"I won't either," Myles Weber said. "I intend to fight."
"I'll tell you my 'why' once," Jack said. Darkness had come down, so he seemed a gray-furred ghost of Jack Monroe. "—I'll tell you once, but not again. I'd be very sorry to have to kill you, so that other people will do what I tell them to."
Neither Martha nor Myles said anything.
"—Martha, you're old. Myles, you're old and small. You both are better used drawing the Cree to follow." Then Jack walked away into the dark, calling for four small fires.
Joan Richardson and her son, Del, came over. Del carried a spruce torch—and by its light, Martha looked at Catania and said, "Your lover is a bitch's son, and bad luck."
"No, this is good luck," Joan said, spinning her lance shaft across her fingers. "These Crees are a gift from Mountain Jesus." And Del agreed.
* * *
One of the best arguments for ancestor-spirits, when shamans and big talkers discussed the matter, was the sudden refreshment of weary men, of runners particularly.
Who but a caring ancestor of the same blood and spirit would enter a tired runner and give him, as a gift, fresh strength?
"Thank you, Five-Bear-Claws," Buddy said, and leaped a fallen tree to keep on running, with the thud and rustle of his men coming behind him. It was odd that he'd called on his mother's grandfather, who'd been all white-blood and supposedly not to be trusted, but that was the spirit that must have come to visit.
There was smoke in the trees. Paul Kisses-the-Girls, scouting, had found the snow-devils just gone from their camp.
While the spirit was still in him, Buddy thanked Five-Bear-Claws for the end of this chase. Another day or two might have been another day or two too long. Some of the older men had already gone deaf, and didn't hear when he spoke to them.
Buddy glanced over his shoulder as he ran, and saw that the warriors had their hatchets out. Gray dawn light shone on bright steel.
There was a little clear space just ahead. Buddy ducked and ran through it fast, in case the Trappers had left a bowman behind. But no one shot at him. The little space opened into a bigger clearing, shadowed from sunrise by trees at its edges.
The campfire ashes still smoked. The mealy snow was rutted by sled runners. The place smelled of snow-devils and their dogs.
Buddy ran dodging from side to side, being careful of a back-trail guard. But the Trappers had been too frightened to leave one.
He stopped running as his men came in. When they gathered, Buddy said, "Shut up!" softly as he could and be heard. He listened. Dogs were yelping ... south.
"Hear that?" he said. His men nodded.
It was a question whether to send back to the Maynard brothers to bring up the teams and sleds. But this forest snow was now so poor and shallow, it seemed unnecessary. Sleds would only slow them.
Edwin-Jim was jogging in place, watching him. Some men were catching their breath, others jumping up and down, all bad feelings forgotten now they were so close.
Buddy called, "We run them down!"—tossed his hatchet whirling in the air, and caught it as it fell.
The men shouted—happy with their leader, now—and followed him down the Trappers' sign, running fast so as not to be run over.
The clearing narrowed, south, to a close-treed track streaked with yellow sunrise shining through high foliage. Buddy led down the snow-devils' path. He thought, I will be a chief... and how that would have pleased his mother.
He still had his spirit breath, dodged past big tree-trunks at a run—and saw a tall red-haired woman step into the path before him. A Trapper, with a lance. Another woman, face scarred like a warrior's, stepped out beside her.
Edwin-Jim yelled with joy. "This is their back-trail guard!" He ran up beside Buddy so they came to the women together. Edwin-Jim was laughing like a fool.
The women's lances leveled, steel heads shining. Buddy swung his hatchet, struck the red-hair's lance aside and ran on into her to knock her down and put the hatchet in her head.
As he hit her, the woman grunted and went to her knees. Buddy was struggling with this red-haired woman, who was quick and almost strong as a man, when he heard Edwin-Jim make an odd noise, and saw him come staggering past with a loop of rope, blue and shining, hanging out of his long buckskin shirt.
Buddy, wrestling with the strong red-hair as if they were making hard love, saw it was Edwin-Jim's guts come out. The scarred woman had cut his belly open.
Using all his strength while gripping her knife-hand's wrist, Buddy could barely hold the red-hair woman down. He raised his hatchet to chop the witch before she could twist her knife-hand free—and someone lifted him up off her and away. He thought it was Paul Kisses-the-Girls or another warrior; he could hear shouting and fighting behind him.
He turned to tell Paul to let him go—but saw it was a tall Trapper with a short black beard. The man looked thoughtful, not hurried. Catching Buddy's swinging hatchet by the handle as if they'd both intended that, he reached across and did something with a knife.
There was a terrible burning, as if Buddy's throat had caught fire; he was afraid to reach up to touch it. He walked a few steps away and no one bothered him. He could hear the fighting back on the path. He could hear the warriors very clearly, trying to force a way through, make room for the others crowding behind them.
He could hear, but he couldn't breathe, and trying made terrible noises. He leaned against a tree, felt sick and sat down.
Still hearing war cries, Buddy saw only the backs of six or seven snow-devils fighting to hold the narrow way against his men. Most of the warriors were still in the clearing, shouting. Then there was twanging music, and a great whisper. The men in the clearing began to scream.
Buddy felt something pouring into him, running inside him like slow water. He looked down and saw he was soaked with red all down his front. Going home like this, his buckskins ruined, it would be difficult to face his mother, who had scraped them so white, worked them so soft....
Great battle in the woods.
We won—killed fifty-one Cree in an ambush (a perfect Warm-time word). We lost Max Auerbach, Tatum Sorbane, and Evelyn Weber killed, and have nine wounded. The Garden people hunted the two Cree dog-holders, caught them, and burned them on their sleds.
We kept the best of the tribesmen's dogs. I'm sorry to say it, but the Garden people intend to eat the others. We are keeping this sadness from Dummy.
Now our people are happier—and so am I. Lance medicine, arrow medicine, and knife medicine has cured us of much sorrow.
I know, by our pleasure, how far we are from being civilized.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DOCTOR CATANIA OLSEN
CHAPTER 12
Garden Mary, having lost none of her people, came smiling to the Trappers' camp in the evening. She crossed the creek bridge, then walked up along the bank with May and eleven other plump girls dancing and singing around her. They were singing a very old Warm-time song, 'Dancing in the Dark,' though their melody sounded odd.
Musicians came behind them, playing flutes and deep-bellied drums. And there were other Garden people following with skewered goat meat and birds to roast, a pot of trade-honey, and a small keg of vodka. Four men came last, carrying someone sitting up in their arms.
Mary One-eye walked into the camp, calling out that she'd brought celebration girls, celebration food—and the Garden's doctor, to help tend the injured.
This doctor, a withered elderly woman in a green robe, was the person carried by the four men. They put her down on a stool at the nearest Trapper fire, and set a small leather chest in the snow beside her.... Catania had never seen this woman before. Her wrinkled skin was painted with green leaves. She had no feet; the stumps of her ankles were sheathed in beaten gold.
Mary came to Catania and put an arm around her waist. "Now," she said, "—you will see how scientifically medical we are. And all learned before your three fine books."
"Her feet...."
With a one-armed hug—a strong
fat-woman's hug—Mary stood on tiptoes to whisper into Catania's ear. "Wouldn't it have been foolish for my Lady-aunt to allow knowledge to walk away?"
When Mary let go, calling for pepper for the goat meat, Catania went to the doctor and bowed as the Garden people bowed, in respect for her age. She couldn't bow to the old woman's skill until it was shown.
"Welcome, colleague," Catania said, since that had been the doctor-to-doctor greeting in a copybook, The Mag—Magpie's?— Obsession, by Douglas. A wonderful book of secret kindnesses and successful surgery for blindness, unfortunately not given in detail.
It seemed to please the old woman. "Dorothy is my name," she said. "Fat Mary mentioned hatchet wounds." Her slurring Garden voice seemed to have withered with her.
"Hatchet wounds and knife cuts. And some penetrating injuries by arrows—four, one with the head resting in bone, the tibia."
"Ouch," the old woman said.
"Yes ... ouch."
"And you've done what?"
"In the open wounds, bleeding vessels pressed to clot, or burned shut. Some cuts cleaned and sewed. Hatchet wounds cleaned and left open to rest for two days before sewing."
" 'Cleaned.' " Doctor Dorothy shifted on her stool. "Anyone can say 'cleaned.' "
"I clean with poured boiled water, then vodka."
"That's all? No little friends from the forest? No green helpers? No dust from correct fungi?"
"No. I believe that simplest is best."
The old woman smiled her first smile. "Doctor," she said, "—all simple people believe simplest is best."
Because the woman had no feet, and was so old, Catania kept her temper.
"I'll look at your arrowhead stuck in bone," the Garden doctor said. "Bring him to me."
"Her."
"Bring her to me. We'll deal with that, first. Catania is your name?"
"Yes."
"Catania, when you use vodka in a deep wound, it leaves a little slime—you know the word?"
"Yes, I do."
"Well, it leaves a little slime of tissue-meat killed. And that can make a comfortable bed for the too-tiny-to-see-but-actual bacteria coming later to visit.—Are you angry?"
"No. Go on, say what you were saying. I know about the too-tinies."
"I'm saying that in deep wounds that have bled, unless made with rusty metal, better a clean cloth cord left in for draining, than your rinse of vodka."
Catania said nothing.
"You are angry," the old woman said. "But there are two reasons you shouldn't be. First, a doctor's deaf pride kills her patients. And second, I could be your grandmother... and grandmothers know more than granddaughters."
Catania was surprised to feel tears coming into her eyes, then realized it was sorrow for the elderly Trappers left behind to die, sadness refreshed by this old woman. "Forgive my rudeness," she said, bowed again to Garden's doctor, and motioned to have Jennifer Weber carried over.
Jennifer had made no sound, and made none now, though the sharp steel was in her bone.
"A brave girl," Doctor Dorothy said, when Jennifer was laid on a caribou hide before her. The old woman leaned forward, bracing herself on the golden stumps of her ankles. She examined the wound in Jennifer's leg by firelight. Midway along the shin, a black stub of arrow-shaft stuck out of crusted red swelling.
"Pooh," the doctor said. "Girl, you'll be dancing in a Warm-time month. Dancing in summer." The old woman leaned sideways to open the lid of her leather chest, took out a wooden bottle, and poured green liquid over her hands. "Vodka and forest friends," she said to Catania.
Then she rummaged in the chest again, brought out a small tool made of two slender steel pieces fastened together almost at their ends, so they swiveled and closed like trade-scissors, but with little teeth in their jaws. The doctor poured green liquid on this tool, looked at Catania, and said "Pliers."
Catania was astonished. She'd imagined pliers were much bigger, and had been used to bend thick metal wire and turn large screw-bolts and so forth. But that was reading and imagining. This was seeing.
A number of Trappers had come to watch, and stood in a circle around them.
Doctor Dorothy leaned over Jennifer again, and said, "What's your name?"
Jennifer said, "Jennifer," but very softly. She looked sick. The pain was making her sick.
"Speak up!" The old woman bent to hear.
"Jennifer...."
"That's better," the doctor said. And she whipped the pliers down and hit the girl with them, hit her hard on the nose—then quickly leaned the other way, reached down with the pliers click-clicking, caught the arrow stub and yanked and twisted. The arrow made a snapping sound and came out with a blurt of blood.
"What happened?" Jennifer lay with her hands to her face. "She hit me!" Jennifer began to cry. "And my leg—"
"It's all over, Sweet bush-berry, all over." The doctor bent and crooned at Jennifer as if she loved her. "Your pretty nose isn't broken, and you were very brave."
The old woman looked up at Lucy Edwards, who was watching, and said, "Take her away from me. Take her to be with her friends, let the wound bleed, and give her one drink of vodka and no more."
When Trappers had carried Jennifer away, Catania bowed to Doctor Dorothy. "Thank you for a lesson," she said. "Doctor Monroe never thought of doing that—and I have never thought of it."
"It's a mind trick," the old woman said. "A distraction by a small pain from a large one. Useful only for a moment, like most of what we can do for hurting until dreaming gas is found again, or the morphing—some damned butterfly, I suppose." She leaned over to put her pliers back into the leather chest. "Catania...."
"Yes, Grandmother?"
The old woman smiled. "What is stuck in bone must be gotten out quickly. Fumbling with it this way and that only causes more harm, more chance of rotting."
"I see...."
"And with this injury, once it's bled awhile, I would use vodka. Pour it in, then rinse it out quickly with boiled water. Then bandage lightly with boiled cloth."
"That's what I do."
"The bone was split. She will probably lose her leg. Have you done that medicine?"
"Twice. I've taken off a boy's leg and a man's arm. Both were spoiling. The little boy died while I did it. His heart stopped beating."
"Yes," the old woman said, and she looked very tired. "Well, don't wait too long if you smell the leg going. Take it at the knee—good flap."
"I will."
"And a drain!"
"Yes."
"May be all right, of course. She's young, and we got the arrowhead out soon. But most of the time, when I've tried to help a bad bone that is touched by the air, I've done more harm than good."
"Doctor Monroe told me, 'Better a leg than a life.' "
"Sad," Doctor Dorothy said, "—but true." A perfect use of the Warm-time phrase.
"We are strong people. Perhaps Jennifer will keep her leg."
"Hope and despair are both dangers to doctors," the old woman said, and crossed her legs to be comfortable. The gold sheathing her stumps glowed in the firelight. "Now, show me a hatchet wound. Veins are easy to deal with; white-string tendons are not."
At other fires, the Trappers had begun to dance to the Garden peoples' drums and flutes. Garden girls were dancing with the Trapper men, some with their robes pulled down so their breasts showed and shook as they stepped.
Catania, going to bring Mark Richardson over to the Garden doctor—he had a hatchet-cut deep across his left shoulder— passed Mary One-eye watching the dancers, smiling and striking the palms of her hands together in time with the music.
"You don't mind your girls dancing with our men?"
"No," Mary said, and raised her voice against the drums. "It's fucking I'm looking for. New seed, hybrids, cuttings and starts for Gardens. We've been growing too few men, too many girls— and all too much the same." She turned to the dancers and sang a song without words to the Garden music, her plump hands pattering a swift uneven
rhythm.
Helping Mark along—"I heal fast," he said, walking hunched with the pain of the wound—helping him along, Catania thought that Mary's wish for new-crop babies was likely the reason she'd let the Trappers stay. And might let them stay a little longer.
Through the evening and into the night, it became an eating party, then a drinking party, then a fucking party. Mary's daughter, May, danced with all the Trapper men but Torrey. She never looked at him.
Mary One-eye smiled at everyone, and drank as if she were young, but touched no man. Only Dummy Olsen tried to touch her, and she turned him away gently.
Late at night, Tall-David Richardson came to Catania, drunk, and asked for kindness fucking, though it wasn't Sunday. A Garden girl had danced with him but said 'no' to lying down, afraid of having a too-tall child and being laughed at.
Tall-David asked, but Jack came over and said, "Go away." And Tall-David went, unsatisfied.
A little later, while Catania and Mary One-eye were sitting, watching Rod Sorbane jump-dance over a fire, Mary said, "Do you now hold yourself only for him?" And had no need to name.
"I try to."
"Poor Catania," Mary said. "Tomorrow, I will let you see our library."
* * *
In the morning, men and women came to Catania whining like children over their headaches and bad bellies. The Garden vodka was a different vodka than they were used to; it had green stuffs in it. Some women thought they'd been poisoned because, when they shook their heads, they could feel things moving inside and hurting. These women were upset, and asked for medicines she didn't have.
Catania—who felt sick herself, and supposed it was a bad smoked bird that troubled her—was very patient, listening, nodding. But Big Millie Auerbach had come twice, each time claiming she saw double of everything and was very ill, sicker than anyone else—the others being only fools who couldn't hold the potatoes' spirit.
The first two times, Catania listened carefully, even moved her finger back and forth in front of Millie's face to see that her eyes followed together and the pupils were the same size.
The third time Big Millie came, Catania led her down to the creek edge, still lacy with ice, saying it was to pick a watercress sprig for pain. She told Millie to stand on the bank with her eyes closed—then pushed her in.
SNOWFALL Page 15
