The Stage Driver Collapsed Above a Canyon and Asked the Schoolteacher One Question She Could Not Answer
Clara stood.
“Mr. Burke?”
“Old legs.”
His voice sounded wrong.
Mrs. Valdez leaned through the coach window.
“Elijah.”
Burke looked at her.
“Sit in the shade.”
“After the horses.”
“You are too hot.”
“So are they.”
He watered every animal.
Only then did he wet a cloth and wipe his face.
Clara noticed something that frightened her without knowing why.
He was not sweating.
Not at all.
In heat fierce enough that Clara’s dress clung damply to her back, Elijah Burke’s skin was dry.
Mrs. Valdez saw it too.
“You should not drive.”
Burke ignored her.
“There’s no one else.”
“I drove teams once.”
Burke looked at her hands.
Mrs. Valdez looked at them too.
Time and arthritis had bent her fingers until she could barely close them.
Burke softened.
“I know you did.”
Clara looked down the far side of the mountain.
The road seemed to fall away.
“What is this section called?”
Burke climbed slowly onto the box.
“The Staircase.”
“That sounds reassuring.”
“It isn’t.”
The Staircase descended four miles through turns so tight that sometimes the leaders were already moving in one direction while the rear of the coach was still traveling the other.
Halfway down was the most dangerous place.
A narrow shelf around a shoulder of rock.
Drivers called it the Elbow.
Burke gathered the lines.
“Keep your eyes on the horizon, Miss Whitmore.”
The stagecoach began descending.
For the first three turns, everything went perfectly.
Clara watched his hands.
Watched his boot.
Brake.
Ease.
Pull.
Release.
Then Burke swayed.
She thought the coach had jolted him.
It had not.
His shoulder struck hers.
“Mr. Burke?”
He did not answer.
His eyes had lost focus.
His breathing came rapidly.
Clara grabbed his arm.
“Elijah?”
His lips moved.
She leaned closer.
“Can you drive six horses?”
She almost laughed from fear.
“No.”
He stared at her.
“No, I told you. I have never held reins.”
His fingers opened.
The leather lines dropped into her lap.
Burke collapsed.
His boot slid from the brake.
The coach lunged forward.
The wheel horses felt the weight first.
The coach shoved against them.
They broke into a trot.
The swing pair felt them move and followed.
The leaders surged.
Within seconds the entire six-horse team was running downhill.
And the road turned sharply left.
Clara screamed.
She shoved Burke against the rail so he would not tumble from the box.
Then she seized every line she could reach.
She pulled.
Nothing happened.
The horses ran faster.
The turn rushed toward them.
Clara saw sky beyond the edge.
She remembered the brake.
Her right boot slammed down.
The rear wheels locked.
The sound was monstrous.
Iron tires skidded across stone.
The rear of the coach swung sideways.
Inside, Felix Ambrose shrieked.
Clara stood on the brake with both feet.
The coach slid.
One rear wheel reached the edge.
Gravel poured into the canyon.
Then the coach straightened.
The horses, feeling resistance behind them, slowed just enough.
Clara pulled left.
All six lines tightened at once.
Somehow the leaders turned.
The swing horses followed.
The wheelers stumbled around.
The coach tilted so far Clara saw nothing but desert below her.
Then it slammed back onto four wheels.
They had survived the first turn.
The second was already coming.
Clara’s hands were shaking so violently she could barely hold the lines.
“I can’t do this.”
A face appeared below the box.
Mrs. Valdez had pushed herself halfway through the coach window.
Her shawl whipped in the wind.
“Yes, you can.”
“I don’t know how!”
“I do.”
Clara stared down.
Mrs. Valdez’s eyes were hard and steady.
“My husband raised horses forty years. Before my hands became useless, I drove teams better than most men.”
Another turn approached.
“Then you drive!”
Mrs. Valdez lifted her twisted hands.
She could barely move her fingers.
“I cannot.”
Clara’s heart dropped.
“But you can.”
“I told you—”
“Listen!”
Something in the older woman’s voice cut through Clara’s terror.
“Separate the lines. Do not pull everything together. If you pull everything, you tell six horses nothing.”
Clara looked at the bundle.
“Longest lines go to the leaders. Find them.”
Clara found two lines running forward above the backs of the middle pair.
“Good. Shortest are wheelers. Find them.”
She did.
“Now brake. Not all the way. Feel the coach.”
“I don’t know what that means!”
“You will.”
The second switchback came fast.
“Right leader. Gently.”
Clara pulled.
The lead horse’s head turned.
“Wheelers slightly right. Now ease brake.”
Clara obeyed.
The team curved.
The front wheel scraped rock.
The sound screamed through the mountains.
Then they were through.
Clara inhaled.
“Again,” Mrs. Valdez said.
And the mountain began teaching her.
— — —
The first thing Clara learned was that terror could not be defeated.
It could only be given work.
As long as she had something to do, fear stayed behind her shoulder.
Brake.
Ease.
Left leader.
Wheelers.
Straighten.
Talk to the horses.
“Easy, Molly.”
She remembered Burke’s names.
“Easy, Jasper.”
The animals were frightened, but they knew those sounds.
Felix Ambrose opened the coach door.
“I’m getting out!”
Mrs. Valdez turned.
“Close that door.”
“I am not dying in here.”
“You will die outside faster.”
“I’ll jump.”
Mrs. Valdez slapped him.
The sound echoed inside the coach.
Felix stared at the tiny old woman.
She pointed toward Elijah Burke’s unconscious body above them.
“Hold his legs so he does not fall. If you must be useless, be useless while holding something important.”
Felix closed the door.
Clara almost laughed.
Then the road dropped again.
The brake grew hot.
She could smell scorched leather.
“Too much!” Mrs. Valdez called.
“If I let go, we run!”
“If you burn the brake, then we run forever.”
Clara eased her foot.
The coach pushed against the horses.
The wheelers increased their pace.
“Now more.”
She pressed.
They slowed.
“There!” Mrs. Valdez shouted. “Feel that?”
For the first time, Clara understood what Burke had meant.
Not intellectually.
Physically.
The coach had a rhythm.
A heavy, living pressure through the floorboards.
When it crowded the horses, she felt it.
When the brake held too hard, she felt that too.
The lines were no longer six identical straps.
Each carried a different tension.
A different animal.
A different possibility.
They came through another switchback.
Then another.
Burke groaned.
Clara glanced at him.
His face was frighteningly red.
“Elijah?”
No response.
“Is he dying?”
Mrs. Valdez looked at him.
“He is alive.”
“That was not my question.”
“I know.”
Clara swallowed.
“How far to the station?”
“Too far.”
Her palms were beginning to burn.
At the summit Clara had removed her gloves.
Now every pull dragged the leather across bare skin.
The first blister opened.
Then another.
She felt moisture between her fingers.
She knew without looking that it was blood.
“Mrs. Valdez.”
“Yes?”
“My hands.”
“I know.”
“They’re bleeding.”
“I know.”
“What do I do?”
The old woman looked up.
“Do not let go.”
The answer was so simple that Clara became angry.
“That’s all?”
“That is everything.”
The stage continued down.
The Arizona sky stretched mercilessly blue above them.
Clara’s arms began to ache.
Her shoulders burned.
She could no longer feel two fingers on her left hand.
Felix called from inside.
“Miss Whitmore?”
“What?”
“I want to apologize.”
“For what?”
“Everything I said about my medicine.”
Despite herself, Clara barked a laugh.
“What’s actually in it?”
There was a pause.
“Mostly whiskey.”
“I knew it.”
“And cinnamon.”
“If we survive, I am reporting you to someone.”
“That sounds fair.”
For several minutes nobody spoke.
Then the road straightened.
Clara allowed herself one breath.
“Are we almost through?”
Mrs. Valdez did not answer.
Clara looked ahead.
And saw the Elbow.
Every driver she had overheard at the previous station had spoken about it.
A shelf carved around a bulging wall of red stone.
Rock on the left.
A canyon on the right.
No railing.
No shoulder.
No forgiveness.
Clara’s mouth went dry.
Then she saw something else.
A boulder lay in the road.
It was large enough to reach nearly to the coach axle and wide enough to cover a third of the ledge.
“No.”
Mrs. Valdez saw it.
“Slow.”
“No.”
“Clara.”
“We can’t fit.”
“We can.”
“There is no road.”
“There is enough.”
Clara stared at the boulder.
To pass, the horses would have to move toward the outside edge.
The coach’s right wheels would come within inches of empty space.
“No.”
Then the gray lead mare saw the obstacle.
She reared.
Harness chains snapped tight.
The other leader jerked sideways.
The middle pair stumbled.
The wheelers stopped.
But the coach did not.
Its weight carried it forward.
Straight toward the horses.
And the canyon.
“Brake!” Mrs. Valdez screamed.
Clara threw her entire weight onto the lever.
The brake shrieked.
The rear wheels skidded.
The coach pushed forward.
The gray mare came down, scrambling.
One wheel horse slipped to his knees.
Clara hauled on the wheel lines.
“Easy! Easy!”
The stage slid another six feet.
Three.
Two.
Then stopped.
Silence.
The right front wheel rested less than a foot from the edge.
Small stones continued falling beneath it.
Clara stared down.
She could see treetops far below.
A hawk circled beneath the level of the coach.
Her stomach turned.
She pressed harder on the brake.
“Clara.”
“I can’t move.”
“Do not move yet.”
“I mean I can’t move.”
Mrs. Valdez’s voice softened.
“You stopped us.”
“I almost killed us.”
“You stopped us.”
Clara began crying.
She could not prevent it.
Tears ran down her face while she remained frozen over the brake.
“I want to go home.”
Mrs. Valdez said nothing for a moment.
Then she said, “So do the horses.”
Clara looked down.
The old woman nodded toward the team.
“They are more frightened than you. They cannot understand the rock. They cannot understand the canyon. They understand only your hands.”
“My hands barely work.”
“They work enough.”
Mrs. Valdez leaned farther out the window.
“You teach children?”
“Yes.”
“A frightened child learns nothing from a frightened teacher.”
Clara wiped her face against her shoulder.
“What am I supposed to teach six horses?”
“That you know the way.”
“I don’t.”
“They do not need to know that.”
Clara laughed through her tears.
The laugh steadied something inside her.
She looked at the team.
The gray mare trembled.
“Which one is she?”
“Molly,” Clara whispered.
She remembered Burke touching her that morning.
Morning, Molly.
Clara wet her cracked lips.
“Molly.”
One gray ear moved backward.
“Molly, listen to me.”
The mare lowered her head slightly.
“That’s right.”
Clara took one breath.
Then another.
“Mrs. Valdez?”
“Yes?”
“Tell me.”
“Release brake one inch.”
Clara did.
The coach creaked forward.
Every muscle in her body tightened.
“Again.”
Another inch.
The horses shifted.
“Now left leader line. Bring them toward the rock.”
Clara stared.
“Toward it?”
“Yes. Close to the inside. The coach follows.”
Molly resisted.
Clara spoke softly.
“Come on, girl.”
The line tightened.
Molly took one reluctant step.
Her shoulder nearly touched the boulder.
The other leader followed.
Then the swing team.
The wheel horses strained.
The coach rolled forward.
Its right front wheel moved along the edge.
Clara heard gravel cracking beneath it.
A stone fell.
Then another.
There was no sound when they reached the bottom.
The boulder passed the leaders.
Then the swing pair.
Then the wheelers.
Now the coach itself approached.
Clara stopped breathing.
The left side scraped stone.
Wood groaned.
The right wheels rolled so close to the canyon that half the iron tire seemed suspended over nothing.
Felix prayed loudly inside.
Mrs. Valdez said one word at a time.
“Straight.”
Clara held.
“Straight.”
The coach moved another foot.
“Straight.”
Something snapped beneath them.
Clara screamed.
“A branch,” Felix shouted. “Only a branch!”
The rear wheel cleared the boulder.
The road widened.
Suddenly there was solid ground beneath all four wheels again.
Clara slammed the brake.
The coach stopped.
For three seconds, no one spoke.
Then Felix began laughing.
Not politely.
Not sensibly.
The wild laughter of someone who had expected death and received another minute instead.
Mrs. Valdez joined him.
Clara laughed too.
She laughed until she sobbed.
Above them, Elijah Burke opened his eyes.
He whispered one word.
“Horses?”
Clara turned.
“You unbelievable old fool.”
His eyes drifted toward the road.
“Who’s driving?”
“I am.”
Burke blinked.
Then, barely conscious, he smiled.
“Knew you had the look.”
“You asked me if I could drive.”
“Seemed polite.”
“You knew I couldn’t!”
Burke’s eyes closed again.
“Learning fast.”
Clara wanted to hit him.
Instead she gripped the lines.
The Staircase still had nearly two miles left.
So she drove.
Turn after turn.
Brake.
Ease.
Pull.
Release.
Her palms became raw.
Her back ached.
The sun lowered.
But something had changed.
The mountain no longer felt like an enemy.
It was simply ground.
Dangerous ground.
Unforgiving ground.
But ground that could be crossed one decision at a time.
When the stage finally came out of the last switchback and the road flattened into desert, Clara did not immediately understand what had happened.
Mrs. Valdez did.
“You are down.”
Clara stared ahead.
A mile across the plain stood an adobe stage station.
Water barrels.
A corral.
A cottonwood tree.
Smoke from a chimney.
Safety.
The horses smelled water.
They broke into a trot.
Clara let them.
For the first time all afternoon, she smiled without fear.
“They know the way.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Valdez said.
“They always did.”
— — —
The station keeper saw the stage coming strangely from half a mile away.
Later, Clara learned his name was Wade Mercer.
He had been repairing a corral fence when he noticed that the driver on the box appeared to be wearing a blue traveling dress.
He dropped his hammer.
His wife, Ruth, came outside.
“What?”
Wade pointed.
“That ain’t Whip Burke driving.”
The stage rolled into the yard.
Six exhausted horses pulled up beside the trough.
Clara tried to set the brake.
Her right leg shook so badly she missed the lever.
Wade ran forward and caught the lead horse.
“Whoa!”
The team stopped.
Clara looked at him.
“Help him.”
That was all she managed.
Then she sagged.
Wade climbed onto the wheel.
Ruth rushed from the other side.
They lifted Elijah Burke down.
His condition erased every other question.
Mrs. Valdez became commander again.
“Shade. Water. Cloths. Remove his boots.”
Wade obeyed.
Felix obeyed.
Ruth obeyed.
Clara sat on the porch with her hands in a washbasin.
The cool water turned pink.
Then red.
Only now did the pain fully arrive.
She stared at her palms.
Skin had peeled away in strips.
Ruth knelt beside her.
“Lord above.”
“I’m all right.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Is he alive?”
“For now.”
That answer brought the tears back.
Clara bent forward.
“I should have noticed sooner.”
Ruth looked at her.
“Noticed what?”
“That he was sick.”
“You a doctor?”
“No.”
“Then stop trying to become guilty of something you didn’t know.”
Clara looked toward Burke.
They were pouring water over him.
His breathing seemed shallow.
Mrs. Valdez sat beside Clara.
For several minutes she said nothing.
Then she placed one twisted hand over Clara’s bandaged one.
“You brought him down.”
“Barely.”
“Barely counts.”
Felix approached.
The red mark from Mrs. Valdez’s slap was still visible on his cheek.
He removed his derby.
For once, he had no speech prepared.
He set a bottle beside Clara.
Dr. Halloway’s Desert Restorative.
Clara looked at him.
“Does it restore hands?”
“No.”
“Drivers?”
“No.”
“Courage?”
Felix shook his head.
“Definitely not.”
“Then what’s it for?”
He sighed.
“Mostly making foolish men money.”
Clara almost smiled.
Felix looked toward the unconscious driver.
“I was going to jump.”
“Yes.”
“I would have died.”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Valdez slapped me.”
“I saw.”
“She hits very hard.”
“I believe you.”
Felix looked at Clara’s hands.
“I spent half the afternoon thinking I was the one who was going to die. I never once thought what it cost you to keep us alive.”
Clara stared at the basin.
“I thought about dying too.”
“That makes it worse.”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“It makes it human.”
That evening the temperature finally dropped.
A desert sunset turned the sky orange, violet, and then deep red behind the mountains they had crossed.
Elijah Burke woke shortly after sundown.
His first question concerned the horses.
His second concerned the coach.
His third concerned Clara.
Wade came onto the porch.
“He’s awake.”
Clara stood too quickly.
Pain shot through her hands.
She entered the small station room.
Burke lay on a cot with wet cloths across his chest.
He looked twenty years older than he had that morning.
His eyes found her.
“Well.”
Clara stood over him.
“Well?”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“What would you prefer?”
“You nearly died.”
“So I hear.”
“You gave six running horses to a woman who had never driven.”
Burke considered this.
“Worked out.”
Clara stared at him.
Mrs. Valdez, standing in the doorway, hid a smile.
Clara pointed a bandaged hand at Burke.
“You told me nobody would ask me to start driving six horses.”
“I was mistaken.”
“You told me you understood the desert.”
“Mistaken again.”
“You told me you were fine.”
“That one was a lie.”
The humor vanished.
Clara sat beside the cot.
“Why didn’t you stop?”
Burke looked toward the open window.
Outside, the horses drank from the trough.
“Schedule.”
“That is a foolish answer.”
“Thirty years driving makes a man think the road belongs to him.”
“And?”
“And roads don’t belong to anybody.”
Clara waited.
Burke’s eyes moved back to her.
“I felt bad before the summit.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because I was the driver.”
Clara’s expression hardened.
“That is the stupidest thing I have heard in nineteen days of travel, and I spent three days beside Mr. Ambrose.”
Felix, outside the room, said, “Fair.”
Burke laughed weakly.
Then his face became serious.
“I’m sorry.”
The words surprised her.
“For what?”
“For making my pride your problem.”
Clara looked down at her hands.
“I was terrified.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Good drivers usually are.”
“I am not a driver.”
Burke smiled.
“You drove the Staircase.”
“Mrs. Valdez drove it. I was only her hands.”
Mrs. Valdez spoke from the doorway.
“My hands could not do it.”
Clara turned.
“You told me what to do.”
“I told you many things. You chose not to panic.”
“I did panic.”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Valdez smiled.
“And then you drove anyway.”
They stayed at the station overnight.
No one would attempt the remaining road to Copper Wells after dark.
Clara could not sleep.
Her hands throbbed.
Every time she closed her eyes she felt the stage sliding toward the canyon.
So she sat beneath a lamp at the station table and wrote a letter to her older sister Margaret.
Dear Margaret,
You will not believe what I am about to tell you.
That sentence became eleven pages.
She wrote about the desert.
About Burke.
About Mrs. Valdez.
About Felix’s fraudulent medicine.
About the six horses.
She described the moment Burke collapsed.
She described the Elbow.
She did not describe how frightened she had been as well as she should have.
Some things could not fit inside words.
Near midnight, Felix sat opposite her.
“Writing home?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to tell them you’re coming back?”
Clara stopped.
All day, until that moment, she had assumed the answer was obvious.
She had almost died before even reaching Copper Wells.
Surely any sensible woman would return to Ohio.
Her mother would beg her to.
Her sister would agree.
The school in Copper Wells could find someone else.
Clara looked at the last written page.
Then at her hands.
“No.”
Felix raised an eyebrow.
“No?”
“I came to teach.”
“You nearly fell off a mountain.”
“The school is not on the mountain.”
“There are probably other mountains.”
“Then I will avoid them.”
Felix laughed.
“Miss Whitmore, I believe you may be the most unreasonable woman I have ever met.”
Clara dipped her pen.
“That is what my mother fears.”
The next morning a relief driver arrived from Copper Wells with fresh horses.
Burke was pale but stubbornly upright.
Mrs. Valdez made him sit inside the coach.
He objected.
She raised one hand.
Burke sat.
Clara smiled.
They traveled the final miles slowly.
As they approached Copper Wells, Clara expected little more than a few buildings.
Instead, nearly the entire town seemed to be waiting.
News had reached them by a rider during the night.
Miners stood outside the general store.
Women crowded the boardinghouse porch.
Men from the livery had gathered near the street.
And in front of the small wooden schoolhouse stood thirty-one children.
Someone had washed their faces.
Someone had combed their hair.
They ranged from six-year-olds to boys nearly as tall as Clara.
The coach stopped.
Nobody spoke.
Clara stepped down.
The children saw her bandaged hands.
One little girl whispered something.
Then a boy shouted, “That’s her!”
The entire street erupted.
People cheered.
Clara froze.
She had never been cheered in her life.
Not once.
Felix climbed down behind her.
“Smile.”
“I look terrible.”
“You drove a stagecoach down the Staircase. You are permitted to look terrible.”
Mrs. Valdez descended next.
Her son pushed through the crowd and embraced her.
Then Elijah Burke climbed out.
The cheering grew louder.
He looked uncomfortable.
“People making too much noise.”
Clara laughed.
Burke walked to the rear boot of the coach.
He pulled out his driving whip.
Hickory handle.
Long braided lash.
Polished smooth from decades of use.
He held it toward Clara.
She stared.
“I cannot take that.”
“You can.”
“No.”
“You brought my coach home.”
“You brought it most of the way.”
“I lost it on the mountain.”
“You were unconscious.”
“Still lost it.”
Clara looked at the whip.
Burke placed it carefully across her bandaged hands.
“Old driver’s rule.”
“What rule?”
“If a driver loses his coach, he owes his whip to whoever brings it home.”
Clara narrowed her eyes.
“That is not a real rule.”
Burke considered.
“Started yesterday.”
Children laughed.
Clara looked at the old driver.
His eyes were tired, but kind.
“Keep your eyes on the horizon, Miss Whitmore.”
She closed her fingers around the whip.
This time, she did not argue.
Clara Whitmore began teaching the next Monday.
Her first week was a disaster.
Three boys fought behind the woodpile.
A seven-year-old released a lizard in class.
Two brothers arrived with a stray dog.
Someone stole the bell rope.
Half her students thought Ohio was a city.
Clara went back to her boarding room every evening exhausted.
She loved it.
The children had heard the story of the Staircase so many times that by September they were correcting each other’s versions.
“You did not jump the canyon, did you, Miss Whitmore?”
“No.”
“Billy says the coach flew.”
“Billy is mistaken.”
“Did you fight bandits?”
“No.”
“Did Mr. Burke die?”
“He is outside fixing my window.”
The children turned.
Burke waved through the glass.
They groaned with disappointment.
Felix Ambrose stayed in Copper Wells for six weeks.
He stopped selling the Restorative.
To everyone’s surprise, he began selling ordinary soap instead.
“Harder market,” he told Clara, “but fewer lies.”
Mrs. Valdez returned to her son’s ranch.
Every month she came into town and sat in Clara’s classroom for an afternoon.
Sometimes she corrected Clara’s Spanish.
Sometimes Clara helped write letters for her.
Neither ever spoke much about the mountain.
They did not need to.
A year later, on July 16, Clara removed Burke’s whip from the wall above her desk.
She held it for a long time.
One of her pupils, a quiet girl named Annie Cole, remained after class.
“Miss Whitmore?”
“Yes?”
“Were you really not scared?”
Clara looked at her.
“Who told you that?”
“Everyone says you were brave.”
“I was terrified.”
Annie frowned.
“Then how were you brave?”
Clara thought of the mountain.
Of burning hands.
Of the gray mare trembling before the boulder.
Of Mrs. Valdez saying the horses understood only her hands.
She placed the whip back on its hook.
“Being brave does not mean fear goes away.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means fear does not get to choose what you do next.”
Annie considered this carefully.
“Like multiplication?”
Clara smiled.
“Exactly like multiplication.”
Nine years later Clara left Copper Wells when the mines began failing.
By then she was married to Nathan Hale, a quiet surveyor who had arrived in town during her third year and spent nearly six months gathering the courage to ask her to supper.
They moved to Prescott.
Clara taught another twenty-two years.
She never drove a stagecoach again.
She never wanted to.
Elijah Burke retired two years after the accident.
He claimed it was because the company bought newer coaches he disliked.
Everyone knew otherwise.
He visited Clara every July.
Mrs. Valdez wrote until her hands no longer allowed it.
Then her son wrote.
Later her granddaughter did.
Every letter contained some version of the same sentence.
We remember.
Felix Ambrose eventually opened a respectable mercantile in California.
Once a year, without fail, Clara received a bottle of cinnamon-flavored whiskey labeled in Felix’s handwriting:
Guaranteed to cure excessive seriousness.
She never drank it.
Nathan did.
And on every July 16, Clara took the old stage whip down from the wall.
She did not remember herself as heroic.
She remembered confusion.
Pain.
Dust.
A frightened gray horse.
An old woman’s voice.
And a single terrible question.
Can you drive six horses?
The truth was that she could not.
Not when Elijah Burke asked.
Not when the lines first fell into her lap.
Not when the coach began running downhill.
She learned because the mountain gave her no time to become ready.
Years later, after Clara’s mother died, Margaret found the eleven-page letter her sister had written that night at the desert station.
She kept it in a cedar box.
The final lines were written crookedly because Clara’s bandaged hands had been shaking.
Margaret,
Grandfather was wrong about me.
I suppose I did have a feel for horses after all.
But perhaps that was never the lesson.
Perhaps the lesson is that sometimes life puts the reins in your hands before anyone has taught you how to hold them.
And when that happens, you do not need to know the whole road.
You only need enough courage for the next turn.
THE END.
