Chapter 9
A Rash Decision

About an hour and a half after Pa and Zack and Mr. Weber left—the whole time it had been still as death, hardly a sound either in the house or outside—we heard the door of the livery crash open.

Mrs. Parrish jumped up and ran out back to the stable, and I followed.

“Hey!” a man’s voice was calling. “Hey . . . ain’t nobody in there? Marcus, where are you, man?”

Just then Mrs. Parrish opened the stable door and looked inside. “Mr. Ward!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“No time to explain, ma’am! Where’s Weber, Hollister? I can’t find any of the men around. I gotta have me some help an’ I ain’t got time to go tryin’ to track ’em down!”

“I’m afraid all the men are gone. There was an avalanche down across the Yuba on Washington Ridge.”

The man swore, slapping his hand to his forehead. But I could tell it was fear he was feeling, not anger. His face turned pale and he started to collapse.

Mrs. Parrish rushed forward and caught him in her arms before he hit the floor. “What is it, Mr. Ward?” she said in alarm. But the moment she felt his body and saw his face close up, she knew. “The man’s nearly frozen to death!” she exclaimed back in my direction. “Corrie, come help me—we have to get him into the house!”

Together we half dragged the poor man, whose legs could hardly support him another step, back into the warm parlor of Mrs. Parrish’s house. By the time we got him slouched in a chair he was nearly unconscious.

“The boots, Corrie!” she said. “We’ve got to get his boots off!” She grabbed at one as I pulled on the other. The leather was soaking wet, and when we got his boots and his stockings off, we could feel that his feet were just like ice.

“He might already have frostbite—it’s a wonder he didn’t die from the exposure,” she said, pulling his limp legs in the direction of the fire. “We’ve got to get some dry cloths around his feet.”

In a few minutes Mr. Ward began to come to, and almost immediately started to ramble in a panicky, exhausted voice. “My wife and three girls,” he said, “ . . . trapped up on Buck Mountain . . . snow caught us last night . . . blizzard up there—had to get ’em to town . . . wind blew the storm right down on top of us . . . snowing so hard I couldn’t see a thing . . . too far to turn back . . . got off the trail, and the wagon went in a ditch . . . wheel broke—”

He stopped, then looked around at the two of us. His eyes were wide, as if he suddenly had become aware he was sitting in a warm room in front of a fire. His expression showed no recognition of who we were.

He struggled to rise. “Gotta get out of here,” he mumbled. “Got to get back . . . gotta find help . . .”

“Mr. Ward, you can’t go anywhere,” Mrs. Parrish said firmly but gently. “Your feet and hands are frozen, and all your clothes are soaked.”

“I’ve got to get back . . . they’ll die if I don’t . . . got to get help!”

“Where are they?” she asked.

“Snow was everywhere . . . wagon was broke down—wheel shattered . . . couldn’t get us all out on the one horse . . . sheltered them best I could under the wagon . . . unhitched the horse, took off for town. But I pushed the beast too hard in the snow . . . stumbled . . . broke a leg . . . walked rest of the way here . . . got to find some men . . . got to get back out there . . . they’ll freeze to death in the blizzard!”

“Where are they—where, Mr. Ward?” asked Mrs. Parrish, urgency in her voice.

“Halfway down the Buck . . . off the road from our place . . . got to get back there!”

Again he struggled to rise, but fell back, unable to stand.

“There’s no way this man’s going out again any time soon,” said Mrs. Parrish, half to me, halfway thinking aloud to herself. She paced toward the fire and back again.

Without really stopping to think, I suddenly found myself running to grab my thickest coat, putting on my gloves and hat, and then running back out to the stable and throwing the big double doors wide open. I climbed up on the seat of the wagon Marcus had hitched for Pa, and took the reins in my hands.

“Corrie, what do you think you’re doing?” exclaimed Mrs. Parrish, rushing out of the house behind me.

“I gotta go after them,” I said. “Mrs. Ward and the young’uns!”

“The horses can never make it! The snow’s too deep, and it’s still falling!”

“I can do it—I know the way.”

“It’ll be dark soon. Please, Corrie . . . don’t. Come back inside with me.” Her voice had a pleading sound in it. I could tell she was worried.

“I’m sorry, Almeda, I’ve got to. I can make it—I know I can!”

She stood there for a moment, just looking at me as if seeing me for the first time. “All right, Corrie,” she said at last. “But wait a minute.”

Faster than I would have thought possible, Mrs. Parrish ran into the house and came back with a package wrapped in a dish towel, with several blankets thrown over one arm.

“Some food and water,” she explained. “And blankets.” She threw the blankets in at my feet and stepped back. “Be careful, Corrie,” she said briefly. “And God go with you.”

I flipped the reins and called out to the horses, and in a few seconds I was plowing my way through the blizzard. I didn’t look back. But inside I knew Mrs. Parrish was crying, and would immediately go back into the house and get on her knees to start praying. I knew God was with me, but I was glad to have two of us praying at the same time! If Pa’d been there, I might not have done what I did, but if I had, he’d have probably been muttering something about “that blame fool Belle blood” as he watched me disappear up the street. He probably thought the same thing when he heard about it later.

I didn’t realize it then, but that was the first time I ever called Mrs. Parrish Almeda. I suppose I was moving toward being a grown-up faster than I realized.

I headed out of town northward, where I could still see Mr. Ward’s footsteps in the snow. But I wouldn’t follow them all the way. I had made a delivery up to the Wards’ place last month with Mr. Weber. He had showed me a ravine along the foot of Buck Mountain where he said the snow didn’t fall. He was laughing about it then, but now it just might save those peoples’ lives! I’d take the wagon to the foot of the mountain, then along the length of the ravine and up the cutoff road that joined the main ridge-road about halfway to the Wards’ place. Marcus had shown me where it turned off when we’d been on our way back down the mountain.

About halfway through the canyon, I heard the bray of a donkey, a strange sound through the quiet of falling snow. I stopped, and heard it again. Then I heard a familiar voice yelling and cursing. Suddenly the sounds coming from the animal made sense!

I urged my horses toward the sounds, and as I got closer I heard the voice again, this time calling out to me. “Hey! Who’s there? Hold up . . . whoever ya may be!”

I called my horses to stop. Then I heard the voice again, from part way up the hillside on the slope of Buck Mountain. But it wasn’t from the trapped members of the Ward family at all. I wasn’t anywhere close to them yet. Instead, the voice was coming from the mouth of a small cave.

Presently a figure appeared in the black opening, looking out into the white blizzard. It was Alkali Jones!

“Mr. Jones!” I called out in astonishment. “What are you doing here? We were all worried about you!”

“I was halfway down from Dolan’s when I figured I’d better git me an’ my mules hurryin’ a mite faster or we’d be buried by this dang blizzard. Then one o’ ’em stumbled an’ went lame on me an’ I figured this here cave’d be ’bout the best I could do till the blame snow quit—hee, hee, hee! But am I glad to see you!”

“But you’re only six or eight miles from home. Couldn’t you have made it?”

“You ever tried t’ pull a mule through a foot o’ snow—an a lame one at that? Hee, hee! I might as well o’ got on my hands an’ crawled home on my knees. This blasted beast won’t budge! An’ I jest gave Dolan six-fifty fer the blame critter, an’ I weren’t about to part with my investment, ya might say, hee, hee.”

“Well, come on down from there and get in! We got folks trapped up the mountain!”

Alkali left the injured mule tied at the cave and tethered the healthy one behind us. The old miner jumped into the wagon with me, and we continued on to the end of the ravine, which ended abruptly about six hundred yards farther up the canyon.

“You’ll never git this pile o’ lumber even halfway up the hill,” said Mr. Jones. “Ain’t no way a wagon like this is gonna make it up that steep path. I don’t know what ya was aimin’ t’ do fer them folks.”

“I thought there was a road from the canyon up to the ridge on top. When Mr. Weber and I were up there, he pointed down this way, and it looked like a fine road leading off down toward here.”

“Fine road fer maybe two hundred yards, till it’s outta sight! Then it turns into a steep trail switchin’ back an’ forth up the side o’ the mountain. Ain’t hardly wide enough fer a man, much less a beast. Jest look at it! Ain’t no wagon can climb up that!”

We looked up toward Buck Mountain, one side looming against the canyon on our left. Tiny flakes of snow were falling, but above us, the mountain was lost in a dense fog of thick snow.

“‘Sides that—look at it!” said Mr. Jones, still pointing upward in the direction I had been hoping to go. “Why, the snow up there’s comin’ down in a white blanket. There’s likely a foot or two foot o’ powder, maybe three, up t’ the top where the other road is. That trail comin’ down off the mountain t’ this here ravine—why, it drops a thousand feet! Ain’t no way, even if there was a road this wagon’d fit on—which there ain’t! No way ya’d git it through that blizzard, not with them horses ya got.”

“They’re Mrs. Parrish’s best,” I said.

“They ain’t snow animals.”

“What are we going to do, Mr. Jones? Those people are trapped up there, and night’s coming, and the snow’s still falling!”

“That’s what I was askin’ you—what ya was aimin’ to do.”

“I thought I’d be able to get there with the wagon.”

I hesitated. “What about the mule?” I exclaimed. “Could your mule make it up the steep trail?”

“‘Course he could. He could make it up a mountain with no trail.”

“In the snow?”

“That critter’s been with me in worse snows than this! He ain’t no blame tenderfoot like that beast o’ Dolan’s!”

“Then we’ll take the mule up to the top!” I said.

“Jest how ya figure that’ll help? How many of ’em ya say there was?”

“Four—Mrs. Ward and three young’uns.”

“Hmm . . . lemme see, we might oughta—”

“We could bring them out one at a time, with the mule, and get them to the wagon!”

“Take too long! I tell ya, it’s a three-quarter mile o’ steep, rugged trail. Time ya went back an’ forth, whoever was sittin’ down in the wagon waitin’, why they’d be plumb froze to death! If we’re gonna git ’em outta there, we gotta git ’em all at once, git back down here, an’ high-tail it back to town to git them young’uns someplace warm afore nightfall brings another three foot o’ snow an’ they’re buried till next spring!”

We were at the end of the canyon, and the trail up the mountain wound up and out of sight. I now saw the impossibility of what I had hoped to do. The wagon could go no farther. A light wet snow was falling where we were, and up higher the snow was falling in huge, thick flakes.

We stopped and I tried desperately to think.

“We’ll have to try it with these horses,” I said at last. “They’re the best workhorses Parrish Freight has, and it’s our only chance.”

I jumped out of the wagon and began unhitching the straps from the two animals.

“What’n tarnation ya thinkin’?” said Mr. Jones.

“We’ll both ride up there!” I answered, working my fingers as fast as I could in the biting cold. “We’ll take the horses and your mule . . . leave the wagon here, then bring them all four down at once!”

“Ya got spunk, I’ll say that! Let’s git goin’—we still gotta find where they’s broke down,” said Mr. Jones, already out of the wagon and untying his mule from the back. “An’ that ain’t gonna be easy, neither!”

In another three or four minutes we were making our way up the narrow trail. It seemed to take forever, but we made it safely to the top. When we reached the main road that ran along the ridge, we stopped.

“Which way’s the Ward place?” said Mr. Jones, half asking, half trying to remember himself.

I glanced all around. In the eerie quietness of the snowy wooded area, everything looked different.

“I . . . I’m not sure,” I replied, glancing about for something I might recognize.

Suddenly Mr. Jones jumped off his mule and tromped forward in the snow several paces.

“Look . . . there’s wagon tracks!” he shouted back at me as he pointed ahead. “They been along here all right!”

He glanced hurriedly to the right and left.

“The slope’s climbin’ this way,” he said, jumping back onto his mule. “That means they was headed down.”

“Let’s go!” I cried, urging the horses toward the faint wheel tracks.

Alkali Jones nodded. “I jest hope we ain’t too late.”