We have found Boyd, though not in any good condition. We are at his cabin & for the first night in nearly a month, we will sleep indoors.
We remained at our riverbed camp until near mid-day. The fog was unchanged, so we loaded sleds. Travel was difficult. We stayed near the river’s main flow to keep our bearings, but then had to traverse open creeks, decaying ice. Our snowshoes were soon coated in a frozen slush. We stopped to remove them, struck them against each other to break free the ice.
Just then came the blast of a gunshot.
?—?That’ll be him, Samuelson said.
?—?He’s northwest, Pruitt read from compass.
For the next hour, we made our way in the direction.
?—?Sure wish he’d fire off another round, Samuelson said.
?—?That would be a help, Tillman said. —?Also hoping he’ll have supper on us when we find him.
But there were no more gunshots. In the fog we could not make out hillsides, but at last we spotted a snowshoe trail that came out of the trees, led to a square cut out of the river ice.
?—?His water hole, Samuelson said.
The track was deep-set in snow, so had been used often during the winter, but Samuelson was grim as he made note of the fresh snow filling it in.
?—?He’s not been down here in some time.
The trail led away from the river & quickly turned steep. We left the Indians & sleds to retrieve them later. Even without the weight of the sleds pulling at us, at times we had to grab tree branches to keep from slipping down the slope.
Tillman observed that he wouldn’t want to haul water up such an incline.
After a strenuous climb, we reached a bench land of large spruce. Samuelson spotted a cabin through the trees.
A ghost of a man stood outside the door. Tall, gaunt, so weak he could hardly stand so he leaned on his rifle like a crutch. Boyd’s cheeks & eyes are sunken so that his face appears a skull. As he led us indoors, he showed us the many notches in his belt where he had tightened.
?—?I suppose it was folly to think you might have supper for us? Tillman said.
Boyd pointed to bare shelves, empty pots.
?—?I’ll go fetch the grub, Tillman said.
Pruitt said he would split kindling so as to build a fire in the woodstove.
Boyd did not seem to know what to do with himself or our company. He grinned, stared. Again & again he clasped Samuelson’s arm.
?—?Jesus on high, I’ve never been so glad to see you.
?—?Why the hell didn’t you fire another shot? We could have used help in finding you.
Boyd had been reduced to his last round of powder. He saved it, in case help came & he needed to alert someone to his whereabouts.
?—?Or in case help never did come, he added.
Samuelson asked why he didn’t travel downriver before now. Boyd’s answer was cryptic.
?—?She wouldn’t leave. She said she’d already come down too far out of the mountains.
When asked of whom he was speaking, Boyd said that he has a wife, that while there was no preacher to do the work, they are married before God all the same.
?—?I never would leave a wife, he said.
Samuelson became impatient, demanded to know who he was talking about. I advised we should get food in him as his thinking may be clouded by hunger.
The cabin is warming with the heat of the woodstove. We have boots, socks, wool underwear, drying along a beam. Tillman is cooking ham & rice, a kindness to share the last of our meat. Out of doors, the Indians have built a lean-to of boughs against a spruce tree & cooked their own meals beneath.
Once we have eaten, I will be curious to hear how Boyd met this fate.
I will here do my best to capture Boyd’s story.
He was hunting ptarmigan up in the hills behind his cabin when he first spied her. He claims she was the most beautiful woman he ever put eyes on.
?—?There was a mist, hard to make anything out, so I thought I was seeing things. She was moving over the rocks just like an angel. I hollered out to her, but she didn’t make that she’d heard me. Before I could catch her, she was gone.
Boyd returned to the mountainside again, again, in hopes of seeing her. He was going to look for her forever if need be. —?Head over heels like a wounded bear, he says.
At last, one day he saw her through the fog. He approached her gently, so he wouldn’t spook her off.