Tread Softly Page 3

  "I bet you go to the beach a lot, being in Los Angeles and everything."

  "Yeah." She considered explaining about their backyard swimming pool. Tim might think she was bragging, though. "I really like the ocean," she said.

  "We've got the river," he said, "and some lakes. I'll go over to Millerton or Pine Flat. They aren't far. We take the boat over when — -" The double ring of a bell interrupted him. He peered out the window. A pickup was rolling to a stop beside the pumps. With a sigh of disappointment that pleased Julie, he pushed himself off the desk. "Well, I've gotta go. Have a good trip, now. Stop in on your way back if you get a chance."

  "Okay. 'Bye, Tim."

  He left the office. On his way toward the pickup, he looked over his shoulder and waved. Julie waved back.

  Benny had set the four soft-drink cans on the floor to free his hands. He punched a number on the snack machine. Inside the display window, a clamp opened, dropping a small pack of barbecued potato chips into a trough.

  Julie picked up the chilly, wet cans. Benny gathered up four packs of chips and Fritos. Together, they left the office.

  At her door, Julie watched Tim lift the hood of the pickup. "So long," she called.

  "Stop by again," he said.

  Then she climbed into the car. She passed around the drinks, poured the remaining change into Karen's hand, and thanked her.

  As they pulled away, she looked out the rear window. Tim was wiping a dipstick with a red rag.

  "He seemed like a nice young fellow," Dad said.

  "His father owns the station," Julie said.

  "Oh? Checked him out, did you?"

  "I didn't 'check him out.' We were just talking, that's all."

  "Baloney and liver sausage," Benny said.

  "He looked like he was about Nick's age," Dad told her.

  "Nick?"

  "Flash's son. You remember him? The company picnic?"

  "Unh-uh."

  "Well, that was about five or six years ago. I think you ran the three-legged race with him."

  "Oh, him." She smiled. "We won that. He's Mr. Gordon's son?"

  "Yep. He's seventeen now."

  "Oh, yeah?" Maybe this wouldn't turn out to be such a rotten vacation after all.

  * * *

  "Ow!" Heather cried, clutching the back of her hand.

  "Rose, play nice."

  "I didn't hit her hard."

  Alice Gordon gave her daughter a warning scowl. She considered calling a stop to the game, but Heather had already hidden her hand behind her back, ready to continue.

  "One, two, three," Rose said. Her open hand darted out.

  Heather, at the same instant, swung her hand into view with two fingers extended. "Aha! Scissors cut paper!"

  Rose presented her hand. Heather slapped it hard, getting even.

  "Didn't hurt," Rose taunted.

  They got ready for another match. "One, two, three," Rose said.

  Heather came out with scissors again. As Rose's flat hand swung forward, it closed into a fist. "Rock breaks scissors," she declared.

  "No fair!" Heather cried out. "You cheated. Didn't she, Mom? You saw her! She was paper!"

  Nick looked around from the passenger seat. "Is Rose cheating again?"

  "Yes!" Heather blurted.

  "I think we've had enough of this game," Alice said. "Why don't you find something nice to play? Twenty Questions or Hangman."

  "I get to slap her!" Heather protested. "She was paper!"

  "No more slapping."

  "But I won!"

  "Kids!" Arnold snapped. He was driving and didn't look back. "Do as your mother says."

  "But, Daaaad!"

  "You heard me."

  Heather sighed as if the world were unfair. She narrowed her eyes at Rose. "Cheater."

  With a long-suffering smile, Rose offered her hand. "Go ahead and give it to me."

  "Mom, can I?"

  "Oh, I don't care. Just once, then I want you both to find something better to do."

  Heather slapped downward. Rose's hand shot out from under the path of the blow, and smacked the back of Heather's descending hand. "Hey!"

  Rose laughed. So did Nick. Heather punched her sister's knee.

  "That's enough!" Alice snapped. "Stop it!"

  "I think I'll pull over and tan some hides," Arnold said.

  "No!" Heather yelped.

  "We'll be good," Rose said. "Promise."

  "All right then. Now, do as your mother says and play something nice."

  "Better yet," Nick said, "take a nap."

  Rose rolled her eyes upward. "Are we almost there yet?"

  "A couple more hours," Arnold told her.

  The idea of a nap certainly appealed to Alice. She took the pillow from the space between her and Heather, fluffed it up, and placed it behind her head. Snuggling back against it, she closed her eyes. In quiet voices, the twins were discussing whether to play Hangman. She heard a rustle of paper. Good. That should keep them out of mischief for ten or fifteen minutes.

  She wondered if Arnold had remembered to set the lamp timer before they left. No point bothering to ask, though. If he'd forgotten, it was too late now.

  Her mind drifted to the last time she'd seen Scott O'Toole. They'd gone over for dinner and bridge. Scott had complimented her on her perm. That must've been over a year ago, closer to two. How could June walk out on a man like him? Must be more to it than meets the eye. Maybe he was fooling around on the side. Sure had plenty of opportunity, being away half the time. And those flight attendants. Everyone knows how they are. June was no slouch, not by any stretch of the imagination, but a guy like Scott'd be a real prize for lonely stews. A lot of temptation there. Take a strong man to resist.

  Thank God Arnold stopped flying. He might have to work nights when the shift bid didn't go his way, but at least he came home to his own bed and wasn't alone in hotels all across the country. Would've been nice for him to have a pilot's pay and prestige, but she'd rather have him as he is. They got by just fine, thank you, and she didn't have to spend all her time worrying.

  Poor June must've been worried sick, wondering if he'd go down or get himself shacked up with some stew. Who was that — Jack? — no, Jake. Jake Peterson. Had a whole second family in Pittsburgh. Must've come as quite a shock to his wife — both wives. Wasn't even a Mormon, not that that would've made it right, but ... Alice's thoughts slipped away as sleep overtook her.

  The road up the mountainside had once been paved, but winter snow, spring runoff, and summer sun had broken up the asphalt, leaving a dusty shambles. The car bounced over ruts and potholes as Scott steered slowly up the grade.

  Ahead, a Volkswagen appeared around a bend.

  "What now?" Karen asked.

  "He's small." Scott eased the car to the right until branches squeaked against its side. He stopped.

  "Hope he's careful," Karen said. She was gripping the armrest.

  "If he's not," Scott told her, "he'll have a very thrilling ride for a few seconds."

  A girl in the passenger seat of the VW had her head out the window. She was looking down, apparently contemplating just such a ride. From her perspective, Scott imagined that the sheer drop-off must look bottomless. After a moment, she pulled her head in and said something to the driver.

  The VW crawled closer. The young bearded man behind the wheel grinned at Scott as he inched alongside. "Lovely day," he said.

  "Yep," Scott agreed. "How far to Black Butte?"

  "Take you an hour."

  "The road get any better up ahead?"

  "No. Tell you what, though, there's an RV about a mile behind me."

  "Thanks for the warning."

  "Have a good one, friend."

  "You, too."

  The Volkswagen finished passing, took to the center of the narrow road, and sped off with a cloud of dust.

  "A camper?" Karen asked. She looked sick.

  "What'll we do?" Julie asked from the back.

  "I guess we'd
do well to find a wider place in the road before he shows up."

  "No sweat. Right, Dad?" Benny asked.

  "No sweat," he said, and pulled away. He drove slowly, looking for a place to turn out. Ahead, the road bent back in an uphill hairpin. He took the curve. Now they were on the outside, the slope dropping away sharply to the right. "Maybe a little sweat," Scott admitted. He picked up speed. The car lurched and jarred as it rushed up the grade.

  Should've played it safe, he thought. Should've stopped back at the bend. But now he was committed. What he could see of the road ahead didn't look good. The mountainside rose up steeply to the left, leaving no room for turning out. To the right, there was no more than a yard's width before the ground fell away. Even if he parked at the very edge, he doubted there would be room for a recreational vehicle to squeeze through.

  "What'll we do?" Karen asked.

  "If worse comes to worst, we can always back up."

  "Oh, wonderful."

  Scott's foot jumped off the accelerator as the camper came down the center of the road straight at them. In a reflexive move, he pulled at the wheel as. if to raise the nose and shoot above the oncoming vehicle. His car remained earthbound. He stepped on the brake, and eased to a halt.

  The camper moved over close to the mountain's wall and stopped, blocking two thirds of the road. An arm poked through the driver's window. It waved Scott forward.

  "Can you make it?" Karen asked.

  "Sure," he said. "Just to be on the safe side, though, I want you out." He looked over his shoulder. "Everybody out."

  "I'm not scared," Benny said.

  "No arguments."

  With a sigh, Benny opened his door. When he, Julie, and Karen were outside the car, Scott unbuckled his seat belt. The trio walked ahead of him, Karen nodding and speaking to the man behind the wheel. At the rear of the camper, they stopped and turned around to watch. Karen straddled the road's edge, her eyes fixed on his right front tire. Her lips were drawn back in a grimace. She wiped her hands on the sides of her corduroy shorts.

  This must be really bad for her, Scott thought as he inched forward. Karen knows no one's immune to an accident. She'd barely escaped death in a car crash three years before, and her fiance had been killed.

  With the fingers of his left hand curled around the door lever, he steered alongside the camper. He watched its gleaming side as he slid past it, no more than an inch away. If the car should start to tip, he realized, he wouldn't be able to get his door open.

  Not at first anyway. He might find an instant, though, just before the car slipped over the edge.

  He glanced at Karen. Her hand was covering her mouth. Benny looked relaxed. Julie was squatting down, hands on knees, staring at the tire.

  Ice fishing when he was a kid, Scott drove out on the frozen Saint Lawrence River with his father. Sometimes, the ice creaked and groaned under the weight of the pickup truck. They always kept their doors open for quick escapes. Everyone did, driving on the river. Everyone but fools.

  He wished he had his door open now. A little precaution like that could save a man's life.

  The front of his car was even with the rear of the camper. He fought an urge to speed up, and kept to a steady crawl until he cleared the vehicle. Then he swung to the left and stopped in the road's center.

  Benny climbed in first. "Boy, Dad, that was really close."

  "A piece of cake," he said, and backhanded the sweat off his upper lip.

  "Hope we don't have to go through that again," Julie said.

  Karen slumped in the passenger seat with her knees against the dash. She stared straight ahead. Her lips were a tight line.

  Reaching out, Scott rubbed the side of her neck. "You okay?"

  "I guess," she muttered.

  After another traverse, the road curved around the mountainside to a high, wooded valley. A weathered sign, caught in a patch of sunlight, read BLACK BUTTE RANGER STATION, 6 MI.

  Chapter Five__________

  The forest, pressing in close on both sides of the unpaved road, opened up. Karen saw two cars ahead, parked under trees. One, a dusty Mazda resting at a rakish angle, had a rock at the base of each rear tire to keep it from rolling.

  "Guess we beat them to it," Scott said. "What do they drive?" Karen asked. "Probably the Plymouth station wagon." Karen imagined a station wagon trying to squeeze past the RV on the thin strand of road along the mountain slope, and her stomach tightened.

  Scott swung off to the left. He pulled forward slowly, the tires crunching over fallen limbs and pinecones. He parked with the bumper close to an aspen, and shut off the engine. "Let's leave everything here for now, and check out the ranger station. We can pick up our fire permit while we're waiting."

  They climbed out of the car. After the air conditioning, the heat outside felt stifling to Karen. But the air smelled sweet, and a soft breeze stirred the trees. She took a deep breath. She stretched, arching her stiff back, sighing with pleasure as her muscles strained. Then she followed Benny around the rear of the car, the thick mat of leaves and pine needles springy under her boots. "This is really wonderful," she said, joining Scott and Julie.

  "Warm," Scott said. He took off his flannel shirt, rolled it up, and tossed it into the trunk. His T-shirt was tight across his chest, with a slight rip at the shoulder seam. "Well, let's see if we can scout up a ranger."

  They walked alongside the tire tracks toward a small log cabin in the clearing ahead. A Jeep was parked close to the cabin's side. The snort of a horse drew Karen's eyes to a corral at the left, where a man in a uniform was currying a brown stallion. "That's probably the ranger," she said.

  They walked toward the corral. The man saw them and waved. He slapped the horse's haunch, tossed aside the curry brush, and climbed over the fence. "Hello there," he called in an eager voice. "Hope I didn't keep you waiting. I was out on the trails, just got back."

  "No," Scott said, "we just arrived ourselves."

  "Well, that's good." He smiled at Karen and Julie, winked at Benny. He looked to be barely twenty, with short blond hair and cheerful eyes. Though he wore a badge on his uniform shirt, he was unarmed and had a casual manner that put Karen at ease. "Come on over to the office," he said. "We'll take care of your wilderness permit and get you on your way."

  They followed him toward the cabin.

  "Where you folks from?" he asked.

  "Los Angeles," Scott told him.

  "Dad's a pilot," Benny said, looking proud.

  "Oh? What do you fly?"

  "L1011s, mostly."

  "No fooling? The big birds. My old man's a crop duster. He flies a replica of an old Fokker DR-1. The triplane?"

  "Sure. Richthofen. The Flying Circus."

  "Yeah. My old man calls himself the Green Baron. He works out of Bakersfield."

  "Sometimes I wish I had three wings," Scott said, stepping onto the porch after him.

  "All that airfoil, he can glide for miles. Sometimes has to."

  They entered the dim, shadowy cabin. The young man stepped behind a counter near the door. On the wall was a huge topographical map of the area. A poster of Smokey the Bear hung over a two-way radio. Benny nudged Karen's arm, and pointed to a rifle rack on the wall across from them.

  "Whereabouts are you heading?" the ranger asked.

  "We're hoping to make it over to the Triangle Lakes area."

  "Some good fishing up there. Here's an Angler's Guide for you," he said, and spread open a leaflet on the counter top. "This map's a bit sketchy."

  "We'll be meeting some friends. They've got topogs of the area."

  "Fine. This one'll give you a nice overview, but it's weak on detail. You've got a nasty ridge here, for instance." He tapped his ballpoint against a bare spot on the map. "Looks like an easy jaunt from Wilson to Round, but don't you believe it. It'd take an hour of hard climbing. The topogs'll take care of that for you."

  He tapped the counter three inches from the bottom edge of the map. "Okay. You're about here.
You'll want to take the Juniper Lake trail. It's two miles to Juniper." As he scribbled directions on an edge of the map, he said, "That'd be a fine place to spend the night. Some nice campsites all around it. When you head out of there, you just follow the trail you came in on. It branches out at the head of the lake, and there's a marker there for Triangle Lakes. You just stay on it, all the way. Here's where it comes onto the map." He drew a line along the trail. He circled a lake. "This is Tully. It's beautiful, has a real nice waterfall at the western end. Just a couple of miles farther, you've got Lake Parker. They're a good day's hike from Juniper. I'd stick to one or the other if I were you. Once you leave Parker behind, you've got Carver Pass to look forward to. You'll want to be fresh when you tackle that. It's a good three- or four-hour climb, takes you up to eleven thousand feet."

  "Yuck," said Julie.

  The ranger grinned at her. "About halfway up, if you're like most folks, you'll start wishing you were back home watching a ball game." He marked zigzags on the map. "You've got switchbacks you think'll never quit."

  "I'm already exhausted," Karen said, "just hearing about it."

  "A great view from the top," he told her. "And a good, cool wind." He lowered his eyes to the map. "Right here, on the down side, you'll run into the Mesquite Lakes. I don't recommend you bother with those. You'll know what I mean when you see them."

  "The pits?" Julie asked.

  "That's exactly what they are." He drew his line along the trail. "Wilson's just an easy three miles beyond the Mesquites, and it's fabulous. Wooded, good campsites." He circled Lake Wilson. "From there, you've got an easy shot to the Triangles. Get an early start from Wilson, and you should be there by noon."

  "Sounds terrific," Scott said.

  "Shall I put you down for Juniper, Parker, Wilson, and the Triangles?"

  "Fine by me."

  He took out a form and began to fill in the information. "So, we've got you into the Triangles on night four. How long will you stay there?"

  "We'll want to be within an easy hike of here by next Sunday. Maybe spend Saturday night back at Juniper."

  The ranger marked it down. "If you want to see some new scenery, you can make a circle by following the Postpile trail south out of the Triangles." He marked the trail, describing the lakes along the way, explaining that the return route was shorter and mostly downhill.