The Windcatcher's Cave: The Windcatcher Series, #2

By Donald Hofstetter

If the cave doesn't kill them, the bear that chased her in there is bound to.

The long shadow that filled the doorway was all she needed, to know that the bear was still behind her. Bruised and dazed she ran for her life into the total darkness of the cave. The dull thud of the bear hitting the ground in the entry let her know he was not giving up.

Aggie Stonewell was not supposed to be there. She was a good girl from a good family and it was such a harmless little lie. Where it took her was beyond belief. Into miles of interlocking caves with a man she had only seen from a distance. Feeling their way in the total absence of light, through stone structures and sulfur springs of the deep, dark, dampness of a massive cave whose only sound was the sound of the constant wind and the occasional moan of the bear that had nowhere else to be.

In the other world, the one outside, the ground echoed with the sound of horses' hooves, scouring every inch of forest for miles, desperate to find a young woman lost someplace in the Sawtooth. A land that rarely gives up its dead.

Staged around the turn of the century, in a small town in the depths of the Sawtooth Mountains, a young woman is lost in a cave with a young Sioux Indian brave she hardly knows. If the cave doesn't kill them, the bear that chased her in there is bound to. The only light they have is a small flashlight with a weak battery, that they dare not use. The cave appears to be endless and is filled with strange surprises. Interlocking tunnels, where anything could be expected, leave them wandering in the total absence of light, feeling their way along, searching for a way out while they try to stay just one step ahead of the bear. The bear that Talon knows he will be forced to meet face to face if he can't find a way out.

In the outside world, her father and friends search every crevice in the mountains for even the tiniest clue that might lead them to the lost girl

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tazlina Glacier Publishing
• Release date: Jan 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9780997005813

Donald Hofstetter

Born in Oregon, raised in Idaho, now sharing my life between Alaska and Idaho. Fortunately, due mostly to a complete lack of self-discipline, I managed to wander and explore nearly every inch of the entire state of Idaho and eastern Oregon. Then I got married. Nuff said.

Book preview

Blood rushed to his head and all the rage of a savage entered his mind. He wasn’t desperate, he was literally on the warpath.

Chapter 1

Cougar Rock

There are places in the world where most people never wander. They are usually out of the way places where small communities exist, that over time fade away just like they started. Sometimes it’s the gold that stops flowing, then the miners leave. Supplies stop coming in or get hard to buy and the people move on.

Whatever it is, it’s places like this where legends are born. The towns fade into history, but the legends tend to remain. The town of Cougar Rock, Idaho was one of those small communities.

Maybe some remnant of it still remains if one knew where to look. Or maybe it changed its name, like so many others, and is hiding in plain sight. All that is certain is that the legend lives on. This is the legend of Cougar Rock and the haunted cabin on the Oxbow River not many miles west of there.

Cougar Rock was built by gold and grass around twenty miles from a place called Bear Valley. Bear Valley is a large beautiful valley with the Clearwater River flowing along one edge of it. The grass there is good and plentiful.

As you follow the Clearwater River upstream through Bear Valley you will come to a place where the valley narrows and the river gets rough.

The road at that point begins to climb and follows the river another ten miles or so into another smaller valley that is flat enough to allow for slower water where beaver have dammed up a good portion of the river. Another ten miles down the road into that little valley sat the town of Cougar Rock.

As you entered Cougar Rock there was a large ponderosa pine that looked at first as if it were standing in the middle of the road. As you got closer you could see that the road had been built around it but didn’t turn until it was right at the tree. On that tree hung a small sign painted on a Tamarack plank that read: Welcome to Cougar Rock Population unknown.

On the other side of that tree, the road widened and became the main street of the town. The main street of Cougar Rock was lined on both sides with little shops and businesses. On the right was the town stable owned by a heavy man named Dennis Caldwell. Dennis wasn’t much on a pick handle, but he was good in business and knew how to make money.

On the left as you rode past the stable, stood the only saloon in Cougar Rock. It was owned by Jack Miller. Jack was a man to keep your eye on in a business deal, and your hand over your pocket. He wasn’t dishonest, but he was crafty. Jack was a stout-built man with a full red beard that matched the hair on his head.

Just past the stable, there was a street that ran down to the Clearwater River. On that corner was the blacksmith shop. Louis Willis was the smithy that worked it. Louis was built like a brick outhouse as they used to say. A little less than six feet tall, and solid inside and out. The kind of a man you would want with you in a fight but not the kind of a man who fought much. Louis Willis’ father once told Louis that he could break an anvil with a glass hammer. That was why he had put him to breaking horses. On account, he had already broken everything else on the property.

Turns out, his father was wrong. Louie had been the town blacksmith for about five years and the anvil was still in good shape. Louie was one of the only permanent residents of Cougar Rock that was single and old enough to not be. The street that the blacksmith shop was on ran right off into the river. It was there that the crossing over the river happened. That crossing may have been why the town was in its exact location.

The river there was braided with small gravel bars and brush-covered islands separated by river channels that ran from a few inches to several feet deep. To cross safely, one needed to know where the route ran between the two banks. The trail on the other side was too narrow for wagons. It ran along the edge of the river up against the steep canyon hills of the Sawtooth Mountains.

If one rode past the crossing street he would see that the rest of the town was made up of the general store where the stage stopped, a few houses, and a mill yard where a rather nice sawmill made lumber from the pine and fir that grew in the forest around it. Most of that lumber was sold in Bear Valley or shipped down to Boise by freight wagon.

About the turn of the century, before the first automobile had found its way into that part of the country, a family by the name of Stonewell built a small cabin about five miles beyond the river crossing at Cougar Rock. The cabin was west of the town and on the other side of the river at the very spot where a stream had created a small waterfall of about 12 feet or so high and then meandered through a large meadow where it spilled into the Clearwater.

Thomas Stonewell first built that cabin there for a trapping cabin and to prospect for gold in the surrounding mountains. In the course of time, the Stonewell family grew to four. Thomas, his wife Alice, and two daughters Aggie and May. They were a backwoods people who lived a simple life and understood how to do well on little.

Aggie, the oldest was 18 and of somewhat small stature. A strong girl for her size, and wise beyond her years. By most standards a good girl but she had, at least, one weakness and though he lived a good walk from the Stonewell home he was an interesting if somewhat dangerous lure for her.

His name was Talon Windcatcher. Talon had a cabin on the Oxbow River a few miles from the Stonewell cabin. Aggie’s father had forbid her to go anywhere near that cabin. Not because of Talon necessarily, but because of the cabin itself.

The Windcatcher Cabin was an old rock cabin that belonged to the Windcatcher family from a time long before Talon was born, and then it was abandoned. Actually, the legend of that place told of more than one of the early people who had lived in that cabin who had gone missing as if they just disappeared into thin air. They simply went into the cabin and never came out again. For that reason, the cabin was well known by the town people as the haunted cabin on the Oxbow River.

The cabin had stood empty for a number of years before Talon had come to town and moved into it.

Talon had lived there for over a year and showed up in town a few times a month to sell a little gold, buy supplies and leave again. Talon was twenty years old on the day he first rode into Cougar Rock. He was a tall man and well made. He lived alone, had little to say, and kept to himself. He was an Indian of the Sioux people and looked it in every way. To look at him left little doubt of his bloodline. His Raven black hair was kept tied back in a ponytail and usually tucked under his buckskin shirt, but not always.

He showed up in town over a year ago on a painted mustang with a stout little sorrel that had four matching stockings and a blaze face for a pack horse. He seemed to know where he was going and didn’t ask any questions. He stopped at the store long enough to get a grubstake and then crossed the river and headed for the haunted cabin. Since then most folk were not sure what to think of him but were not about to ask too many questions and he didn’t offer any answers.

To get to the cabin where Talon lived you rode the same trail that led to the Stonewell home and continued on upstream another three or so miles until you found yourself at the mouth of a small river called the Oxbow. The Oxbow flowed into the Clearwater. Up the Oxbow another half mile or so the Windcatcher cabin had been built in a little grove of ponderosa and fir trees right up against a large flat stone wall that was part of the mountain behind it. It was built of indigenous rock and was the only one like it in the valley.

At first glance, it looked like any other stone cabin. On closer inspection, however, one might find the design a little curious. The cabin had a large window in the front that was once a shuttered window but was by this time in history a glass window.

The thing about windows is the heat loss they are famous for. A nice large window like this one no doubt lost a lot of heat, but there it was.

The only thing between that cabin and the Stonewell home was a large part of the mountain itself. It was a high and steep part of the mountain made up of solid rock where few trees could cling to its steep surface. The trail between the two cabins was narrow enough in places that horses needed to step careful or risk slipping into the crashing waters of the Clearwater River. In other places, it broke around bends in the trail that opened into small ravines that accessed steep hillsides where blueberries were abundant and strawberries could be found on occasion.

The only way to access the Windcatcher cabin was up the Oxbow River.

The mountain it was built against was straight up as far as one could see from standing at the river edge. The only way down from up there if you went, would require a dead drop fall of several hundred feet.

For the people who lived on the Clearwater, this was a rich land. It sported a good degree of gold and lots of timber. The south side of the river was not at all like the north where the Stonewell and Windcatcher cabins were.

On the south side of the river, the land was made up of rolling hills and little valleys where ample supplies of grass could be found and forest trees provided logs for miles just waiting to be harvested.

It was well known for elk and deer, sheep could be found in the higher reaches, and there was no shortage of black bear and grizzly bear about anywhere you were not expecting them.

The trails along the river were a favorite place to find them most any time but more so now that it was getting down in the fall in the Sawtooth country.

Berries were ripe and bears were looking for winter fat so they could be expected to be looking for berries growing along the rivers or up the south facing hills.

Yes sir, the Cougar Rock valley was a ready-made paradise for a man like Talon Windcatcher. He was a private man and this was a place where he felt at ease.

Chapter 2

The Tiny Lamp

It was the fall of the year, and the sun was just getting up good in the sky as Talon made the crossing and rode into Cougar Rock. He had a week’s worth of gold and needed a few supplies. The Mercantile had been open since six am as it always was and Joseph Long who owned it was sitting out front on the boardwalk when Talon rode up. Joseph was a little overweight for his five nine size, but he was a hard worker and an honest man. He liked Talon the first time he met him. Talon was easy going and pleasant to talk to. Joseph was one of the few people that Talon knew in town, and he had come to know him well.

Mornin’ Mr. Windcatcher, said Joseph. You looking for some prime quality goods this fine day, I got ‘em.

Talon liked his smile. It was always good to see a friendly face.

Just a few little things, said Talon.

He made a quick wrap with his horse’s reins around the hitching post and stepped into the store.

The little shop was filled to the brim with just about anything one could imagine. Every shelf and bin was as full as space would allow. For Talon, it made things a little complicated. He knew what he had come for, but there were so many things on the shelves that he began to wonder if there were a few more things on the shelves that he needed than he realized. He had a little more gold than his list required and all those goods always looked tempting to him.

He wandered around for a little while and found what he was looking for and was ready to pay up and leave when something caught his eye.

Joseph had come back into the store again and was standing behind the counter. The counter had a heavy glass top and interesting small things were under the glass. It was something under the glass that Talon had noticed. It was a tubular device with a glass face. Very strange, thought Talon.

Joseph saw him looking at it and pulled it from under the glass. Ever seen one of these? he asked.

What is it?

Well, it’s a flashlight, said Joseph. You just push this little button forward and presto. Talon stepped back a little when the light came on. Flashlights had been around a while in other places, but Talon had not been. It was new and amazing to him.

It’s a lamp! he said a little surprised.

The thought instantly came to him how handy that little light would be for prospecting.

Yep, said Joseph, and look at this. It comes with this very well made leather sheath you can wear on your belt to carry it in.

Perfect, thought Talon, Just what I need.

How much you need for that little lamp? asked Talon.

One dollar, and I can have more batteries in a week or so when Dan brings up the wagon again from Bear Valley.

Batteries? thought Talon. He had heard of batteries before but never had any reason to need one.

So how does that work? asked Talon

Simple, said Joseph, you just use the light until the batteries get too low to shine good and then you come in and get more.

Just one dollar, Joseph repeated. That’s all, and you can find a hundred uses for it too. You need to make a run to that little shack out back in the middle of the night. You won’t need no lantern at all. Just push that little button straight up and you got all the light you could ever want.

Talon didn’t need the sales pitch. He was sold the instant the light came on.

One dollar huh, said Talon. Seems like a good bit but I do need it.

Talon thought about the batteries for a moment and decided that they were definitely not a deal breaker. He really could just come in and get more. He snapped the little light on and off and then he smiled and handed Joseph his poke.

Just as I thought, he said to himself. Don’t matter how good my list is, there is always something in this place I never knew I needed till I saw it on the shelf.

He felt a little guilty about spending money he worried he might need later but seriously, this was something he really needed.

All the way home Talon studied the little light. He turned it on a few times just to turn it off again.

White man stuff, he said to himself always something. What’ll they come up with next.

Back at his cabin, Talon pulled the saddle from his horse and left him to wander in front of the cabin. The goods from the store where in a leather pack he wore on his back so he wouldn’t have to put the pack saddle on his other horse. It was handier and saved