They skinned, dressed, and butchered out three antelope— offering slices of raw liver to reluctant Garden girls, each slice sprinkled with gall—then rested roasts wrapped in belly fat amid the grass-fires' coals. Roasts, loins, and racks of ribs were hung on lances—butts driven into the dirt to hold them at a slant, long shafts bending with the weight—set close enough to the fires to cook, far enough to save the lance-heads' temper.
There were no wild onions to flavor, no hill thyme, no potatoes to roast alongside. It was meat alone—killed and cut and cooking, so the hot sweet smell settled in the camp with drifts of smoke, and fat ran spitting into the fires. Where the smoke rolled up thickest, at a big pit-fire with damp grass thrown into it, sliced bundles and thin shaved strips of meat hung on rawhide lines— stretched across the pit between two travvies to cook, dry, and cure for jerky, and for pemmican when bird-fat and berries were found.
The Trappers butchered and cooked, but delayed their eating for the pleasure of anticipation. They shouted and danced to Dummy's drumming, and young Del Richardson and Pat Weber wrestled, rolling through the camp as if the meat had already made them stronger.
It was the best day since leaving Gardens; the first day that Catania had seen the Trappers truly happy since the Cree came down. Their lost loved ones were beginning to let them go.... She sat with Jack, Torrey, and Garden May—the girl staring dreaming at the fire, the men playing pick-up sticks. Jack had lost the first two games; Catania supposed he'd done that as a gift to Torrey.
She sat with them, watching the rack of ribs roasting in its fire, to see it didn't burn—and thought that in such a warm-country season, where water often didn't freeze at night, and only morning frost lay on the grasses ... thought perhaps with good hunting, and Garden girls for the men to share till love made choices, that there would be no more trouble, and they would find a new Range, and be happy.
It was thinking so restful that she dozed until the meat was done.
But that night she dreamed she sat in the Running-dog bus, with its travelers whose destinations waited forever. She sat with the eyeless withered child in her lap, holding the frozen toy bear. The bear whispered a secret into the child's ear, and the blind child turned up her shriveled face and whispered to Catania.
It was a secret she didn't wish to hear.
* * *
They went due east for many days into country as open as the sky, once passing big grassy bumps and lumps beside a slow river. Micah Olsen dug into a bump to look for good metal, but found only a piece of low wall made of spoiled gray stone with sticks of rusted iron stuck into it. The sticks broke when he gripped them, and were no good for anything.
They travvied on, living off antelope meat—now with wild spring onions—and also the meat of a brown and white cattlecow startled out of shallow brush. They had more than they could eat, and kept the nanny as a pet though she was troublesome to milk, and only the Garden girls and Dummy cared to drink it.
The Trappers stayed happy, traveling and hunting. At night, the women gathered around Susan Monroe and her baby, playing with Small-Sam, warming themselves at him as if he were a fire, while the men tended dogs, sharpened broadheads, and told stories of the Range. Now, no one asked them not to tell those stories.
None of the men came to Catania for Sunday fucking after prayers, since Jack stood in their way—and all the Garden girls but May and Ruth Bissel would do it.
So those many traveling days were easy days, and everything happened as it should, except the healing of Jack's eyes. His eyes were red, and the left eye, after it had been rinsed, would make pus in its corner again.—If not for that, Catania would have been happy for those days to last forever.
But though pleased with open country, the Trappers were tired of feeding greedy grass fires and guarding them from spreading— so they were happy to come to a deep flowing spring shaded by hardwood trees. And though it was early in the day for camping, they stayed.
These trees' branches were easy to break away, and the Garden girls used their axes to chop them into firewood, so there could be a big camp fire, steady, and easy to control. Though soon after the fire was made and burning, Jack and Newton came back to camp from a no-game hunt, and pulled wood away to make it smaller, so it showed less smoke.
Spring water tasted better than the melt they'd taken from Slow-River-by-the-Bumps, so the Trappers emptied their water-skins and refilled them. There were little fish in the spring, and Dummy took off his buckskins, jumped in, and tried to catch them. But they were too small, too quick to be caught—and though Dummy promised not to pee in there, no one believed him, and Ben Olsen made him get out.
That evening, the women, searching along the spring for onions, found tiny blue berries all shriveled from winter. There were enough for everyone to have a mouthful. Dummy, and May and the other Garden girls, had their berries with the nanny's milk and claimed that was very good.
That night was only a quarter-moon night, so the stars were bright as on the Range but more of them, since no mountains' shoulders stood in their way. In this open country, there was no end to stars. Catania lay with Jack, tangled under furs too warm, his arm heavy across her breast, and looked at the stars to count them.
Though one copybook had described them as perfect burning of the tiniest things, and as far away as the farthest possible away, it seemed to Catania they must be more than that to be so beautiful. Old Doctor Monroe had said the sun was a star, which might be true, since it seemed friendly, and tried to help against Cold-times. ... She lay a long while watching the stars, until they sent her to sleep.
* * *
Jack jolted against her, was being shaken—and Catania woke to dawn's first light.
"What?" she said.
Newton, crouched naked beside them in frost and drifting mist, said, "Something, Jack."
Jack sat up, and Newton put his hands on the ground, pressed down hard, and closed his eyes.
Catania, who had thought she was dreaming, watched Jack do the same. Then both men were quiet, their eyes closed.
"Spotted cattle?" Jack said. "Running?"
"No." Newton took his hands from the ground. "Riding horses."
Jack stood and shouted "Up!—Up!" The Trappers woke, rolled out of their bedding and reached for bows and lances before thinking of bows and lances.
"Riding horses!" Jack said, stringing his bow. "I've never seen them."
"I have," Newton said, and called out, "Get back into the trees! People are coming on riding horses, and coming faster than friendly!"
Dogs were barking in their lines—at the sounds, or the smell of strange animals coming.
The Garden girls were up with their axes and trotting alongside as the Trappers backed to the little grove of trees. There was a rapid drumming, like partridges courting, but loud, and becoming louder.
Susan, holding the baby in his blanket, ran calling "Jennifer!" and an arrow came whistling out of soft gray light and struck the back of her head. The point came out her mouth so she bit it as she fell dying, and the baby fell with her.
Catania ran with her lance where Helen Weber was helping Jennifer, who was limping along on her bad leg. There was a rush, a rush and hammering on the ground. Catania turned with her lance and saw a man coming at her through the air, riding high on a black animal's back. She saw the animal's nostrils and eye. It had no antlers. The horse-rider was a small, flat-faced man with big shoulders in a thick jacket. He swung away from her lance-head—then swung back all in an instant, and hit at Catania with a very long knife. Its blade was an arm long, and shone as it came down.
She thought it must be a sword-knife from the copybooks, and fell fast to avoid it.
Then she was up and the small man was gone, but three others coming. Arrows were sneezing through the air.
Two of the three men ran their riding-horses at Jennifer and Helen Weber. Helen lanced the first horse—it yelled and swerved away—but the other man leaned down to hit Jennifer with his sword
-knife as Catania was running to them. He hit Jennifer once, and blood came down her face. She drew her knife to strike at him, but she limped and was too slow. He made his riding-horse dance away, then came back and hit her with the sword-knife again, with the point of it. Catania saw that go in, knew Jennifer was killed—and a terrible rage came into her at this end to traveling peace. She couldn't wait to reach this rider, was too impatient to run to him, so she threw as hard as she could throw. Her lance sailed over and slid into his back.
He screamed, reached behind him to feel what had happened— and the lance shaft wagged as his riding-horse went this way and that. Helen Weber ran to him, put her lance in his throat to stop his noise, and was killed as she killed, when two arrows and then one more struck, snatched at her, and turned her almost around before she fell.
Catania saw three horse-riders sitting on their animals beyond the camp, shooting with short, deep-curved bows—shooting fast. They had killed Helen.
Taking her bow off her back, Catania slid an arrow from her quiver and nocked it as the three horse-riders suddenly made their animals come running. They were shooting as they came. It was clever, how they shot while riding.
"The trees!" Jack said. He had come to stand beside her. Naked, he thrust his lance in the ground, then drew his bow as a horseman went riding by. He shot—missed, and seemed startled to have missed—then dropped his bow and took up his lance as he ran at that rider.
Arrows were stitching the morning air like sewing needles, the horse-peoples' fletched white, the Trappers' fletched in family colors. Jack ran shifting between them, very fast. The rider saw him coming and rode to meet him, leaning over his animal's neck so his sword-knife was pointed at Jack. He was smiling.
They'd almost come together when Jack suddenly changed stride and ducked under the horse's head to its other side. The horse-rider whipped his blade up and over, but not in time. The lance took him in the belly, and Catania saw Jack brace himself and heave the man up off his animal and into the air on the lance-head, screaming, smiling no longer.
Jack held him there a moment like a banner, while arrows hummed past, then threw him away.
Two more horse-men, though riding fast and shooting from the edge of camp, were caught by Trapper arrows. And Catania shot a horse beside the spring. The rider leaped away as the animal went down, and Millie Auerbach stepped from the trees and shot him through the heart. It seemed to Catania these horse-people were surprised to be fighting other archers, and didn't like it.
But they liked it well enough that five, then one more, came riding into camp like wind in a storm, sweeping through very fast, and shooting as Trappers came out of the trees shooting at them.
Two of those men were hit hard, one after another, and fell from their animals quilled with Trapper arrows.
Newton and Chapman Olsen ran out naked with their lances. Chapman threw, hit a rider so he swayed and jounced on his horse. The animal turned, confused—and Jack was there, stuck his lance up into that man and killed him.
Newton dodged a rider's arrow—a difficult thing for so big a man to do—and lanced that shooter's horse as Chapman, standing beside him, was struck in the back by another horse-man's arrow. As he staggered, a rider wearing a wide red-leather belt rode past and hit him in the neck with a sword-knife, so his blood sprayed out and he fell dying.
Carl Auerbach lanced the horse-man whose horse had been killed, and Joan Richardson ran out from the trees—stopped running to shoot—and put an arrow into that red-belted man, so he turned and tugged at it. Joan drew and shot him again, through the lungs, and he rode his horse away slowly, his head thrown back, making bad sounds of trying to breathe.
Only two more horse-riders came into the camp, coming very fast, calling to each other and shooting. Ben Weber hit one in the throat. Catania shot at the other, missed, then ducked aside as his arrow whined past her ear. As she nocked another arrow, she saw a group of horse-men sitting on their animals at a distance, out of bow-shot. They were watching the fight. One was holding a slender pole with animal tails hanging off it.
A man cried out behind her, and she turned and saw one of the riders—this one a very big man—stumbling, staggering along, bleeding from his mouth. Two Garden girls were hurrying after him with blood on their axes.
Now, only one horse-man was left in the camp, and he rode across it shooting, until a Trapper arrow caught his horse, and it screamed and fell. As it went down, the rider kicked free, rolled on the ground, and got to his feet with a sword-knife in his hand. Catania saw he was dressed brightly, in yellow and red and blue— and supposed all the horse-people had been dressed brightly, though she hadn't noticed it before.
Naked men rushed past Catania, Jack and Newton running at the rider with the sword-knife. He cut at them quickly, left and right, so the steel glittered. But—Jack on one side, Newton on the other—they stepped in, out, then in again together and took him in their hands.
Then the horse-man was like a weasel caught between a wolf and a bear; they gripped and grappled him, twisted his right arm out of its shoulder joint, then bent him back and back. The man screamed a word and Catania heard his spine break like a branch.
... There were no sounds after that but from hurt riding-horses, and Susan's baby crying. None of the horses had antlers— they were exactly as the copybooks had said.
We have had a bad battle at Sad Spring, with people who had no reason to come and fight us. We would have shared meat with them, would have let them have spring water if they'd asked, but they were unfriendly people— good archers, flat-faced with tilted eyes. I believe Mary once asked me if we had seen such riding men.
This battle was the end of peaceful traveling, and I do not expect peaceful traveling again, so I am trying to remember each of those good days, and that way keep them.
Susan is dead. Chapman Olsen is dead, and Joan Richardson's son, Del. Helen Weber was killed, and Jennifer Weber, and Bailey Auerbach back in the trees; they were both limping, and too slow. Sweet Lucy Edwards is dead ... and one of the Garden girls, Francine Kemp. Del liked Francine, so perhaps they are together now.
Paul Auerbach was hurt, and Rod Sorbane. Small-Sam was not hurt—and after trying and trying him for a hungry day, he finally took the nanny's teat. The nanny hated it, and looked so offended I laughed for a while, and then I cried. The baby means very much to me—as if he is all our lost Range, all our lost people.
We killed thirteen horse-riders, and sent another away dying, with two barbed broadheads in him.
Newton has not spoken since Lucy was killed... and I am worried that Joan Richardson is going mad.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DOCTOR CATANIA OLSEN
CHAPTER 17
The Trappers traveled east, traveling sadly from Sad Spring. Those who spoke about the fight agreed that it had been one thing to read about horse-riding in copybooks, another thing to see it done—and done by good archers.
Tattooed Newton spoke to no one, hadn't spoken since Lucy was wrapped in hide like the other dead, and tied to rest in a tree at Sad Spring.
Joan Richardson spoke, but only in anger—and was always armed, so the others left her alone.
It was quiet traveling, with no sign of more horse-people. They had come and gone as the antelope rain had come and gone.
Even without rain, the Trappers had water. And it was fortunate the skins had been filled before the fight, since during it Torrey had wounded a rider in the trees, and Garden May had followed that man down to the spring and butchered him in the water with her ax.
... The evening of the third day of quiet traveling, they camped as high as the open country allowed, and set watchers to guard their back-trail. Then they dug pits and started small fires that made little smoke, so no one would know where they were except by following their travvy drags, and so come to their arrows expected.
Catania sat by a fire with Jack resting his head on her lap, being patient as she washed his eyes clean of pus. She washed them gently wit
h water boiled in a trade-kettle, then washed them with more water, adding a pinch of salt to burn away tiny germ badness.
Jack lay still as if this did not hurt him. He hadn't changed since Sad Spring, but everyone else had changed. It seemed to Catania that the Trapper men and women, more so than the Garden girls, were smaller, harder, tighter in upon themselves than
they had been. Their faces had become older, harsher faces....
They had been in one fight too many. As she had been in one fight too many, and was likely even uglier now than before.
Newton had still not spoken. Lucy had kept Wandering Newton a Trapper—now, he was once again as if a stranger, and silent.
Jack blinked saltwater from his eyes and started to sit up, but Catania held him for another rinse to wash the salt away. And as she did so, gently, a slow and dreadful cold rose in her, and she saw Mary again, humming a song with no words while searching ... searching through her little boxes for what she wished to put into her cup of vodka. Vodka she never drank, only held, until she threw it into Jack's eyes.
She'd said, "Forgive me, Catania."
"But I have nothing to forgive you for."
"Say it. Say that you forgive me...."
Catania looked down, and now saw clearly what she had not permitted herself to see before. Jack's left eye was clouded, red as coals—and the other coming to be the same.
Still good enough, though, to see her face.
"Trade-honey," he said, "—don't be afraid. I've known for many days." He got up, took his lance and walked away.
Then Catania felt as Joan Richardson felt with her son dead— as Newton felt, with his Lucy killed and tied in a tree. And as a piece of them had died, so a piece of her died while she sat there, though Jack Monroe was not yet blind.
* * *
They traveled another day, then quiet-camped and told stories. The Garden girls, who had no stories except from copybooks, or about garden-growing or what this or that Lady had done, loved to hear about mountains and the Wall and Old Man Glacier. About white bears, brown bears, wolves, and snow-tigers. It seemed to them the Range had been a wonderful place.
SNOWFALL Page 22
