Plains Shadow

The sky was an endless curtain of stars, hung like winter’s wool over the valley. It had been another long day’s ride following the sun, setting camp and settling for the night; the rider happened upon a decent clearing near a broad stream, sheltered by an overhanging rock. No bear or wolf tracks, but the water source was likely to draw predator and prey alike. It would do for a night or two, but he knew he would have to move on before long. He was not alone out here; the dark and shadowy thing that had been pursuing him since St. Louis was still out there. It had his scent. It would not stop. It never stopped.

He poked a narrow cedar branch had had fallen long ago enough to fully dry into the flickering embers of his campfire. Sparks popped and danced through the column of smoke, tiny amber lights alive in a swirling field of carbonized pine.  

Now that dinner was contentedly easing its way through his belly, the rider took a few minutes to go through his supplies. In addition to his general goods – tools, traps, utensils and whiskey flask – he remained well covered. He had plenty of shot and powder to last him until he would need to head towards a trading post, and he would take care to avoid being so loaded down with furs that it would cause his cargo pony any troubles. Food and water he would find right where he was, with any consumables being replaced by the valuable goods he was out here to gather.

He figured another month or so and he would need to start heading back east to make the circuit complete. And every day’s ride west added an extra day to ride back, so he would have to decide if he wanted to risk another two weeks ride west or head south, or just wander aimlessly around the area. It was just barely summer; he wouldn’t need to worry about the snows for well past time to head back.

Having struck up a gentle alliance with the Nez Perce, he knew at least this general area would be safe from the locals. But there were still plenty of ways to die out here in the wild. Unlike the townships and trading roads back east, every step was on uncertain ground. Every breath needed your attention. He reckoned it was why he hated going back to town – one of the reasons, anyway. It was just that being in town around all the loud idiots that lived there seemed to just push him back further into himself. All the whiskey in the world couldn’t keep out their high-horse looks, their wrinkled noses. As if he was the one what smelled up a room.

After counting up his supplies, he took apart and cleaned his rifle and pistols. The flint in one of the pistols was worn down enough that he decided to replace it outright, adjusting and tightening the new stone. He tested the pull a couple of times to make sure it knocked sparks into the pan and made a mental note to get off a shot or two with powder to ensure its calibration. That still left him with one pistol and the rifle if he needed them, so he wasn’t concerned. He sat the rifle beside the head of his bedroll, gear ready in case something happened upon his camp in the night, and set about sharpening his long knife. The steady rhythm of steel against whetstone relaxed him, luring his mind into restfulness.

His long grey beard had just started to tickle his chest when he heard his name, whispered through the edge of darkness. The fire was mostly gone now, an orange glow shivering from the last lingering coals. So near to sleep, the shifting light made him wonder if he was even awake at all; he rested the edge of the knife against the back of his hand for a sense of consciousness. It was warm from the steadiness of its passes cross the stone, proving enough of a convincing to his wavering mind. And before he could assure himself elsewise, the voice came again from the shadows, calling his name.

He knew the voice, sure as if he’d been standing afore the old man himself what spoke. Of course it couldn’t be the man in the flesh, however. The old man had been dead long before the rider had left that world behind him. But out here past civilization, voices didn’t need a body to make themselves heard. He knew well enough not to answer the dead, though. No sense in giving them cause to start a whole conversation.

The rider sheathed his knife and tossed the whetstone back with the rest of his possibles, pulled the wool jacket up and over his shoulders and laid down with his back to the coals.

That night, the dreams came. More memories than new dreams, as if his brain had no strength left to make up new images for the mulling. Just rehashed old thoughts, replaying for his eyes alone. Flashes, more like. Arriving off the foul ships with his parents and siblings, working on a fishing boat by the age of eleven to help feed his family. The clogged and fetid streets and ramshackle housing tenements of the port of Boston. The back of his father’s hand when money got too hard to come by. Leaving home at fifteen, well of the age to strike out on his own. Never looking back.

When he woke, the shadow’s voice was still echoing in his ears. His cheek still stung with the old man’s hand. The sky was already shifting to shades of sunrise, giving him a limited scan of the area past his camp. Nothing of note; no footprints of beast or man. But then, the dead leave no trace of their passing.

He restarted the fire with what wood and kindling remained, and set his small pot to boil while he packed up the rest and prepared to leave. An hour later, coffee and a handful of jerky later, he was back on the move, the sun at his back.

By day’s end he found himself at the mouth of a valley, a small river carving its way through a thick meadow. A few of the trees seemed fruit-bearing, and he noted a few patches of wild berries randomly mixed among them. Birds sang in the treetops, and more than one kind of track led between the treeline and the water’s edge. Likely beavers, judging by a few of the felled trees and gnaw marks he saw on the occasional trunk, and probably a mountain lion den close by to hunt them. Plenty to hear to fish and trap, and even a flattened rise up high enough to set up a sturdy shelter.

Just like that, he decided on his next few months of living. By week’s end, he had a functioning encampment constructed: firepit, horse enclosure, latrine, and even a rudimentary watercatch to gather the rain near the shelter. The rider had built a couple of drying racks for skins, as well as a frame to dry and smoke some of the meat he expected to catch while here. He had already laid out some traps and found good areas to fish, and felt generally at home here.

On the second week, a small band of the locals rode along the edge of the tree line while he was skinning his second beaver. He stopped what he was doing once he noticed their passing, letting them know that he saw them but that he meant them only respect. If they had any problem with him, they would be back to kill him, but he imagined they were only likely to come around with one of their tribal elders to arrange a trade in exchange for him working the land a while. In the twenty or so years he had been making his way through the west, he had picked up enough of their language that between that and his bad English and worse French he didn’t have a significant problem with communicating. When words failed, a stick in the dirt seemed to do the trick, too. Though maybe only another two or three dozen trappers worked this particular range of mountains, he trusted that his past interactions would be enough of a foundation to offer him good will with any concerns the locals might have.

As the small party moved on and out of the valley, he found himself smiling at the thought of their return. They had been the first people he had even seen in near a month, now; he nearly missed the idea of socializing with others. Certainly, the living had so much more to offer than the dead.

The following night, the voice found him once again.

And once again, it lingered just beyond the scope of his fire, calling to the rider by his Christian name.

The rider fought it off with the last of his flask, letting sleep claim him among the echoes of the dead. He could still feel the unanswered calls as he woke the next morning. By the time he chased the hangover off with a cup of strong coffee, he was again alone.

Another few days and nights passed, and the rider carried on as he had done. He woke to the lightening sky, broke fast, checked his traps, caring for whatever he might find there or fishing if the traps were still empty. He found a few rabbits, skinning them as well; they were too lean so he boiled them up with some wild onions and a few herbs he had gathered along the way. He had refilled his flask from his ceramic jug, but decided to leave it be for now. He could feel the voice waiting for the twilight, and he found himself resolved to squaring up against it, once and for all. It had followed him all these years and seemed like it was determined to follow him all the way through to the end. “Might as well face what you cannot flee,” he had heard. He couldn’t remember where he had heard it, but the old saying fluttered out and back into whatever faded memory it was borne from.

Sure enough, the voice came back that night as he readied for sleep, calling him as always by his name.

“What do you want?” the rider said to the voice. His own words sounded strange to him; he hadn’t used them in a while, now. “Can’t offer you much in the way of hospitality.”

He could feel it now, as tangibly as if someone was strolling into his camp.

“Don’t suppose you’ve just come here for the coffee.”

A slight breeze crossed through the fire, dropping one of the logs down into the embers and sending a small shower of sparks up into the sky. After another moment of silence, the rider chuckled to himself. Standing, he picked up a block of wood and set it on its side across the firepit from his seat.

“Apologies,” he said, nodding his head. “Take a load off, I guess.”

The shadow said nothing, merely slipping slightly closer and shimmering against the shivering light of the fire.

“Must be loads different, yeah, a dusty old campfire? Not quite the cast iron you had back in the back office?”

He noticed that the shadow seemed to fade a bit at that.

“Sorry. I know you were proud of that. I remember when they set it in, how much you liked to brag about how much it had cost but that you’d paid for it all in cash.” The rider poked one of the logs in the fire, causing another spray of sparks to snap off and float up into the sky. “Never really got why that was such a thing for you.”

“You never knew Ireland,” the shadow whispered.

The rider’s head rose suddenly. “What?”

“I said you never knew Ireland.”

Shaking his head, the rider reached for his flask, unscrewing it slowly with his thumb. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Your ma and I,” the shadow answered, “we saved up for three years to have enough to get the worst space on the worst ship to come to the colonies. Near two dozen of the others on the ship were lost, tossed over the side on the way here. Your older sister passed after we arrived, you and your brothers were sick the first year. Your ma passed when you weren’t more than six. And still we did what we could to give you a home to grow in. And all that… it still a damn sight better’n we left behind.”

“You’ve told me this before,” the rider grumbled, pausing to take a sip from the flask. It burned like a caramel flame down his throat, and rose back up like a gentle steam. “You always told us this.”

“I never told you what we left behind,” the shadow said.

“So tell me now.”

Flames crackled and the wind blew lazily through the trees. A coyote yipped to its pack, no more than a couple miles off, the rider guessed. At last, the shadow answered him.

“Your ma was only fourteen when our parents told us we’d be married, over a debt incurred and a means to resolve it. But there’d been another lad in the town, and they’d fancied one another. Without our parent’s arrangement, like as not she would have married him above me. Your ma never said as such, but I think she still loved him until the end.”

Several moments of silence filled the camp before the shadow continued.

“Even so, after our parents made the announcement, he left town and your ma and I courted, and we got married when she was sixteen. We were happy, and though I’d see her fall sad from time to time, we did do well together and, I think, we were in about as much love as a couple could be. A couple years after, the boy came back. He’d tried his hand in a few businesses in Edinburgh and ended up with nothing but his name. When we came across him in town, he’d cross the street and pass us from the other side, but I never saw his eyes leave her. I had no hate for the man, see, but I know what that kind of envy can do to a soul if it’s carried on too long.”

The shadow seemed to grow darker, its transparent feet looking to rise up from a pair of stones near the fire itself. “Not long after your sister had been born, your ma and I decided to leave not just our families and our town, but the whole of Ireland itself. We had our eye on a ship that would take us to the new England colonies, and, if we had saved for another year we would have taken it. But… we had to leave earlier than we’d planned.”

The rider took another sip and nearly offered the flask to the shadow before reason stayed his hand. “What happened?”

“We had a wee pub there in town – no more than a room with some chairs and a table, with a side room for Declan McGinnes who owned the building – and we’d settle in there from time to time for drinks. You weren’t more than a couple months old at the time, so I only meant for a pint or two, but after three pints, your ma’s former himself walked in with a couple of his friends and started laughing up the drinks, getting loud in their whiskey and such. I tried to keep my eyes in my beer, but then he said something his friends found particularly amusing, and he pointed right over at me as he said it, and I knew exactly what it was he’d been saying.”

The rider found himself clenching his flask hard enough to warp the curved metal.

“I told the man to mind his own drink and leave us be, but it was either the drink or his hate that made him cross over to me,” the shadow said faintly, as if wandering through its own memories. “He threw the first fist – a sloppy fist, just grazed my face. Our friends pushed him back but he came again hard. We took our swings – not an uncommon thing, and the others chose to let us punch ourselves out – but then he pulled a knife and tried at my chest before anyone saw the blade. He only got a button off my shirt, but I caught his arm and tried to wrestle the knife away. I remember someone screaming out, and I remember the expression on his face. It was pale, and there was this sound coming out of his mouth, like a little stream. He was still holding the knife, but the blade had gotten turned around and had come up into his chest. I can still feel that scrape it made when it pushed past his ribs. And then I remember him coughing, and the blood on his lips. He fell to the floor, still trying to hold on to me, but I remember my friends grabbing me by the arms, and running me home. I….remember them helping throw what they could into sacks and putting us all in the back of a wagon. I… I remember being on the ship – a ship, and not the one we’d agreed on. And I remember your ma, her face in tears. But I don’t remember why she was crying. I just remember her tears.”

“Did you tell her? What you did, I mean?”

The shadow was silent, and the rider imagined that perhaps it was shaking its head, having forgotten that such a gesture holds no relevance for a spirit.

“I never knew about that.”

“Why would you? It didn’t matter.”

As he thought about this, the rider’s mind floated back to the few memories he had of his mother; of her pale features, the darkness beneath her eyes he had always seen but not truly noticed. He remembered her kindness, her softness. At last, so many years later, he recognized her pain.

When he looked back up, the shadow was gone.

With a sigh, the rider closed the flask and laid down on his bedroll, peering through the dying flames until the sun awoke him.

That morning, he searched the area for some decent game trails, leaving a pair of beaver traps down near the water’s edge and a few sling traps to catch a rabbit or two for food. Then he grabbed his net and pole and moved upstream above the beaver lodges that dotted the widened ponds dammed by the locals. He picked up a few trout in short order, cleaned them and fried one up for an early lunch, leaving the others to dry in the sun with a pinch of herbs and salt. It was all mindless labor to him; the necessities of his life, all performed by muscle memory. The unfortunate side effect of his life being so performed out of habit was that it left his mind to mull over the campfire conversation of the night before.

He didn’t quite know how to factor this new truth into the assumptions he had made over his youth, and resolved to hashing this out with his father’s shadow if he returned that evening. He spent the rest of his day walking the woods near his encampment, looking for new opportunities to lay traps and plucking edible vegetation to accompany his supper.

After supper was a memory of flavors on his lips, he set about sharpening his tools: an axe for chopping, a knife used for gutting the fish, and another for skinning the rabbits or beavers he hoped to find waiting for him in the traps he had laid out. He set aside a small pile of ash from the campfire to use in preparing the skins, as well as a cast iron pot for melting down what he’d need for tanning the hides. He even looked for indicators of other animals, including the possibility of bears to help. In a good season, he would need a fair amount of animal grease to help the preparation in the furs, and nothing beat a bear for grease.

It wasn’t the first time he considered the option of simply putting up a house out here in the mountains. He could have a nice room set aside for the sole purpose of the tanning process, which could put out a fair stink, and it would be nice to have a place to store the meat where he wouldn’t need to keep an eye out for the occasional critter. But that meant months of work he could otherwise be roaming and trapping and living on the land. A full season would be lost, just for the benefit of a building; and if the land ever got tired of him, there he would be with a pointless house to show for it.

No point in putting down roots, ‘less you’re a tree, he thought, unaware that he was saying the words along with his thinking them.

“Is that what you think roots are for?” the shadow said.

He hadn’t noticed the spirit’s arrival, and nearly cut his thumb open on the edge of the blade he had been honing.

“Ah, hello there again,” he said, attempting to behave as if he hadn’t been startled.

The shadow seemed to nod its head in acknowledgement of the rider’s greeting. “Roots, I said. You liken them to a prison, do you?”

The rider shrugged his shoulders, pretending to admire the lack of light along the edge of the blade before sheathing it and setting it aside. “Trees do seem to do well with them.”

“Ever wonder why that is?”

“Not as such, no. Just not really a thing for people as much as for a tree.”

“A person’s not a tree.”

“That’s my point.”

“But a person can be like a tree.”

It sounded like the strangest thing to be said, but it was certainly the kind of thing his father liked to say. The rider’s grandfather was a learned man, knew his letters and such, and had passed that learning along to his children. But arriving in this country had changed the inheritance of knowledge, and the rider and his siblings had spent more time learning about trades and earning a living than such as could be found between the pages of books.

“How do you figure?”

The shadow was taller now, reminding the rider of looking up at his father when he was a young lad. “A person can be like a tree in that it needs sunlight and water, and things to make it grow tall and strong. A tree and a person can be thick or thin, can branch out, can bear fruit and send its seeds off to grow in other places. A tree can perish, give shelter, be made to be useful, be a part of a group of others or grow up alone, all by itself. A person can be like a tree.”

“That’s fair,” the rider said, scratching his beard. The gesture was as much to soften the itch he was feeling there as it was to remind him that he was a man, now, and not the tiny lad of his memories. “But it doesn’t mean a man needs roots.”

“What happens to a tree that has no roots?”

“Rain falls, wind blows, the tree goes down. But a man isn’t a tree.”

“A man can be like a tree,” the spirit repeated.

“And that means a man can be unlike a tree, as well.”

“And what happens when the rain falls? When the wind blows, when the rains come?”

The rider was silent for a while before he answered. “Then the man leaves the rain and wind behind him.” When he looked up, the shadow was gone.

It was several days again before the shadow returned. The rider had three skins drying on the racks, just downwind of the camp, a beaver and two rabbits. The former was of a decent size, though he’d caught much larger in years past. Not bad for a first catch, he thought. Four more like that and he’d pay for the whole season. If he caught a deer or two before it was time to head back, he’d be in for a decent profit. He had taken a full extra day to rig up a separate fire some feet away from the main pit, deep and wide enough to fill with heated stones and surround with a cone of canvas to use as a smoker. The thought again came to him that if he had simply set up a cabin here he would only need to set these things up once, but he shooed it away like an irritant fly.

One of the afternoon’s efforts were curtailed by a heavy summer’s shower. It was refreshing and energizing to walk around in the altogether and feel the rains washing away a week’s work, but it also kept him from his labors. As he sat on his blankets to dry by the fire, he pondered the satisfaction of one’s efforts. Not two weeks ago, this had been a pristine valley, without the barest trace of man’s existence, as if a fragment of the blessed garden of eden itself. And now, here had come man, tools in hand to craft from its beauty the needs of mankind. By the sweat of his brow, indeed.

But in less than a month, he would be gone from here, and nature would reclaim that which was its birthright. By the same time in a year, a man could find his way here and believe himself to bring the first footsteps to happen upon this soil. Perhaps the rider wasn’t the first, in fact. As spins the world, how could a man know his place? The Nez Perce talked about their old spirits having walked this world for generations without number, long before the white man arrived. And the spirits would walk this world still when all traces of mankind had long since been washed away.

He thought of his father’s words, back in the town he had left so many years ago. “Make yourself a legacy, son,” he had said. “Build something to leave behind for your children.”

“But I didn’t want children,” he whispered back.

“I didn’t believe you then,” the spirit replied. It was standing, again, just across from the rider, looking as if he’d sprung right out of the rocks. “I thought you were just angry.”

“I was angry. But I wasn’t just angry.”

 “Angry enough to leave.”

The rider shrugged his shoulders, poking a stick at one of the new stones he had placed into the center of the fire. “There wasn’t much cause to stay. You made that plain.”

A moment passed before the shadow responded. “I never told you to leave.”

“Didn’t you?”

“I wanted you to stay. We’d planned for you to take over the shop.”

“You’d planned. Besides, Simon took over the shop, just like he always wanted.”

“True, he had more love for the enterprise than you had. But you could have stayed anyway.”

The rider threw the stick aside and sat forward angrily. “I never wanted it! I wanted this!”

“And what is this? What is it about this life that you loved so much more than your own family?”

“You wouldn’t understand! You never understood.”

“There you are,” the shadow whispered. “That’s the boy I remember.”

The rider wanted to scream, to throw something, to hit something, but he knew nothing would chase the shadow away. Though this was the first time they’d spoken, the shadow followed him every year from the outskirts of whatever westernmost city he departed at the frontier’s edge out into the wilds of the western mountains until he at last returned to the city. Strangely, he was only free of the pursuit when he found himself among the shadow’s home.

He breathed deeply, closing his eyes and covering his face.

“I’m an old man, now, father. I’m older than you were when you died.”

“You have a point to that? Do you think being older somehow gives you power over me?”

“No, it doesn’t. Just like you being my father gives you any power over me.”

“Doesn’t it?”

He remembered his father’s words. “Power cannot be taken; it can only be given.”

“Even so.”

“Why are you here, pa? Why do you always show up out here, when I just want to be alone?”

“I should ask you the same.”

“But you didn’t, so maybe you could answer me.”

“It’s the same answer, son, yours and mine. I could tell you the answer, of course, but…”

The rider interrupted him with the statement his father had made so many times before. “If you don’t work for the answer, I’ll never understand the question.”

“Yes.”

“I always come out here because it’s the only place I feel like I’m free to be myself. I can do what I can do, and I don’t have to answer to the will of another. I can breathe the air, I can live on the land, and I can make what money I need by the things I can do well. I can think, and I can rest, and I can dream. Out here, I can live. Out here, I don’t need anyone or anything.”

The shadow was silent, as if giving the rider enough time to amend his answer. Finally, he spoke.

“That is a good, clear, and well thought-out answer. What is the actual reason, though?”

The rider opened his mouth, his throat burning with an angry response, but the shadow vanished as he was staring into it. He couldn’t be sure if the spirit was angry, sad, or laughing at him.

Two weeks passed. The rider was relaxing into a comfortable rhythm: he laid out traps every three or four days after retrieving their catch, he fished, gathered, cleaned and prepared what he found in the sprung traps by cooking or drying the meats, preparing and tanning the hides, and using all the remaining parts as possible. He was content with how many ways all the parts of an animal could be used. Other than the meat, of course, the sinews and intestines made for a fine replacement for rope; the bladder was useful for storing extra water; the scrapings of the hide, mixed with the brains and ash from the fire was essential for the hide tanning process. There was an old saying he had been told from one of the trappers he had met, back when he was inspired to follow that path: “every animal has just enough brains to tan its own hide.” The memory made him smile.

He had caught a deer – just a young buck, a two-pointer – three nights earlier. He had been kept so busy caring for it, cleaning it and preparing its parts that he’d stopped laying out extra traps. He didn’t want to tap the area out, as well-populated an area as it was. Also, the stack of furs on his mule would be impressive at this point and he didn’t want to make himself a target for any thieves on the road. Few travelled out this far what didn’t mean to live shoulder to heel with the wild, but as one approached “civilization”, the truly dangerous predators lay in wait. There were trading post only a week or two behind him, though, so if he chose to stay out the winter, he could always sell out for a smaller percentage of the money he might make in town proper. Somewhere in the back of his mind, his father’s mercantile voice counted the numbers out.

It wasn’t about the money, he reminded himself, trying to sound convinced. Well…. It wasn’t only about the money. Not only.

He held an antler from the buck in his hand as he slowly sawed it into button-sized discs.

“Killed that yourself, did you?” the shadow asked him.

“I did. Bow and arrow, knife through the neck to make it peaceful. Dragged it back, treated it respectful. Just one buck, too. I won’t take any more deer this season, and the venison will last me well into the trip… well, to wherever I decide to go for the winter.”

“It’s not too long, now, is it? The winter, I mean.”

The rider shook his head. “I’ll need to be off within a pair of weeks, I suppose. I can feel the wind changing already. Bit of a chill in the morning that wasn’t there last time we spoke.”

“So, do you know what you’ll do this year? Back to town, or wintering in?”

Shrugging, the rider offered little confirmation. “There’s an encampment, mostly miners, about two days southwest of here. Like as not, I could probably trade my haul here for a pocket of nuggets, assuming they haven’t dried up. Either way, they’ve got a share of cabins built up just below the snowline, if I don’t mind bunking up. That way I could stay here til the first flakes drop, and really stack up for winter. Or I could head back sooner and strike for St Louis or one of the other border towns, maybe even a trader depot.”

“St Louis no longer your favored destination?”

The rider chuckled at that. “Getting a mite big, I think. There’s others like me now, running into town with their mangy scraps and undercutting the trade. Gonna price me out of a job if they’re not careful.”

“Times change,” the shadow whispered. “We either change with them, or we fade away.”

“Nothing wrong with fading away. If nothing goes away, it gets a bit…crowded.”

He could feel the shadow staring at him. “Was that directed at me, son?”

“Not completely, no.”

“I suppose I deserve that. Here you are, out in the wilderness alone, and I come along and haunt you.”

“I didn’t come out here just to be alone, pa.”

“It would be fair if you had.”

“But I didn’t.”

“So tell me, then.”

“Tell you what?”

The shadow was standing in front of him now, between the rider and the fire. The rider could see the subtle contours of his face, the buttons of his waistcoat, the callouses on his fingers. He could almost smell the ink on his fingertips as the shadow reached down to the rider’s bearded chin.

“Tell me why you left,” it said. “Why you really left.”

“Why does it matter? Why should a…spirit of beyond the grave give one whit about my reasons? I left! Isn’t that enough?”

“It doesn’t sound like it’s enough to you.”

“To me? What in the hell are you even talking about?”

The shadow faded slightly, allowing for an unsettling translucence in the center of itself. The fire sputtered and sparked, echoing the rider’s nerves.

“If you answer this question,” the shadow said softly, “you’ll answer all your other questions.”

“What other questions?”

Rather than answer, the shadow moved away from the rider and hovered near the rack where the most recent skins were drying. “What was it like, the first time you skinned one of these?”

It took a moment for the rider to process the question. “It was….it was….” He laughed softly, a much-needed and unexpected release of the tension he felt. “It was a mess, to be honest. My hands were shaking, and I pretty much ruined the poor thing. Ended up as scraps.”

“Do you know why that was?”

The rider nodded. “I didn’t know it at the time, but it was because I set about to skinning too soon after I’d killed it. I was still shaking with nerves, and couldn’t keep my hands steady.”

“But you’re better now.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“Practice. Age. Time.”

“Peeling back the layers takes practice,” the shadow whispered. “In all things. Even looking into your own mind. The first times are hard, but it gets better as you go.”

“Looking into my own mind? What are you talking about?”

“Why did you leave home?”

The rider’s mouth dropped and he felt the usual rage rising in his throat, but this time, he caught it there and kept his words back until the anger faded.

“See?” the shadow said, its voice calm and gentle. “You were right. All things should fade.”

And like that, the shadow vanished again.

Every night, the rider peered past his campfire for the shadow’s return, but it was not until nearly a month later when it appeared again. The rider had stayed past his initial timeline, and he had already seen one gentle flurry and felt the first tentative bite of the winter. St Louis was no longer a realistic option. It was either east to a trading post, south to the mining camp, or struggle here in the valley. He could see real issues with any of the choices, however, and was still unresolved when he felt the shadow resume its conversational vigil at his campfire.

“You’re packed,” it said.

“Mostly. Just have to wrap up the rest of my tools and saddle up the horse and mule for the ride.”

“You’ve decided, then?”

“Not yet,” the rider said honestly. “I was kind of hoping you’d show up to discuss it with me.”

The shadow did not seem to have expected his answer, and was silent for several minutes before speaking again.

“I…appreciate that.”

With a shrug, the rider tended to the fire. “All my years out here, I don’t usually have guests. I suppose now that I’ve had one, I’ve kind of taken to it.”

“You’ve spoken to others, though? The natives? Other trappers?”

“Other trappers like as to be left alone as much as me. And no native’s been my guest. If anything, I’m theirs. They put up with us, but I expect they’d just as soon I left them alone.”

“I see. Well, then, I am glad if I have added something to your time here.”

The two remained silent again for several minutes, until the rider thought the shadow might have left. But when he looked up, the shadow remained.

“I didn’t leave home to get away from you,” he said softly.

“Then why?”

Taking a slow breath, the rider gave his father the answer. “You made your life on your own, you know? You always told us kids that. You brought us here with nothing to your name but your name, and you worked until you had a business. And you built that business until you had a home for us and then some. But you always told us it was what you did – what a father did for his family. I probably never said thank you for that, I suppose. I was a shit son and never told you a thing about how much it meant to me. I just ran off because of a fight or something, and I can’t even remember what it was about.”

“It didn’t matter.”

“No,” the rider agreed. “But every year I’d think I should go back and apologize, and every year it got harder to think about it. Every year, the fight seemed further away, and the mountain of excuses just got higher and higher, and every year Boston got further and further, and suddenly I wasn’t a boy anymore.”

“And then I died.”

“And then you died.” The rider felt the words catch in his throat, as he realized it was the first time in more than twenty years that he’d said aloud the fact of his father’s passing. Had he even said it? He couldn’t remember.

“Too late to go back now and apologize,” the rider added, idly wondering why it was suddenly so hard to focus on the fire. “Too late for anything now.”

“It doesn’t matter, son.”

“Of course it does. You taught us that. Words matter. Truth matters. Your word matters.”

“Words aren’t the only thing that matters.”

The rider shook his head slowly. “No, they aren’t. Actions matter.”

Silently agreeing, the shadow stepped closer.

“Why are you here, son?”

A sharpness splintered across the rider’s chest, and a breath filled his lungs with a pleasantly flowing lightness. “To be a good son,” he said, his words coming out like a gust of wind. “To make you proud.”

The words bounced from the fire to the wall of stone that surrounded him, and spiraled up until they were lost in the night sky. His hands followed the drops of water he mistook for rain up, to the tips of his beard and to his cheeks, and then looked out to the empty air around him. He was alone – again – but somehow he didn’t feel the distance of life to his own. It felt to him as if he still shared the fire with others. Loved ones. Family.

When he laid his head down to sleep, he felt the comforting embrace of others, watching over him until the dawn returned.

As the sun was still making its leisurely way up and over the eastern ridges of the mountains behind him, the rider had his horse and mule saddled and packed, with only the packed ground and a scattered, cold campfire left in his wake. To his right was a still darkened horizon, and ahead of him awaited his next destination. He remembered talk of new townships being developed on the near coast, along the pacific ocean. He’d never seen the pacific ocean, and it sounded like something he’d like to see before he made the ultimate decision to settle down and enjoy the fruits of his labors.

Behind him, he knew he was no longer pursued by the shadows of lives lost, of family. The shadows and spirits of the departed now travelled by his side. No longer predators, they now accompanied him as his companions.

And together, they moved forward. Away from their memories, towards tomorrow.

Coda:

The night had already settled for the evening, and, like the old man, had kicked up its feet in front of the campfire and breathed a bit more easy after a long day under the sun. It usually showed up around this hour, give or take, and the old man reached for his flask and took a long and deliciously painful swig before closing it back up and setting it back to its place beside him. When he glanced back up, he could make out the distinct outline of the shadow that had been following him these past two weeks. 

“There you are,” he muttered, unsure as always if the being could even hear him. “Was just about to send out a search party.” He chuckled as his little joke but the shadow did not seem to find him amusing. 

“I’ve been meaning to ask you. What’s your whole angle, anyway? You show up here every night, share my fire, and take off before sunup. Are you lost, or are you here for a purpose?” 

Once more, the shadow made no sound, merely appeared to be staring through the old man’s tired eyes into an equally tired soul. 

“I mean, if you have family, I don’t imagine they’re around these parts, are they? And if they are, why aren’t you with them? I don’t suspect I’m fit company, even if you are...whatever it is you are.” 

He picked up a thick branch and stirred the embers, kicking a storm of sparks up into the sky. He imagined each one of them looking up towards the stars and hoping to dance among them, only to fade and vanish before attaining their goal. Poor stupid sparks, he thought. Know your place. Keep your dreams realistic or learn to live with disappointment. 

Those words felt familiar somehow, and as he looked back to the formless mirage of his visiting shade, the old man at last connected the dots. 

“Dad?” he asked. The shadow seemed to move in response, almost as if he was nodding what passed for a head. “Oh, shit on me. You’re him, aren’t you? Figures, you’re the only one who’d be stupid enough to follow me all the way out here. You’re a bit lost, old man.” 

The shadow continued to regard him on the opposite side of the flames. 

“So, what, you weren’t happy to look over my shoulder while you were alive, but now you’re just gonna keep silently judging me after you’re dead? Yeah, that seems about right. Motherfucker, you never gave two shits about me when you had a chance to do anything about it, but now, what, you’re just gonna haunt me forever? Prick.” 

“I said, you're a prick!” he repeated louder, on the off chance the spectre didn’t hear him the first time.  

“Seriously, I don’t know what the hell you’re on about. Just because I wasn’t the son you wanted, just because you didn’t understand who I was. And I didn’t care about that, not really. It woulda been nice for you to know who I was, but I knew you.” 

The shadow appeared skeptical. 

“I did,” the old man growled. “I knew good and well who you were, and I was still all right with you being my father. We didn’t have to agree. You didn't have to accept that I was going to end up out west, while you kept up the family business. That’s what John was for, right? Picking up where you left off? That wasn’t ever going to be my life. And I know that made you feel like I was disappointed with you, but I told you - it just wasn’t my life. I belong out here. I’m an explorer. I want to be out here in the wild before it’s not wild anymore.” 

“You don't have to understand, and you don’t have to agree with me. But the sooner you get that I’m not changing to suit you, the better off your afterlife is going to be. You got that?” 

The shadow, again, did not respond, and they both went silent, with only the crackling fire to break the void. At some point during the night, the old man fell asleep and by sunrise the shadow was gone. But he would return again tonight, and they would argue more.  

There was much to do, and the creaking in his bones wasn’t going to go anywhere. He stretched and met the day.