Stony River Read online

  STONY RIVER

  Ciarra Montanna

  Copyright © 2011 by Ciarra Montanna

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author.

  To the Kammerzells of the Kootenays,

  where this story found a beginning so long ago.

  CHAPTER 1

  Deep within the alpine ranges of western Canada, like a hermit of the mountains, is found one solitary town, the tiny settlement of Cragmont. Here between steep forests on the shore of a serpentine lake, the town receives the Stony River as it comes rushing and tumbling out of the high country. Here also, the sun has to climb high into the sky before it shines above the sharp peaks that overlook the town, and often in winter it doesn’t shine at all. But the handful of hardy folk who live beneath those imposing crags take the days of shadow along with the days of sunshine, as part of the land in which they live. And even in the howling snowstorms of the long winters, when the mountains vanish into clouds for weeks at a time and the river lies frozen and silent, they choose to stay, finding in that rugged land their own peculiar delight.

  It was toward this seclusive hamlet that Sevana Selwyn was traveling one afternoon in late spring, having come more than halfway across the country from a large eastern city. She had begun the journey by train, then continued on a variety of buses, for there was no direct route to her destination. The final bus she had boarded late that morning was a chalky-blue vehicle of obvious vintage dubbed the Selkirk Stage. Its eight blue-leather seats had been sparsely occupied to begin with—and now, the bus having passed through a few scattered outposts earlier in the day, Sevana was the only passenger still aboard.

  She was presently holding onto the seat in front of her and staring with wide eyes as the bus veered and bounced over washboards and potholes in a dirt road ever disappearing just ahead. Hoping to take her mind off the perilous route, she looked instead at the rockbound cliff rising vertically outside her window, and the knife-edge range jutting up across the finger lake, and found little to console her. The land itself looked perilous, built on an up-and-down scale with nothing level in it except the lake. She felt trapped-in by the constricting mountainsides, and—with every uninhabited mile—more isolated. Even knowing a town lay somewhere up ahead, she couldn’t escape the feeling she was being cut off from civilization. The stifling pressure in her lungs subsided only when the rock wall declined, and the mountains stood back far enough to make a toehold for the buildings of a town.

  “Cragmont, B.C.,” the driver announced, with the formality of someone arriving at a big city with a busload of people, instead of this diminutive village and Sevana his lone rider. He pulled the rattletrap bus to a stop in the vacant lot beside the mercantile.

  Cragmont! Sevana felt her heart begin to race as she half-stumbled to her feet. She had been so impatient to get here, and yet now that the moment had finally arrived, it had come too suddenly for her to be ready for it. Hurriedly collecting her hand luggage and portfolio, she stepped forward to thank the uncommunicative man in whose hands her life had rested the better part of the afternoon. “This must be a long drive for you to make every day,” she added—which sympathetic sentiment caused his nut-brown face to register in a transitory smile.

  “Oh, I don’t drive this road every day, miss,” he said, with the barest shake of his long black braid. “Only when there’s somebody to take or get, and that hasn’t been more than ten times yet this year.”

  “Is that so!” Sevana was taken aback. More all the time, Cragmont was looking like the end of all things to her. “You—you must be glad for that.”

  “I don’t mind it any in the summer, miss,” he assured her calmly. “It’s only in the winter it sometimes gets a little nip and tuck.”

  Sevana gave the solemn, dreamy-eyed man a stricken glance. That road in snow and ice—! As she stepped down into the undiluted May sunshine, she was thinking how lucky she’d been to make the trip in good weather. Then, standing in her summer-blue dress and matching jacket of the newest city fashion, she cast an expectant look about her. There was not a soul in sight on the graveled street.

  The driver unloaded her trunk and set it against the board-and-batt siding of the store. “You got folks coming for you, miss?” he returned to ask in his reserved way.

  “My brother,” she replied, with a little smile for his solicitude. “He said he’d meet me.”

  The man nodded, seeming satisfied by her answer. Politely wishing her a good day, he got in the bus and turned it around in the direction he’d come. And watching him go—even in the consternation of being left alone in that deserted, end-of-the-earth town—Sevana did not for one minute envy him the crooked road back.

  When the Selkirk Stage had been lost from view, Sevana looked around her again. Only an extensive line of snowtopped mountains gazed back at her silently from across the lake. Not knowing what else to do, she resorted to the bench in front of the mercantile, which some industrious woodsmith had axed whole out of a single, stout log. Sitting straight and proper on the hard-back seat, she continued to scan the street with watchful eyes.

  It was easy to suppose that Fenn had been detained at work: almost anything could have come up. But deep inside she had an odd little fear he wouldn’t come at all. He had never contacted her concerning the summer, although she’d written him several letters herself. The plans had all been arranged by their father, and Fenn had been at odds with him for years. Perhaps, she thought, looking down at her polished fingernails in dismay, this was a way Fenn had chosen to show his disregard.

  She was considering this unsettling possibility when a wiry, elfin man tied into a grocer’s apron hobbled out of the store on a wooden leg to see who had come in on the bus. He bobbed his head in a friendly way and said something to her with a shy grin, but she didn’t understand him. “Excuse me?” she asked, determined to listen more closely.

  Again he spoke, and from the inflection of his voice she knew he was asking a question, but the words were garbled. Then she realized he had some sort of speech impediment, and quickly, to prevent embarrassing him, tried to guess what he was saying. “Yes,” she said, smiling as she prepared to take a blind stab, “I’ve just made the trip from Toronto.”

  He nodded in pleased recognition, as if she hadn’t been too far off the mark, and asked something else—so close to words she could almost catch it. Once again she tried frantically to form the sounds into some kind of meaning. “Yes,” she said brightly, nodding and smiling the more. “It was a long trip, but it was interesting. I’m going to be staying here for the summer,”—volunteering some general information in the hope of hitting on the answer he was looking for. And this time she decided to ask him a question. “Is this your store?”

  The grin on his thin face became wider, and he dipped his head modestly. “Yes, yes,” she thought he was saying.

  “I’m expecting my brother.” She felt it was up to her to take the lead in the conversation. “I hope you don’t mind me waiting here.”

  He spoke a few words, motioning freely with his hand that no, no, he didn’t mind at all. Then he asked another question and looked at her expectantly. She had to ask him to repeat it. And this time she thought she caught it: “Who’s your brother?”

  “My brother?” she asked, proud of her job of deciphering. “Fenn Selwyn is my brother.”

  His smile faded and he looked confused. He spoke some mumbled words back to her as a question.

  “Yes,” she said encouragingly, “do you know him?”

  He nodded, but he seemed upset. He scratched his sparse, mouse-brown hair and said something else, still mis
sing his grin. When she didn’t respond, not knowing how, he limped back inside, wagging his head and muttering to himself. Even though Sevana couldn’t make out the words, his reaction to Fenn’s name hadn’t been lost on her, and after his narrow back with its sharp shoulder blades had retreated through the doorway, she studied on it.

  As the minutes continued to pass, Sevana began to question outright what she would do if Fenn didn’t come. It was frightening to think of being stranded out there, so far from anywhere. But in the midst of these alarming contemplations, she put up her head boldly. She was not afraid of anything, she told herself;—she could not be. Whatever was ahead, she had to meet it squarely. There was no place behind her to go back to.

  A ragtag old man came rambling up the street just then, wearing a baggy canvas coat and a misshapen felt hat pulled low over silky wisps of white hair. A black-and-white dog followed at his heels. The oldtimer propped his walking stick against the storefront and turned to take in the sight of Sevana sitting primly on the bench, focused attentively across the lake so as not to be found staring indecorously at the wild-looking stranger.

  “You like them mountains?” he asked gruffly.

  Sevana was surprised he had spoken. In the city, people on the street addressed each other only of necessity, never for mere conversation. But being confronted so, a reply did just then seem a necessity. She turned her head and met piercing gray eyes in a face almost as cragged as the ranges opposite. “Yes, I do,” she said courteously, although her mind had not been on the scenery. She thought he must be looking for some kind of compliment on his town, so she offered, “They’re very beautiful.”

  He glowered at her from under bushy gray brows. “Oh, they’re a sight today, all right,” he said querulously. “No rain or fog hiding them, no blizzard wind blowing. ’Tisn’t always like this, you know. Folks come here in summer and they think we live in heaven, but they don’t know how rare ’tis for a clear day to see ’em.”

  “How long have you lived here?” she asked, wondering why he stayed if he didn’t like it there.

  “All my life. Left once or twice, but never for long.” His eyes continued to burn into her without trace of warmth or human friendliness. “You here visiting?”

  As she was sitting not ten feet from her luggage at the corner of the building, she could only answer, “Yes.”

  His scowl darkened, like a rain cloud passing across a rocky escarpment. “You’d better build your cabin right here,” he warned her fiercely, stabbing a twisted finger toward her face, “’cause you’re never getting out.”

  “I beg your pardon?” she said with a gulp.

  “You’ll get used to it here and you won’t want to leave,” he rasped in his abrasive voice. “If you do leave, you’ll be wishing yourself back.”

  “Is that so?” She tried to laugh to show she wasn’t unnerved by his odd behavior.

  But as abruptly as he had spoken he vanished into the store, leaving behind the obedient and well-mannered border collie—who sat by the door and stared at her politely but unwaveringly the whole time she remained there.

  She was still trying to make sense of that freakish exchange, while averting her gaze from the spooky, pale-blue eyes of the collie, when a faded red pickup truck careened to a stop across the street in a cloud of dust, and a young giant with flaxen-colored hair like her own got out without preamble and came striding toward her. Gladly she jumped up and ran to meet him—for she recognized him at once, even though he had changed considerably in the five years since she’d seen him.

  Something in his quizzical attitude made her stop short of hugging him; nevertheless, her eyes were shining as she looked up to him. “Oh Fenn, it’s so good to see you again!” she exclaimed, her joy doubled by the fact that she wasn’t stranded alone in that wilderness town.

  “Been a while, hasn’t it?” He made no move to embrace her or take her hand, but perhaps it was just as well—as his work trousers, cotton jersey, face and hands all were coated with dirt and sawdust. He asked if she would mind waiting while he picked up a few things from the store.

  In a short time he came out with two boxes of groceries. After wedging them with her baggage into the tangle of logging equipment in the truck bed, he got in the cab and revved the engine. Sevana, clutching the portfolio case she wanted up front for safekeeping, climbed in before he could leave without her, and they were off down a one-lane road past a few unimposing houses and out of town.

  “What happens if you meet another car?” she asked what seemed a reasonable question to her mind as they bumped along.

  “It’s wide enough to pass if you drive on the shoulder, most places,” Fenn answered. Sevana started to ask what happened in the places it wasn’t, but then gave it up. He lived here and his truck was in one piece, so there must be some kind of system.

  “Did you see a—a mountainman-type person in the store?” she asked to his silence. For she had waited outside to watch her belongings, not being aware that crime in that outlying town was not common—was not, in fact, sufficient to employ the constable fulltime, so that he led guided fishing tours on the side.

  “You mean the graybeard with the dog?”

  “Yes. Who was he?”

  “Just an old codger who wanders into town occasionally.” Fenn seemed content to leave it at that.

  But it was still puzzling to her, the things that eccentric backwoodsman had said…“You’re never getting out.”

  She took up a different topic. “What about the shopkeeper? Why can’t he talk? And what happened to his leg?”

  “Logging accident on both accounts. Got hit by a falling tree about twenty years ago. Mangled him up pretty good.”

  The road had slipped through a notch in the row of mountains, and now they were in an even tighter canyon, with a river surging bankful beside the road in a whitewater dash toward the lake they had just left behind.

  “You live way out here—in the middle of nowhere?” Sevana, grappling with so many new impressions, voiced the idea to see what she thought of it.

  “What’s the matter…you want to go back?” Fenn slowed the jolting truck as if ready to carry out the proposition.

  “No, of course not.” She shook back her hair, painstakingly curled at the night stopover and still falling in waves over her shoulders even after the bone-jarring stint aboard the Selkirk Stage. “It’s just—I knew you lived out in the country, but I didn’t imagine it to be all so—wild.” She couldn’t explain better than that the feeling over her. “Anyway, you know I have to stay with you for the summer.”

  “Yes, that’s right—while your father indulges in another round of globe-trotting. London this time, isn’t it?” he said acrimoniously.

  Sevana thought about pointing out he was his father as well, but decided to let it go. She’d always suspected that Fenn had come out to this unheard-of place just to get away from Bryce and everything he stood for. Only, she hadn’t realized until now, just how far away that was. “I can’t believe how long it took me to get here,” she volunteered. “First two days on the train, and then so many different buses. Nobody had a direct line to Cragmont. The travel agent had never even heard of it.”

  “That’s the way I like it.” Fenn was driving the winding road with one hand, his other arm resting on the open window ledge.

  “Yes, I figured you must have liked it, to stay out here.”

  He snorted. “As if I had any reason to go back!”

  “I’ve always meant to come see you, Fenn,” Sevana confided, turning to him as much as the metal hardhat, lunchbox, and canteens between them on the dusty seat would allow. “But I didn’t dream Bryce would send me out here for a whole summer. It’s very kind of you to let me come.”

  “That’s all right,” he said ironically, drumming his fingers on the metal ledge. “It would be asking too much for him to look after you himself, wouldn’t it? Besides, how could I refuse, seeing he pays so generously for the favor?—although I’m not sure thi
s is quite the life he would choose for his young and tender daughter, if he ever stopped to think.”

  Sevana heard the hardness in his tone, but she couldn’t blame him for being resentful, for Bryce had never been a true father to them—only a provider who made sure his children were properly cared for, while he devoted all his time to a classified military career. She, too, knew the sting of neglect and the lonely years of boarding school, and tried to reach out to him on common ground.

  “We didn’t have much of a family growing up, did we, Fenn?” she asked softly. “I admire you for coming out here and making a life for yourself. I hope I can do as well as you.” But whether the appeal had any effect on him, she couldn’t tell, for he made no reply and his profile remained impassive.

  She faced forward again, but continued to study him surreptitiously from the corners of her eyes. He resembled the boy of eighteen he’d been when he left Toronto to come west, but he was much bigger and brawnier now, and his face no longer had a boyish contour. It was a hard face—sharp-planed, resolute in line, streaked now with dust and sweat. His arms were tanned and muscular below the short sleeves of his white jersey. It was almost difficult to believe that the powerful, obstinate-looking individual at the wheel was her brother. At twenty-three, he had grown up more than just in stature: he had the attitude and bearing of a full-grown man.

  Sevana found the changes in him disconcerting. Even though they had never spent much time together, she’d expected to find some vestiges of familiarity in him just because he was her brother. And she had looked forward eagerly to this visit as a chance to catch up on some of what they had missed growing up—had even hoped this summer they might become the best of friends. Now she wondered if she would ever know the hard stranger beside her, much less be his friend.

  She turned her attention to the way ahead but immediately regretted it, for the road lay between two perpendicular bluffs that opposed each other blackly from across the river channel. A passageway had been blasted out of the nearer cliff to the width of one car only, with a straight drop to the torrent below. Fenn drove forward with the confidence that his was the only vehicle in the corridor, but Sevana wondered greatly what he would do if he met another one coming his way. “How much farther?” she asked, to cover her nervousness.