Against the Current (Idaho Territory - 1885)

The boy was nine and his father was dead. Abe found him by the rocks where the trail turned north, his face streaked with dried tears and dirt.

"Got a name?" Abe shifted the Sharpe's in the crook of his arm. He kept his distance, letting his voice do the reaching.

"Nick."

Abe studied the lengthening shadows. The temperature would drop twenty degrees once the sun slipped behind the ridgeline. He could backtrack to Boise, maybe make Warren, but either way that was three weeks of walking, no way he would last. He just didn't have the strength. "I guess you're coming with me."

The boy's father lay in the shade. A rattler had done it. They buried the man, set a cairn of stones, and marked it. Abe felt there was nothing to say about death in the mountains.

They walked, the mountain air biting sharp and clean as they picked their way through the backcountry. Each step marked time Abe didn't have, carrying him toward the abandoned homestead where his mother had brought him into this world. It seemed fitting to close the circle there, far from the new mining towns where men spoke of railroad lines and progress, where they'd run him out for being different—a man who preferred solitude to society, who'd turned down good ranching work to trap and guide, who'd never taken a wife.

One night they ate rabbit that Nick had spotted first.

"Good eyes," Abe said

The boy nodded.

Several days later, they made camp at a river, a valley laid out ahead. Salmon jumped in the flow, leaped against a cascade of water, their bodies flashing red. Abe said. "Look at them. Every instinct says go easy, flow downstream like everybody else. But they fight upstream anyway."

Where they going?" the boy asked. Dark hair fell into his eyes.

"Salmon come home to die," Abe said quietly.

in the morning, they walked on.

The old cabin stood like Abe remembered when his father had built it, though the roof had collapsed with the log sides caved in. The following days, they worked together on thatching the roof, bracing the walls as best they could. One night, Abe showed him about the fire, not by talking but by doing. The boy watched, and the next morning the boy was already up, practicing with the flint, sparking the fire. His hands got steadier each day, the fires quicker. At night they'd sit and Abe would point to the stars. The boy learned their names without being told he was learning. Abe gestured to the southern stars. "The Nez Perce taught me those stars are where the sky river flows strongest. They say that's where the first salmon learned to swim upstream." He pointed to the misty glow of the Milky Way flowing through the constellation. "See that cloudy patch? They say that's the steam rising from the sacred waters, same as you see on the Salmon River on cold mornings."

The pain in Abe's gut was bad. The laudanum helped some, but he'd known what was coming when he'd left Boise. A man knew such things. But finding the boy changed it.

"My pa would've called this savage living," Abe said, one day showing Nick how to sharpen a knife, his sun-weathered hands, thick-knuckled from decades of trapping." He was dead set on building proper walls, having proper ways. Died trying to prove these mountains wrong. The Indians had it right all along—you don't fight nature, you bend."

In the weeks that followed, they patched the cabin together between lessons. Abe showed Nick how to read the land, how the water flowed, how to spot a pass through the mountains. "See that notch in the mountain? The Nez Perce used that to guide their hunting parties. Same as those stars guided the wagon trains, if you know how to read them. The world's full of signs, if you're humble enough to look."

They spent mornings setting snares with rawhide strips, Abe teaching Nick the habits of rabbit and grouse. His hands might shake with the rifle now, but they were still steady enough to teach the boy how to clean game, how to preserve meat by smoking it over pine boughs.

The weeks wore on and Abe woke a little slower, the pain a little deeper. He caught Nick watching him sometimes, questions in his young eyes that Abe wouldn't answer. The boy was learning fast—had to, up here mistakes meant death.

One morning, Abe looked on as Nick started a fire, using the flint and steel Abe had taught him to use. Pride warmed Abe's chest more than the flames. "Your pa teach you anything about these mountains?"

"He worked at the mercantile in Boise. Said there was no future in the wild places, that the railroad was bringing progress."

Abe nodded, hiding a grimace as he shifted position. "Progress. That's what they called it when they fenced the valleys, when they made laws about who could live where and how. But nature ain't about progress, son."

Fall came early to these heights, the mountainside now splashed with yellow aspen, red mountain maple. In the mornings, their boots crunched on frosted pine needles. One day at breakfast, Abe's hands shook so bad he couldn't hold his tin cup. Nick took it from him without a word. "Reckon it's time," Abe said softly. He pulled out his map, the one they'd drawn together in charcoal on a piece of deer hide. "Remember, you're here. Boise's there. Follow the river south till you hit the ruts of the Oregon Trail. Keep the morning sun on your left shoulder. You'll make it in three weeks, maybe four."

"You're not coming?"

"No."

The boy looked at him for a long time.

"I know," the boy said.

"Times don't fit for men like me no more. Maybe in my case they never did."

At dawn, they parted ways. They didn't say goodbye. Abe watched until Nick disappeared into the pines with his Sharpe's strapped over his shoulder, almost bigger than he was. Then he closed the cabin door his father had hung fifty years ago.

That same evening, Nick made his first solo camp. He chose his spot like Abe had taught him—high ground, sheltered, defensible. As he struck flint to steel, he felt the old man had given him something, more than how to survive, but at that time in his life he wasn't sure what it was. It was only later he'd know. The fire was small and hot. He'd learned that you didn't need big fires. Big fires were for men who were afraid. Nick added wood to his fire, knowing exactly how to make it last. Tomorrow, he'd make his way south, he'd find the trail. He bedded down with the stars above him, Sagittarius to the south. Somewhere in the dark, a wolf howled a long way off.

Up on his porch, Abe watched the same stars that had guided trappers and tribes for centuries, his breath growing shallow and quiet. His last thought was of the boy, imagining him moving sure and strong through the wilderness. The boy would make it. That was the thing that mattered. He smiled, guessing some part of him would live on.