Part 2 (2/2)

”Until my father went to school in the East,” I said quietl}. ”And met my mother there.”

There was a momentary silence before Caleb Hawes spoke coolly. ”Something your grandmother has alwajs regretted.”

I turned to him with a sudden appeal I hadn't meant to make. ”I have a feeling I'm not welcome here. I won't stay long. Perhaps only for a few days. Long enough to find out why 3*

my grandmother wanted me to come. I don't belong here, and there's nothing I can do for her-so I'll leave as soon as I can.”

”Once you belonged here,” Jon Maddocks said.

The deep tones of his voice seemed to probe something dangerous in my memory, as if sleeping terrors stirred and grew ready to waken.

Hillary came to my rescue. ”Laurie's a New York girl now. I can't see her putting down roots in these mountains.”

”She can't help her roots,” Jon said, his eyes always on the winding mountain road, so that I saw only the back of his head, the battered rim of his hat. I couldn't place him, pigeonhole him, and I was beginning to suspect that no pigeonhole would ever accept that lanky, sinewy body. Had I known him when I was little? It was possible, since he was only a few years older than I. Yet I had no sense of recognition. Surely I would have known him at once if he had been the young boy who sometimes came into my dream.

”What I can't understand,” Hillary went on, ”is why Mrs. Morgan would want to stay in so remote and broken-down a place at her age.”

”It's her home.” Caleb sounded curt. ”She doesn't mean to be put out of it, no matter what anyone else advises. She is a determined woman. At least she used to be.”

”Used to be?” I repeated.

”She's changed,” he said, and was silent.

Hillary put another question of his own. ”Why does she disapprove of the Timberline?”

Apparently it was the wrong question, and the attorney closed his lips tightly on four words. ”You'd better ask her.”

I didn't mind the silence that followed. The mountains were awesomely beautiful, and I longed to be out where I could climb them, get to the very top, where I could command the earth below me. I gave myself over to watching whatever offered-tall spruce and hemlock, aspens with their quivering 39.leaves like ”silver dollars”-I remembered that phrase. Occasional outcroppings of red rock raised eerie pinnacles beside the road, and a mountain stream tumbled down the canyon toward the plains. Now that we were long away from Boulder there were fewer signs of habitation, but it was clear that cars had come this way, because of the pitiful animal bodies left on the pavement.

”Hold tight,” Caleb said. ”This is where we turn off on the road to Jasper.”

It was a rough gravel road-very rough-and I could see the need for a jeep. Wind came whining around craggy peaks that were etched now in gold from the lowering afternoon sun, so that mauve shadows fell across our way. Already it was cooler, and I was glad of my suede jacket and warm pants. Red whined uncertainly, and I knew that strange scents from the deep woods were reaching him. He responded to my hand and snuggled closer for rea.s.surance. He was not a very brave dog, and all this was unknown territory.

Once, looking down between aspens on the hillside below, I saw the main road we had left winding off in hairpin turns below us, with a car following its looped ribbon like a tiny bug. The sense of height was exciting, and the sense as well of moving out of touch with a world I knew-the world of cities and living towns. This was still wilderness. Forest and cold mountain streams, the steep-pitched sides of slope and canyon, hadn't yet been reached into destructively by man. I began to experience a bit of that euphoria Caleb Hawes had mentioned, and I knew that once I had loved all of this.

For the first time in some miles Jon Haddocks spoke. ”Look ahead!”

I stared through the winds.h.i.+eld at snow peaks lifting gloriously against a cornflower sky where the sun still shone.

”The Continental Divide,” Caleb informed us, sounding like 4.

a textbook. ”Running all the way from Canada's northwest territories to Mexico. The backbone of North America.”

Yet the Rockies were beginning to seem more like a jumble of mountains to me, spreading beyond and beyond forever, and not at all liike a thin backbone. They were indeed rocky, and not like the gentler mountains of the East.

Now it was my turn to cry, ”Look!” as I pointed toward broken ties and rusted rails running below the road we followed. ”Did trains come up here?”

”Of course,” Caleb said. ”That's the old narrow gauge that took out the ore from Jasper when it was mined. Wherever there was enough silver or gold, the railroads came. That track hasn't been used since early in the century. We're nearly there now.”

For a little while the lonely mountains had calmed me, but now I braced myself, waiting for my first glimpse of the town I could vaguely remember.

There had been a sign on the highway we had left announcing that the Pa.s.s was open. A reminder of what could happen when the snows came. Now we seemed to be traveling through a narrow cut between high peaks, and here the shadows were thick, almost as though night had begun, though it was still late afternoon.

”Jasper can be cut off completely in the winter months,” Caleb said. ”The road gets cleared out eventually, but there are sometimes snowslides that take days for the road crews to cut through. Electricity is the first thing to go, of course, and the telephone. Though we have shortwave radio now for emergencies.”

”Mrs. Morgan doesn't stay up here through all that snow, does she?” Hillary asked.

”Sure she does,” Jon said. ”I've been here with her for the last few winters. That's when you find out what you're made of.”

41.Caleb's laugh was dry. ”Not for me! Ill take Denver in the winter anytime. But the Morgans have always stayed here in the mountains, along with a few other hardy souls who dislike civilization. They have oil for heat and propane gas for cooking. And some extra generators. The old oil lamps come out, and the candles. Of course food supplies are stocked well ahead of the first snow, and there's even one last store in town that operates. Jasper was never completely abandoned, so it hasn't deteriorated as badly as most old campsites in the mountains. Now it's having its first real face-lift.”

There was something in his tone, part denigration, part admiration, that caught my attention. ”In what way?”

”Ingram's taking charge. He's done over the Timberline, and as I told you, he owns most of the town by now. He wants to turn Jasper into a ski resort, get the access road paved, open up ski slopes. And during the summer bring tourists in for a taste of the old West.”

”He doesn't own Persis Morgan,” Jon Maddocks said.

Caleb went on, ignoring him. ”Your grandmother holds the land outside Jasper that Ingram needs for his project. So you've arrived in the middle of a war, so to speak.”

I exchanged a look with Hillary and saw that his eyes were bright with antic.i.p.ation. If I had been brought here to fortify my grandmother's opposition, Hillary would be ready for a fight. But would I? What could I possibly do?

”How do you stand on this?” Hillary asked Caleb.

”I work for Mrs. Morgan. Her interests are of course the interests of my firm. But Mark Ingram is pretty powerful, and it might be better for her to sell and get out. More sensible. She's grown too old for this sort of fight. And Ingram could be a ruthless opponent.”

Before I had time to wonder about his words, I saw that the road had opened and we were descending from the Pa.s.s. The mountain dropped off precipitously to a stream far below. Along 42.the narrow expanse of ledge between mountain and canyon stretched the town of Jasper, Colorado, and something stirred in me. Recognition? I wasn't sure.

I knew only that suddenly I wanted to turn and run, wanted only to escape what was coming up so surely ahead of us as the road dropped to the level of the town. But I sat hunched in my seat, knowing that I could not run, knowing that I wouldn't even if I could, and that a knot of stubborn determination was gathering in me that would have to subst.i.tute for courage.

So this was Jasper, and possibly my fate? All right then-I would meet it as well as I could, and that was all I need ever ask of myself.

IV.

The way we followed was clearly the main street, with another running parallel below and two or three other streets on the hill above. Still higher were the ruined structures of old mines and the bare mounds of tailing dumps left behind to scar the land forever.

To my surprise, the main street was far from empty. Many of the false fronts had been repaired and refurbished with new paint. Men on ladders and scaffolding were working on buildings that were still shabby and dilapidated. The pounding of hammers, the ring of metal on wood sounded everywhere. If I'd hoped we would enter a lonely, empty street that would evoke the past so that a feeling of familiarity would stir in me, I was to be disappointed.

Freshly painted signs announced a blacksmith's shop, a barber's, where a pole was being newly striped, and even a livery stable. The latter was operating, since horses stood in the stalls and repairs were being made on a buckboard. On ahead a small white church raised a new steeple above its lower neighbors.

Cars and trucks had been parked on the side streets, above and below, obviously belonging to the influx of workmen from 44.the outside world. Some of these houses seemed to be occupied, probably being used as living quarters for this army of help.

Somehow all this effort to spruce up everything took away the appeal for me. The Jasper I remembered was gray and weathered and growing shabby-like an old friend who had lived for a very long time. This new Jasper meant nothing to me, and I felt recognition only for those buildings that still showed the signs of age, whose windows were broken and siding splintered.

Farther on along the street an impressive building with thin posts holding up its extended roof indicated by a new sign that it was the Opera House. Next door was a post office and general store, and then an empty jail. The town was noisy with hammering and pounding and the voices of workmen.

Across from the Opera House the Timberline Hotel stood out because it was the largest building in sight, and had been painted a dazzling white.

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