The Big Dark Sky (80)
If the boy has been foolish and set out on another, harder trail, Ophelia won’t be able to meet the challenge, being a soft suburban girl in pink-and-tan running shoes. She’ll wear out quickly or take a fall and break a bone. Even if the damn kid doesn’t become burdened with her, he won’t have the skills or strength to take on the mountains and storm without his father, the renowned historian and man of action now flavoring the corpse stew under the church.
In any case, Nature does not favor them as she favors Asher, for they have not cut from themselves the power to breed and ruin the world. As a reward for Asher’s supreme sacrifice, green Nature will bring gray death to the snarky bitch and the boy, either by her hand or by Asher’s.
69
These were the moments for which the Tac Light batteries had been saved: the bald and weathered stone so smooth in places that the rain waxed it to a dangerous slickness, other places where the broad crest abruptly narrowed and the former slope became a sheer drop to one side or both. Now the ridge brought them to a two-foot-wide cleft that testified to the power of an ancient seismic action that people of its time might have cited as proof that giants slept in the earth and, when troubled in their sleep, caused havoc on the surface. The light revealed the gap, and in the light, they leaped.
The dangers of this trail were acceptable, because ridgelines afforded hikers a quicker route than lower land. Fewer trees allowed a more direct path, as did less underbrush. Up here, there were no deadfalls, no slopes of brittle shale or loose gravel stone to slide underfoot.
For the most part, the path was wide enough to allow Colson to keep Ophelia at his side rather than lead her and then have to look continually back to be sure she hadn’t fallen behind or gotten in trouble. The trek wasn’t easy on her, but she was game enough, and more than merely game. She didn’t complain, didn’t want to pause to catch her breath or massage sore muscles, and though her inadequate shoes probably caused her pain, she gave no voice to it. Maybe she went to the gym regularly or was a long-distance runner.
Terror and the survival instinct could blunt pain, facilitate greater endurance. Colson had read about that in a science magazine. Maybe it was true, although not everything you read was true just because it was written by a scientist or another expert. His father had taught him as much by comparing how different historians wrote about the same events.
Of course, Ophelia was also driven hard by what happened to her sister. For her, this was about making sense out of a senseless accident, while Colson was motivated by a thirst for vengeance. She wanted to find meaning in tragedy, hope in the face of loss. What he wanted was for his dad’s murderer to suffer horribly and die slowly in the most gruesome manner he could devise. He knew her motive was pure, and his was not. He didn’t care. His father would have told him that he should care, and maybe one day he would. But right now, it was not caring about indulging in vengeance that gave him greater endurance. He was, after all, just thirteen years old, which not long ago his dad had teasingly called “a barbarous age.” When this business was done, he would have a lot of time to make himself into a better man.
Greater exposure to the elements was the price paid for taking the high ground. On this grim night, the price was daunting—the wind a whip, the rain a stinging swarm. Without rain gear, they were soaked. Colson’s sodden clothes were heavy on him, and his wet socks bunched and twisted in hiking boots that could not remain waterproof in this deluge. If it had been colder, he and Ophelia would have been in serious trouble. Later hours of the night would bring lower temperatures; after all, this was Montana. But with luck they would reach help and safety before a chill sapped their strength.
He was coping better than he’d expected. None of what his dad had taught him was lost on Colson. He was surprised that the farther they moved into the wilderness, the more competent he felt, the more sure of what to do as the terrain offered each new challenge. He thought his father would be proud of him, and that inspired him to tough out whatever might lie ahead.
In spite of bad weather and its discomforts, they were making good time. After crossing a forest-service road, they arrived at the transitional crest leading to the western ridge that paralleled the eastern one they’d just traveled. The canyon-head wall, here at the north end of the box, was less steep than the slopes that fell away from the east and west ridges. Once they transited the head wall, they would turn south along the western ridge for less than a mile before the trail descended toward foothills and ranch land.
Slashing in from the northwest, the storm had been battering them from the left, but now they were hiking directly into it. The great volume of rain, with the punishing wind behind it, blurred Colson’s vision when he didn’t keep his head down. Hunched forward, he had to focus on the immediate ground before him.
When the way narrowed for about fifty yards, Ophelia moved from his side and fell in close behind him, as lightning stilted across the sky on bright spider legs. Perhaps because he blocked her from the rain, allowing her to raise her head, she saw the threat when he did not. She grabbed the sleeve of his jacket and cried out, but the wind and thunder robbed her words of meaning.
He halted and turned. As he pivoted, the direct beam of the Tac Light revealed what she had seen by the grace of the lightning. On the brow of the slope to the left, among the trees, at most twenty feet away, the immense creature was standing on its hind legs, eight feet tall, maybe taller. Grizzlies were called “grizzly” because the hairs of their thick brown fur were tipped with gray. In the intense beam of the Tac Light, the wet bear looked more silver than brown. Its eyes were as yellow as egg yolks, radiant with animal eyeshine.