I have studied this Internet site for months. I've examinded the many threads that pertain to the single-shot 45 /70. So, finally, today, I put money down on a Buffalo Classic. If not for the information and wisdom set forth on the many pages of this site, I would have been reluctant to do so, because my meager income is based on my profession as a fiction writer. With an H&R BC, I believe I can walk the few remaining wildwood places of the Blue Ridge, carrying a piece of history that will take me back to a time I wish I had lived.
Some years ago, I owned a C. Sharps 45-120, a beautiful piece of art I'll never again be able to afford. I sold it, because at the time, I was into other things: banjos, handguns, traditional archery, fly fishing, jeeps, and things way beyond my income.With the support of an understanding wife of 39 years, I have come back to my true addiction--a powerful, long range, long barreled rifle made in America for Americans.
As a very small gesture of gratitude to those of you who have shared your knowledge of such weapons, I attach the following piece of fiction, which has yet to be published. You are the first to view this attempt at succeeding in the unkind world of publishing, although it has been accepted as a part of an entire book soon to be available to the public. The format is somewhat fragmented by the copy/paste. Still, perhaps it's readable.
Author’s note—
This story is for me—to reflect a dream I’ve carried since childhood. I’ve known since then my time and place upon the earth are incorrect, a mistake by whoever placed me thus. Now, in my latter years, I still dream of what might have been. I might have forsaken family and career and safety to go where a strong man can live by his own abilities, without interference or assistance from the tightly-packed humanity he leaves behind.
But that’s a dream, alive only in fiction.
Moss Creek fell just ten feet in its eternal journey across the two-mile length of Austine Valley, a verdant meadowland dotted with white-bark aspens and Sitka Spruce. The valley’s music and color blended harmoniously into the seasons. In May and June, bees hummed and danced among the lavender fireweed and foxglove, the blue larkspur and the orange Rocky Mountain lily. The mating and nesting goldfinch, the red and green ruby-crowned kinglets, the blue scrub-jays, added their songs of joy as they flitted above the moving music of the sunlit steam. The early morning silver frost of autumn glistened on the yellowing aspen leaves, which waited patiently for the warming breeze of midday, when they would rustle and whisper their secrets of a place unspoiled. Ravens heralded winter’s approach with cries of apprehension over the dwindling bounty of seeds and insects. Soon, their screams of hunger would be the only sound as winter’s white blanket muffled the valley and hushed the stream’s tittering melody.
I found Austine Valley by accident during my youth, when my legs were hard with muscles, and the strength of my heart carried me lightly across the wilderness ridges and mountains. In those years, I did not know what I was looking for until I found it. I simply hiked the Rocky Mountains from any access road I noted on a map. Although I saw nature’s seasonal glories and her displays of quiet drama, I climbed to no lofty plateau and descended into no wooded depression that could contain my wanderlust.
Then I discovered Austine Valley.
After that, I came again and again, wearing thick boots to guard against disturbed summer vipers, and snowshoes in winter, when the high mountain passes barred the way of the less adventurous. From whichever direction I approached the valley, I had to cross at least two mountains and several wide and icy streams.
Never did I go without plans and supplies to camp for several days. Never did I go with intent to harm, disturb or despoil my secret place. And it was my place. Not only did I never see another human within miles of it, neither did I see a sign that anyone had passed through. No footprints, no candy wrappers, no fire pits. With permission from no man, I came and stayed whenever possible. My few acquaintances, from the less peaceful areas of my physical world, knew only that I had “gone hiking.”
Thus, my youth passed. The journey to Austine Valley became arduous and filled with dangers that had always existed but had never worried me as a young man. youth. The cinnamon bears, the panthers, the hazardous stream crossings, deep snow and the steep terrain had heretofore simply been barriers to trespassers. Now they were barriers to me.
So I didn’t go. For two years, I languished in the city, wasting away in soul-poisoning pollution, noise, traffic, selfishness, greed, and the stink that attaches itself to a city dweller’s mind. I eventually realized that such a life with no hope of escape would weaken and kill me. To die there was unthinkable.
I returned to Austine, this time to stay. For the first time, I entered the valley with items that did not belong in such serene environs. I carried an axe, a rifle, traps, and all the accoutrements of a hunter/trapper, a thing I did not want to be, but a thing I must be if I were to stay and survive.
I arrived on horseback in early summer so that I might establish myself before the ravens brought news of winter’s approach. I led other horses, intending to keep a small herd to give me a lifetime of extended journeys into the wilderness surrounding my valley. I chose for a cabin site a little knoll at the tree line on the valley’s western slope, where I might awaken each morning to the rising sun. Before me lay the open, living land; behind me a forest of spruce and mature hardwoods. I paused that summer afternoon to speak to the valley before setting to work with my implements of destruction.
“Austine, despite my intrusion, I cherish your existence and your solitude. I thank you for the nourishing bounty you share with the lives we both respect. Your soft grasses and pure waters are the sustenance of the gentle grazers—the deer and the elk. Your ancient oaks, walnuts and wild grapes are eternally renewed to produce the fruit of life necessary to the dwellers of your deep forests. Your creatures live and thrive by your grace. I offer humble gratitude for the many safe passages to and from this place of peace and plenty.”
I listened for a response that didn’t come, except that the wind stopped and the birds fell silent, as if the valley waited for further explanation.
“Yes, I have brought here the only axe you have seen, the only rifle, the only traps. But I ask that you do not scorn or judge me. I am a man, yet different from other men. My need is to stay here, taking from you only that which you can renew, and only what I need to live, like your hawks take your rabbits. Never shall I waste your resources. My desire is to be part of your glory, to bask in it and to add the dust of my bones to your nourishing soil.
“And know this.” My voice rose with unintended pride. “Other men are dependent on men. Other men need the recognition and comfort of their own kind.
“Not I! I am aged, yet strong. I bring no one here because I need no one. I have fled from those of my species because they were strangling me with their polluted lands and polluted minds. By your grace, Austine, I shall dwell with you.”
A breeze moved my uncut hair. A crow called from the valley floor. A squirrel chattered from somewhere behind me, and several deer appeared from an aspen grove to graze on the sweet grass of the valley floor. Austine had heard me.
And accepted me.
* * *
I cleared only enough land for my small cabin. My axe rang repeatedly as it bit into the aspens, killing them for my own survival. Upon breaking the hickory handle of my axe with an ill-timed stroke of excessive force, I heard the valley laughing. “No creature is self-sufficient,” the wind said. “Even the wolf needs help to bring down its prey.”
I laughed with the valley, and carved a new axe handle, and thus continued my assault upon the aspens. My finished cabin, though crudely built, would stand against the strongest blizzard, and the bark-shingled roof would keep me dry in driving summer rains. A fire pit directly below the smoke hole in the roof ensured my survival.
I worked a trap line, taking the furs I needed to warm home and body. My rifle spoke infrequently, providing the meat and hides of animals too large to trap. By December (or what I judged to be December), my spruce-framed bed was lined with the fur of bear, wolf, otter, fox and beaver. My store of dried food consisted of fish, berries, roots and venison. I put these away against those days or weeks I could not hunt due to illness or unfavorable conditions.
With less need for skins, I set my traps less often. Yet, for the sake of exercise and a need to be outside, I tended six traps placed at the beaver ponds near the lower end of my valley. That small trap line, while not crucial to my needs, became in one evening both a curse and a blessing.
I finished baiting and turned homeward, wearing snowshoes in the deepening snow. I noted a steady drop in the temperature. My frozen breath turned to ice in my beard and moustache.
By noon of the following day, a brutal blizzard tore at my cabin door. I cursed myself for having set the traps. A wolf or some other furbearer may have found my bait before the storm arrived. My duty to that animal, and indeed my duty to the valley, was to check those traps. Had I not promised the listening wildwood I would never waste her resources?
Beneath my coat of bear hide, I wore lighter layers of fox and mink. My hat was of beaver and rabbit, my breeches of the same thick wool I had worn to the valley. Thick and soft elk hide lined my rabbit-fur mittens. Snow packs and snowshoes protected my feet and gave me mobility. I carried nothing but the Winchester rifle.
The storm had not lessened when I checked the first trap at noon. It was un-sprung and still baited. As I headed for the second site, wind-driven snow and ice assailed me from the north, impeding my progress. I found the second trap undisturbed.
The third trap held a wolverine. Ordinarily, I would have skinned it quickly, but the storm still shrieked its full fury. If it didn’t slacken soon, it would keep me out until too late to make it home by dark. My sixth trap lay a quarter-mile down the river, and I was only now approaching the fourth.
The jaws of that one held the bloodied ankle of a girl. She lay face down in the snow, unmoving. Her yellow hair sprayed like a golden mist from beneath a wool scarf wrapped around her head and ears.
The impossibility of her presence stunned me into momentary immobility, but I managed to kneel and turn her. Her pale features said she’d been in the storm too long.
Because of my trap.
What circumstances had brought her across the mountains in winter? Why was she alone? Her outer garments, a blue woolen coat, denim pants and hiking boots, would protect her only briefly from the freeze that had settled in the valley.
I covered her slender form with my bear-hide parka before releasing her ankle from the deadly grip of the trap. The serrated jaws had bitten deep, but not to the bone. Blood on her gloveless hands and upon the snow indicated she had tried to free herself. How long since she’d given up?
If she didn’t die from the cold, severe frostbite might scar her permanently. I had to prevent that at any cost, else live with myself for not trying. My mittens swallowed her delicate hands, but I tied them in place. I gave her also my hat, and I wrapped her shoes with my inner jackets of fox and mink. Even so, they fit loosely inside my snow packs.
Now without boots, I strapped my snowshoes directly to my woolen socks. She groaned as I stepped away to cut saplings for a litter. Even though she weighed little, I’d not be able to carry her through the snow. Using strips of rawhide from my pack and two maple poles, I made a serviceable litter. By the time I laid the girl upon it, my hands and feet were as numb and heavy as stones.
The snow stopped suddenly, but the wind shrieked unabated. Patches of blue appeared and disappeared between the scudding clouds. I left the wolverine carcass in the snow and started walking, dragging the litter against the wind, taking the most direct route to my cabin. I had five hundred yards of howling wilderness to cross. If I didn’t make it. . .
The jolt of crossing a log awakened the girl. “Star,” she said, which had no meaning to me, unless she had spotted Venus in the twilight sky.
“Rest easy, Miss. We’ll be home and warm soon.” I considered asking her how she came to be here, but did not. She should simply rest for now.
I proceeded through the forest and across snow-covered rocky terrain, which slowed me, but I did not stop. If I stopped, I’d not have the strength to start again. I regularly checked my grip on the poles, to make sure it was secure, for I could feel the poles not at all. I had no doubt my feet were frozen. Lifting each one for the next step was not unlike walking in a dream world, where something unseen and dreadful thickened my thoughts and slowed my movements.
I focused my mind on each step, one foot at a time. Only the next frozen, nearly impossible step mattered, for if I failed at that, she would die.
Although the early twilight of winter had long faded into darkness, I knew the valley and had no misgivings about where we were. I saw my cabin in the clearing, knowing that the darkness concealed it. How odd. But there it was, serene and warm in its covering of snow. How pretty it looked against the backdrop of tall spruce trees.
* * *
The blizzard died, but another came before spring. Our cabin and our barn were strong, built with strong hands, and they stood unyielding to winds driven in from the north. Not once did I fear that the bitter blast might force itself through the oaken door to steal the warmth and safety of our home. Star (I had named her so) sometimes gazed upwards as the shingles rattled, but then she would smile at me as if to say she was happy. I lived for those smiles, and for the brightening of her hazel eyes that reflected contentment.
Never did she tell me her story, and never did I ask. The present was sufficient for the both of us, and I had no reason to doubt the future. Although she was fifteen years younger, I loved Star more than the valley itself.
* * *
Now, in our third winter together, she’s still with me every waking and sleeping moment, except during those intervals when she must be outside to tend the horses she’s come to love.
Tonight, she wraps my bear-hide coat around her perfect body, covers her head with the hat I gave her that long-ago winter eve, and dons her mittens with the affection of one contented by the simplest of comforts.
Another blizzard’s fury beats against our cabin, and I know I shall worry until she returns.
“The foal,” she says, “may come tonight, and would perish in this killing cold. You rest, my love. I shall return before the lamp needs relighting.”
My heavy cabin door, of oak and iron and lock and bar, opens and closes as she leaves, allowing lamplight into the raging night to be swept away by the storm. And then she’s gone into the blizzard.
A similar blizzard took my toes and fingers, my nose and ears, on that evening Star stepped into my trap—a trap I shall never set again, and a trap I would not set again even if I were able. I lie upon my bed of beaver, wolf, fox and bear—a bed I cannot leave—and in my mind I count how oft her footsteps are to the barn, where her beloved mare lies upon clean straw and awaits the care Star will bring.
I have time—too much time—to reflect on the trade I made with Winter. Winter took my steps away and left me as I am, but in return, Winter gave me Star, and I know the girl is all I’ve ever needed.
But I worry on nights like these. I wait for her return. I hear the shingles and the door fretting against their stays.
I’ll be back before the lamp needs relighting.
I wait.
And oh, the lamp! So low, the burn.
Make haste, my love, my Winter Star.
