the little bridge, just as they had in real life. There were just the three of them—his father, he, and his mom—just as it had been, and when they broke camp his father rode Dandy, his favorite hunting horse, and led BJ, the strawberry roan mare who was half Arab and who they always used as a packhorse because she was too twitchy to ride. She could rear at a chipmunk or leap over a low deadfall stick as if it were a two-rail jump.
The trail ran into the spruce along the right bank of the river. The river still rushed with snowmelt in late June. It was really just a big creek and it dropped fast into a constricted shaded canyon densely wooded with spruce and pine. The trail climbed away from the thundering rapids. His mother rode ahead of him on Mindy, a sweet, big-boned quarter-horse mare, and he followed on Duke, his young gray. In the dream, and as it had been that morning, he insisted on taking up the rear, it made him feel more grown-up. As in real life they took their time. The trail was narrow and rocky and it hugged the side of the steep slope. His father sang as he rode. Fifty feet below, the river cliffed out into a narrow rock-walled gorge and vanished in a sharp right bend. The whitewater roared up like a jet engine and sent mist into the trees. His heart hammered and he loved this. His father in the lead got to a short sloping slab of bedrock and clucked Dandy across it. Jack heard the grating strike of the steel shoes, saw BJ toss her head, put her nose down and cross, he heard the bit rings jangle and the dainty click of her steps, and then his mother urged the slow-gaited Mindy, Good girl, what a sweet girl. As in real life something spooked BJ just ahead and she balked back and tautened the lead and his father, who held the line, called, “Whoa, girl! Easy!” and Mindy bunched back, she was on the slick slab and her rear hoof slid. The rear left foot, Jack saw it right there beneath him, the shod hoof slipped and scrambled for purchase, his mother yelling, “Hey, girl!”—the butt of the horse sliding and now the fore hooves scrabbled at the mossy bank above the trail and—he saw it all as if in slow motion, the horse, and his mother still reining and leaning forward over her mane trying to save the mare, and she lost all traction, flailing the back legs now and the mare screamed as she went over. Not his mother, the mare. A scream like a terrified human. He saw them hit a large spruce and get knocked sideways and out and they separated in air, his mother still clutching the reins, her hat knocked into space and tumbling like a shot bird, that moment frozen before it wasn’t and they hit the white torrent together. For a moment, miraculously, they were swimming, she was grabbing for the saddle, then they went over what must have once been a ledge but was now the hump of a breaking wave that rolled down into the trench of a thundering backward-breaking hydraulic, they vanished, came up once, first the mare’s dark head, then his mother’s arm before they slammed into the wall and were tugged around the bend. His father when he could speak shouted, “Stay!” and he looked wildly back and yelled, “Can you hold him? Can you?” and Jack nodded, mute, and his father let go the lead line of his packhorse and spurred Dandy into a crazy lunge down the trail. He was gone. In real life they both were gone. BJ loped after his father, trailing the rope. Jack stayed. He reined tight the quivering gelding and they were both shaking and he stayed. He would do what his father demanded. He loved her more than anything on earth. He was eleven.
But in the dream her hat caught itself and took wing and flew up to the other side of the canyon and caught the sunlight like a turning hawk, and she and Mindy did not hit the white rush but floated a moment in air and he knew they would figure out how to fly, too, he knew it, and when he woke up under the late stars a loon was calling pitched and lonely somewhere far out and