“See you in the autumn,” he called.
Marcus crossed the highway, found the trail to the Jaw and plunged into a lacy forest of western hemlocks. The giant trees filtered the sunlight into misty streamers that shafted downward. He took a deep breath of the sweet air and began his long climb to the peak.
Marcus crossed the Knife Rim swiftly. The painful memory of Will pierced like a million pins as he marched the narrow wall. He slowed down at the fatal spot, heard Will call his father stupid, saw his fist and felt its impact. Will had hit first. He had. Marcus ran to the end of the Rim. To see a person fall to his death, to awake some nights wondering how it had all happened, to hear Will’s voice in the wind had been unbearable. But now he realized he had done what he had to do—strike to save his own life. The year-long tension ended. The terrible guilt he had felt fell away. He continued up the trail with a lighter heart.
The Jaw rose like a phantom from a river of clouds. On its slope, the high goat ledges were green bands. A golden eagle sped out of a canyon, spiraled up over the peak and out of sight. Marcus whistled and jogged along spiritedly. By the time he reached Feather Plume Falls he was out of the hemlocks and firs, into the subalpine world. Marcus was glad; he loved the wild brightness of the land of small twisted trees and wild meadows. He sat down, caught his breath, and thought of the Morgans and the Kulicks far below, living in an inferno of their own making. He wiped his brow as if to rid himself of the last sweat of the family feud. Then he dipped up an icy cupful of water and drank long. The wild freshness of the subalpine world elated him and the icy water washed away all thoughts of home.
“I will never go back,” he said to the spray and the ice-rimmed pool. “There’s too much hatred and fear down there.”
He hooked his cup on his belt, stood up and hiked on, feeling freer as the valley dropped away. As he walked, he planned his shelter in the mountain. He envisioned permanent smoke-houses and gardens, for he had resolved to stay away from Hungry Bear until its buildings crumbled and the wind carried its dust across the mountains to the sea.
Marcus halted; the trail was quivering under his feet. A loud explosion sounded on the mountain. He spread his feet wide and glanced back. A vast area on the side of the Jaw was alive and rolling. The gleaming block slid for an instant; then it blew up and fractured into a billion bits. It thundered down into a small valley and became a cloud of snow that boomed and rumbled. Huge trees snapped like toothpicks in its flow. A raven screamed, a coyote called as the thundering avalanche filled the high valley.
Marcus yelled with awe. The mountain was wild and snarling. It was warning him. “Go away from Old Gore,” it was saying. His heart pounded. “Ha!” he yelled back at the Jaw. “He’s mine! I’m smarter than you are!”
Gingerly he peered into the valley. The avalanche had piled up like another mountain, still and ominous. Something moved on the snowfield to his left. Marcus pivoted and saw a black rock disappear before his eyes. It just turned into white and faded away. He focused his binoculars. Two black spots gleamed in the whiteness.
“Old Gore,” he cried aloud. “I see you. You’re in front of that boulder.” Goose bumps rose on his neck as the rock reappeared and the goat vanished into a blazing, white ice chutte.
“I’m coming,” he called to him a bit nervously. “I’m coming to learn all about you.” He slung his rifle higher on his shoulder and hurried up the trail that went to the sun.
He was high now, far above the cedars and Douglas firs. Here the Jaw was covered with vegetation twisted by winds and ice. Only a few alpine firs were able to survive in this highway of wind near timberline.
The trail was now white with blown snow, and Marcus found the going tougher. He took out his ice axe, dug it into the packed snow and pulled himself slowly upwards.
Beyond the blow he came upon the hoof prints of horses. The trail crew had been bringing supplies to the Chalet in preparation for its opening in June, when the danger of avalanches was over and the trails were clear for hikers and riders. Marcus had never been in the Chalet. It was beyond his world, visited as it was by tourists, and until this week it had never interested him. Now he wondered about its walls, beds, rooms, tables. What kind of place protected Melissa from the wind and cold?
He hurried on. Footprints of goats lay all around, their broken moon-shaped designs stamped on slippery spikes of rock and narrow blades of ice. Goats were magical mountaineers. Not even a bird would balance where they leaped and frolicked. Suddenly Marcus had the feeling that he was being watched. He spun to the right and left, he glanced up and down. There was only whiteness and clefts and fissures. He climbed on. He was now at least five thousand feet up the mountain. The goats lived between five and nine thousand feet, he knew.
Marcus swung his axe gracefully as he crossed another snow drift; then he jumped back onto the rocky trail and jogged to a switchback. There he stopped.
The Chalet was in view far above him. It sat on a sheer cliff at the bottom of a glacial valley. Stunted alpine fir embraced it and a waterfall threaded down the cliff. The red-gray stone of the Chalet matched the rocks and tors.
Marcus’s heart beat rapidly. It had been eight months since he had seen Melissa. Would she be changed? Would their meeting be awkward? What had another year at an Eastern school done to her?
A mile farther along the trail, the foliage told him he was nearing the creek that came down from the Chalet falls. Dwarfed aspen, chokecherry and snowberry grew abundantly, the plants of the high mountain streams. As he walked through the low trees, he named each one, for he must know each habitat for his study. At a bend he looked back to the ice chutte where Old Gore had vanished.
“I know a lot about the mountain, Old Gore,” he shouted. “And I’m going to know more. I’m going to get you.”
As he spoke, a distant rock fell, struck a steep snowy slide, picked up snow, rolled, grew, set off a movement, and a second avalanche boomed into the valley.
“Okay, okay,” he said to the Jaw. “I hear you. But I won’t go back. I won’t.” He jogged to the juncture where the Going-to-the-Sun Trail met the trail from the Chalet. He paused. The trail crossed a wooden bridge before it wound up the steep cliff to the inn. Marcus pondered what to do next. Go to Melissa or set up his tent? He studied the terrain. He was in a bowl of rock out of the wind. About fifty feet farther on was a meadow where he always camped before storming the citadel rocks of the Jaw. He would settle there first and then figure out some way to get word to Melissa. He must be careful. Aunt Jerome would be at the Chalet.
The sound of ice being crunched beyond the bridge alerted him. He ducked into a krummholz of firs and peered out.
Melissa was running toward him, her red curls flying, her feet moving lightly from rock to stone as she came down the trail.
“Melissa!” he called huskily. Her cheeks were as red as the alpine flowers, her blue eyes clearer and brighter than he could ever recall. With a cry, he enfolded her.
Marcus’s teeth struck Melissa’s with a crack. He pulled her against his whole body. Then he touched his forehead to hers. He was in love—this was doing handstands, turning ski flips, driving ninety.
“Marry me, Melissa,” he said. “Marry me, please.”
“All right,” she answered softly, astonishing him.
“Will you?” His heart banged wildly. “I have a job; I can support you.” She looked up at him, her eyes like gentian-blue flowers.
“You’re beautiful,” he gasped and brushed back her parka hood and inspected her lovingly.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Let’s go down to some distant town and find a minister. This minute. Now.” He pulled her gently toward the trail. She tugged the other way.
“My Aunt Jerome will marry us. She marries lots of summer people up here. She’s a justice of the peace, you know.”
“But she won’t marry you and me. Not a Morgan and a Kulick.”
“Oh, yes she will.” Melissa pulled him toward the tra
il to the Chalet. “Wait till you meet her. She’s dusty, dirty, mountainy...Dad calls her uncouth...They fight on sight. She thinks he was terrible to your father. I adore her and love her. She’s the kindest person I know.”
“She doesn’t hate me because of Will?”
She laughed and started up the trail. “Come with me,” she said. Seeing her march off toward the Chalet frightened him.
“Let’s go away,” he begged. “Let’s go to Canada or California. I’ll find work. This isn’t the only job in the world.” She shook her head.
“No, no, no, don’t you see? We’re safe here, absolutely safe. My parents know I’m working for Aunt Jerome but they’ve told everyone I’m in Europe. I told them you had joined the Peace Corps. They would never call and check that!”
Marcus still hesitated. “Melissa, let’s run away.”
“Please, please,” she said. “Come with me. Aunt Jerome will marry us and we can live on the Jaw, high up, way, way up, with the goats. We’ll end all the fighting with love.”
As he held her hands, Marcus heard her father’s voice on that terrible night: “Let’s forgive this night.” Maybe, thought Marcus, Tom Morgan really meant that. Hesitating with each step, he followed her up the path, thinking of the consequences of marriage. His father would lock him out of the house. He could never go home again. Home to what? he asked himself. To bitterness and hate. Melissa plodded ahead of him and he moved to catch up with her.
“Melissa, Melissa,” he cried. He ran, for his mind was made up.
At an icy bend Melissa skidded, fell and he picked her up. He threw her over his shoulder with a whoop of joy, feeling her lively body inside the big coat, hearing her laughter. Then he saw her red-gold curls before his face. He opened his mouth and bit them.
“You taste great,” he said.
“Faster, faster,” she whispered. “Giddyap.”
Marcus banked at a curve and sprinted up the trail. Finally he reached the top.
There he stopped. Before him stood a small horse-barn, a pump house and a well-worn path to the stone Chalet. He ran down the path, opened the door and stepped into a dimly lit hall. Melissa rested quietly like a bundle across his pack and shoulder.
A fire burned in a massive fireplace at one end of the stone room. Old inn tables were stacked by boarded windows that apparently looked out across the Mission Range into Idaho. At the other end of the hall, steel kettles and kitchen counters gleamed behind a log partition. Marcus blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light. It was almost twilight inside and outside.
“Hello.” The deep warm voice came from beside the fireplace. Marcus walked toward the sound. A small woman with a rusty complexion stood before the fire. She was dressed in woolen shirt, knickers and red knee socks. Her feet were clad in heavy mountain boots and her hair was as fine as spider webbing.
She smiled and her eyes creased along deep friendly lines.
“Aunt Jerome,” Melissa said from his shoulder. “Meet Marcus. He’s beautiful and I’m going to marry him.”
“I’ll be durned,” she said and studied him from head to foot.
“Marcus?” she mused. “That’s a different name. Not many Marcuses around here. Could it be Marcus Kulick?”
“The very one,” Melissa said and giggled. Aunt Jerome stepped forward.
“Come here, Marcus,” she said. Melissa wiggled and he lowered her slowly. Her feet touched the floor and he let her go reluctantly, afraid that three inches of separation might become a continent. Melissa took his hand and led him into the firelight.
“See,” she said brightly, “he’s tall and strong.” She helped him off with the backpack, unsnapped his coat and pulled it off.
“See, he has a broad chest...” She lifted his hand, “...and little black curls on his wrist, and...” She touched his face and thought a moment, “...furry brows that knit in the middle. He has big white teeth and...a stubborn chin and a mean nose. I love him so much.”
“He’s got kind eyes,” said Aunt Jerome and turned to Melissa. “So you’ve found Marcus Kulick to love?”
Marcus felt uneasy, then saw small lights sparkling brightly in Aunt Jerome’s eyes. He breathed comfortably. She winked.
“I’ll take good care of her,” he said softly. “I will.”
Aunt Jerome scrutinized him. “Where will you live? You can’t stay here. You can’t go to Hungry Bear.”
“We’ll live in the mountains,” Marcus said. “I have a tent, and a stove, an axe, and a rifle to hunt with. And I have a job. The Game Commission is grub-staking me.”
Aunt Jerome listened as if he were saying that he would soon be vice-president of a large company, for to her all his plans were reasonable. She had lived on the Jaw for thirty years. The mountain was her home.
“I’m up here to study the goats,” Marcus went on. Melissa slipped her hand into his. “It’s never been done before. I’ll do a terrific job. I’ll be famous. My father will be proud of me. Tom Morgan will be proud of me. They’ll be glad Melissa and I got married.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Aunt Jerome said with a twisted smile and a shake of her head. “But I like your plan. I’ll marry the two of you.”
She crossed the room to a large hand-made desk. “You and Melissa are destined,” she said. “The wounds must be healed. Your two fathers were good friends for so long.” She spoke with such feeling that Marcus almost believed that he and Melissa had been created to bring peace to their long-estranged families.
He took her hand and felt it tremble. Did she feel their destiny too?
In a cubby-hole in the desk, Aunt Jerome found a stack of marriage licenses she kept for summer marriages. She struck a match on her pants and lit a small candle.
“Melissa, you’re not of legal age to marry,” she said.
“You’re my godmother. You have the holy power to give me permission.” Melissa’s chin tilted defiantly.
Aunt Jerome shot her a look through the top of her reading glasses.
“The marriage can be annulled by your families,” she warned. “But,” she paused and glanced into the fire, “you could always marry again.” A pensive expression crossed her face, then she blinked and quickly filled out the details on the license.
“Sign here,” she said and handed Marcus the pen. Thoughtfully he wrote his name, passed the pen to Melissa and stared solemnly as her signature formed beside his. Marcus Kulick—Melissa Morgan: the rumbles of hatred died away and he saw only the bridge, the messages under the steps, the blue eyes and the hair of sunlight.
“We need witnesses,” Aunt Jerome said perfunctorily and picked up a battered Bible. “Ignatius!” She glanced toward the kitchen. “Would you and Singing Bird join us?”
In a far corner of the kitchen Marcus saw Ignatius White Falls and his wife, Singing Bird. He had not noticed them in the excitement, but as Ignatius approached, Marcus remembered the prayer on that far-away night at the foot of the Knife Rim when they found Will’s body—“Great Goat...Release the spirit of the boy and take him to the sun.”
He had pondered the meaning of those words all winter. Did the prayer mean that the goat had Will’s spirit? Did Will still walk the mountain as Old Gore? Did he? Did he? Marcus wanted to shout his painful question to Ignatius. The wind screamed. A mountain lion caterwauled and everything was real. There was no such thing as a spirit in a goat.
Marcus took control of himself. A goat was a goat. The mountains were rocks. Life came and went, and spirits were only in the minds of men.
“Take Melissa’s hand,” Aunt Jerome said in a low voice.
Marcus entwined his cold fingers in her warm ones. The fire sparked, and over the whistling call of the wind he heard the words of the wedding ceremony.
Then silence prevailed. “I do,” said Melissa softly.
5
THE LEDGE
Marcus opened his eyes. He was lying in front of the fireplace, looking over the down comforter at the sunlight shafting through some chink
in the rafters. He smiled at the sun. Today he was a husband, a protector, a provider and lover. He stretched his arms, then his ribs, legs and toes. He was coming to life like a lizard in the sun.
Exuberantly he rolled to his elbows.
“Melissa,” he said and pushed back the comforter to find the small girl. She was sleeping. The white lashes were pressed against her rosy face; copper shadows lay in the hollows of her cheeks.
“Wife,” he said, testing the word lovingly. Melissa’s eyes popped open. She giggled. “You thought I was sleeping. I’m not.”
“What were you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“About what?”
“About being a wife.”
“How does it feel?”
She sat up and pulled the comforter around her, then flopped back on the buffalo-skin pillow. “Marcus,” she said softly. “When you first kissed me, it felt like bird wings on my lips. Now it feels like butterflies and flowers all over me, even in my toes.”
She blushed and ducked down under the comforter. Marcus dove after her, and in the darkness he held her again.
Her hands explored his eyes, nose and mouth; then with a swift move she threw back the cover. Melissa stared at him for a long time, then she put her head on his stomach.
“Today I am Mrs. Kulick,” she said.
He took her in his arms, kicked the comforter over their heads and rocked her until she fell asleep. The clock in the kitchen ticked softly on and on.
“Melissa! Marcus!” Aunt Jerome was calling from the big sink. “It’s time for you to leave.” Marcus opened his eyes and shook Melissa gently. She blinked and sat up. Quickly she leaped to her feet and in the semi-darkness of the boarded-up inn dressed deftly. Marcus watched with great interest.
“Why do you put on your shirt before you put on your blue jeans?” he asked.
“Because it’s reasonable, of course,” she answered. “If you put on your shirt first, you just pull your trousers over it. You don’t have to spend an hour tucking it in.”
“I’ll be durned,” he said. “Do all girls do that?”