Page 2 of Blazing Mountain Man

I open my mouth to tell him he doesn’t know the first thing about me, but I don’t get to, because he’s already looking at the wall and reading it, every stamp and skyline, then back at me. There’s nothing careless in it. He guides people up mountains for a living. He knows how to look at terrain and see what’s under the snow.

“How long are you in town?” I ask, mostly to move us off the wall.

“Until the season turns. A few weeks of backcountry work booked, then I’m gone before the lifts spin. I don’t winter in the same place twice.”

“Of course you don’t.” Drifter. I note it, file it away, and my stomach flips anyway. “Let me guess. Guide.”

“Guilty.”

“You come down off a mountain covered in snow, catch the last shuttle out, and disappear before anybody learns your last name.” I lean back on my stool. “I’ve dispatched a hundred of you.”

“You’ve dispatched a hundred guys who look like me.” He plants a forearm on the counter, close, the flame ink inches from my hand. “Not one of them’s me.”

The radio saves my life.

It squawks, but it’s not Marco. It’s the base line, and the voice on it is tight. The whole room resets around it.

“Elyse, you copy? We have a party of one overdue off the Saddle. Solo hiker, checked out at noon, no contact since. Weather’s on top of him, and it’s getting dark.”

The office goes cold in a way that has nothing to do with the door. I have the mic in my hand before I’ve decided to.

“Base, say again the location.”

“The Saddle. Above the north trailhead. He didn’t check back at the ranger box.”

I know the Saddle. Everybody who works this desk knows it—where the easy trail forgets to stay easy, the first place a first storm turns dangerous. The last light’s already going. My drivers are getting people down, not up. There’s no run on my board that goes where that man is.

I look up, and Cash isn’t relaxed anymore.

“The Saddle.” He’s already pulling his sleeves down and reaching for the pack by the door, every loose thing in him gone still and certain. “I guided that ridge three days ago. I know exactly where a solo hiker gets himself lost up there.”

“You can’t drive it. The pass is closing.”

“I don’t need the road all the way.” He has the pack on one shoulder now. He stops with his hand on the door, snow already fine against the glass behind him, and looks back. At me. Only me. “You got a rig that’ll get me to the north trailhead before the road’s gone?”

The spare rig’s out back. Four-wheel drive, chains already on the tires for exactly this kind of night. It’ll make the north road if anything short of a plow will.

I key the radio. “Marco. When you’re down, you’re on the desk. The last pickup’s yours to run or hold. Your call, your board.”

Static, then his voice, wary. “Say that again. Where are you going to be?”

“Up the north side. There’s a man on the Saddle.” I let it sit there in the crackle. For six years, Marco’s run this pass with me, and not once has he heard me dispatch myself anywhere. “Storm’s closing the schedule out anyway. Base can hold the board until you’re in. I’ll have my radio the whole way.”

A long, staticky pause. Then, “Copy. Go get him.”

And that fast, the thing I’ve spent years swearing couldn’t be done gets done in twenty seconds of radio traffic. The desk is covered. The runs are handled. Nobody ends up stranded because I get up from this chair.

Everything I’ve ever done at this desk is send other people toward the danger and stay behind the counter where it’s warm.

I reach for my coat.

“I’ll drive you,” I say.

2

CASH

The rig handles better than it has any right to.