Girl in Falling Snow

by F. M. Parker

  “My-o-my, what do we have here?” Two Doves asked from the doorway of the kitchen. She was wiping her hands on a white apron tied about her waist.

  “Two Doves, meet Alice and Will. They’re going to stay for supper and spend the night with us.” He looked at the two. “Isn’t that right?”

  Both nodded quick agreement.

  “That’s just fine for I’ve cooked plenty of food,” Two Doves said in a hearty voice. “Alice, why don’t you come into the kitchen? Its warm and you can wash up there.”

  “Thank you,” Alice said. “I would like to clean up a bit.”

  “Then come along. Jack, have your dirty loggers wash up for supper.” Two Doves led Alice into the kitchen.

  Alice followed the short, broad woman with a large bosom and well rounded hips, and clothed in a brightly flowered springtime dress. The woman was half a hand shorter than Alice.

  In the kitchen Two Doves dipped warm water from a reservoir attached to the end of the cooking stove and filled a washbasin nearly full. This she placed on a wash stand where there was a bar of soap in a small dish, a towel and a mirror on the wall.

  “Help yourself,” Two Doves said and gesturing at the washbasin.

  Alice removed her coat and cap and hung them on the hook fastened to the wall near the wash stand. She examined her face in the mirror and saw that the wind and cold and her weariness made her appear older than she was. She scrubbed her hands and face with warm, soapy water, and dried them on the towel. She combed her tangled yellow hair as best she could with her fingers.

  *

  At Two Dove’s call, the loggers filed into the kitchen and took seats around the long rectangular table. Two Doves guided Alice to a seat between Will and Jack at the end of the table, and then hurried off to her kitchen. Will gave Alice a quick, short smile showing his pleasure at being warm and about to feast.

  Alice gazed upon the table where three coal oil lamps, one of outsize dimensions, sat in a row along the center and illuminated the large bowls of steaming venison stew, sliced ham upon a platter, large loaves of hot bread on cutting boards, dried apple pies in their metal pans, black coffee and cans of rich condensed milk to enrich it and sugar in bowls to sweeten it. The rich aroma of the food overwhelmed Alice in her hunger and she felt faint. She fought the weakness and filled her plate as the food was passed around the table and came to her. As was her habit, she ate slowly, chewing the food thoroughly and savoring the flavor to the utmost.

  The men ate with gusto, their forks and spoons rattling against the crockery as they dipped and ladled food. She glanced up once from her plate and noted that Will was eating as sturdily as the loggers, and that brought a smile to her face.

  Alice finished her food and looked about at the men. All had finished eating and had lit their pipes or cigarettes and were puffing away and creating a cloud of smoke. Their brushy beards and the squint marks around their eyes from staring into wind and sun, and the obvious strength in their muscular bodies, confirmed their occupation as woodsmen.

  Her attention was drawn to the extra-large oil lamp that was directly in front of her in the center of the table. In the globe made of thin, clear glass, a golden flame rose in a broad, shallow U from the end of the wick. The warm air surrounding the hot globe was rising and spinning in a counter-clockwise vortex some one foot in diameter. The column of air was drawing in the gray smoke of the men’s tobacco and every strand and thread of it was distinct. Upon striking the ceiling, the rotating column fragmented into a formless mixture of smoky air.

  Jack noticed Alice fascination with the lamp. “The lamp makes that whirling smoke when a pretty girl eats at the table.”

  Alice blushed. “I don’t believe that at all,” she murmured.

  “It’s the total truth. Ask any man here.”

  Every man’s heads, save Will’s, nodded sagely in affirmation of Jack’s statement.

  Two Doves had come from the stove with a steaming coffee pot. “It’s the truth,” she said with a laugh. “When I first came here, I was much younger and just a slender slip of a girl, it swirled like that for me.”

  A great roar of laughter erupted around the table. “True, true, for I was here when it happened,” one of the loggers shouted out.

  “Now let the girl drink her coffee in peace” Two Doves directed and tipped her pot and poured Alice a cup full of the black brew.

  “And, Jack,” Two Doves continued, “when you’re done eating, move one of the empty bunks into the kitchen near my bed. Alice can sleep there.”

  “Right, good idea” Jack said.

  “I thought so,” said Two Doves. She turned away to her work at the stove.

  The men took up their coffee mugs and streamed off into the barracks. Alice remained at the table and sipping her coffee. She was reluctant to leave Two Doves and go into the barracks with the men. But why should she be? She rose and walked into the barracks and to the heating stove.

  The woodsmen sat about the room drinking their coffee, smoking and talking in deep, rumbling voices that filled the space. At Alice’s entrance, they ceased talking and focused on her. In the weaker lamplight of the big room the loggers watched her with eyes hidden in dark caves beneath their brows. Thought she could not read what was in their minds, their expressions, those of the younger men especially, caused her cheeks to warm and she knew she was blushing. She felt not ready for what they were thinking. Still, she had read that in some countries girls became married as young as eleven and twelve.

  Alice was tired of running from men. Whatever these woodsmen were thinking wasn’t going to drive her away from the heating stove. She seated herself on a chair beside Will who sat with his weary head lowered and half asleep. She watched the leaping flames of the fire through the little clear mica windows in the door of the stove.

  Jack and another man passed by carrying a bunk bed. “The kitchen is Two Dove’s country,” Jack said to Alice. “And no one goes in there without her permission.” With those words, Alice knew Jack understood her plight and was telling her that she would be safe there.

  *

  Alice, with weariness pressing her eyelids closed, had nodded off in the grand warmth of the big cast iron stove when a loud crash filled the room as the outside door was flung inward and slammed against the wall. The frigid wind rushed into the room and swarmed over the occupants and fueled the flames in the stove and they roared out with a thunderous WHUMP that set the stovepipe vibrating and rattling and ready to tear itself to pieces.

  She jerked awake at the cascade of noise and whirled to look at the source of the wind. A billowing cloud of snowflakes had blown into the room and blocked her view of the doorway. A shadowy figure moved within the cloud and the door closed. The fog of snowflakes, now cut off from its supply, settled speedily and a man in a long wolf skin coat with a hood hiding his face became visible. A bulky pack was strapped to his back, a roll of furs was clamped under his left arm, and a rifle hung over his right shoulder. A large gray dog was close on his left.

  The last snowflakes fell and lay upon the barracks floor. Paul Bouccard, his shoulders, hood and backpack thickly covered with snow, stood upon the white layer of snow. More snow fell in a shower as he dropped the furs from under his arm and flung back the hood of the coat. He smiled with a broad show of teeth and surveyed the room .

  Alice was astounded by the obvious goodwill that showed so brightly in the young man as he bestowed his magnificent smile upon the room’s occupants one after the other. He seemed to be sharing with them his own peace of mind, his delight in the world and where he was at the moment. She caught herself up, wasn’t she reading too much into him?

  “Paul, come in out of the cold,” Jack called and moved across the room to greet Paul.

  “I already have, thank you, Jack,” Paul replied in a joking tone.

  “Night almost caught you out in the storm,” Jack said.

  “It did catch me and with all the snow blowing about it’s pitch black out there.
But I had Brutus to guide me and he never gets lost.”

  He signaled Brutus into a stay position. Brutus sank down to sit on his haunches, and began to observe the humans with their sharp body scents.

  Paul moved half a dozen steps into the room, and then his sight came upon Alice and his smile widened in utmost wonderment at the vision of a golden haired girl in the logging camp. He snatched off the billed cap that he wore under the hood of his coat. Without consciously deciding to do so, he bowed to the beauty of the girl.

  As he straightened, a man’s voice burst forth loud with fury. “There’s that goddamn dog that bit me. I’m going to chop him into mincemeat.”

  Oroville leapt from his chair and snatched up an ax from the work bench near him. With his face contorted with rage, he spun toward Paul and advanced upon him and Brutus.

  “Hold there, Oroville,” Paul called out warningly. “Nobody hurts Brutus.”

  “I’m going to kill that crazy dog and that’s for damn certain,” Oroville snarled. He raised the ax above his head, and ready to strike, continued to move forward.

  Paul shook the strap of the rifle off his shoulder, seized hold of the gun as it fell and rotated the black iron barrel to point at Oroville.

  “Oroville, I’m telling you to stop. I don’t want to have to shoot you.”

  Brutus recognized his old enemy and remembered the taste of his blood and flesh. He also knew the danger from the upraised ax. His master was angry at the man and was pointing his gun at him. Brutus’s duty was to help in the coming battle. His hackles rose, and he crouched and spread his toes with their arched toenails to best grip the floor, and waited with every muscle tensed. When his master gave the hand signal, Brutus would launch himself upon their enemy.

  “You’d not shoot a man over a damn dog that deserves killing for its meanness.”

  “Don’t gamble your life on that for then you’d be dead wrong.” Paul cocked the rifle, the click of the hammer loud in the stillness of the room.

  “Damn you, Oroville,” Jack shouted as he hurried to intercept the man. He didn’t want a killing in his camp

  He came up on Oroville from the side and grabbed hold of the ax handle, and wrenching powerfully, tore it from his hands. “You stupid bastard, he’ll shoot you for sure.”

  “If he’s going to use a gun on me then I’ll get mine.” Oroville stepped to his bunk, but a few feet away, and reaching beneath the mattress, pulled out a revolver.

  “Now we’re even,” Oroville shouted and cocked the pistol and pointed it at Paul.

  Jack took one long step toward Oroville and swung the handle of the ax into him. The hard hickory wood struck Oroville in the chest and knocked him backward against his bunk. The blow caused him to squeeze the trigger and the pistol fired and spewed a bullet chased by a lance of incandescence and smoke. The bullet zipped past Paul with the buzz of an angry bee and thudded into the door.

  Jack checked Paul and saw he was lowering his rifle. He then leaned over Oroville sitting crumpled on the floor and holding his chest and trying to breathe. He took the pistol from the man’s slack hand. “I just saved your life, Oroville.” He prodded the man in the ribs with the toe of his boot. “Do you hear me, Oroville? I just saved your life.”

  The battered man gulped air into his lungs and looked up with a murderous expression at Jack. “Dawson, that’s the last time you’ll ever hit me.”

  “If you behave yourself until tomorrow morning, then I won’t have to hit you again. You’re fired. In the morning, pack your things and get the hell out of my camp.”

  “Nothing would suit me better.”

  “Then there’s nothing more to say.”

  Jack moved to stand near Paul. “Maybe it’d be better if you left. There’s just too much bad blood between you two.”

  “I think so too,” Paul replied and lowered the hammer on his rifle. “Will you be all right with him?” He nodded at Oroville.

  “I have his pistol so he’ll behave himself. And he’s made enemies here and we’ll all keep an eye on him until tomorrow. The next time you come, you stay the night with us.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  Paul slung the rifle over his shoulder, took up the pack of furs, and pulled the hood over his head. He motioned to Brutus who promptly took station on his left.

  “Another cold night for us, Brutus,” Paul said.

  He stepped to the door and tripped the latch and a blizzard of snow stormed into the room. He lowered his head and plunged into the white swirling mass. He reached back and pulled the door shut.

  Alice stared at the door where Paul had gone. She remembered his appraisal of her. What had been his thoughts? Why should she care? Yet she did.

  Jack spoke from beside her. “Something bothering you little miss?”

  “Will he be all right out there in the storm?’

  “Don’t worry too much about Paul for he’s half wolf and will be all right.”

  “It’s an awful storm.”

  “That it is, worst one I’ve ever seen.”

  “Where will he go?”

  “He’ll find a place to hole up for the night.”

  “I hope he doesn’t freeze to death. I wouldn’t want to be out there in all that wind.” Alice shivered with the thought.

  “Your right, it’s the wind that makes it so damn cold.”

  “I hate it. I’m glad we found your camp.” She gave Jack a smile.

  “So am I. You’ll sleep all snug there in the kitchen with Two Doves.”

  “I like her,” Alice said.

  “She’s a rare one and that’s for sure,” said Jack.

  *

  Paul was blind in the night, the blizzard blocking off all light from the heavens and the darkness absolute. He braced himself against the wall of the barracks to keep from being blown down. The glacial wind was ripping away his body heat and driving ice flakes to lash his face. He must find shelter to survive. He had two possibilities, the barn with the oxen and horses, or the cold room. The cold room was the better for it was more wind proof.

  He pictured its location in relation to his position and moved off along the wall, and sliding his shoulders upon the logs to keep his footing. At the corner of the building, he turned to the right and again followed the wall. When he judged he had progressed half the way to the next corner, he pivoted a quarter turn to the left and struck out with a gloved hand extended in front of him.

  The wind struck and swirled and struck again, each time from a different direction as it tried to confuse him of his course. He dared not miss the cold room and wander lost in the blizzard.

  His hand encountered the wall of the cold room before he could see it. He felt along the logs of the structure until he felt the door. He pulled the bolt to free the door and stumbled into the room. He quickly shoved the door closed against the deadly wind.

  In the Stygian darkness of the windowless cold room, he found the lamp that always sat on the table in the center of the space. He lit it with a match from the box beside the lamp and the room filled with a yellow light that flickered in sync with the wavering flame.

  His furs from previous trips hung in a corner. He placed his newest catch beside those earlier ones. He dropped his pack and leaned his rifle upon it.

  Paul sliced off two large pieces of meat from one of the hams that hung on a cord from the rafters. He tossed one piece to Brutus, who snatched it out of the air.

  He was weary from the storm and the miles of travel running his trap line, and from the trouble with Oroville. He ate his ham quickly and spread his sleeping robe on the floor. He placed his rifle within reach and set the lamp and the matches close by. He lay down on the robe, reached out with a cupped hand just above the top of the chimney, and blew out the flame. He pulled the robe tightly around him. Brutus came and laid down on the edge of the robe.

  Oroville could rightly reason that Paul would choose the cold room for the night and come wanting revenge. However neither man nor beast could steal
upon Brutus without him hearing or smelling him. His thoughts turned to the girl with the loggers, and the boy who most likely was with her. How did they come to be here? He would ask Jack the next time he spoke with him. That could be days away for he planned to leave at first light so as not to encounter Oroville. But the girl now? With that question on his mind, Paul breathed twice and was asleep.

  *

  Alice slept snug and warm on the logger’s bunk in the kitchen. She awoke once during the night and stared into the darkness trying to determine what had awakened her. A few feet away, Two Doves breathed with a soft sighing sound as she slept. From the barracks came the sound of men snoring. Outside the storm was gathering ever more madness and violence as it walked the dark world. She heard the wind pounding the walls and whistling as it was cut by the eaves and roaring as it raced over the roof top.

  She thought of Paul outside in the terrible storm. Jack had said Paul would find a place to endure the night. Alice fervently hoped that was so.

  Chapter Twelve

  Black Face

  Alice and Will left the logging camp barracks just as the sun brought daylight upon the lake and forest. A new layer of snow some three inches thick blanketed the old. The wind was but a frail ghost of its nighttime power and barely strong enough to tumble a snowflake. The cold was intense, seeming to have a density that required an effort for her to move through. Each breath of air stung her nostrils.

  “This is the coldest it’s ever been,” Alice said and shivering as the cold cut through her clothing.

  “It’s a bad one and that’s for sure,” Will replied. “I’d like to reach the river before dark and cross into Canada where we’ll be safe.

  “Yes, let’s try.” Alice said. With her breath pluming out white and frosty, she walked into the waiting day. It would be another long one of slogging through the snow that now reached half way to her knees.

  They had progressed about a mile when Will called out excitedly and pointed ahead to where the lake narrowed just before it ended. “Alice, there go two wolves.”