

Riding on the wind came an answering cry. A few minutes later three of the missing mares walked wearily into the meadow. Willow took the stallion off the picket rope and led him to a rock. Shotgun in hand, she leaped from the rock onto the stallion’s bare back. Instants later, he was cantering eagerly toward the mares, nickering a welcome. Willow stared at the forest beyond the three mares but saw no sign of Caleb, his big Montana horse, or Dove, the only mare still missing.

With rising uneasiness, Willow waited while Ishmael sniffed over the mares, assuring himself that they were indeed the same ones he had lost. After a few moments, the mares began cropping grass ravenously, ignoring the delighted stallion.

«Ishmael, that’s enough. Let’s go see what happened to Caleb.»

Willow had no sooner reached the edge of the meadow when Ishmael’s ears pricked and he whinnied softly. An answering whinny came from the forest. Trey trotted into the open. A page from Caleb’s journal had been torn out and tied to the saddle horn. Willow worked the paper free and opened it.

I’m walking Dove in. The other mares perked up and started tugging to be free as soon as they got below nine thousand feet. They were headed in the right direction so I turned them loose, and Trey, too. Give them some grain.

Dove is done in, but still game. I’ll stay with her as long as she’s standing.

Tears scalded Willow’s cheeks at the thought of her tired mare. Dove, more than any of the horses, had borne Willow’s weight through the long days on the trail. That was why she was so exhausted now.

A glance at the angle of the sun told Willow she had better get to work despite the tiredness that sapped her strength. The valley was more than eight thousand feet high — lower than Black Pass, but nowhere near as low as she was accustomed to. She led Trey to the campsite, stripped gear from him, and turned him loose in the meadow. While she poured out grain for the horses, he rolled in the thick grass, drank deeply from the stream, and fell to eating grain as though starved. She knew how the horse felt. It had been more than a day since she had eaten, and then it had been only a bit of jerky.

Caleb would be ravenous when he returned, for he had taken no food with him.

Working as quickly as she could, stopping from time to time to catch her breath, Willow dragged the saddles and packs in under the overhanging cliff that protected the campsite on one side. She dragged downed wood into camp, started a fire, rigged a tripod for cooking, fetched water, andflet as though she had been running uphill carrying a pack. She had long since abandoned her heavy jacket and Levis. Now she unlaced the buckskin shirt, unbuttoned the flannel beneath, and thought longingly of a bath. But there were too many other things to be done and not enough time before the sun set behind the looming peaks.

Just as the last shaft of light abandoned the high valley, Caleb and Dove emerged in the meadow, startling deer that had drifted out of cover to feed near the horses. After a few seconds the deer resumed browsing. It had been so long since they had been hunted by man they had lost much of their fear of humans.

Dove didn’t notice the deer or anything but the grass and water. She nudged Caleb’s hand, asking to be released from the pressure on the halter that had kept her walking long after she wanted to stop. Caleb stroked her neck, spoke softly to her, and released her to join the other mares.

Willow grabbed the canteen, poured in coffee, snatched up a handful of fresh biscuits, and hurried across the meadow. She was breathless by the time she reached Caleb, who had just finished pouring out some grain for Dove.

«Is she all right?» Willow asked.

«Played out, but nothing that rest and food won’t cure. Her breathing doesn’t rattle, so her wind wasn’t broken.»

«Thank God,» breathed Willow. She held out the canteen and biscuits. «Here. You must be starved. Thank you for getting the mares. I dreamed I was going back for them, but when I woke up I was still here and I didn’t know how I could —»

Caleb drew Willow close and kissed her. When he straightened, he was smiling despite the exhaustion that lined his face. He made a sound of enjoyment and licked his lips.

«You taste like coffee and biscuits,» he said teasingly. «And something else…»