Page 2 (1/1)

He are again as he was so often of being utterly alone At his elevation there were thick forests of conifers, mainly birch, fir, and in to count He’d seen lots of quaking aspen too No logging coher-elevation peaks across the valley, there were no trees, no flowers as there were here in his alpine e beauty, untouched by huer at the far end of the valley that stretched from east to west below It claimed fifteen hundred and three souls Silverthe valley open with more than thirty thousand people-miners, prostitutes, store owners, crooks, an occasional sheriff and preacher, and very few fao The descendants of those few locals who had stuck it out after the silver mines had closed do catered to a trickle of summer tourists There were cattle in the valley, but they were a scruffy lot He’d seen bighorn sheep anddown the slopes really close to the cattle, pronghorn antelope grazing at the lower elevations, and prowling coyotes

He’d driven his four-wheel-drive Jeep down there just once since he’d been here to stock up on groceries at Cleo? He’d bought a package of frozen peas, forgetting that he didn’t have a freezer, just a senerator sitting just outside the cabin He’d cooked those frozen peas on his wood-burning stove, then eaten the entire package in one sitting next to the one bright standing laht a gli for prey, and took his ax back to the stus It didn’t take hi to pull off his down jacket, then his flannel shirt, then his undershirt And still he worked up a sweat His rhyth in to war and healthy He was in business He knew he had s than he could use for the next week, but he just kept to that hard, sht with power, and release

He stopped a moment to wipe the sweat off his face with a sleeve of his shirt Even his sweat smelled fresh, as if his innards were clean

He heard so

A very faint sound It had to be an aniotten used to the owls and the sparroks, to the chipmunks and the skunks, and to the wolves This sound wasn’t one of the his h meadow There were other cabins, but they were lower, at least a half mile away No one came up here except maybe in the summer to hike It was ain He froze in ain

It was like the desperate cry of so-a kitten? No, that was crazy Still, he pulled on his flannel shirt, and the down jacket He leaned down and picked up his ax The weight felt good Had anotherperfectly still, letting the silence invade him until he was part of it He felt the cool afternoon breeze stir the hair on his head At last it ca sound that was fainter this time, broken off into two distinct parts, as if suddenly split apart

As if a creature was nearly dead

He ran fast over the flat meadohere his cabin stood He ran into the pine forest that surrounded the high oing in the right direction, but uncertain even as he ran

He heard his own hard breathing and stopped Little sun could cut through the dense trees Now that it was late afternoon, it was nearly dark here deep in the forest, where there were suddenly no sounds at all Nothing He cal He heard a slithering sound He whipped around to see a s its way under a her up than it should be

He waited silent as the trees on all sides of hiht bicep Slowly he lowered the ax to the ground

Suddenly he heard it again, off to his left, not too far away, muffled and faint, a sound that was almost like an echo of itself, a ht ahead, his stride long He caht overhead There was rich high grass waving in the breeze Blue colu wildly, soft and delicate, already welco It was a beautiful spot, one he hadn’t yet found on his daily treks