Snow Mountain Passage by James D Houston Page A

waterfall of flour spills from splitting sacks to coat the rocks with white dust.
    A voice calls, “Mr. Reed.”
    Again he turns, expecting to see Johnny. But the teamster is gone. The oxen are gone. The wagon is gone. There is no lake below. He stands alone at the summit while the voice calls from farther away. It is not Snyder’s voice.
    “Mr. Reed!”
    Nor is it Walter’s.
    “Mr. Reed! Wake up!”
    His tongue is thick and dry as sand. His stomach is queasy. He holds still, waiting until the voice comes again, closer this time, very close. Is it right above him?
    “Wake up. It’s Charlie.”
    Behind his closed eyes Jim lets the summit dissolve. His head aches, feels larger, as if expanding, as if pushing outward from within. He feels his bones against the earth, his bedroll. On the whole long trail behind him and ahead of him, there is only one Charlie he can think of, pint-size Charlie Stanton. Jim remembers watching him ride away, so silly-looking perched atop his mule, so out of place, like a banker who’d been lifted off the streets of Chicago and carried a thousand miles west and dropped down in the middle of the desert. He remembers wondering if he would ever see this fellow again.
    Jim opens his eyes to make sure it’s him, then sits up with a hand outstretched. “You are a mighty welcome sight.”
    Charlie grabs his hand in both of his, seeming on the verge of tears. “Fella told me someone had come through on foot. I wondered if it could be from our party. But I swear, Mr. Reed, I saw you laying here and I hardly recognized you at all.”
    Charlie can’t conceal his alarm. In the other man’s face Jim sees how he must look to others now. He touches a hand to his gaunt and thinning features, his matted beard. The hair his daughters cut away has grown a bit but not enough to cover the unhealed welts, raw and crimson. Charlie is gazing at the welts.
    “We had a few hard days,” Jim says, nodding toward a nearby heap of blankets and oilskins. “Walter and me, we came ahead.”
    Charlie’s eyes are full of questions he doesn’t ask.
    “… to get more help,” Jim says.
    “How long since you’ve eaten?”
    “We ate last night. Some folks here cooked up some meat. We’re all right now. I think I’m all right. Walter might still be sick. He ate till he threw up …”
    The words come slow. His throat feels closed and ragged. Charlie hunkers next to him, opens a shoulder pack, and pulls out what was going to be his lunch, a couple of biscuits, a strip of jerky. “Here,” he says with a grin. “‘Bout time for breakfast.”
    “Walter,” Jim calls, “you ready for breakfast?”
    The heap turns, emits a miserable groan, falls silent.
    “You’re a good fellow,” Jim says as he breaks off a piece of biscuit and begins to chew, slowly and deliberately. “One of the best.”
    He has never tasted such a delicious biscuit. With each bite his spirits rise. He looks at Charlie in amazement, amazed to see him here, a familiar face. If Charlie had been with them on the Humboldt, if the company by that time had not broken up into so many pieces, things would surely have gone another way. By some miracle Charlie had made no enemies. No one bore him a grudge. He always did more than his share, more than anyone expected, since he was not a family man. He is a bachelor, a loner, traveling without a wagon, who has had some wins and some losses in life, and the losses show around his eyes, a melancholy cheerfulness. For a number of years he was a merchant in Chicago, but fell on hard times and decided to head west hoping for a change of luck. He still dresses like a merchant, in his broadcloth coat, spectacles, bowler hat. He still has about him an oddly prosperous and well-fed look, even here in this wilderness valley, ruddy cheeks, a bit of belly pushing at his buttons.
    When Charlie and Bill McCutcheon left the company a month ago, some predicted he was gone for good. McCutcheon will be back, they said,