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“Yes, we are going fishing and no arguments!" Using her cutting knife like a pointing finger, Kat looked up from the kitchen counter to throw her father a warning glare.
"But Kat, Josie might deliver any day. I usually visit Will on Wednesday and see how he's managing without Irma around. I mean what if something happens?" Her father stood with arms folded watching her pack generous slices of fresh bread and a large wedge of cheese into her saddlebag.
"Papa, you'll do what you always do when you go out on calls. You'll tell Mr. Forester where you'll be. If an emergency arises, he'll know how to send folks to find you." She turned to him with her hands resolutely braced on her hips. "But only if it's life threatening!"
Looking about the office uncertainly, but noting the stubborn stance of his only daughter, Nathaniel rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know."
Kat, closing the flap on her saddlebag, stepped to her father's side and took a firm grasp of his arm. "I do. We're going."
Nathaniel allowed her to tow him out the door, but not without one more weak argument, "But I'm not even sure I know where all my gear is!"
"I do!" As they stepped outside, she gestured to the basket already tied to her father's gelding. Two poles rose high like knight standards where she'd lashed them to the saddle. "I've already taken care of it. Now let's go! You always told me the best fish don't wait for any man."
They rode quickly down the hill to the Foresters' door where Kat hopped down to stick a note between the frame and the door with instructions about where to find them. At the west end of town where the newest houses stood, they began the gradual climb to the foothills. Here the Payette River spread out for a mile or so where two smaller streams fed into it, one with colder waters than the other. It was along the shore of the colder stream that Kat directed Blue.
The stream rose gradually from the valley floor, snowberry and wild lilac bushes giving way to a few scattered pines. A cottonwood loomed before them as they rounded a low hill. On the opposite bank rose a pile of jagged granite boulders, looking as if they'd been intentionally stockpiled there by some passing troll. Here the stream lingered on its journey to the river, forming a deep still pool. Their favorite fishing hole looked just as she'd remembered it. What a relief that at least this one thing had not changed in her absence.
Wasting no time, she slid out of the saddle. Blue eagerly set to grazing while she spread out a quilt on the new spring grass a few feet from the stream. With a deep sigh, Kat plopped down, flung her arms wide and fell back on the blanket, supremely satisfied with this moment.
Forgetting his earlier reluctance, Nathaniel, accepting the challenge of the fishing hole, searched eagerly through his bag for just the right hook. Meanwhile, a sassy trout taunted him as it swam in lazy patterns around boulders and under shady overhanging limbs.
Kat breathed deeply of the damp awakening earth before propping her head on her hand. Seeing her father wholeheartedly engaged in a leisurely pastime rather than elbow deep in someone's bloody problems - it filled her heart with gladness. "When was the last time you came out here, Papa?"
He straightened, cocking his head to the side, thinking. "Probably the summer before you left for Boston."
Kat clucked her disapproval. "All work and no play, Papa."
"Stop talking and let me fish!"
She pulled out the book she'd been unsuccessfully trying to read, making no more headway than the first ten pages in almost as many months. Today would be different.
Ten minutes later she slammed the book shut and sat up. She jumped to her feet and glanced at her father, intent on baiting his hook. Without disturbing him, she started up the narrow animal trail along the stream. Every few feet she found it necessary to duck her head to pass beneath low branches. At least, she thought, the thorny berry bushes were mostly contained to the opposite bank.
The terrain altered, the vegetation becoming less dense the farther she traveled. She found she could walk without bending over. She stopped, straining to hear what she expected. A few yards farther the sound of falling water increased. Kat smiled, quickening her pace.
A few feet from the stream, the bank rose steeply. Squeezed into a narrow fissure, water cascaded down the face of moss-covered rock. A shallow pool carved out of weathered limestone lay at its base. From the cloven rock, ferns sprouted in riotous fashion. It was a fairytale world that had for years belonged to her alone.
She knelt then at the mossy lip of the pool and looked down. What fantasies she had created here as a child, of talking rabbits and enchanted birds that whispered their secret identities in her ear! She had known then that had she the courage to fall into the pool, she too would be transformed. But she did not then attempt it nor did she now.
She sat back on her heels, hands caressing the velvet moss. Choices. Life was a series of choices, some hard, some easy. As a child, they were things like, pretend ponies or sheriffs? Eat the mud pie or don't? Obey or disobey? For most of her adulthood, it seemed her choices always boiled down to stay or go. Stay in Snowberry, or go to school? Beg her suitor to stay, and leave her scholastic dreams behind? Stay or go. Go or stay. Why did it keep coming back to these two rending choices? How to know if she had chosen wisely? Was she choosing wisely now? And the what ifs began to parade before her. The one that loomed the largest, the elephant in the parade, was yet to be decided. What if she didn't take the position in San Francisco? What if she gave up the dream? Was there another to replace it?
The trail climbed from here to a ridge with a vista of the river behind her. Relieved that she'd chosen to wear trousers, she scrambled over the rocks, beginning to climb. It wasn't particularly far, but there was no trail to follow, so she had to pick her way through the brush around some rocky outcroppings. As her hands scraped on rough stones, she regretted not wearing her riding gloves.
At last she emerged from the thick underbrush and ducking under the branches of a low-hanging cedar, she found herself looking out over the valley to the south and west. Shading her eyes, she peered in the direction of the town. Looking more like a storybook village from this height, the effect of white-washed cottages and small businesses arrayed in orderly symmetry charmed her. Kat found her favorite ledge, one she was certain was created just for her with a flat seat and a short back to lean against. She perched on the rock, hugging her knees to her chest, her chin resting on her knees, sighing with contentment.
"Pretty, ain't it?"
She jerked her head around, a gasp escaping her lips. "Oh!" It was all she said when she saw him.
"I'm sorry, ma'am. I didn't know how to keep from startling you." Jonathan stood a few feet back leaning against a gnarled cedar tree, his arms folded easily across his chest, his hat tipped low shadowing his face.
She experienced a violent transformation in her emotions from absolute serenity to extreme annoyance, as again her private space had been violated. But Jonathan seemed far more interested in the view than in her, so she relaxed as her emotions leveled out again.
Kat remembered then the trail that led from Schmidt's Valley up to the ridge, one she'd taken often, easier than the one she'd just climbed. He must have ridden up from there. She looked up at Jonathan uncertain as to what to say, so she turned her gaze as he had, back to the valley.
Neither spoke for long minutes. The vista held them there, the sinuous curves of the wide green river winding through spring fresh grasses, the patchwork quilt of a town, the layered range of foothills giving way to distant mountains on two sides of the valley. On the far horizon clouds rose in sinister billows of gray and mauve.
"Looks like a storm's comin'." His words, though soft, made the hair on the back of her neck prickle. She kept her eyes trained on the fast approaching bank of angry clouds.
"Yes, it does," she said softly, her voice barely more than a murmur.
"Guess we'd better be gettin' back. This isn't a good place to get caught in a storm, I'd think."
She turned to look at him, his hand stretched out to her. She took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet. With her hand still in his, she heard the first rumblings of thunder as it rolled in across the mountain range before moving across the valley below. The sound prompted her to turn back, seeing gray clouds rolling down from the mountain to cast their shadows over the valley floor. Even now, the air seemed charged with the fierce energy building within them.
"Will you be all right?"
She hesitated, struck by the genuine concern she heard in his voice. But that unpleasant prickle at the base of her neck returned. This was a man of contradictions, she mused. He was a dangerous man, of that she felt certain. She felt, with equal conviction, that she was safer in his company than any place else she'd ever known.
She answered softly, "Yes." Then with more assurance she repeated herself. "Yes, of course."
She felt his eyes upon her as she returned to the trail, knowing that he would stay there until she had begun her descent.
When she emerged from the thicket at the edge of the stream, Nathaniel was waiting with the horses packed and ready to return home. He looked at her anxiously. "You had me worried. That storm's come up fast."
Kat wordlessly took Blue's reins and mounted up.
The storm started with a slow pelting of light rain, but by the time they reached the house it seemed the whole storehouse of heaven had opened.
Nathaniel and Kat stood at the barn door watching the torrent carve shallow canyons in the road to town. Thunder followed in rolls that shook the walls, causing the Morgan to blow and stamp her feet with each clap.
"Haven't seen one like this for quite some time," Nathaniel shouted above the din.
Kat moved closer to her father, hugging his arm. He pulled free of her grip when he felt her shivering. Wrapping his arm around her, he pulled her close. She felt safe again, the same way she had felt secure with Jonathan Winthrop. Aside from her father, she'd never experienced that assurance of protection in anyone else's presence. She wondered at that. Something in his calm manner, his keen watchfulness, his quietly measured speech, all communicated to her that Jonathan was a man of intentionally, restrained strength.
After a time, the space between thunderclaps increased as the storm rolled beyond the valley and into the far blue range. Kat leaned heavily against her father, breathing in the familiar scent of him.
He squeezed her tighter to him. "I used to tell you when you were a little girl and scared that thunder wasn't anything more than two forces of nature meeting head on. As you grew older, I explained a little more about the science of it. Remember?"
Kat looked up and saw that he was seeing something beyond the passing storm, whether in the past or future she wasn't sure. "I remember, Papa. You gave me the science for everything. It made me feel stronger knowing the why of things."
Nathaniel looked down at her. A vague almost puzzled expression washed across his face. "You know that the older I get, the more I realize how little I know. I could still tell you the why. But lately, I've been thinking more about the who."
"Is that why you've been going to church lately?"
Nathaniel laughed lightly. "Should've known the wags would have filled your ear about that. I wasn't sure how you'd react when you learned about it. Some hypocrite I turned out to be." He shook his head slowly, the laughter fading, replaced by that contemplative expression she'd seen earlier. "It's just that there are questions these days I can't answer with science anymore. People that should be dead, who aren't. Remedies I couldn't administer with my entire apothecary couldn't cure them, but they were healed. Things happen that I can't explain."
Nathaniel pulled back and shrugged. "I'm just looking for answers, Kat, just like I always have. But I've pretty much exhausted the places to look for them." He gave her a half smile. "Sometimes, of late, I think I've been asking the wrong questions."
Chapter 13
