by F. M. Parker
Close by the fire, she leveled a place in the carpet of needles beneath the live pine and made her bed of canvas and blankets. Then using limbs from the pine, she constructed a crude lean-to, copying a picture of one she had once seen in a book, with its open front facing the fire and so would guide its heat upon her bed.
She took a seat on the wood pile and stared out across the snow covered the lake. Not far away on the lake surface, the wind picked up a skein of snow many yards long and spun it away in a miniature snow storm. Farther away, the dark line of the forest on the opposite shore of the lake was visible. She judged the distance two miles. In the north, storm clouds were moving upon her. She shivered, the night would be a cold one.
Alice sat wearily in the warmth of the fire as the black wave of the night crept closer and objects lost their form. Gradually the last fleeting memories of daylight fled from the forest. Out on the lake, the snow became but a lighter shade of darkness.
Alice did not like the darkness. She raised her eyes and looked to the eastern horizon where the edge of a full moon had appeared. She wished the moon was up high enough to give her light for the cold didn’t seem to bite so harshly when she could see around her. It would take several few hours for the moon to reach the middle of the sky where its light could reach her in the woods.
She turned back to the fire where the leaping flames chased her shadow back and forth over the trunks of the close by trees. In the openings between the trees, her shadow vanished, swallowed by the night’s blackness. A puff of wind came down from the sky and made the flames dance wildly and tore sparks from the ashes and sent them streaking off like brilliantly colored butterflies among the boles of the trees. Alice inched closer to the fire.
*
Alice awoke with cold fingers seeming to stroke her cheeks. She thought she had heard somebody whispered her name. She opened her eyes and stared out into the small bubble of light created by the flames of her campfire. The forest was full of wind and falling snowflakes. The trees swayed to the push of the wind and a multitude of snowflakes swirled about. Snowflakes had been blown in beneath the lean-to and upon her cheeks. She brushed them away.
“Alice,” a low, whispery voice spoke. Though Alice barely heard the word, the voice sounded like her mother’s. It seemed to be coming from a far distance. She sat up and held her breath, listening.
“Alice,” the voice spoke again and it held an urgency.
Alice’s heart surged for the voice was indeed that of her mother. More than that, she felt the presence of her mother. Could that really be?
“Mother, is that you?” Alice whispered and staring hard into the wind tormented fall of snow.
Alice sensed the presence of her mother growing stronger, a presence just there close by and hidden by the snow. “Mother, let me see you.” Alice spoke more strongly and willed the loving presence into being. ”Talk to me!”
The wind’s eddies and currents and the snowflakes that rode upon them slowed and moved in a measured way. The snowflakes began to congregate and to form a pattern against the tall pine tree on the opposite side of the fire. The wind shook the top of the tree where the branches were most heavily laden with snow and they shed their burdens. The falling snow struck the branches below and triggered them to drop their snow. Down and down the snow fell, its quantity swelling and spreading. The wind took possession of part of the cascading snow and added it to the snow patterns that it was drawing. The remaining snowflakes formed a white curtain against the pine.
Alice gasped for the figure of a woman wearing a long, rippling dress that reached below her feet, had taken form suspended in the wind’s snow filled currents in front of the pine tree. Her arms were ribbons of downward pouring snow. Her hands and fingers were splayed strips of falling snow. A wavering snow face took shape, a brow, nose and eyes, and all tinted by the light of the fire to give it substance. The face held a haunted and worried expression. Alice recognized her mother in the spectral being.
“Alice,” the snow and wind figure whispered.
The figure was not Alice’s imagination for she had seen the mouth move. She must go and talk with her mother. She cast off the blankets and canvas that covered her and crawled out from the lean-to and into the wind and snow and the awful cold. The air that had had all scent frozen out of it before was suddenly full of the fresh smell of pine. She circled the fire and wondering was this truly happening, or was she dreaming. Her footsteps slowed and she hesitantly drew close to the figure held by the wind against the pine tree.
“I’m here, mother,” Alice said shakily, and looking up at the snow face that resembled her mother’s, but blurred.
Alice listened to the voice that held the sigh of the wind and the soft whisper of falling snow. Some of the words were difficult to understand for they were distorted and rose and fell in volume. As she concentrated to hear, she feared that this was all imagination or a dream and not really happening. Still the voice was that of her mother and she could not close her eyes or refuse to hear. The voice ceased to speak and the arm that was made of a stream of snowflakes, swung out toward her.
Alice hesitated but a moment and then reached out to take hold of the extended hand. Even as she moved, the hand and wrist unraveled into hundreds of snowflakes and fell away. The stump of the arm withdrew.
Alice hastily pulled her hand back. Even as she did so, the hand of the figure began to reform with snow streaming down the arm from the shoulder. The hand did not offer itself again.
Alice looked up at the face of the figure and saw its mouth move.
“Danger,” the voice whispered with its volume frail and fading.
Alice turned her head left and right, straining to hear the voice that was rapidly weakening, seemingly coming from an ever greater distance. Then all that Alice could hear was the sighing of the wind and the whisper of falling snow. The dress and arms of the snowflake figure elongated, stretching down to touch the ground. The face flattened and tore diagonally from the left forehead to the right edge of the mouth. The body became translucent, then transparent with the pine tree behind showing through. The ethereal figure blended into the falling snow and became but part of the multitude of snowflakes riding on the ever-changing currents of the wind.
Alice stood staring at the pine tree with its branches catching snow and bowing to the wind. Had the spirit of her dead mother crossed from the spirit world and created a body from the snow and wind so as to be able to warn her of danger? That seemed impossible, and yet Alice could not deny what she had seen and heard.
The glacial wind buffeted Alice and cut through her clothing, and her thoughts. She wrapped her arms about herself and hurried back to the lean-to, where she stooped and crawl under its roof of pine boughs.
Had she really seen the spirit of her mother, really heard her voice? Or had the killing and the hours of flight through the cold, snowy forest affected her reasoning?
It was not my imagination. Alice hardened that thought in her mind. It was her mother warning that a man who wanted to harm her was close. And she must leave and hurry on.
Alice had been going straight north. Come daylight, she would go left, to the west, for a ways, maybe two miles, and then turn back north toward the Canada. With the new snow hiding her footprints, Oscar wouldn’t be able to follow her. Now she must rest and sleep. She slid underneath the covers. Her mother was watching over her. Alice smiled for the very first time in days.
*
Alice shouldered her pack, and propelling herself along with her walking staff, went out onto the snow and ice covered lake just as the first rays of the sun fell upon it. Nothing moved upon that broad expanse of frozen white for the wind had ceased to blow and the snow to fall. Behind her on the shore, the tops of the snow laden trees glowed carmine in the rising morning sun and lied about being warm. In the north sky, a huge mass of dark storm clouds was driving swiftly upon her. She must hurry and reach the far side of the lake before the storm fell upon her.
; She moved off across the ice, her sore muscles aching. On the snow, the shadows of her legs mimicked her every step. Oh, if only her real legs could move so easily.
*
Alice had barely passed mid-point of the lake when the storm fall upon her like a white, billowing curtain traveling swiftly with its top farther advanced than the bottom and overhanging the lake. The far shore with its green pine forest vanished within the whiteness. Half a minute later, the lake in front of her disappeared and a powerful wind struck her in the face with a wall of snow and a cold so biting that she gasped and halted and turned her back to it.
She could freeze to death on the lake with no shelter. She had to get into the trees on the shore where the wind would not be so strong and she could build a fire. She could not see and must follow the compass. She pulled it from inside her coat, and with her face angled down to protect it from the lash of the glacial wind and the sting of the icy snow flakes, moved off at a right angle to the compass’s north pointing needle and toward the nearest woods.
Alice plowed ahead with the deep snow trying to trip her and the wind slamming her about. Tears were torn tears from her eyes and froze upon her cheeks. She had been cold before, but never like this. she had to find shelter soon or she would surely die.
*
Alice raised her head from watching the compass and threw a look ahead into the wind and snow. She jerked, startled, for not but a score of steps away and inside the edge of the forest, a big fire blazed orange and yellow. She had stumbled upon somebody’s camp.
A man stood on the far side of the leaping flames of the fire and watched her. He wore a long sheepskin coat with the fleece turned inside and a fleece lined cap pulled low on his head until only his eyes showed. Snow lay thick upon his shoulders and head. He stared directly at her.
For a frightening moment, Alice feared the man was the sheriff and he had somehow gotten ahead of them. Then through a break in the thick snow, she saw the face of a young man, not much older than Alice.
“Who in the hell are you?” the fellow shouted out in a challenging voice.
“Somebody who needs to share your fire,” Alice called back. The fellow was a stranger, but stranger or not, she must have a fire.
“Well come on in. The fire don’t care who it warms.” The fellow motioned with his left hand. He held his right hand hidden behind his leg.
Alice moved ahead and halted near the fire. She leaned her staff against her shoulder and, using her teeth, pulled the gloves off her stiff, frozen hands and held them out to the wondrous heat of the flames. She scrutinized the young man. He was quite slender. The coat was too large for him and he had it cinched in around his lean body with a leather belt. Knee high boots protected his feet from the snow and cold. His head was somewhat narrow with a large, high nose and a large mouth. His eyes, large for his thin face, held a worried, alert expression.
The young man scowled at Alice. “Now who the hell are you?” he questioned in a rough tone.
“My name is Alice.”
“What’s your name?” Alice asked.
“Call me Will,” the young man said and kept a sharp focus on Alice. “Where in hell you going in a storm like this’n?”
“I’m headed north to Canada.”
Will gave Alice a knowing grin. “That’s what I suspected. That’s were most of the runaways go.”
“Where’re you heading in the same storm?” Alice asked.
“The same place.” Will brought a revolver into view from behind his leg and held it up for Alice to see. “For a time there in the snow I thought you might be somebody chasing me. I don’t intend to let anybody take me back south.”
“You’d use a gun to stop somebody from doing that?”
“If I had to. And I’m a good shot.” Will cocked the revolver and then lowered the hammer. “I’m betting you’re a girl off the Orphan Train and now running off to Canada because people are mean to you and hit you.”
“I’d say you’re one of those too.”
“People learn quick not ever to hit me.” Will waved the pistol up at the wind tossed pine boughs above his head.
Alice watched Will’s display with the gun. Had he committed a crime? Had he killed someone, as she had done? She must not think about what she had done.
“Is anybody chasing you for something you done back there?” Alice asked.
“Haven’t seen anybody chasing me.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“That’s my answer.”
Will studied Alice. “You’ve got the smell of bad luck.”
“You do too,” Alice said, not to be outdone.
“I was good luck to you what with my fire when you needed one.”
“True enough and I won’t deny it.”
Alice hoped Will wasn’t as violent as he acted. She tightened her grip upon her walking staff. She would use it as a club if the need was forced upon her.
Will’s scowl lessened at Alice’s admittance of his help and he spoke more friendly. “You’re going to need something to keep the wind and snow off you. If you got a hatchet or something to cut with, I’ll help you built a lean-to there beside mine on the up-wind side of the fire.” He shoved the revolver into a side pocket of his coat.
Alice dropped her pack and dug out the hatchet. With its sharp blade, the hatchet would make a deadly weapon. Keeping a wary eye on Will, she began to chop branches off the nearby pines. They gathered the branches up and carried them close to the fire. Then working together, they constructed a lean-to adjacent to Will’s, and as near the fire as they dared and not be burned.
Alice placed the last of the pine boughs in a mat under the structure to sit on and keep her bottom off the snow. She took up her pack, stooped, ducked her head and entered the lean-too and seated herself. She extended her cold feet out to the fire.
Will took a seat in the entrance of his shelter, and there hunched his shoulders to shield a pouch of tobacco from the wind and rolled a cigarette. He popped a wooden match into flame with a thumbnail and lit the cigarette.
“You want a smoke?” Will asked and holding the pouch of tobacco out to Alice.
“No. I don’t smoke.”
“That’s the best for a poke of tobacco cost ten cents. And girls shouldn’t smoke anyway.”
They sat without talking and the pine trees around them bucking and bowing and their limbs thrashing and the snow slanting down in a torrent of white on all sides. Snowflakes fell into the fire where they boiled and hissed for an instant and vanished.
A swift burst of wind reached down through the trees and rode up over the sloping back sides of the two shelters and struck the fire. The tall flames bent and flattened and stretched long downwind and spat a multitude of red sparks out over the ice imprisoned lake.
“The storm acts like it’ll last a while,” Will said.
“Looks that way,” Alice replied.
“I’m going to sleep for a while and wait for the storm to stop,” Will said. He crawled into his lean-to.
Alice remained silent. She was exhausted and cold, but dare she close her eyes and rest with not knowing the character of the fellow?
She spread the canvas and blankets upon the mat of pine boughs. Placing the hatchet ready to her hand, she pulled the covers over her and lay facing the fire. Her eyelids felt as if lead weights were pulling them down. She would close her eyes and rest just for a moment. She went instantly to sleep.
*
Alice awoke shivering with the cold. She twisted about and peered out from under the shelter. The snow had stopped falling. The wind had raced off to some distant place and the pine trees surrounding the camp stood rigid in the intense cold. Wood smoke lay in a thin, motionless gray fog between the lowest limbs of the pine trees and the snowy ground. The fire had burned itself away too only a pile of coals frosted with grayish ash.
She turned to Will’s shelter. He appeared to be sleeping soundly and that was a good thing for he had worried her. However i
t seemed that he meant her no harm regardless of his tough talk.
She rolled out from under the lean-to and tossed fresh wood upon the bed of coals. Flames, waiting only to be awakened, sprang to life. She threw on more wood and the flames greedily ate and grew to stand tall in the windless day.
Alice spread her cold hands out to the flames and listened to their crackling talk as she looked at the lake wearing a wave tossed covering of snow drifts. The stiff polar wind had performed a Herculean task of creating snow drifts tall as Alice’s chest and many yards long. Every drift was aligned north to south. In the alleyways between the drifts, the snow lay but thinly, and in many places the ice had been swept clean. She noted a frequent linking of one snow free area with another. Her eyes turned upward to the sky that held a hard blue color, and then to the south where the sun was small and pale and gave no warmth to the frozen forest and lake.
She called out to Will. “The storm is over.”
Will sat up and tossed off his blankets. He sat for a time and silently looked at Alice. “We’re going in the same direction. You want to go with me. I’m strong and can help you. And I’d like somebody to talk with.”
Alice silently considered the proposition. He seemed friendly enough and he had made no trouble for her as she had slept. She admitted to herself, that she wanted somebody to travel with, to share the dangers that must lie ahead. Also, she judged him strong even with his slenderness.
“I can help you fight off the wolves.” Will said, as if reading her thoughts.
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“No. Just telling you the truth.”
“I’ll go with you until we cross the border.”
“You’re a stout girl,” Will said and for the first time he smiled at Alice.
“Not so stout.” Then to herself, just scared of who might be close behind me.
