Honor Road by Jason Ross (best non fiction books of all time TXT) 📕

expressed only during TV commercials and the middle of the night when his bladder woke him up to watch the prairie moon.

“Daddy’s boy...my happy baby...you know who loves you the most...” the words waxed and waned on the breeze, drifting from the porch, then dribbling away with the Commissioner’s open-hearted chuckle.

Sage’s face warmed with shame. He was a villain to intrude on the rancher’s private moment with the stars, the moon and the puppy. Sage despised the world and his place in it. He wondered if his own father’s heart ever paused to lavish affection on a silly dog. Sage had never seen it happen.

Who was his father, anyway? He couldn’t say he really knew. Would his father have survived all that Sage had survived? He assumed his father was a survivor, but he’d learned that the mountain and the snow revealed a man in a way nothing else could. What did he really know about the man who had locked him into a promise—a promise that led to this moment of ignobility?

The rancher got up from the bench, took a last look at the moon-stroked prairie, and went back inside. The screen door clicked shut, then the main door thunked closed.

Sage took inventory of himself and his surroundings, waited five minutes, then picked his way back to the hills. He didn’t bother covering his tracks. There were so many animal tracks criss-crossing the patchy snow that he hoped it wouldn’t matter. He collected his snowshoes and raced the coming dawn up the mountainside.

By the time he reached his bivouac, the sun colored the eastern horizon a milky gray. Exhausted by emotions and the climb, he let his moist skin dry in the cold as long as he could stand, then climbed back into his sleeping bag. It wouldn’t be long before the stark light of day.

He knew better than to make decisions in the middle of the night, muddle-headed and full of worry. He hoped that a couple days’ sleep would bring him back from his emotions to the cold reality of his mission. He worked for a man, who served a county, who fought for survival. Maybe it was just that simple.

The next day, after a sleepless night, Sage stumbled twelve miles back toward Union County. The next night, he slept like the dead in his ever-more-humid sleeping bag. The clouds filled in over Wallowa Valley, and nighttime temperatures warmed under the floating cover of fluff. He slept a good night, woke with the sun, and faced the rest of the long hike out.

It was Sunday morning and Sage felt fueled by a singular cause: to make it back in time for the Sunday visit to the Butterton home. As hammered as his body felt from traversing fifty miles of snow, his yearning for Aimee’s soft hips, candy lips and lilting, country-girl voice drove him hard. He had thirteen miles to cover—half the length of the valley—if he was going to reach the police cruiser and have a roll in the hay with Aimee Butterton, he’d have to haul ass.

He pounded mercilessly up the inclines, then glissaded down at a jog. He was making good time, snowshoeing smoothly along, weaving through the pine trees, and following his trail back.

Snowshoeing was like jogging, but without the impact. He drifted along in a mind-numbing cadence of exertion. Swish, swish. Swish, swish. The cold was a forgotten uncle, and the brisk wind on his face whisked away the sweat with only a slight crust of salt left behind.

Sage flounced into a canyon when he heard a branch crack like a rifle shot. He slammed to a stop and flopped sideways behind a big pine. He rolled his rifle from his back and into his hands. He racked a shell and listened.

Another crack. A thunk, and the thud of snow falling from a tree. A huge, dark form burst from the tree line. Then a dozen more.

Elk.

They skittered in circles, unsure where his scent and sound had originated. Sage watched them whip left and right, confused at the interruption to their midday nap. They must’ve been dozing in a copse of dark pine when the swish-swish-swishing of the snowshoes startled them. The wind whistled down-canyon. They probably couldn’t smell him well, and they’d likely barely heard him over the rustling of the pines. The elk settled, then returned to their bedding area in the black pines. Sage eased the cartridge out of the chamber, reloaded the bullet into the tubular magazine, then returned the rifle to his back without a round in the chamber.

He wasn’t in Wallowa Valley to fight. He didn’t like running overland with a round chambered. It was an artifact from the combat rifle course he’d taken as a teenager. Maximum safety.

With the wild vision of the elk, his world had brightened. The clouds from the night before had drawn back without dropping snow, and the morning sun cast across the snowfields, making the cold-hardened flakes glitter like stardust.

The rifle was slung over his backpack, which tightened the sling and minimized the bouncing as he, once again, flew over his old trail. He probably shouldn’t have brought the gun in the first place. There was no turn of events in Wallowa Valley that he could imagine, where he’d defend himself with a rifle. If they caught him, he’d let himself be arrested. As it was, he had a hard time stomaching the thought of reporting back to Captain Chambers. His promise to his dad had grown thin in the clean air of the Wallowa Valley. From the snowy crags of Sacajawea Mountain to the rising prairies that skirted the Zumwalt, it was a beautiful, open range, as though God made it to shelter a favored breed of bright ones. The people acted as though they knew they were blessed. It seemed to humble them; make them kinder and slower to anger. He’d only been with them for a few hours, but their grace and generosity had stunned