Traveler's Rest

Luther warmed his hands on the china cup but it offered small solace. Setting the fragile china carefully upon the bedside table, he waited as the doctor finished his examination. It was the fourth time he'd summoned the physician in as many days and he knew it would probably be the last.

Gideon Cleese buttoned up his patient's sweat-soaked shirt and brushed a hand tenderly over her cheek.

"Rest now," he said. "I'll be back soon with the makings of a fresh poultice."

He stepped back, watching as she nestled into the thick bolster of pillows and turned her head towards the hotel room's window, holding a well-used handkerchief to her lips to surpress a cough. He motioned for Luther to follow him out to the hallway. The young doctor sighed.

"It won't be long. Her lungs are filled with fluid, much of it blood. I'm surprised she's breathing as well as she is."

"She's as stubborn as they come, Doc." He placed his quite substantial hand on the man's slight shoulders. "Thanks for all your help."

"She'll have some bouts of energy, but they won't last long. I'd give her something stronger for the pain, but I know she doesn't want to lose consciousness. She's fighting for every minute."

He trailed his fingers through his thick black hair in frustration - at her pain, at his helplessness to save her, at the frailty of life.

"Then we'll give them to her."

Luther smiled slightly and shook the doctor into attention. In spite of his lack of trust in doctors in general, he liked this one. When the time had come for her to find medical help, he'd had difficulty persuading her to come to the city. He hadn't felt comfortable at all himself. But the gentle attendance and straight-forward manner of this man made Luther glad he remembered that Ephraim Cleese's brother practiced in Miles City.

"Have you...have you discussed funeral arrangements?"

Luther bit his lip and nodded, staring at an unseen horizon. "Says she wants to be buried up in the hills. I know a place..."

"Has she no family?"

"Some back East, maybe. Doesn't talk about them much." He cleared his throat. "Husband's dead. No children."

Gideon Cleese clasped the hulking man's hand gently and squeezed it in comfort.

"Go to her," he advised. "I'll bring something back for her...and something for you as well."

"Whiskey, Cleese," Luther called after him as he watched the doctor descend the stairs. "None o' that squirrely ladies stuff you brought last time!" He chuckled as Cleese strode out of sight, then surpressed a shudder as he returned to the sick room.

Claudia Harrell stirred from her rest and smiled when she saw him return. "I heard that," she rasped. "That was a good brandy he brought last time."

Luther shrugged. "Tasted like liniment. I'd rather have a shot of Mosby's watered-down rotgut." He sat down in the flimsy chair by her bedside, and grimaced at the creaks it made as he settled into its delicate city-made frame. He picked up the cooling cup of tea and pressed it into her trembling hands. "And you need more of this."

"If I die of anything, it will be that poison." He lifted it to her lips but Claudia rolled her eyes. "Enough, Luther. I deserve only sweet things now."

He'd been feeding her the foul-tasting tea for weeks, a remedy from a Blackfoot woman he'd known years earlier. It was the only thing she could keep down. But he knew her requests should be respected at this point.

Unhappily, he set down the cup and reached into the pocket of her vest hanging on the bedpost, bringing out the small flask of liquor. She took a sip, then pressed the linen to her lips again, coughing in short explosive bursts. Desperately she gulped for air and all Luther could do was wait helplessly and watch her struggle. He took the flask away and stroked her hair as she fought for breath. Finally the spasm subsided and she dropped back among the soft pillows.

He took the handkerchief and wiped her blood-tinged lips. Weakly, her hand sought his and he held it to his cheek, head bowed in despair.

He followed her as far as Flat Willow when she left Curtis Wells, trailing her invisibly through the snow- encrusted hills before revealing himself as she worked in the small town. She refused his help, causing him no end of frustration with her sullen stubbornness and intimidating presence.

Bruised by her actions, he retreated into his beloved mountains for healing, but to his surprise, it provided no remedy for his ailment.

Seeking a temporary cure, he returned to Curtis Wells like a pilgrim, drawn to the scene of their first meeting, only to be broken further by the tragic death of Hannah Call. Haunted by the loss and determined to resolve his unrequited heart, he applied his prodigious tracking skills towards an unaccustomed prey, finding Claudia as she traveled along the banks of the Mussellshell River. This time, in the rougher, riotous atmosphere of the mining camps, she accepted his companionship.

In spite of the thick wall of indifference she had built up around herself, he could tell she had a genuine affection for him. He was a patient protector and she learned to rely on his strength and common sense as they ambled their way along the river's path.

They became lovers and soon after that, friends. But they hadn't gotten far before the lightness in her head and tremble of her hands prevented her from further photography.

He tried to help her, clumsily treating the glass plates with the damning chemicals and positioning them in the camera as she directed. She was a demanding teacher, though he knew her cantankerous bellowing was directed more at her own frustration with not being able to do the work than his incompetence.

When her wracking cough and nights of fevered restlessness forced her towards all inactivity, he brought her to Miles City. With money earned from trapping earlier that season, they took a room in one of the best hotels, on the top floor so she had an unobstructed view of the mountains beyond.

He located Gideon Cleese, who accepted with him the inevitability of her situation, allowing her a grace and dignity in dying that few had in their violent world. They provided quite an amusement to the town, the simple Brobdingnagian mountain man and the sharp- tongued, delicate invalid. But without guile, his compassionate devotion to her endeared him to the townsfolk. Not a day passed that a clean item of clothing or an appetizing meal or sweet was pressed in his hand as he picked up supplies for her comfort.

Luther cleaned up the sick when she couldn't keep anything down. He held her in his arms when she shivered from chills and wiped the sweat off her flushed cheeks when she burned with fever.

Spring was blossoming outside the sickroom's walls, casting green and gold shadows on the mountains in her view. He brought her thin branches from the newly-budded saplings and what early, bright-colored wildflowers he could find near the city limits, replacing them daily although she could no longer smell their sweet scent. He kept the window shade open all day for the sunshine and all night for the stars.

He strung her pictures around the room so she could re-visit the scenes of her travels for the last time. Between the increasing spasms of breathlessness and coughing, she related humorous or woeful tales behind the people in the photos, as well as a few tidbits about her own past.

She enthralled him with descriptions of dances she'd attended, amused him with shrewd and unkind portraits of her relatives and friends. She delighted him with stories from the operas and plays she attended as a girl. She'd led a life of culture and he listened with a previously unfelt jealousy about her education and polished manners.

She narrated the story of Edward's courtship with her acid tongue firmly in cheek. Entrapment, she called it, likening his wooing of her to the very methods the skilled mountain man used in his business. And how she began to break her bonds when Claude Harrell arrived one day and showed her a portrait of freedom. How Edward's descent into drink and despair had been killing her then as surely as the poisons of her chosen profession were killing her now. How she had survived for several years with no money, no warmth and no regrets.

When her strength grew too faint to continue, he was persuaded to reveal his own stories, dull though he protested them to be. He thought he'd go hoarse with more talking than he'd ever done in his thirty-five years and marveled at her ability to coax his most private feelings into their conversations. But she listened with a rapt attention, as if taking one more trip vicariously through his narrative.

His father had moved his family west from Minnesota in '48 to try to strike it rich in the gold fields of Sacramento. Dragging his sickly wife and young children from camp to camp, he barely made enough to keep one meager meal on the table each day. As the eldest son, Luther took it upon himself to learn shooting and trapping for their survival, desperate to keep his father's dreams from fancying them into starvation.

His mother finally found relief from her suffering when he was ten, his first encounter with death's fair face. The family struggled on in disharmony for seven more years before his father and brother died of a virulent fever that devastated the waste- laden gulch they'd lived in. His sister had married by then and moved with her blacksmith husband to Kansas, but Luther refused to join them.

His needs were simple, his dreams, few. His heart was sustained by the land. He found his trapping skills in great demand by the struggling towns holding fast to the harsh land like the western bitterroot flower that clung perilously in crack and crag of the mountain ranges.

Unaccustomed to society, he kept it at arm's length, forming respectful but distant alliances with the few townspeople he allowed in his life and thought he could remain satisfied with the lot. But though his land was truly a paradise, even Adam needed his Eve.

He told her how he met and wooed his wife in one of the small border towns. How she turned him down three times before finally consenting to join him in the hills. It hadn't been an easy life, but together he felt they enjoyed an enchantment and faith that grew deeper as the years passed. There hadn't been children, there hadn't been riches. But there had been a constancy of beauty and strength to their days, a simple, satisfying grace.

And then his contentment cruelly ended when she doubled over one morning, cut by a pain that no medicine could ease. Forced to leave his beloved mountains, he brought her into a town, to the healers who delivered empty and ever-more painful curatives that yielded no encouraging results. He helped his wife endure the hell of her sickness, mourning more when she rallied back from the point of death, often against her will it seemed to him, than when she finally closed her eyes to the peace of endless sleep.

He buried her in the soft pine forest behind their cabin and traveled further from the ache of civilization, existing from day to day for years until a wolf bite brought him back to the world of men. It was no small coincidence that he suspected Claudia Harrell's spirit guide was a wolf. She had bit him too, in a way. Bit him in a hardened heart and worried him in her teeth until she allowed him the mercy to bite back.

"Your wife's name? What was it again? I've forgotten."

"Emmeline."

"Emmeline. I will try to say hello."

"She'll be there to greet you. I've been...talking to her."

"Talking to her?" Claudia's eyes grew wide. "Why, Luther Root, you've been praying. How sweet!" Her laugh crackled like dust.

Luther wrapped a loose tendril of her hair around one thick finger and nodded teasingly.

"You'll be great friends. She's as ornery as you."

"I doubt I'll end up in the same place, after all."

She sighed and turned to the window again, her hands flinching nervously, plucking at the covers.

"I wouldn't take bets either place'll take you."

He watched her struggle to find the strength to respond to his jest, but she could only beat one hand weakly on the quilt.

She smiled and whispered, "There be a debate, I'm sure." Her hand tugged gently on his shirt sleeve. "Where do you stand? Really."

"You're a fighter. Warrior. Sioux talk of a great spirit road in the sky that warriors travel. It leads to the land of the Wise One."

"I can...still be a traveler?"

"If you want. Or if you want to rest..."

"No!" She bit her lip against the tears that were rising in her eyes. "I haven't made it to the end of the map."

He moistened a handkerchief in the tepid tea and pressed it to her temple.

"Went farther than most."

"But I never saw California or Nevada or..."

"But I have." He blotted the cloth gently over her cheek, catching up the hot tears she could no longer control. "Together, we complete the journey."

"Tell me about the Pacific...the ocean...the trees..." Her voice faded as she choked back another coughing spasm.

Luther took a strong pull on the foul-tasting tea to moisten the catch in his own throat and bided while she calmed herself.

"Saw the blue of the ocean, it's like your eyes. And the water-washed sand at dawn. Not near as smooth as your skin."

She smiled and her eyes flickered closed. "And the trees?"

"Trees so tall into the sky they must tickle God in the..." He stumbled, ashamed at his coarseness. Then he felt a weak pinch on his arm.

"In the ass?" Claudia's eyes were open again and for a moment they sparked with a bonfire's flame. "So you're saying I might see them from a different side..."

He sheltered her hands in his and nodded. "You will."

"And what will you do?"

She arched an eyebrow and he could already tell no answer would satisfy her. She wrenched her hands from his and waved him away dismissively.

"You'll head back into the mountains."

Luther shrugged, fingering the worn material of his vest. He planned it all along, knowing that her passing would scar his heart irrevocably. Scrambling for existence in the sharp rocks and barren trees of the mountains might bring pain, but a pain more easily healed than any human-caused wound.

"Can you truly go back now?"

She stirred restlessly and turned her head to the window's view and the hills in the distance, streaked with purple shadows in the growing dusk.

"That's the journey's end," she said scornfully.

"Have you already finished with traveling?"

His thoughts caught on her stinging words and he answered her back with an honest bitterness.

"I seen enough. I've been to town. It doesn't smell as good."

Claudia clucked her tongue unsympathetically.

"And here I thought you were a traveler, like me. Turns out you're just another land-locked bore with no capacity to experience the most interesting trip of all."

Rising, he padded to the window and tapped his hands on the sill in frustration. Talking with her for so many months, he'd learned that words could be put together in a way that was more than just a question or an explanation. He liked it when he learned from her. But other times he just wanted an answer and wondered if she was capable of a straightforward response.

"Luther." She called out faintly from behind him but he refused to turn.

"Luther..." she breathed lightly.

Finally, he pivoted around, crossing his arms.

"Where would I go?"

Her dry lips cracked as they formed into the coy, beguiling smile she used to make a point.

"Why, the most interesting trip to take, Luther...is a journey of the heart."

He huffed a response, caught off-guard by her destination.

"Please. Listen to me." She patted the blanket and he sat down beside her. "I know you've had losses. We all have. You hid yourself away, thinking to avoid it ever happening again. And that's the biggest loss of all."

Absent-mindedly she fingered the strings of his vest. "But...you have so much to give. So much. I can't begin to tell you how wonderful you've made me feel. Didn't it make you feel good, just a little, knowing you were helping me?"

He nodded again. He knew how much he had given. He was just weary at the cost it took on him.

"I'm too young to die, Luther. I know that. I know that it's the freedom I chose that killed me."

Her eyes searched his furtively for understanding as she choked out each word.

"I don't regret any time I've lost for all the happiness it brought me. "Be a part of the world, Luther. There's little enough goodness in it, there's so little...Promise me..." Her throat tightened and she fought for breath. A chill of fear blew up from his gut as he heard her strangled gasps.

"Shhhh. Hush now."

He raised her from the pillows and pulled her arms up, hoping the position would help the fight to get air into her damaged lungs. Her chest raised and lowered with difficulty and she stared at him with a unexpected wonder in her eyes. Then he felt her body go limp, her head lolled backwards. Blood spilled from her lips.

Cradling her tenderly, Luther held her to his breast and swallowed a sob. He must get Cleese, he knew. He should get help. But he didn't want to leave her alone. He was finding it hard to breathe himself.

Claudia Harrell, born Katherine Forrest, died two days later in his arms as golden sunlight sent its first radiant warmth of the day into the room, kindling her hair into a conflagration of red curls. Luther dressed her in her best black suit and placed a picture of himself in the breast pocket. He combed her hair, then fumbled it into the best braid his meaty hands would allow, knowing she needed to prepared for the travels ahead.

The town that had adopted the disparate couple as one of their own asked that she be buried in the small graveyard beyond the church. Luther argued against it, hoping for Gideon Cleese to back his wishes, but the young doctor sided with the townspeople, well aware of the import their request made on his new friend. Keeping the photographer in town would keep the mountain man there as well.

As a white wolf pacing restlessly on the green rise above the cemetery, one traveler was laid to rest. Another began a new journey.

 
 

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