Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

TWO MORNINGS LATER, she was the last to linger at the foot of the trail, watching the small party ride up the incline through the binoculars she’d borrowed from Bart. Bart had stayed back to tend to one of the horses who had picked up something in his hoof and been favoring it all day; he was worried that a trip to the settlement and back would be too much for the horse. Besides, three men were more than enough to do the reconnaissance.

There were only two possible outcomes. The first was that the settlement party had reached Salt Point, and were now in some state of construction. The first wave would probably not be thrilled to see them, but the new council had put a lot of effort into how to present their case, and even Cass had to admit that it was a compelling one, focusing more on the skills and resources they brought, and less on the challenges they presented. Though no one voiced the thought out loud, they’d lost their weakest members; they would not have to beg passage for their elderly or injured.

The other possibility nagged at her no matter how she tried to force it from her mind-that no one waited for them at Salt Point, that there was nothing there besides beautiful scenery and spring snows, a plot of land perfect for a well-supplied, well-rested party with the luxury of a plan and the means to implement it. But the Edenites had come with only what they could carry, enough food for another week. They had children and old people; they were demoralized by loss and lacking clear leadership. Cass was certain that, if nothing waited for them but bare land, they would lose more people before the summer came.

Still, the little advance team seemed to lift everyone’s spirits as they took off at a brisk pace up the mountain. Dor and Smoke had become competent riders. Bart had been training them for the past week, after they determined that Smoke and Dor and Nadir would ride ahead. Smoke had lingering stiffness in his hip and leg, and getting in the saddle presented a challenge, but by the third day he had mastered the move. Dor tended to impatience with the animals, but once he started riding Rocket, who had been Mayhew’s mount, it went more easily; Rocket was as stubborn and headstrong as Dor himself.

Nadir was the key to the group’s cohesiveness. Smoke and Dor spoke mostly to-and through-him; Cass didn’t miss the way the men avoided each other. If one walked by, the other would step out of the way, or pretend to be engaged in some small task. The few words they exchanged were brief and barbed.

It made Cass melancholy to remember their old friendship in the Box. True, Dor had been Smoke’s employer, but they’d worked as partners from the start. They talked for hours, trained together most mornings, fought and worked side by side. Now, after so much had passed, she finally knew the secret Smoke had confided in Dor, and forgiven him for choosing to share it with him instead of her. Dor had never told anyone about the thing Smoke had done, and she understood that the secret would stay with the three of them and someday die with them.

At first she’d thought that the secret should be enough to bind them all, its terrible weight a burden they could only bear together. But now she understood that loving her had driven the two men apart. They were both proud men, both passionate, loath to compromise. Now that she’d separated herself from them both, she saw the way they drove themselves harder than ever. Smoke’s regimen of healing left him spent and exhausted each night, but he didn’t rest until he’d done a full share of work. Dor often seemed to be everywhere at once, consulting with the new council, helping anyone who asked, and throwing himself into the manual labor of breaking camp, splitting wood, hauling water, anything to burn off his endless supply of glowering humorless energy.

Paradoxically he seemed more and more at home, the farther they traveled from civilization. This was an inhospitable part of the country, far from any mountain pass or even an improved road. Dor was undaunted by the lack of commerce, power lines, any evidence of community. They’d been following the map the Easterners had laid out and found this final camp exactly where it had been marked, eight miles down mountain from Salt Point on what had been an old stagecoach road many years ago and in recent decades had served only the most intrepid sportsmen: cross-country skiers, backpackers and fishermen.

On the map the camp was not named, but a note scrawled in the margin read, “5 cabins, well water, no elec.” There was no sign of a well anywhere and only three cabins remained standing, one reinforced sometime in the last decade with repairs to the board siding and a new handrail, the other two in sorry shape. Elsewhere the remains of other cabins were stacked haphazardly. On the positive side, there was no evidence of Beaters anywhere in the camp. Cass, who had been on the lookout for the whole journey, had not seen a single blue leaf in at least a week. Perhaps it was true, that it could not tolerate the harsh winters of the north.

Best of all, neatly parked in a row at one end of the camp were three empty flatbed trucks, and the trail leading up the mountain was deeply rutted. The logical conclusion was that the first wave had arrived and used a compact tractor to take load after load of supplies up the trail.

Last night they’d built a celebratory bonfire from discarded lumber and kept it going all night, and since there was no threat of precipitation, almost everyone slept on the ground near the fire. Volunteers took turns feeding boards into the flames, an extravagance they’d think twice about if anyone expected to be here more than a single night.

In the morning there was an atmosphere of subdued cheer-of hope. People stirred from their fireside pallets, pushed themselves up on elbows, sat up in tangles of blankets. The wood was damp, the fire smoky, but people leaned in close nonetheless, warming their hands. They pushed back their hoods and combed disheveled hair with their fingers and looked at the sky, gasping at the beauty of the mountain face illuminated with the rising sun. There were murmured good-mornings, gentle inquiries as to how the night had passed.

For breakfast there was fresh-caught fish, as much as anyone cared to eat, grilled over the fire. The teens took over the serving and cleanup duties, unasked; a couple of the boys tossed a tennis ball with the little kids.

Not everyone was holding up well. A handful of Edenites sat apart, morose and uncommunicative. The circles under some of the older folks’ eyes had deepened, and they weren’t eating. Post-traumatic stress, Cass figured, but there was little she could do for it now. She brought food to Ingrid, took her turn holding Rosie. Across the clearing, Valerie glared at her while she helped with the horse; Cass turned away.

Dor, Smoke and Nadir were surrounded by well-wishers when they took their leave, a spirit of cautious optimism pervading the group. Cass stood near the back and watched Dor hug Sammi, and then search her out in the group. For a tense moment she felt both Dor and Smoke watching her, and she looked away, turning toward the path they’d climbed the day before, and focused on a hawk that soared lazily above the valley below.

She waited until they were off, the ground reverberating with the horses’ hoofbeats, before she busied herself with cleaning up from the morning meal.

Now, with Ruthie asleep on a cabin porch with Twyla after a long and unseasonably warm day of playing at the edges of the stream, and everyone else either fishing or napping or strolling, taking advantage of their first day of rest in weeks, Cass slipped away from the camp, following the trail where the men had ridden this morning. She wanted to be the first to see them return. She was still looking for clues and, having failed to find any in the mirror the night before, thought she might find them now. Two men had ridden away with Nadir this morning; both had loved her, but she wasn’t sure if her future lay with either of them. For several days she’d felt that the answer was tantalizingly close. Perhaps the feeling was nothing but the imminence of the journey’s end, but Cass thought it had to be something more.