- Hard Fall Read Online Free PDF Page A

professional-quality camera.
    Already filled up two SD cards on the trip, said she owned a photo studio, if I heard her right. We headed out the ranch road for a while, back toward the bluffs. Passed a family fishing and talked with them a bit. We were stopping every fifteen minutes so Anya could take photos. Irritated Gunter.
    He kept getting more and more pissed, like he had someplace to be."
    "Chafing?"
    "I guess. I kinda liked it, you know, taking time. If I'd just been by myself, I'd have just blasted through on the wheels.
    It made me slow down and take it in a little more, you know?"
    "Okay, so you're heading out, stopping here and there." I repeated it more for my own recollection than to prompt Kabe. "Gunter's chomping at the bit to get himself relaxed.
    Then what happens?"
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    Hard Fall
    by James Buchanan
    "We got to the base of that rise up ahead." He pointed between two pine-covered hills cut by a pass of streams and pasture. Just beyond them a craggy, torn section of mountain reared up. "I was gonna head around to the north end, maybe another two miles, to the face I wanted to climb. I told them to keep on the road and at about four miles they'd see a pine growing out of the top of a boulder with a path. If they took that, it'd take them up to a bluff with a nice camp spot that overlooked the park."
    "Y'all parted at the fork then. When was the next time you saw them?"
    "Well, that afternoon I did the face twice. It's like a 5.3."
    Now a little flush seeped onto his cheeks and down his neck.
    "Not as scenic, at least from day-packer's perspective."
    Climber pride—a face you could do twice in a day didn't rate real high and a 5.3 was nothing ... the Yosemite scale started at 5.0 and went through 5.15 on rating how difficult a face was to climb. "It really isn't much, but there are some stretches and reaches, you know, to limber up. Chin-ups aren't the same as pushing your body up a rock with your toes."
    With those words, life seemed to pump into Kabe. Not a lot. Just enough to tell that this was something he enjoyed.
    Not the recounting of his day, but the climb. "Okay, got it."
    "I camped there, then packed up before the sun was up.
    The whole night was quiet. I was going to go farther in, to a 5.6 point pitch, you know, easy enough to get my center back. I thought I should swing by Gunter and Anya's and check in." He shrugged and tapped the window frame.
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    Hard Fall
    by James Buchanan
    "Something just told me to. So I'm maybe halfway up that trail and I run into Gunter coming down. He was acting all freaked out and said that Anya fell. I'm thinking, shit there goes my weekend, 'cause I'm going to have to haul some German tourist back with a broken leg."
    "Wasn't a broken leg." The comment didn't need saying, but I said it all the same. Reminding myself we were out for someone who wasn't coming home.
    "No, no broken leg. He jumps on the ATV with me, takes me up and over past their camp. He's telling me, actually yelling it into my ear so I can hear, that Anya took off to photograph the sunrise over the park. When she didn't come back for breakfast he goes looking and finds her."
    "When do you think this was?" That question I had to ask.
    Needed times, even if they weren't solid. "When you first ran into him on the trail?"
    "About eightish."
    "Sunup was around six," Ramon, for the first time, broke in, "maybe a little after." I'd plumb well forgotten he was there. Made no more sense than a rabbit at a wolf convention since he was driving, but my mind does that sometimes.
    "Yeah," Kabe mumbled, "about then. Why?"
    "Nothing, keep going."
    "Well, we had to leave the ATV at one point. He's telling me to hurry. Maybe with both of us we can haul her out. Save her. He hustles me over to the rim. One look, and I knew it was over."
    "How so?"
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    Hard Fall
    by James Buchanan
    "Most people's heads don't face their spine." A little twitch flicked at the corner of Kabe's eye. No more reaction than that, though.