The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(22)

“A sight, ain’t it?”

It took what strength I had to drag my eyes away and turn back to Olin. When I did, he was cradling his coffee cup, watching me calmly. I tried to answer, but words wouldn’t come, so I nodded.

“Folks give it all sorts of names,” he continued. “Hereabouts, we just call it the Mountain.”

I pressed my napkin to my lips. I felt flushed—a mild fever was muddling me, that was all. I’d overdone it coming down to breakfast.

“You have a pretty place,” I managed finally.

Their farmhouse was stately—two stories of smooth gray stones, facing west, with wide windows and a deep porch wrapping around.

“Built it myself,” Olin said. “We had ourselves a little low-slung place snug to the road at first, but I kept plowin’ up fieldstones every year, and the missus, she hankered for a stone house like she seen in some magazine. So I put fieldstones by till I had enough to make it for her. Sure took a while.”

A red barn and a slope-roofed coop for the chickens stood behind the house. Next to the barn was an empty corral, and farther down the valley were thick groves of nut trees and fruit trees, shade trees and varieties of pine. There were many others I couldn’t identify. Beyond that stood half-grown fields of wheat and corn.

I could hear water running nearby that Olin said was Willow Creek, cutting down from the Mountain. A hundred yards or so out was a little arching footbridge. And on the far side of the bridge was a boxlike building of yellow stucco with turquoise trim. It sat along a hardpan road that bisected the valley north to south, with a neon sign on the roof facing away. I couldn’t make out what it said.

“Yonder’s our place—the Crow’s Nest Café,” said Olin.

A pickup truck, mustard yellow, sat in the shade of the building. I could only guess it belonged to the short-order cook who worked there—the one Jessie said had found us and brought us to their door.

“You can’t get much business out here,” I said. “Remote as it is.”

There looked to be miles of empty in every direction, and I was grateful for it. A moat of wilderness to keep the world out.

“We get enough,” said Olin. “Not brisk—regulars, mostly. And every now and then strangers blow through.”

I checked out both ends of the road. If Jim were to find us, that was how he’d come.

Olin nodded south.

“Up the road there, round the bend, is our little town—Morro. Used to be mines all through here till one day the copper played out. Most folks up and left, but some of us stayed on.”

He looked about, taking in the landscape in a way that was almost loving. As if all he surveyed in every direction was as much a work in progress as his house and his fields.

Jessie was back with the eggs. “Here, honey,” she said, sliding two of them onto my plate and two onto Laurel’s. “Eat up.”

“It’s our little corner,” said Olin. “Summers are hot, but they don’t burn you. Winters are cold, but they don’t bite. A few of us, we was born hereabouts. Others was movin’ through and decided to stay on. But nobody makes it here that don’t make for good company.”

His blue eyes locked with mine as if he were scouting for something. I couldn’t look away if I wanted to.

Finally he nodded.

“And every now and again,” he said, “we get us a short-timer. I figure you for one of them.”

For some reason, it stung me to hear it.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

He smiled encouragingly.

“I figure you for a gal with a thing or two to accomplish yet,” he said. He chucked Laurel under the chin. “This li’l gal, too.”

Jessie turned to Laurel. “My, my! You ate every last bit on your plate,” she said. “You want seconds?”

“No, ma’am. I’m full,” said Laurel.

“Run along, then, and take your plate to the kitchen. Then I know for a fact there’s a new swing under that tree yonder, made for a little girl just your size.”

Laurel ran to the kitchen with her plate and fork, then over to a big chestnut tree near the barn. She slid into a wooden swing seat that looked freshly hewn and sanded, and kicked off. Her slim legs pumped hard. Her hair and feather boa flew.

“Mommy, watch!” she called.

“I see you, sweetie! Hold tight!”

“She’ll be fine,” Olin said. “She’s a strong little thing.”