A Cowboy Followed His Horse Into the Mountains—Then Discovered a Woman Everyone Thought Dead
Chapter 20
The first Cutter’s Pass run was made on the first Sunday of December, in weather that would have made a sensible man turn back at the county line.
Wyatt rode up ahead on Adrien, breaking trail through knee-deep powder, and behind him came Clara on her own sorrel mare, riding with her brace and her cane strapped to the saddle, grinning like she’d never met a mountain that could hurt her, and behind her came the mule — a hulking red mule named Biscuit, borrowed from the Swede, packed high with emergency blankets, oat bags, sealed food, fire-starting supplies, and a hamper of the women’s circle’s best preserves for the town relief pantry.
The cave was exactly as Wyatt had left it — ash, boughs, the tin from the smokehouse, the honey jar Clara had set in the light. They unloaded the emergency cache and arranged the mountain supplies at the back of the cave, on the flat rock and near the gray ash, and Clara stood in the mouth of the cave and looked out over the valley in the winter sun, and she was quiet for a long time.
“The first winter I came up here, I came up alone,” she said. “The second winter, I came with you. This is the third. Couldn’t have told you, three years ago, that I’d ever wish on a winter to come back.”
“Winters have their own ideas,” Wyatt said.
“They do.” She turned and looked at the stacked gifts, the little shrine of good things. “Funny thing. Everybody in the valley figures this pile of stuff is for the mountain — an offering, you know, to thank it for giving me back. But it ain’t for the mountain. The cache is for whoever gets stranded up here, and the fund back in town is for the people who live at the mountain’s feet. The ones winter could catch next. It’s my way of saying — see? It gave one back. Maybe it’ll give another.”
Wyatt looked at her, at the brace, at the cane she refused to use unless the grade demanded it, at the fire that still burned behind her eyes, and he thought about what Rose had told him once, near the end: The good ones, Wyatt, they don’t get easier to keep. They get easier to lose. But you keep them anyway. That’s the whole thing.
“You’re a good soul, Clara Hayes,” he said — the first time in years he’d said anything like that out loud to another person.
“You saved my life,” she said simply. “Worst mistake you ever made. Now I’m going to be in it until the end.”
The wind blew a veil of powder off the crest, and the sun came out full, and the three of them — horse, mule, and the two riders — began the long, slow work of descending, breaking a trail down that next winter’s story would follow.