Girl in Falling Snow

by F. M. Parker

  Alice pointed at the lake. “Why don’t we travel on the lake for the wind has blown snow off in places. That’ll make for easier walking than through the woods.”

  Will scrutinized the lake with its snow drifts. “That’ll work just fine for Canada is straight north up the lake.”

  They gathered their possessions in but a moment. Walking abreast in the snow free pathways, they struck out over the ice.

  *

  Alice was exhausted, her legs rubbery and breath coming hard. She was terribly cold. Using the channels between the snow dunes, they had walked for miles across the frozen lake. At times they were forced to laboriously break through a tall drift to get to another snow-free pathway leading north.

  “I’ve got to rest for a minute,” she called to Will. “Just for a minute,” she added for she did not like to complain.

  Will looked at Alice’s taut, strained face and halted. Not once had she complained at the fast pace he had set. She was a good companion and he should have been watching her more closely. “All right. We’ve come a fair distance.”

  *

  The two journeyers were still far out upon the frozen lake and searching for paths through the snow drifts when the sun rolled down its ancient sky path and hid below the rim of the world. The ice covered lake filled with dusk. The cold deepened.

  Will called to Alice. “It’s getting dark. But we’ll have the North Star to guide us when it shows.”

  Alice looked at the north sky where night was birthing. She murmured to herself.

  Oh, North Star,

  Hear our plight.

  Surrender the day

  Come early tonight

  To Guide our way,

  Oh, North Star.

  She would write the poem down in her book so as to remember it. One day in the future, she would read the little poems to her children and tell them about her adventures, should she have a future and children.

  Alice struggled on while the sky darkened and the first big evening star came out. Her spirits rose as a few minutes later Will pointed at the sky.

  “There’s the North Star. Can you see it Alice?”

  Alice looked up into the sky, and as her father had taught her, found the Big Dipper and the two stars of the dipper’s cup that pointed at the North Star. “Yes, I see it. I’m always surprised at how small it is.”

  “It’s not much of a star, that’s the truth.”

  They set their course to bear on the star. A weary distance later, Alice could see the shore of the lake. They trudged on and reached the land. A treeless area lay before them, its size hidden by darkness. A line of wooden post supporting a three strand barbed wire fence blocked their entry upon the land.

  “We should be close to the Red Lake Indian Reservation,” Will said. “Maybe on the other side of that fence. I don’t know what the Indians would do to us if they caught on their land.”

  “We won’t let them catch us,” Alice said.

  “That’d sure be best.”

  “I smell smoke,” Alice said and smelling the air. “There has to be a fire someplace close.” A fire meant warmth, if they were allowed to come close. She looked through the darkness lying upon the snow covered land. A tiny yellow pinpoint of light showed far away.

  “There’s a house out there for I see a light,” she called out and pointed. “Let’s go and see if we can find a place to sleep tonight before I freeze to death.”

  “I see it too.”

  Will pressed down the top wire of the fence and stepped over. The fence was too tall for Alice to step over. She lay down and scooted under the bottom strand. Will helped her to her feet and brushed the snow off her. As they went into the field, the full moon lifted its round head above the forest in the east and its light fell upon the field of snow and turned it into a shimmering plain of silver. They waded onto the silver plain.

  *

  Alice and Will slowed as the point of light they had seen from the lake, grew into an orange square of lamplight in a window of a small frame house. A small stream of smoke rose from the stone chimney. A barn, silhouetted against the snow covered land, was close by the house. The lowing of a cow came from the barn.

  “The people will have finished all their chores by now and be in the house,” Will said in a low voice. “Since they have livestock, there’ll be hay for us to use as a bed. I hope they don’t have an ornery dog.”

  “Me too,” Alice said. “We should wait until they’ve gone to sleep and maybe they won’t see or hear us go into the barn.”

  They waited with the cold deepening. On the snow, the barn shadow and the house shadow and their own thin shadows shortened as the moon climbed higher. An orange shooting star passed overhead and vanished silently in the void of the north. Alice hardly noticed the streak of fire for her legs were growing ever weaker and she was wobbly on her feet and she stood erect only by propping herself up with the staff.

  “I wish they’d go to bed,” Alice whispered. Even as the last word left her lips, the lamplight in the window went black.

  “I’ll be damned, Alice, you’re a witch. Now let’s have a look in the barn.”

  They crept over the snow to the barn. The door make a low grinding sound on its hinges as Will pushed it open and closed it behind them. He struck a match and held it up to see the barn interior. A tan cow was in a small section of the barn and a team of black horses in a second, larger section. In the open part of the barn was a horse drawn hay mower, a hay rake, a wagon and a sled. Various farm tools lay on a work bench, or hung on wooden pegs on the walls. Hay lay in a mound in the loft.

  “There’s plenty of hay to make us a good bed.”

  “That’ll be better than the pine limbs we’ve been sleeping on,” Alice replied.

  Will doused the match that had burned down to his fingers and the barn went dark. He struck another.

  “I want to check something,” Will said and walked slowly toward the cow that watched him with large, liquid brown eyes reflecting the match. “Easy Old Jerse,” he called to her as he stepped over the railing of the partition and into her portion of the barn. As he drew even closer, he shook the match out so as not to frighten the cow with its flame.

  He touched the cow’s side with his bare hand and ran it down her ribs and flank and then lower and felt her bag-like udder. He squeezed the closer of the four teats. He licked his fingers and began to chuckle softly.

  “Alice, how would you like to have fresh milk for supper?” he called out through the darkness of the barn.

  “How could we have that?” Alice had a sudden yearning for a glass of milk.

  “The cow is fresh and giving milk. I’m sure she was milked earlier this evening but she has made more by now. She’s a jersey and they have the richest milk.”

  “I wonder where the calf is,” Alice said. “Do you think they ate it?”

  “Probably sold it for cash. These small farmers always need cash.”

  “What can we use to catch the milk?”

  “There’s probably a can around somewhere, but it’ll be dirty. We can take it straight from her tit.”

  “I don’t want to put her tit in my mouth.”

  “You don’t have to. Just open your mouth and squirt the milk in.”

  “Can you really do that?”

  “Sure. Come over here and I’ll show you how.”

  Alice’s eyes had become mostly accustomed to the darkness, and with moonbeams streaking in through the cracks in the walls of the barn, she could make out the forms of Will and the cow. She moved to them.

  “Take off your gloves and kneel down close to her udder,” Will directed.

  Alice knelt on the floor of the barn and put out her bare right hand and took hold of a teat that possessed a soft leathery feel and contained a little warmth. The cow bent her head on its long neck and looked at Alice.

  “Now open you mouth and put it close to the end of the tit and squeeze. You’ll have to give it a good hard squeeze. A hard one now.”<
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  Alice gave the teat a strong squeeze. A squirt of milk gushed into her open mouth, struck her tongue, the top of her mouth and down her throat. Half strangled by the unexpected strength of the jet of milk, she swallowed hastily.

  “Oh my! Oh my!” she cried out and shivering with delight, her taste buds strumming with the taste of the sweet, warm milk heavy with fat that her starving body craved. She smelled the muskiness of the milk. Using a coat sleeve, she wiped a few ill guided drops off her chin.

  She heard Will laughing as she hastily pulled the teat to her mouth again and squeezed even more strongly. Milk spurted into her mouth and she swallowed. She squeezed again and again, drinking, drinking, and savoring the delicious fluid. A cow hair came into her mouth and she isolated it with her tongue and spit it out. The cow hair had no importance when compared to her hunger. She again positioned her open mouth to receive the squirt of milk.

  After a time, Will touched Alice on the shoulder. “Save a little for me,” he said.

  Alice released the teat and looked up at Will through the gloom of the barn. “I was getting a little greedy, wasn’t I?”

  “It’s all right.”

  Alice rose to her feet and stepped away. Will was turning out to be a good traveling companion.

  Will knelt in her place, lowered his head and reached for a teat.

  Alice moved close to the cow’s shoulder and dug her fingers deeply into the thick winter hair and down to the skin and pressed them tightly there to absorb the warmth of the living heat. She stood thus, hearing the squirt of milk and Will swallowing the rich broth and knowing his great pleasure at the food. She could still taste her own feast of the liquid goodness of the cow. She leaned her weary head upon the Jersey’s hairy shoulder and rested.

  *

  Alice and Will slept in the hay mow of the old barn. Throughout the night the walls and roof creaked with the cold and the cow and horses stomped and moved about. In the morning twilight, hungry and stiff with cold, they stole from the barn and closed the door.

  Alice was surprised to see the moon still in the sky. It had driven its course across the night sky and now rested as a large, glistening silver-gold sphere on the western horizon. She lowered her eyes to look at the house, about the size of her home in England. Along the front of the house was a large flower bed with the dead heads of several types of flowers sticking above the snow. A fair size garden surrounded by a woven wire fence was to the left of the house. An orchard of at least a dozen leafless fruit trees stood evenly spaced one from another in a neat square just beyond the garden. Now in the dead of winter, the farm appeared bleak and cold and lonely.

  “Best we hurry on before the farmer wakes up and sees us,” Will said.

  They struck off over the snow covered field north of the house. As they entered the forest on the far side, Alice looked to the rear. A person trailed by a dog was walking from the house to the barn. They had barely escaped being caught trespassing.

  They forged a trail in the deep snow through the long forenoon of the day. In the afternoon, they came upon a lake. They left the dark tunnels of the forest and went out upon the flat, frozen surface with its wind hammered snowdrifts. They took a course near the right hand shore. As evening dusk built in the east, dense snow began to fall, large snowflakes fluttering down like small, white birds that had frozen to death while flying in the cold air. A north wind came alive and pushed the snowflakes into their cold faces.

  Alice raised a hand to brush away snowflakes that had attached themselves to her eyelashes. As she lowered the hand, she caught movement on her right and turned hastily. The grayish brown forms of several deer were in a brush thicket not far off. Every animal was watching the two journeyers.

  They moved on for a ways when Will halted and stared ahead through the falling snow. “Alice, I think I see buildings off there on the shore of the lake.”

  Alice looked where Will indicated. “Yes, yes there are,” she exclaimed.

  “It’s a logging camp for I see big piles of logs. And men are there for I can see smoke. We’ll try to buy some food from them.”

  “It’s nearly dark and the wind is growing stronger. Maybe they’ll let us sleep inside where it’s warm.”

  “I sure hope so. Let’s go and ask them.”

  Will increased his pace. Alice hurried to keep up.

  The daylight faded swiftly and the logging camp began to loose its form and to blend into the great piles of logs that lay about it. The logs in turn were fading into the dark forest where night had arrived early.

  “It’s going to be dark before we can get there,” Will called out.

  Alice did not respond. She needed all of her breath for the arduous task of keeping up with the long steeping Will.

  In the black forest not a quarter mile off in the forest, a cacophony of barks, yaps, and howls rose shrill and penetrating on the cold, dense air. She halted abruptly, startled by the explosion of sound.

  “What’s that,” she cried out.

  Will stopped and faced about. “That’s wolves rounding up their pack for a hunt. They‘re the first we’ve heard. Sounds like there are about five or six of them. I’ve been told that the farther north we go the more wolves we’ll hear.”

  Alice stood transfixed by the wild, strident cries rushing unbound from among the giant pines and out onto the lake. As she listened to the voices, the volume rapidly increased and she feared the wolves themselves were racing from the darkening forest and upon her. Then she realized that was not so, that the greater loudness was caused by additional wolves joining the outcry.

  As Alice listened to the wolves’ voices, their barks and yaps and howls combined into a harmonious melding of pitch and tone and volume that resembled a human yodeling, a surprisingly pure sound that was truly pleasant. She cupped her ears in her hands and leaned in the direction of the source of the song. As she eavesdropped upon the wolves, her fear of them lessened and she sensed the kinship each of them must have for all the others, and their readiness for the hunt.

  The joining of animal voices into the enjoyable vocal sound held for a slow count of six. Then the synchronization of the many voices broke apart and once again they were but a clamoring of barks and yaps and howls of the wolf pack. The volume lessened and then the last yap sounded and silence fell upon the forest. Alice pictured the wolves, ready for the chase and the kill, loping off over the snow led by their leader, a large, strong animal.

  Alice silently composed a poem to remember this strange event.

  I hear the wolf’s wild lament.

  The savage bite is his passion.

  I hear him howl his wild intent.

  The starry sky echoes his obsession.

  Before she slept tonight, she would write the poem in her little book.

  “Alice, we must hurry while we can still see.”

  They pushed into the wind with snow falling more heavily. As they drew closer to the camp, men were seen coming from the forest and entering the larger of the buildings.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Logging Camp

  Will rapped on the stout wooden door of the building at the logging camp and waited for a response from those inside with their fire. Nobody came to open the door. He knocked more loudly and waited and still no one responded.

  “Hit it hard and make them hear,” Alice called out as she leaned her shoulder against the log wall of the building to keep from being blown down by the powerful wind. She was freezing and hungry and exhausted.

  As Will raised his fist to hammer the door, it swung away and a tall, rawboned man with a reddish beard stood in the opening. He peered through the snowflakes streaming past and swept Will and Alice with a quick appraisal.

  “What the hell!” he exclaimed. “Come in. Come in.” Immediately he reached out his big hands and caught Will by the arm and Alice by the front of her coat and dragged them inside the building. He kicked the door shut.

  “It’s not fit for man nor beast to be outside
on a day like this.” The man said in a hearty voice. “Hustle yourselves over to the stove and get thawed out.” He motioned at the huge iron heating stove in the middle of the spacious room.

  Alice was astonished, but pleased by the man’s vigorous welcoming. She leaned her staff against the wall and trailed closely behind Will toward the stove, feeling its increasing warmth, a physical force touching her cold body. She wanted to smile, however her face was too cold and stiff for that, and so the smile got no further than her thankful heart.

  She and Will took a vacant space among the three men sitting around the stove with their feet propped up on a metal ring surrounding its bottom and a foot off the floor. The men appeared to have been awakened from snoozes. Alice stripped off her gloves and unbuttoned her coat and held it open so that the heat could get to her shivering body.

  She sensed the presence of other people in the room and looked about its spacious interior that was both a barracks and a work room. She saw a score or so of bearded men, dressed in heavy woolen shirts and trousers, scattered about in various situations. Every man in the room had halted what he had been doing and now Alice and Will were the focus of their attention. Their eyes held curiosity, a wondering as to how these two young people had suddenly entered their province.

  Alice smelled the odors of the room, pine wood smoke, tobacco smoke and unwashed bodies, and the oil used to waterproof leather boots, and other scents faint and stale that she could not identify. She caught a whiff of food being cooked and her mouth moistened.

  “I’m Jack Dawson and the camp boss. What might you two be named?”

  “I’m Alice.” She was going to speak for herself from now on.

  “My name is Will.”

  “You’re not lost, are you?”

  “No, we’re not lost.”

  “And where might you be leading you?”

  “North to Canada,” Alice replied.

  “Well, you’re almost there. Maybe ten to twelve miles more will get you to the Rainy River that marks the border. But don’t try to cross the river on the ice. The river flows fast and the ice is thin in places. You’ll have to find the bridge on State Route 72 to cross, and it’s off to the west of us about four miles.”