Chapter Three

 

THE LOW, STEELY gray light of morning greeted Roni as she woke the next day. She wasn’t surprised to see her breath even in the dimness. She vaguely remembered slipping out of bed in the middle of the night when Puller woke her up, shivering. After stoking the fire again, she’d donned thermals and thick socks, draped a heavy alpaca blanket over the two of them, and gone back to sleep.

She stayed in bed for a while longer in hopes that Jeff would get up soon and rekindle the fire. Puller was nestled deep under the blankets but, probably sensing she was awake, crawled up onto her bladder and made the decision for her. She flung the blankets back. “If I have to get up, so do you.” Puller shivered once, turned around, and burrowed back under the covers. “Wimp.” She gave the lump an affectionate pat.

She pulled a turtleneck and jeans over her thermals and slipped her Timberlands on over her thick socks. She tried to peer out the blurred window, but a thin film of condensation covered the panes and frost coated the edges. She wiped the window with her sleeve and discovered that a large animal had disturbed the heavy frost as it wandered by the cabin in the middle of the night. It was probably one of the resident mule deer she’d seen fade in and out of the meadow at dusk.

Snoring resonated from Jeff’s room. There was no chance of him getting up soon. Married life sure made him complacent. She wondered what it would be like to wake up next to the same person day after day. She shook her head to keep thoughts of Beth out of that castle in the sky. She didn’t believe for one minute she would ever have to worry about it as she rubbed her cold hands together and padded into the bathroom.

A few minutes later she walked out and checked the fire. She stirred the contents and managed to find a few live coals under the ashes. It wasn’t long before a hot fire heated the cabin and a kettle of water for coffee. Puller came out a few minutes later and snuggled deep into a sheepskin next to the stove. When the coffee was ready, Roni filled a mug, put on her coat, and stood in the doorway. The sun had just started to peek over the tree line. Its finger-like rays transformed the woods and meadow into millions of sparkling diamonds. She never tired of these glimpses of beauty.

The horses were huddled together under the trees on the far side. Frost blanketed their backs like everything else. As soon as the sun breached the trees completely, they’d take full advantage of the warmth it dribbled out. Chenoa saw Roni on the steps and nickered a greeting. In the still air, she heard him as plainly as if he were standing next to her. Sparky stood unmoving beside him with his ears perked in her direction.

Roni sat down, leaned against the upper step, and sipped her coffee. Strong and bitter going down, it warmed her all the way through. Her eyes watered from the cold, and her vision blurred until she blinked the tears away. Despite the chill, the dawn stilled the restlessness in her, but only temporarily.

Ever since she’d graduated from college with her forestry degree, Roni recognized that she always seemed to be searching for something. She didn’t know for what or even if it was a “what.” She got to her feet and paced in front of the cabin. She hated it when she got so frustrated trying to reason with the stream of unending ponderings. It just clogged up her brain, and the only way to alleviate some of the anxiety was to keep busy.

She took another mouthful of coffee, closed her eyes, and savored the bitterness and warmth as it streamed down her throat. She opened her eyes and stared at the herd. At the ranch, training horses from sunup to sundown ensured she’d fall into bed exhausted and sleep the entire night through just to get up and do it all over again.

With a heavy sigh, she returned to sitting on the porch. “But when I’m up here, it’s solely a waiting game for somebody to get themselves into trouble.” That gave her mind a lot of time to play games.

It occurred to her that Jeff was going to bug the crap out of her until she called Mike. “He can’t if I’m not here when he gets up.” She gulped down the rest of her coffee and went into the cabin. She didn’t worry about making noise; Jeff slept like the dead. Even the howling of a fierce blizzard wouldn’t wake him up.

A few years ago, a rebel spring storm had come barreling through the mountains. She and Beth played cards for most of that night because the intensity of the wind kept them both wide awake. Roni smiled at the memory. When dawn brought a stillness signaling the end of the storm, she and Beth slept together in Roni’s bed while Jeff slumbered on. She had purposely wedged Puller between the two of them for fear of inadvertently spooning Beth.

Roni laced her boots, put on a modified game vest, zipped on chaps, and set her Stetson on her head. From the wall, she took the 30.06 caliber rifle that Jeff had brought up with him, hesitating briefly to make sure it was loaded. She slapped her thigh for Puller to follow, and they headed out the door.

The sun was high enough to warm the cabin porch so she took off her coat and laid it down for Puller. “You stay here. I’ll be right back to get you.” Puller made quick work of snuggling into the warm fleece.

Chenoa, the only horse not requiring hobbles because he never wandered, trotted to her when she whistled. Roni hugged his neck and inhaled the sweet scent of him. “Hey, pretty boy, want to go for a ride?” The brown-and-white paint followed her to the pole barn. While he ate a handful of grain, Roni brushed his coat smooth and rubbed the frost from his back. After securing her saddlebags and tying a scabbard onto the saddle for the rifle, she tacked him up and led him toward the cabin.

Puller heard her coming, stood up, and blurred his tail with his frantic wagging. He barked in anticipation as Roni drew closer.

“Shhh, you’ll wake up your uncle.” She sat down on the porch, opened one of the enlarged pockets of her vest and signaled for Puller. Familiar with the maneuver, he squirmed his way in. With his head poking out the opposite side, Roni felt his tail wiggling against her belly. She put her coat on and mounted Chenoa.

She directed the horse to the opposite side of the meadow. The remaining horses stood alert and watched their departure. Keeping Chenoa close to the tree line to leave as little trail as possible, she wanted to make detection difficult when Jeff woke and went looking for her. Once into the woods, she urged Chenoa into a long-strided trot. The silence of the pines accentuated the sound of the creaking saddle.

Within the hour, as it got a little lighter, birdsong would fill the trees. Puller’s nose moved side to side as he sniffed the air. The warmth from his little body, in addition to the movement of riding, kept her cozy.

As she rode out of the evergreens, the chill forced her to zip her coat closed. It was that time of day when the sun’s heat high above forced the cold air down the mountain. She heard the stream before she saw it. The continuous babbling of the water over rocks and around the glacier-formed boulders created a melodious backdrop to the scenery. By the time she halted the horse next to the bank, she heard nothing else.

She searched the trees for the poplar scarred by an elk’s antlers. The long vertical wounds could easily be mistaken for shadows. There. Smiling to herself, she urged Chenoa down into the water and walked him downstream for maybe twenty yards. She turned him around and headed back upstream to a large slab of rock where she guided him into a small tributary. Satisfied she’d hidden her tracks, she urged the horse up the solid bank and continued on.

She wended Chenoa through the thick alders and broke through to a dense area of cottonwood trees. The smell of horse sweat and leather cleared her mind.

She stopped and let Chenoa graze on the lush grass for a few minutes while she watched a flock of tundra swans pass high overhead. She could hear their distinct call as they migrated north to their arctic nesting grounds. The sun’s angle was so perfect she could see the reflection of white off the undersides of their wings and bodies.

She couldn’t help noticing that the most incredibly beautiful birds were not rarities at all, but were in fact some of the most common species. Regrettably, the average person didn’t know such birds existed at all.

The trees around her slowly came to life with birds and a few brave insects buzzed around her head. It was still too early for black flies, but in a few warm days the mosquitoes would be voracious.

She nudged Chenoa forward with her heels and soon located her next landmark. The stream she’d been following for the past two hours forked to the south. Roni rode through the shallows and headed east. A hundred shades of green surrounded her as she kept to the lowlands. A dense stand of ferns, interspersed with mayapple, grew under the red cedar trees. Chenoa’s hooves made quiet thuds as he calmly plodded along.

When the vegetation thinned to short grasses, Roni stopped and lowered Puller to the ground. Her destination was close, and she was tired of his impatient squirming.

“You better keep up, mister.”

Puller ran a few yards ahead of the horse, and by darting back and forth, took care to stay out of the way of hooves. He kept his nose to the ground as he trotted along. Every few minutes, he stopped dead in his tracks to inhale some mysterious scent.

The trees grew sparse and eventually emptied out into a meadow. Ahead, she saw plumes of steam reaching toward the impossibly blue sky. A series of thermal pools, each varying in size and temperature, lay before her. For centuries, even before the white man’s arrival, the Nez Perce Indians considered the hot springs medicinal. Roni self medicated whenever she had the opportunity to sneak away to this treasured area.

She’d happened upon this place by accident a few years back while out searching for a lost hang glider. Ironically, the woman pilot had been so engrossed looking at the pools, she’d crashed her glider into the nearby trees. When Roni found her, she was taking advantage of the hot water to ease the bumps and bruises that resulted from her awkward landing. Fortunately, she’d sustained nothing more serious than a sprained ankle and multiple scratches from the tree branches.

Roni guided Chenoa to within fifty feet of the heated water, dismounted, removed his tack, and gave him the freedom to graze wherever he wanted. She verbally released Puller and he went about shuffling in the grasses nearby, apparently hoping to find a rodent or two to terrorize.

Roni undressed and draped her clothes on one of the few large boulders that lined the edge of her favorite pool. Naked but for her ever-present hat, she waded in slowly to gradually adjust to the hundred degree water. Little by little she crouched down until she’d submerged up to her shoulders and then leaned back against one of the sun-warmed boulders. “Ahhh, this is heaven.” Before closing her eyes, she glanced around, hoping to see Puller. She found him dozing belly up in the sun near her clothes. He looked as content as she felt.

“You’ve got the right idea there, buddy.” Roni laughed and he wagged his tail with his eyes closed.

The warmth from the geothermal water relaxed her muscles and eased the aches she’d acquired the past few days, not the least of which were bruises from her as of yet unexplained dances with Sparky. She loved that, unlike many hot springs, these pools were rich in carbonates and free of sulfur. The Lava Hot Springs site in the southeastern part of Idaho was the only other one she knew of that didn’t smell like rotten eggs.

Forced out of the water by her rising body temperature, Roni stood up and stretched. She felt a million times better. Chirping from the sky alerted her to the golden eagle circling overhead that was probably looking for prey.

“You better be careful, Puller. That bird is going to think you look like tasty roadkill.” His response was more tail wags.

Roni waded out and sat on the rock next to her clothes. She watched steam roll off her toned body as superheated skin met the cool morning air. She leaned back onto her elbows and let the sun dry her. She’d missed her hot springs. Although they were on Forest Service land, to her knowledge, nobody else other than the hang glider knew about them. It was no wonder warring Indian tribes had considered the hot springs a neutral zone. They believed them sacred. The peace and solitude of the mountains refreshed her body, mind, and soul. She’d almost forgotten the events of last night. Sitting in a place like this made it easy to ignore problems, responsibilities, worries, and anything else that didn’t bode well in her world.

Despite the hardness of the rock, she dozed in the warming sun. A slight breeze carrying the scent of pine resin caressed her skin and ruffled her hair. The many evergreens growing along the base of the mountain seemed to absorb all sound except for the wind.

Puller’s anxious barking brought her back to reality. She whipped her head around and saw the dachshund running circles around her saddle. Roni heard buzzing. Snake? But it sounded more like static than the telltale sound of a rattler. She got up to take a cautious look. She bent down and carefully grabbed a hold of the saddle horn.

“V e-ron-ica.”

“What the hell?” Roni ripped open her saddlebag and discovered a radio. “That little shit!” She yanked it out and pressed the receiver button. “What?”

“Veronica, you know proper etiquette on the radio, over,” Jeff said. “Anyway, I was just checking in to see if you’re enjoying your bubble bath. Over.”

Roni looked around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Jeff. She scanned the woods, oblivious of her nakedness. “What? Where in the hell are you?” As an afterthought she yelled “over” into the radio.

“You can stop turning in circles, sis. I’m at the cabin. Over.”

“How did you—?”

“Know where you are? You go to those springs every time you’re pissed or upset. Given your reaction last night, I figured you’d be heading there at first light. I got up at four and tucked a radio in your saddlebag. I can fake-snore real good, don’t you think? Over.”

“I hate you.”

“Want to hear something sad? Over.”

“Why would anybody ever answer yes to that?”

“Hmm, yeah, I never thought about that. Anyway, the point is, I have this big plate of pancakes here and nobody to share them with. Over.”

Roni’s stomach grumbled and her mouth watered at the thought of breakfast. In her haste to leave, she’d only had a cup of coffee and later a squished protein bar found in her coat pocket during the ride.

“You there? Over.”

“Yes, I’m here. I’ll be heading back shortly. Over.”

“That’s good because Mike is looking for you. Over.”

“Shit. I forgot he was going to be in Elk City this week. All right, I’ll see you in a few hours. Over.”

Roni turned the radio off and stashed it into her saddlebag. She whistled for Chenoa and got dressed. While she tightened the saddle, Puller growled deep and low in his throat. Roni glanced down to see what direction he was looking. She scanned the trees but didn’t detect any movement or anything out of the norm. Chenoa snorted and tossed his head.

“What’s the matter with you two?”

She reached down without looking, grabbed Puller around his waist, and inserted him into her vest. She gathered the reins and swung herself into the saddle. The additional height gave her a better view and advantage.

“Easy now. Let’s just wait a second and see what’s out there.”

Puller continued his growling, and she caught the white flash of his teeth. Clearly something was bothering the hell out of him. Then she saw it. Barely. The tip of the mountain lion’s long tail gave it away as it twitched. The cat was crouched so low to the ground she might have missed it but for that tiniest of movements. Her heart beat a little faster as she recalled that a few minutes ago she and Puller had been dozing in the sun, unaware the cat was stalking them.

Fortunately, the cougar was on the other side of the pools, and Chenoa could put a good distance between them in a short amount of time. Nevertheless, Roni pulled the rifle from the scabbard and held it at the ready as they cantered away. Just before she entered the woods, the mountain lion screamed. She didn’t look back. She clucked and encouraged Chenoa to pick up a little more speed. He seemed more than eager to put additional distance between him and the hungry predator.