“I keep hoping we'll get to the horse trader's.” My toes hurt with the cold, and I wanted to spend the night where it was warm. I wanted to get there soon.
“We won't make it that far,” Maude said, lunging ahead again. “The snow slows us down too much.”
“We need a pine tree, a big pine tree,” I said. “Maybe we can even build a fire under there.”
“Under a pine?” Maude said. We had once caused a chimney fire by throwing some pine branches into our fireplace, thinking to make the house smell like Christmas. She said, “We're likely to burn the whole tree right to the ground.”
“Sounds good to me,” I told her. “A nice size fire like that ought to keep us warm for a while.”
Maude laughed. I admired that laugh. There wasn't much that seemed funny to me right then. And I wasn't even the one breaking the most snow.
“Are we headed south?” Maude called back to me.
I looked at the compass and yelled, “Bear right.”
“What happened to the river?” Maude asked me.
“It's there. Let's don't walk right into it.”
“We'd hear it, right?” she asked.
“I hope so.”
“I don't see any trees, Sallie.” We were stopped now. “Shouldn't there be trees near the river?”
I looked at my compass and turned it in my palm. It struck me that the needle didn't turn so freely as it did once. “Maybe this thing gets frozen,” I said.
“Put it under your arm,” Maude said. “Then we'll look at it again later.”
“But how can we be sure of our direction now?”
“We can't stand here and talk about it, Sallie,” Maude said, her teeth chattering slightly. “Let's just go. Keep watching for trees.”
We went on this way for another hundred steps. Maude breaking snow, me leading the mule. And then suddenly Maude picked up speed. Not a great deal of speed, not enough that it was alarming, but it did raise my curiosity. A moment later, I found I was walking more easily too.
The snow was not less deep here, because on either side of me, it stood as high as my waist. But it had been tamped down some right where we walked now. Although fresh snow had fallen on that, it was not such hard going.
“What is it?” I shouted to Maude.
“Something went through here,” she said, turning back to speak to me. “Animals, I guess. I'm going to follow this path.”
I followed Maude, trying to think if this was something Wild Woolly would have done. It seemed unlikely. I tried to think of what kind of animals we might be talking about. Wolves? Or even one large bear, heading for a cave?
WE HAD NO IDEA WHETHER WE WALKED SOUTH OR EVEN north. But we walked nearly as easily as when we had started out that morning. We didn't even think of trying to break snow so long as that path lay before us.
It seemed we were on that path for some time, maybe half of an hour. All at once something loomed ahead of us, and it was a moment before I saw that it was trees. Snow-covered trees.
Maude stooped down on the path and brushed the loose snow away from the packed snow underneath. “What are you looking for?” I asked her.
“I hoped we were following cows back to the barn,” Maude said. “Now I'm trying to figure out just what it is that we're following.”
“Deer,” I suddenly realized.
“Do you see a track?”
“Everything else has a burrow or a cave,” I said. I had read that in Wild Woolly.
“Are you sure?”
I shrugged. Reminded of the compass in my armpit, I dug it out and found the needle was looking a little more lively. But we had seen no sign of the stone wall Cleomie told us to look for. The stand of trees was all that lay ahead if we went on moving south.
“We have to try it,” I said, shoving the compass into my pocket for safekeeping. “There isn't any other place for us that I can see. I think it's getting dark.” In fact, I knew it was getting dark; I just hadn't realized it until we saw how shadowed the trees looked.
“All right, then,” Maude said. “Move slowly. Let's don't talk unless we have to. Just till we know how things stand.”
Maude carried my shotgun because she'd never reloaded her rifle. She moved slowly, looking for a place to part the branches so that I could lead the mule through. He was so eager he all but trampled me getting in first. It was probably for the best that his big horsey face took the lead.
There were deer beneath that stand of trees, huddled in groups for warmth. While the mule made a startling appearance, it seemed that his presence made us less scary than if we had gone in alone. At least that was how it seemed. Because while there were wide, watchful eyes upon us, and some shuffling of hooved feet, not one of them skittered off to another spot.
“Don't look at them,” Maude said, leaning in close to whisper. It was much quieter under the trees, and the scent of the needles sharp and sweet in my nostrils.
“Real slow,” I whispered back as I took the rein off my hand and tied it to a branch.
Slow and quiet. That was how we did everything. Unburdened the mule and wiped him down. Laid his blanket over him.
Maude took out biscuits for us, and oats for the mule. The deer watched all of this with a kind of interest. Maude filled her hat and walked around at a very slow pace, spilling oats on the ground. The grain dust hung in the air like a small cloud. The mule followed her, eating, but it wasn't long before most of the deer had a mouthful too. And a few very bold ones followed her for more.
The excited light in her eyes as she walked back to me made me smile. Maude had always been fond of deer. “Don't grin,” she said in a low voice. “Deer don't like to see teeth.” I clamped my mouth shut.
We had been aware of the cold all day, and always fighting the wind. Our feet were never anything but cold. But we couldn't easily freeze to death while we were on the move. Sitting so still, we were getting chilled, and there was no chance of a fire.
But we had the sweet, fruity jelly in the middle of our biscuits, enough biscuits to satisfy us, and there was little I felt I wanted to complain about. Delicious as they were, I didn't rush through my share of the biscuits but ate them slowly.
“I think we have to try Marion's way,” Maude said as I licked the last bit of jelly from my fingers.
My mind was a blank. “What way is that?”
“We have to bury ourselves under the snow.”
“That sounds very cold to me,” I said.
It was very cold.
We talked all around the doing of it in low voices that didn't seem to bother the deer. We thought up different ways it might best be done, now that all that snow lay out there. Never did it seem very likely to be an idea that worked.
In the end, we just wrapped our blankets around ourselves and picked a spot only a couple of steps from the tree line. I sat down, leaning against Maude, back to front, to share our warmth.
Maude took the trouble to pull snow down in front of us. “It seems to me the idea is to heat a small space with our own bodies. It won't do to have a big open window.”
I didn't reply to this. We were as good as sitting in an open window. That morning the snow had fallen in wet, soft flakes. Now it had turned dry and fell in sharp bits that stung my face.
Maude pulled the top of her blanket over our hats and wrapped her arms around me. We had only to wait for the snow to cover us over. Maude began to talk in a low voice about walking to town in the snow the winter before, going for Aunt Ruthie's medicine, and how long and hard a walk that seemed to her then. Maude said that walk hardly seemed real to her anymore. She thought that once we reached Independence, none of this would seem real to us.
I thought it would seem real. I thought about my feet, which ached with cold. I wondered if I wouldn't do better to take off my boots and put on some dry socks. But while I thought about it, a strong lazy feeling crept over me. I felt lazy and warm.
So warm.
“This was a good idea,” I said to Mau
de.
“What did you say, Sallie? You're mumbling.”
I sank into a warm, sleepy place. If I never had to leave that place, it would be too soon for me. I tried to tell that to Maude.
“Good night, Sallie,” I heard her say, and then I was dreaming. I knew it for a dream, because grass had never been so green, the sky so blue, the flowers so many. Aunt Ruthie dangled her feet in the water of a sparkling brook and said to me, “There now, that wasn't so hard, was it?”
“Aunt Ruthie,” I said, “I've been meaning to tell you some thank-yous.”
Sitting on Aunt Ruthie's other side, her hair grown long again, Maude laughed.
IWASN'T SO WARM AS I HAD BEEN BEFORE; THAT WAS THE first thing I knew. I reached for that warmth again and again, falling into it with open arms, like falling into a feather bed. But still there came a time when I could not bring it back to me.
I sat in the chill darkness for some minutes without moving. Taking stock, more or less. Maude slept on, and I had the warmth of her breath in my ear. I wished bitterly that I could sleep some more, but it would not come.
The snow was a cold weight all around us, and yet the air seemed only brisk, not frigid. I realized that we had not made the air chimney Marion had talked about, but we didn't seem to have needed it. We hadn't frozen to death either, even though we'd fallen asleep. This was all good news.
My stomach growled every so often, so I figured it was hunger that woke me. We should have eaten more than biscuits, but we had been too tired to care. I let my mind drift from one thought to another, but after a time, I got so hungry I felt sick. Just when I had begun to think about waking her, Maude said, “Me too.”
“What?”
“I'm answering your stomach. I'm hungry too.”
“I think it's still dark,” I said.
“It doesn't matter,” Maude said. “We'll follow our path back to the tree.”
But when I pushed my foot straight out in front of me and broke through the snow that Maude had pulled down to shut us in, I saw light. Bright at first, making me blink, but as my eyes grew used to it, fading to no more than a pearly gray dawn.
I could see the branches of the tree right in front of us. The snow had quit. This cheered me enough to make me want to crawl out into the open, anyway. When I looked back, I saw that much of our snow cover had not even fallen down as we left. It looked like a cave.
We moved slowly, stiff with cold. Deer still stood huddled under the tree, and some of them now stood around the mule. They had pawed through to the grass, where the branches reached to the ground and the snow left off. In some spots they had eaten right down to the roots. The mule had done this, judging from the dirt on his nose.
Maude and I crawled over to the tree trunk where our bags rested, wrapped our blankets around us again, and ate. We opened paper-wrapped parcels of ham and corn bread. Although my belly was filled, my mood was not helped at all.
The wind still blew hard enough to make a whistling sound as it slid through the branches. When Maude said, “Let's get a start,” I didn't really feel like going on to break snow another day. There was so much more of it than when we started out the day before. I was colder and tired now in a way I hadn't been then.
I said, “Everything has gone wrong for us, Maude.”
“There is nothing in it for us to stay here,” she said. “Our food will soon run out.”
I said, “The snow will melt if it warms up.”
“Cleomie thought we would make it to the trader's by midday yesterday,” Maude argued. “He may not be that far away. We could make it by midday today.”
“We can't be sure of Cleomie's signs anymore,” I said. “The stone wall is covered with snow.”
“His chimney smoke will be rising.”
Although the thought of a fire raised my hopes a little, I said, “We may be too far off to see it. We walked south, as south as we could, but Cleomie's direction struck a winding path, and for all we know, it would have taken us east or west of there. We could miss him by a mile.”
But I knew too that Maude was right. This was the beginning of winter, not the end, and we couldn't stay under the trees. I wanted only one more day. I wanted to sleep and dream of being warm. I wanted to dream of Aunt Ruthie smiling at me. The odd thing was, my feet were by now warm, even in the socks wet since the day before.
“Are your feet warm?” I asked.
“My feet are numb,” Maude said, “and so, very likely, are yours.”
“Don't let's think about it,” I said.
Maude grimaced at my grammar, but she said, “Don't let's.”
She filled her hat with oats and sprinkled the ground, the way she had the night before. She did this twice, letting the deer eat along with the mule. She was spare with the mule because he would find no grazing to aid his digestion while we walked. She fed him, because till we found him a bale of hay, he would be walking hungry.
I got my compass out. It had a little fog inside it but otherwise seemed lively enough. I moved from tree to tree, staying in their shelter as much as possible, until I came to the southernmost fringe of branches.
I looked out, expecting to see nothing but snow and more snow. That was exactly what I saw. The day was cloudy, but the look of the sky did not promise more snow. That did not lower my spirits but did not raise them either. I looked for smoke. I saw none. My spirits fell impossibly lower. I went back to help Maude load up the mule.
“See anything?” she asked me.
I shook my head.
“I keep thinking I smell bacon,” she said.
Now that she said it, I imagined it too. Not only bacon, but wood smoke. It ought to have been a pleasant thing, but the cruelty of it brought tears to my eyes.
“Buck up,” Maude said, sounding like Aunt Ruthie.
When we were ready, we made our way through the trees again, to strike out from that southernmost point. “We'll find the trader's place today,” she said to me. “Let's just both say it.”
So I said it, and I did feel a little better.
I kept saying it to myself because it was hard going. We made twenty feet in maybe ten minutes, or so it seemed. “Myturn,” I said, because Maude was already tiring. She turned to say something to me, but her gaze was caught by something else.
I looked behind me and saw a log cabin at not very great a distance, maybe half a mile. It lay low, looking all the lower for being half buried in snow. Smoke rose in lazy spirals from the chimney, quickly blending with the cloudiness of the day.
We had passed the cabin by the evening before, so intent were we on following the path the deer had broken. Maybe we could never have seen it anyway, the snow falling so heavily as it was at that time.
“Didn't I tell you?” Maude said to me, grinning, and because my mood was suddenly greatly improved, I said to her, “Don't show your teeth.”
We went back under the trees, only stopping long enough to spill some more oats on the ground for the deer. Maude said we owed them that much for leading us to the trees. Then we were out again, and planning.
Maude said, “We'll use the deer path to get as close to that cabin as we can before we start plowing again.”
We took turns often. Having that cabin right there before our eyes helped us along. Still, it seemed to take forever to get close enough as made any difference. My heart pumped furiously, sweat spilled off our foreheads, sweat soaked our clothes from the inside out.
“This is going to take all day,” I complained.
For the first time, I realized that we never would have made it to anywhere before we fell exhausted in the snow. The only thing that made Maude right about leavingshelter was that we finally saw how close we had come to saving ourselves.
We were lucky to find another path of some kind. We came to the edge of it and had to step up a ways. Although the fresh snow on top was deep, the snow below had been tamped firm. When we walked there, the looser stuff came up only to our knees and we walked more easily.
“Maybe a wagon went through here before the snow got really deep,” Maude said when she got her breath back. “The wagon bed may have ironed out a path right to the barn.”
Even with this stroke of good luck, the second path, it took us easily more than an hour to get from the trees to a gate. It was some relief to us when the door up at the house was flung open and someone called out, “Bet you thought you would never make it. Keep on coming. You can be sure of hot coffee when you get here.”
He stepped out, buttoning himself into a heavy sheepskin coat.
BEN CHAPLIN BROKE SNOW OUT TO MEET US.
“I'd know that mule anywhere,” he said.
“Cleomie sent us,” Maude said. “We need to buy a horse from you. And then Cleomie wants you to send this mule back to her.”
“Ran into some bad luck, did you?” he asked.
“Some,” Maude said. She introduced us as Johnnie and Pete. I felt a spark at hearing this, but I didn't have it in me to burst into even a small flame. It only went through my mind, if I was ever to have a name a range rider was more deserving of, I was going to have to speak fast and first. I resolved to do that. Next time.
“You boys follow me out to the barn,” he said. “I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw you out here. Where'd you overnight?”
This talk took us out to the barn. Ben Chaplin broke some snow going around the cabin, huffing and puffing as he told us he dreaded a winter that snowed him in as early as December. “I don't mind being snowed in,” he said, “but there's January and February still ahead of us. By then I start to talk to myself.”
“My aunt Ruthie used to talk to herself all the time,” I said. “So long as she thought no one was around to hear.”
“What did she talk about?” Ben Chaplin asked.
“The shortcomings of other people, mostly,” I said. It surprised me that he found this funny.
A path had already been cleared from his barn to his back door. A buckboard, loaded with household furnishings and covered with a waterproof, had been pulled inside the barn. “See here?” he said, as if the buckboard were a piece of evidence. “No one expected this snow.”
The Misadventures of Maude March Page 15
