Once again, Kier gave her a line to pass behind her shoulders to provide support for her back. Since she held on without much conscious effort, she soon fell into a stupor. After an indeterminate period of jostling, she prodded herself conscious and saw no snow falling. A hole in the clouds revealed more stars than she had ever seen and a bright moon against the black-velvet sky shone so clearly she could make out its surface texture. In its light, their shadows danced behind them on the satin shoulders of the mountain. Kier walked now at an ordinary pace.
'So tell me again that we're going to sleep in a cabin with a fire.'
'In a cabin, by a fire. But it will be tomorrow.'
'So I wasn't imagining things,' she said with some hope that it was really true.
'The only other guy who knows about the cabin is in Montana. But it's up to us to get there.'
'What do you mean?'
'I would like you to consider just trusting me and not having me explain it. How do you feel about that?'
'Why don't you wish to discuss it?'
'It's one of the reasons I am carrying you.'
Confused, Jessie looked around. To her left stood a sheer granite wall. Instantly, she looked down to her right and sucked in a breath. It was a straight drop. In fact, she couldn't see what Kier was walking on.
'Is this a trail?'
'Of sorts,' he said cryptically. 'I need to concentrate on keeping my balance. Try not to move.'
She noticed now that he was carrying his snowshoes.
Her gaze wandered over the outline of the tiny ledge that they traversed. For the first time she observed the long stick in his right hand that he held in front of them, feeling along the rock ledge. As she considered the danger of such tenuous and blind footing, she could feel her heart beginning to pound. Her cotton mouth made swallowing difficult. For a moment, she shut her eyes tightly, telling herself to relax. A few slow, regular breaths helped.
Again she looked. They were moving across a cliff on a narrow ledge. Below there was an almost vertical decline. Directly overhead occasional rock overhangs blocked out the clear night sky.
After a time, the rock wall to the left disappeared, and there was nothing but snow to both sides and below them. Ahead was another mountain, rising gently from the end of their ledge. Far below she could see where the landscape turned dark in the moon's glow-a forest. Kier snapped on a light. He was knee deep in snow on a razorback ridge. Now, on both sides, an abyss invited her mind to take leave of thought and embrace panic.
'Oh my God.' She meant it as a prayer.
'I would like for you to carefully consider something.'
'What?' She could barely speak.
''Loosen your grip around my neck just slightly, so as not to choke me.'
''Oh. Sorry.' She realized that she had pulled her wrists into his Adam's apple. 'I don't mind telling you I'm frightened.'
'I know what I'm doing.'
She forced herself into a sort of calm. 'I'm better now,' she said after a time. 'Can I help?'
'In a few minutes, I'm going to need to let you down.'
Each of his deliberate steps followed much poking with the staff. The flat mountain surface ahead lay less than a stone's throw away. She longed to lie on it, touch it, kiss it. It was so massive, not nearly so steep as the ridge on which Kier now balanced. And it had trees, blessed trees. In front of them, she could just make out a tree near a large, dark area, like a cave. Actually, it appeared that the mountainside had an overhang. It was as if she were looking down the tube of a giant, curling wave. Ice and snow in the moonlight were the foam atop the breaker.
'There,' he said, running his staff into a spot in the snow that seemed to have no bottom. 'How would you feel about my loosening the rope and your getting down?'
'Not good. But I'll do it.'
Slowly she slid from his back, letting her feet sink into the snow until she found a foothold on the rocky surface. Removing the pack, Kier pushed it down into the snow like a candle in a cake. He motioned for her to sit on it.
'Have you ever seen that?'
She knew exactly what he meant. On the horizon a planet shone jewellike. She threw her head back, staring. Bright stars and lesser stars occupied every tiny patch of black, and the Milky Way was a shimmering cloud of light. Her cold fear mixed with awe. She looked into eternity. And it was so quiet. There was not a sound.
'It sounds really corny, but I feel like I'm part of God,' she said. 'How could I ever describe this?'
'What are you feeling?'
'Peace, I guess. This is all so crazy. We're dead meat. There's no peace for us. I wonder if the men who hunt us could ever feel this. God, when I look at this… all this… I have never seen a sight to match it… But it is not just in the seeing… it's… ' She didn't know what to say.
Kier tried. 'It's the experience of a spirit-a very thirsty, parched spirit-that wants to touch another. Grandfather says that by knowing your own smallness you can find a way to the whole. Under these stars you are finding your smallness. You touch the whole.'
They both fell silent. She let her gaze trail along the length of the Milky Way and pick among the stars.
'Grandfather brought me to this place.'
'I must meet your grandfather.'
''He was on the mountain today. Not half a mile from you.'
'An old man, with a bag around his neck. A leather bag and a heavy green coat.'
'That's him. Where did you see him?'
'I didn't, I dreamed him. When I was sick and passed out. I dreamed he came. He told me to crawl. Begged me, really. So I crawled to a stream and drank and drank and drank.' Kier didn't stop her. 'It was a dream, wasn't it?'
'There were no tracks near you. It was a dream. On my wall at the cabin I had a picture of him in that green coat. You would have seen it.'
'And the bag?'
''No. It wasn't in the picture. A great-grandchild was holding the bag.'
'I saw him with the bag.'
'Your mind supplied the bag. It's something that used to be common for Indians.'
'Do you realize you always have an explanation for everything? It sounds like you believe in nothing but molecules.'
'I don't know what I believe. I just keep going.'
'Since you went off to college, right? You always quote your grandfather. You don't state your own convictions.'
'You felt what you felt. That's real.' Kier pulled out two coiled lines, one of which he cut to make a third.
'I need to show you a knot.'
'Why?'
'We're going to do some mountain climbing and you're going to need it.'
She studied while he wrapped one line around the other. All the while her sense of foreboding grew. When she could do it, he nodded. Getting down on his hands and knees, with the guns still on his back, he felt around in the snow. After a while, he grunted what sounded like approval.
'Did you find something?'
'Oh, yes,' he said, sounding relieved. 'A piton.'
She knew what that was. It wasn't good. It was a device used by people who climbed cliffs. It would be anchored to the rock and mountaineers would dangle from it.
'Do we need a piton?'
'Maybe I could offer a suggestion.'
'A suggestion? Here we are in the middle of the night on a freezing precipice with one lousy piton? I just met God, and I'm still scared, and you think with a few words, you can just… ' She hesitated. What was she trying to say? 'Just get on with it. I'll be fine. Just fine.'
It was night. Dangling at night was almost unthinkable. It seemed to Jessie that where they stood the ridge's
