An Ordinary Woman by Cecelia Holland

Author:Cecelia Holland [Holland, Cecelia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-12-11T21:09:39+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Along the river the cottonwoods grew thick, their yellow leaves streaming in the wind. Boulders clogged the river’s wash. Ben led the way, picking a course upstream. Everybody went on foot. The animals scrambled on the bad footing, slipped and stumbled and went to their knees, tried to refuse to go on, and were driven on. Ann clung to Nancy with both fists wrapped in her mother’s dress. That night they camped by the river, in the lee of the bank, with a great fire made of driftwood, plenty of water, but nothing to eat.

The next day, climbing steadily from dawn onward, they came up at noon over the summit of a ridge, into the teeth of a roaring wind, and saw before them the battlements of the Sierra, thousands of feet of naked rock. Above the dark shaggy timberline, on the gaunt flanks of the peaks, snow lay like trapped clouds. Bidwell was riveted. He took his journal and wrote furiously, stopping every few moments. The wind ripped at the pages of his book. Ann buried her face against Nancy, hiding from the howling air.

Nancy murmured to her, one hand on the child’s head. She walked along behind Ben, looking out over the plunging slope; the abyss seemed to fall away forever. She knew why Bidwell was writing so madly. This was like the top of the world. There could be no place else on earth like this.

“Having ascended about half a mile,” Bidwell wrote,* “a frightful prospect opened before us—naked mountains whose summits still retained the snows perhaps of a thousand years… The winds roared—but in the deep dark gulfs which yawned on every side, profound solitude seemed to reign.”

To one of them, at least, it looked like the end. George Henshaw, who had come west for his health, sank down on the ground against a granite boulder and said, “I can’t. I can’t walk over that. Go on without me, boys; I’m done.”

They stopped. Many of them simply stared silently out over the tremendous panorama of the mountains, enraptured. Below the skirts of the rock peaks, the thick pine forest sang in the wind like some colossal harp. Higher up, rags and sheets of snow blew like flags off the white haunches of the peaks. Just to see this absorbed the mind wholly. Drew you out of yourself, into the infinite.

Nancy’s arms ached, bringing her back to the immediate and small. She shifted Ann to her other hip. The mountains captured her eyes again. God must live in such a place as this, in such majesty. Then Ben was saying, “Come on, old man. Let’s go.”

Henshaw shook his head. “I’m done.”

Several of the men exchanged a look. Nancy drew back, frowning, and then Andy Kelsey unlimbered his rifle from his shoulder.

“Well, then,” he said, “I’ll just shoot you.”

Henshaw gasped. Nancy started forward and Ben caught her by the arm and held her. The corners of his lips twitched. Henshaw said, “You can’t do that.”

“Oh, yes, I can,” Andy said, and cocked his rifle.

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