Come Spring

by Jill Marie Landis

  Baby began to pout. “Me go too.”

  “No. You have to stay here.”

  “Me go with Buck.”

  Annika crossed her arms. She tapped her foot against the frozen floor. The log in the fireplace popped; sparks fell amid the ashes. She glanced down at the charred hem of her skirt.

  Then she looked at Baby again.

  What if the child strayed too close to the fire? What if she tried to imitate Buck and put on another log? What if she fell headlong into the fireplace?

  Annika looked around. The cabin that provided shelter and a home for the child was as dangerous as a pit of vipers. There were knives on the cook bench that Baby could easily reach by standing on a chair. A heavy Dutch oven or kettle might topple down on her. She could climb on a chair and fall off, or worse yet, open one of the many tins or jars of foodstuffs and eat something that might make her deathly ill.

  Annika closed her eyes and counted to ten. There had to be a way she could escape without endangering the child, for as much as she hated Buck Scott, there was no way on earth she would wish any harm to come to his niece. Suddenly she remembered the way the old hunter, Ted, had tied the baby to the chair. In seconds Annika had crossed the room and plundered the chest at the foot of Buck’s bed. She found a worn petticoat of muslin so thin she could nearly see clear through it. Annika tore a long, wide strip while Baby stood and watched with her thumb in her mouth.

  Ready at last, Annika grabbed Baby’s hand and pulled her across the room, lifted her onto a straight-backed chair, and then quickly tied the muslin binding around the child before she could begin to struggle for freedom.

  “Now,” Annika said as she stood, hands on hips and surveying her handiwork, “you just sit tight until Buck comes back. He said a few minutes.” She silently prayed he meant it.

  Alligator tears began to roll down Baby’s cheeks.

  “I have to go,” Annika began. “Don’t you see? Your uncle might be lying. Maybe I can get out of here on foot. Why, who knows? I might walk to the top of the first ridge and find that we’re right next to a town.” She hunkered down in front of the child and wiped the tears away. “You’ll be fine. You’re a big girl.”

  When she stood again, Annika crossed the room and found the wooden doll amid the bedclothes. She carried it back to Baby and put it in her arms. “Here. You take care of your baby and don’t cry.”

  With that, she refused to look at the forlorn little girl again and headed for the door. She stepped outside and blinked against the intense light. As she closed the door behind her, she wished she could shut out the pitiful sound of Baby’s sobs as easily.

  She saw the deep snowshoe tracks that led away from the cabin and decided to try to go in the opposite direction. One step off the small patch of snow Buck had managed to shovel away from the door and she was knee deep in powder. Within seconds her boots and stockings were soaked, so too were her skirts and petticoats. Annika felt as if she were trying to walk through thick glue, and although it was still cold and snowflakes were drifting down from the slightly swaying trees around her, she was perspiring from her effort.

  If it was hard going trying to lift her feet and legs out of the drifts far enough to take a step, it was nearly impossible to carry her satchel. She thought of leaving it behind, then remembered her buttons and the silver-backed comb and brush and knew that she had to keep the mementos no matter what the effort cost. The silver dresser set had been a gift from Richard. And the buttons, well, the buttons had survived Buck Scott on the trail. She would keep them just to spite him.

  Baby was crying louder now—her wails drifted easily through the cabin door. Moved by feelings of guilt, Annika glanced back at the cabin and lost her footing. Falling headfirst into the snow, she struggled to push herself up and out of the deep, cold stuff without success. Finally, she was able to roll over. Forced to admit she was now soaking wet from head to toe, she brushed off as much of the fine powder as she could and then pulled her satchel out after her.

  Suddenly two things were all too apparent: she would get nowhere without a pair of snowshoes like Buck’s, and he had not lied about the amount of snow that had fallen during the night. Annika knew that there was no hope of climbing out of the valley if she could not even manage to make her way out of the yard.

  With a heavy heart and even heavier steps, she extricated herself from the snow and carefully picked her way back the few feet she had come until she reached the cleared path and finally the front door. Angry at herself for failing, at the snow for falling, and at the child inside for her incessant howling, Annika jerked the door open and stalked back inside. She slammed the door, startled Baby into silence, and began to strip off the wet coat, cape, and then her wool suit jacket and skirt.

  She pulled the barrel stools before the fire and spread the clothing over them. In her nightgown and the flannel nightshirt Buck had given her, she marched back to where Baby sat sniffling and inhaling ragged, sobbing breaths. She untied the mournful child, hefted her to her hip, and then one-handedly picked up her satchel and slammed it on the table. Annika found the tin of buttons, set it on the table, pulled up a chair, and with Baby on her lap proceeded to calm the little girl by showing her the precious cache inside the tin.

  AN hour later, the door opened without warning and Buck Scott stepped over the threshold and closed the door with a bang. Defiantly, Annika met his stony glare. He didn’t have to say a word. She knew that he knew she had tried to leave when he took in all the clothes drying before the fire. His gaze swung back to hers. His cheeks were red from the cold, his lips nearly blue. They were pursed in a taut line. His gloved hands were tightly clinging to a cord slung over one shoulder. His rifle rested on the other. His long, wicked knife rode in the beaded sheath on his thigh.

  She held her silence. So did he.

  For a long while he merely stood there and stared at her while she continued to hold Baby on her lap. The child scooped buttons by the handfuls and let them sift through her fingers. Baby pushed them into a pile, then spread them out again, all the while ignoring the adults engaged in a silent war of wills.

  Finally, Buck moved. He took one step toward the table and halted. Annika could tell just by looking at him that his temper was leashed on a very tenuous thread.

  “I thought I told you to stay with Baby.” He ground the words out.

  “And I told you I’m no nursemaid.”

  His scathing glance raked over her and the child. Without words he labeled her a liar. “Looks like you do well enough.”

  “You can’t keep me here against my will.”

  “I’m not, but you can’t leave this valley until the snow melts, so you might as well face it. And as long as you’re here, you’d better do as I say.”

  “Or what, Mr. Scott?”

  “Or you might end up hurt.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  He stepped up to the table. She saw his fingers tighten on the rope in his hands. “No. I’m warning you. There are a thousand ways to die just outside that door, ma’am. Maybe a million. I don’t want to be blamed for your death if it happens because of your own stupidity.”

  Knowing full well how crazy she had been to even try to escape through the impassable drifts of snow, she had nothing to say in her own defense. She shifted the child on her lap and refused to meet his stare.

  “Worse yet”—his voice was low now, threatening—“if anything happens to Baby because you decide to pull one of your stupid stunts, you won’t have to worry about your health, because I’ll take it out of your hide. Do you understand me?”

  She flashed him a brittle smile, then dropped her eyes to the buttons again. She wished she could control the blaze of embarrassment that stained her cheeks. “I understand you all too well, Mr. Scott.”

  “Good. Then as long as we are both of a mind to weather out the snow together, we ought to be of a mind to be civil.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine. They why don’t you s
tart being agreeable by cooking dinner for all of us?”

  She smiled, but no warmth reached her eyes. “I have no idea how to begin.”

  Buck smiled a cool smile of his own. “Then I guess now is as good a time as any to start learning.” He lifted the cord from his shoulder and swung it around. Without warning, he dropped two lifeless rabbits dead center on the table.

  Baby clapped her hands. The buttons rattled and rolled. Annika immediately blanched and closed her eyes.

  Buck Scott smiled with satisfaction.

  9

  “YOU don’t intend me to actually touch those, do you?”

  Annika didn’t try to hide her chagrin as she stared openly at the dead rabbits on the table. The occasions when she had accompanied her mother or Ruth to the butcher shop had been rare. There was no way to compare the skinned rabbits she had seen then to the two lifeless, pitiful creatures that lay in front of her now. She tried not to imagine the white snowshoe rabbits playful and full of life, foraging about in the snow protected by their thick white pelts.

  She looked down at Baby’s curly blond head to avoid the gruesome sight.

  “Come on.” His voice startled her so that she flinched. “I’ll teach you how to clean and cook them.”

  Annika’s stomach turned over. She remembered once when her father had gone fishing and had later asked her mother to prepare his catch for supper. Analisa had said, “If you clean them I will cook them,” and Caleb readily agreed. Annika looked up at Buck and tried to smile halfheartedly. “If you clean them, then I’ll try to cook them,” she offered.

  But she was not dealing with Caleb Storm.

  “You’re going to cook them anyway. You still need to learn to skin them yourself.” So saying, he picked up the rabbits and turned toward the door. “Put your wool clothes back on and bring Baby outside. It won’t hurt her to go out for a bit to ward off cabin fever.”

  It angered her to think he was worried about Baby getting cabin fever when he had been so furious at her own attempt to get out. But then again, she thought, there was no need to worry that Baby might try to escape.

  “I don’t want to watch,” she argued.

  Buck turned around with a sigh. He set the rabbits down, walked around the table, and took Baby from Annika’s lap. The child clung to him and hid her face against his neck. Buck eased the hood of Baby’s coat up over her head.

  “Outside?” Baby asked.

  “Outside,” he affirmed as he lifted the rabbits again. “You too,” he said over his shoulder.

  Annika said, “I’m not going. I don’t want to.”

  He paused before the door. “I don’t care what you want. Your life might depend on your being able to survive alone up here.” For the first time that day his eyes met hers without a hint of anger. Instead, his expression was sober and painfully honest. “Anything could happen to me out there. I could get caught in one of my own traps or someone else’s; a bear or mountain lion could happen along at the wrong time. I could fall or be buried by an avalanche. You’d find yourself alone here, having to fend for yourself and Baby.”

  She watched him as he looked down at the rope in his hands and the rabbits dangling from it as if he were weighing his next words carefully, deciding just how much to tell her. “That’s the reason I answered Alice Soams’s advertisement in the first place. I don’t need anybody, but Baby does. I have to know she’ll be cared for—” He cut himself off abruptly, unwilling to express the depths of his worry.

  For a fleeting moment, Annika understood his concern, but then she made the mistake of glancing down at the rabbits twirling from the rope. “Couldn’t you just start by teaching me to make mush?”

  As suddenly as it had appeared, his vulnerability was gone and he was the Buck Scott she had known for the past few days—hardened, stubborn, unapproachable. He turned toward the door and threw a sharp command over his shoulder. “Meet me at the shed out back in two minutes or I’m coming back to get you. And I won’t be happy about it.”

  WRAPPED in her traveling suit and cape again, Annika stumbled through the snow banked about the outer cabin walls until she found the shed. When she saw what Buck had accomplished before she got there, she wished she had lost her way.

  The rabbits had been strung upside down and were hanging headless from a support beam of the lean-to, their crimson blood staining the snow in ever widening circles. She stopped eight feet from the sight and choked down a gag, unwilling to show any weakness in front of the man who was watching her. She took a deep breath and fought to control her nausea, then crossed the snowy ground until she was as near the shed as she intended to get. When Baby saw Annika, she pulled herself up from where she was rolling in a low snowbank and scrambled toward her. She toppled onto her backside at Annika’s feet.

  “How can you do this in front of a child?” Annika lifted Baby to her hip and tried to brush off the snow that all but covered the little coat.

  He watched her as she held Baby close. “Nothing wrong with learning about life early.”

  “Life? This isn’t part of life; this is butchery, this is inhumane, this is—”

  “This is only a rabbit. This is what people do to survive. You mean to tell me you don’t eat meat?”

  “Of course I do, but—”

  “Where do you think it comes from? The butcher shop?”

  She’d never tell him that was exactly where she preferred to think it came from—already dressed, cut, and ready to cook. The closest she had ever come to a dead rabbit before was accepting a neatly trimmed and roasted portion from a platter. For the hundredth time she wished she were safe at home in Boston where she didn’t have to think about curly-topped waifs or bloody rabbits.

  He wouldn’t leave the argument alone. “If you’d been exposed to this at Baby’s age you wouldn’t think anything of it now.”

  “It’s not fair to the child. She has no choice.”

  “As far as I can see, she’s paying no attention.”

  Annika looked down at Baby and noticed he was right. She happily ignored the slowly dripping rabbits and was intrigued by the satin frogs that held Annika’s cape closed.

  Turning away from her, Buck cut the rabbits down and carried them to a combination workbench and chopping block against the back wall of the shed. From the looks of the many pelts and antlers tacked to the wall, it was apparent he had a knack for hunting. He brushed the snow off the block and motioned Annika forward. She raised her chin defiantly, but did as he asked rather than stand and argue in the freezing cold. She willed the contents of her stomach to stay put as she moved close enough to watch, horrified, while he skinned the first rabbit.

  As long as she stopped thinking of the mass of fur and flesh as a fluffy little bunny whose family was no doubt pining away in a hidden warren, she was able to keep from retching. Baby had lost interest in the cape and wanted to be put down on the snow. Annika lowered her to the ground and moved up behind Buck when he motioned her closer. She stood off to one side, trying to detach herself from the scene by staying partially behind Buck so that she didn’t have a clear view of the headless carcasses on the table.

  As Buck slid the deadly looking ivory-inlaid handled knife from the sheath at his thigh, he glanced over his shoulder to be certain Annika was close enough to hear and see what he was doing. “Rabbits are probably the most important animal in the wild.” He swiftly cut off the rabbit’s feet and set them aside. Annika failed to respond, but he continued talking anyway. “You might say this animal was put on the earth just to be eaten. Nearly every fur-bearing animal feeds on rabbits, not to mention some of your bigger birds.”

  The blade of the knife flashed as he cut a slit in the skin along each of the back legs and then up the center of the rabbit’s belly. Setting the knife aside, he began rolling the skin down toward the front legs. Annika was surprised to see him pull all the fur off in one piece, much the way a man might pull a shirt off over his head.

  With the ivory inlay of the handl
e again hidden by his hand, only the wicked, sharply honed blade was visible. As much as she hated what he was doing, Annika could not help but admire Buck’s skill. His large tanned hands moved with the speed of familiarity with the task and expertise that might be envied by an accomplished surgeon.

  He talked the whole while he worked on the first and then the second rabbit, carefully explaining each and every step as if he believed that someday she actually would carry out the gruesome task herself. At some point in the process, Annika realized she was listening with interest as he pointed out the gall bladder. “Don’t ever cut into it,” he warned as he carefully removed it with the other innards. “It’ll ruin the meat.” He set aside the liver, heart, and kidneys, pointing each out in turn and explaining that they were all edible.

  The still-warm organs steamed in the frosty air. Buck wrapped the dressed meat in a piece of thick muslin and turned to hand it to Annika. When he saw the gray pallor of her complexion and the way she held one hand pressed against her midsection and the other over her mouth, he decided it would be best if he carried the meat indoors himself.

  “Get Baby,” he said over his shoulder as he headed for the cabin, knowing she had no choice but to follow.

  The sky darkened again, as the brief respite from the shroud of gray clouds passed. He tried to fathom Annika’s reaction to a task so vital to survival, tried to conjure up visions of what her world was like. As he walked through the snow heading for the door, he could hear Baby chatting to an unresponsive Annika. Buck watched his moccasins appear and disappear as he worked his way through the snow and thought of how excited he had been the first time he’d been allowed to dress his first kill.

  Squirrel hunting in the hickory timber in Kentucky had been a chore most boys looked forward to with a passion. He became a crack shot at picking squirrel off swaying limbs— sport that required a steady hand and a good eye. But those carefree days ended all too soon, and at a time when most boys his age were still targeting squirrel, Buck was a full-fledged buffalo hunter and highly skilled skinner.