Girl in Falling Snow

by F. M. Parker

  “I hope I am too,” said Alice. “How do they find the families?

  “The train carries us to towns out west where people come from all around and choose us and take us into their homes. I’ve heard they’re mostly farm people who want children. Of course they expect us to work and earn our way. I’d work really hard for a home.”

  “I hope anybody who takes me in will let me go to school,” Alice said.

  “I heard that most families do let the kids go to school.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “It’s going to be a long trip,” said Opal. “There’s a library here and they’ll let us take a book with us to read on the train. After we finish eating, do you want me to show you where it is and we can choose a book.”

  “Yes. I’d like to have a book of poetry.”

  “Poetry is okay. But sometimes I have trouble understanding what the poet is saying.”

  “Some poems are only for the poet who writes them to understand.”

  “I didn’t know that. I thought poetry for was for everybody. Do you know a poet?”

  “I once knew a wonderful poet,” Alice said sadly.

  *

  Sister Marie stood beside Sister Evangeline at the doorway leading from the dining hall. She was studying the children filing toward her, some alone and silent, others in pairs whispering and smiling. The children looked up with awe and an obvious liking for her as they passed.

  “There’s the new girl from you brought from the police station, the one walking with Opal,” said Sister Evangeline. “A bath did wonders for her.”

  “It certainly did,” said Sister Marie and observing Alice as she smiled at something Opal said. It was but a half smile as if she didn’t smile often. With her slender body, she appeared fragile. However, at the police station, Sister Marie had sensed strength in her.

  “Even half starved she’s beautiful,” said Sister Marie.

  “Yes she is,” agreed Sister Evangeline.

  Sister Marie put out a hand and stopped Alice as she drew abreast of her. She examined Alice closely, noting the smooth sweep of her forehead, the copper gold of her eyebrows and lashes, the fine straight line of her nose. With her golden hair and white, translucent skin rivaling alabaster in its purity, and those magnificence green eyes like gems, Alice was the most beautiful girl the sister had ever seen. Men would be strongly drawn to her, all sorts of men. Alice’s great beauty could bring her great danger, thought Sister Marie.

  “How long have you been living on the street?” Sister Marie asked.

  “Since last April,” Alice replied.

  “I know that must have been a very awful time. But it’s over now.”

  Alice doubted that the sister really did know how terrible it was to be on the streets and shoved aside, cursed and yelled at, to be preyed upon by those in the same dire straits but strong enough to take your pitiful possessions. For a girl it was very bad, for they had a special danger from the big boys, who would catch and fondle the private parts of your body. Sometimes they laughed as if they had captured a prize. Worst of all were the girls younger than herself, who in desperation, went into the dark alleys with men and laid down and sold themselves for a few silver coins with which to buy a little food to fill their empty stomachs.

  Think of something else, Alice told herself and she shut off the picture. She spoke to Sister Marie, “Have you heard anything about Gracie at the hospital? Is she getting well?”

  “I’ll send somebody to the hospital in the morning before we leave to find out about her,” replied Sister Marie.

  “Thank you.” Alice wanted to know about Gracie now and not later, but she must accept what the sister said.

  “We’re going to the library to get a book for the train ride tomorrow,” Opal said.

  “Go along then,” said Sister Marie, and motioned the girls past.

  *

  Alice rested on a soft, warm cot near an outer wall of the girls’ dormitory of the Children’s Aid Society. The electric light at each end of the large room had been extinguished and darkness lay densely. Several rows of narrow cots completely filled the space, with each cot holding a thin cotton mattress, pillow and blanket. Every bed held a girl.

  Alice felt safe among the girls, and by knowing Sister Marie and the other sisters were someplace close by in their own sleeping areas within the walls of the building. Tonight she would sleep soundly. For the first time in weeks, she was free of the constant fear that made her nights so tense and wakeful.

  The conversations of the girls were a whispery murmur coming out of the darkness. A pleasant, sleep inducing quietness was settling as their voices dwindled. Then all talk ceased and a stillness fell over the dormitory.

  Alice pulled the blanket up snuggly under her chin and closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed and steadied and her thoughts began to drift between reverie and sleep; circling, eddying, and drawing her backward. She surrendered to them, going back to memories of her earlier childhood, those memories of certain events that could never be forgotten no matter how many years she lived.

  Chapter 2

  Wolves Of The Forest

  Paul Douccard moved easily on snowshoes through the forest of tall pines and spruce and hard woods of northern Minnesota. A bulky pack containing his one-man tent and fur sleeping robe, food and other camping and trapping necessities was strapped upon his back. He was drawing near Head Lake that lay some eighteen miles south of Rainy River and the border with Canada.

  Nearly a foot of new snow had fallen during the night and the limbs of the pines and spruce had caught mounds of it and now drooped in arches beneath the weight. The bare, leafless limbs of the hardwoods, the oak, maple, and birch made an intricate wickerwork pattern against the blue sky. Every tree stood motionless for the wind had gone off to some unknown place two days past. Though the January sun shone brightly, the deep freeze that had begun in December still held the forest in its frigid grip.

  Paul carried a .30 caliber, Winchester rifle in his right hand, a well used gun that had belonged to his father until his death four long years past. His left hand held a tied bundle of fresh pelts, one from a mink, a martin, and two from foxes that he had taken from traps on this the first half of his sixty mile trap line. Three days were required to run the trap line and he ran it once a week. At the end of each day, he slept wherever the darkness caught him.

  He was seventeen, lean and muscular. His eyes were gray and set far apart in a face that was somewhat broad, which gave it an open, yet a stern expression. He was dressed in woolen trousers, shirt and a long coat made of wolf fur. A woolen cap with a leather bill crowned his head. He moved warily, his senses alert. The forest was an old acquaintance of his and all the animals that made it their home were well known. Still there was danger should he come unexpectedly upon a wolverine, a cougar, a badger, or a pack of wolves.

  On Paul’s left, his long legged dog Brutus with his head held high kept pace through the snow. Brutus was a wolfhound with a gray pelt and black splotches on the sides. The coat was made of long, coarse guard hairs covering and protecting the fragile soft inner fur that was nearly an inch deep and provided protection from the cold. His head was longish with powerful jaws. His shoulders were strong, chest deep. His paws were large and round with arched toes and strong, downward curving claws. His dark eyes were set under bushy eyebrows. He was Paul’s constant companion, and had been for all his five years of life.

  Paul earned a living for his mother and himself by trapping fur and cutting ice in the winter and farming during the summer. The ice was sold to the Torgerson Ice Company located in the village of Diston some six miles west of his home. There it was stored beneath three feet of saw dust until needed in the summer. The furs were sold to a buyer also located in Diston. Paul and his mother raised wheat and tended a large garden on the farm that his grandfather and father had hewed out of the forest along the Rainy River. The river was the boundary between the States and Canada. Paul went to high
school in Diston.

  Paul slowed as he drew near the edge of the forest and Head Lake. In the last fringe of trees, he halted and swept his sight over the flat, snow-covered surface of the lake. It was some two miles wide and seven miles long and rimmed entirely by tall trees of the forest. Under the bright sunlight, the snow sparkled like a billion diamonds. Upon that glittering surface and several hundred yards away, a dark form, a wolf, was making its way in Paul’s direction.

  “Down, Brutus,” Paul whispered and fell into the snow.

  Brutus instantly crouched beside his master. He kept his legs bunched beneath him and waited, coiled for the next command. The tone of his master told him that something important had been seen. Brutus was ready to rush and attack, or steal silently back into the forest.

  “It’s Black Face himself,” Paul whispered, staring out across the lake. “And he’s coming our way. Now if he’ll only come within gun range, all of our long hunt for him will end today.” He chuckled softly with anticipation.

  Brutus turned keen eyes in the same direction as his master. The wolf was but a black spot far away on the lake’s ice.

  Paul, moving slowly so as not to attract the wolf’s sharp vision, slid his arms from the straps of the pack and placed it in front of him. He laid his rifle upon the pack to used it as a solid platform from which to shoot most accurately. He twisted about and removed his snowshoes. From a side pocket of his coat, he extracted a spyglass. He extended it full length and aimed it at Black Face.

  In the 10 power magnified view field of the spyglass, the large, male wolf appeared to leap from 400 yards to but 40 yards distant. Moving easily the wolf made his way through the snow. Paul marveled at the strength of the animal, the dry, light snow seeming to be but fog through which he waded with little effort.

  “He’s too far off for an accurate shot”, Paul confided to Brutus. “We’ll have to wait a bit.” As he lowered the spyglass, he noted a slight stirring of the top limbs of the pine trees as an unwanted wind came alive.

  Paul again took up the spyglass and looked at Black Face. The predators, the hunters were the most intelligent animals in the woods. Of all of them, the wolves were the cleverest. They knew their home range, often encompassing a hundred and fifty square miles or more, like no other forest animal. Every hill and valley they knew, and the habits of every animal that lived there. Humans who entered the wolf’s range were not exempt from being known by the wolves. The loggers who spent much time in the woods, told of wolves spying upon them from but a few yards away. A wolf pack that trespassed upon another pack’s range was not treated so benignly. Fierce battles were fought to defend a home range and thus save the deer and other prey for their own members.

  Paul had known Black Face since he was a pup. He had come upon the female wolf’s den made underneath the upturned roots of a giant pine tree that had been toppled by the wind. The five pups, believing the sound of Paul squatting down near them was that of their mother returning to the den, had whimpered and crawled toward him. Paul had drawn back for he didn’t want to put his scent on the pups. Being newly born their eyes was of a pale blue color. A time would come soon when those eyes would be a fierce yellow with a black center.

  One of the males, with a striking mixture of colors, was larger than the other pups. His nose was jet black. The blackness continued on along his head to encircle the eyes and the erect, pointed ears, and onward across the top of the head to merge with the black saddle that extended the full length of his body. The black graded into a reddish brown on his sides and that changed to a yellowish tan on his stomach. Paul promised himself that one day when the pup was full grown, he would take its pelt for sale. He had left with the wolf den undisturbed.

  During the next two years, Paul had spotted the black faced wolf several times. Once he had aimed his rifle at the wolf and could have killed him, but held off to wait for him to reach full size. This past fall, the third year of Black Face’s life, Paul had observed the pack pursuing a deer. Black Face had been the swiftest and had overtaken the deer and alone brought it down. Now in the dead of winter and pelts prime, Paul hunted the wolf with deadly intent, and had set traps to catch him. The animal had avoided all ambushes. Out of respect for the wolf’s cunning, Paul had given him a name, Black Face.

  At the moment, as Black Face trotted across the lake with his pelt rippling over his muscles and the bright winter sun upon him, the long guard hairs seemed to be on fire with dancing, red flame.

  “Beautiful”, Paul murmured. “Your pelt will bring a premium price.”

  Brutus whined, tensing, wanting to know what his master wanted.

  “Just talking to Black Face,” Paul said.

  Brutus recognized only one master, Paul. When he spoke, Brutus responded without hesitation. Paul had been but a boy when Brutus first opened his eyes as a pup. There had been a man and a woman in the house at that time. However it became soon known to Brutus that he belonged to the boy. And it was the boy who taught him what was expected of him upon certain words and hand gestures. Brutus enjoyed the lessons for it gave him pleasure to do as ordered and to receive that gentle touch on his head, and sometimes a gentle thump on the ribs, that told him he had performed correctly. He had reached full size by the third winter, and at that time when he stood up on his hind legs he was as tall as Paul. Paul continued to grow and now stood six feet tall

  *

  The black faced wolf stopped in mid-stride and stood motionless in the snow. His sensitive nose had caught the scent of his enemy on the wind. He lifted his head higher and sucked in another breath of air to be certain of his finding. The scent was present, both that of the man and the dog. He growled and dropped down on his stomach. Only the top of his head with the sharp eyes and his tufted ears showed above the snow.

  He ranged his eyes out across the frozen lake to the forest that rimmed the shore and examined the openings between the trees, searching for the sight of the man and dog. The wolf feared nothing in his domain of forest and lakes except the men that lived and hunted there. Two years before when he was but a curious yearling and innocent of the danger from a man, he had foolishly drawn close to the buildings of a farm to investigate a tantalizing odor coming from white animals in a pen. The farmer, to protect his sheep, had fired a rifle at the wolf. The bullet had punched a hole through Brutus’s right ears. In pain, he had sped away from that hazardous place. He healed quickly as young healthy animals do. He had learned that man was dangerous and could reach out a long distance and hurt him.

  Black Face judged this man hidden on the lake shore his special enemy for he had discovered him and the dog following his tracks several times. He breathed again of the frigid wind. This time It did not contain the scent of the man. Still Black Face was too wise to doubt those first whiffs of him. He was patient and would wait.

  The man’s dog caused Black Face little concern. When dogs were in a pack and chased after him, he easily out ran them. A dog by itself had always run away from him, except for one large dog that fought him bravely. Black Face was skilled in fighting. He fought to earn his status in the pack. He fought the bears and the wolverines to protect the pups. He fought to defend his pack’s territory against the wolf pack from the river that sometimes stole into his territory to hunt. He killed to eat. The dog was strong; still Black ace had slain him.

  The slow wind came again and it carried the scent of the man. In one fluid movement, the wolf rose to his feet, pivoted a quarter turn to the right and leapt away in long, lithe bounds across the snow covered lake.

  *

  Paul watched Black Face race away, the blackness of his body standing out starkly against the white snow. He seemed to flow over the lake and in seconds was only a black spot growing ever smaller.

  He lowered the spyglass and spoke to Brutus over his shoulder. “Well he outsmarted us again.” Paul felt no regret that the wind had blown his scent to Black Face and he had made good his escape. To Paul the hunt was mostly an interesting game,
with some dollars to be earned by sale of the pelt. To Black Face, the hunt was not a game but a matter of life or death. He lived by his wits, avoiding man who would kill him. In turn he killed only what he needed to survive. As Paul considered the different values, he realized that the death of the wolf would create an emptiness in his life.

  Every time Paul had spotted Black Face during this past year, the wolf had been traveling by himself. Was he searching for a likely female to start his own pack? He was a big fellow and obviously strong and could be the dominant male of a pack. A pack of wolves was to the south on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. A larger pack ranged the land along the Rainy River several miles north of Head Lake. Among the females of those packs, Black Face could find a suitable female. In two or three years, he and a fertile bitch could produce enough pups to have his own following. This possibility added to Paul’s pleasure in not having killed the wolf.

  He snapped the spyglass closed and slid it back into the pocket of his coat. He rose to his knees and stared out over the lake. Nothing marred the dazzling whiteness of the perfectly flat snow field.

  Paul whirled abruptly, and growling fiercely, flung himself upon Brutus still lying in the snow. He wrapped his arms around the dog’s rock-solid chest and rolled with him, kicking snow as his feet propelled them about. Still growling. Paul rolled them again.

  Brutus began to growl even more savagely than Paul and kicked his legs as if trying to break free. He shoved his head close to that of his master’s and began to snap his powerful jaws together with a clash of white fangs. Those teeth could have bitten off the side of Paul’s face with ease. With their voices joined in a savage mock battle, they rolled again and again with first the dog on top and then Paul. The snow was crunched down in a wide area by their tumbling bodies, and hurled aside in white sparkling sprays by their thrashing legs. They crashed into the trunk of a birch, but neither of them paid the encounter heed. Snarling in a ferocious duo, they rolled in the virgin snow. From a distance, the mock battle between the man and big dog appeared to be a struggle to the death