by Julie Weston
Ten yards into the meadow, she could see the area might work well. In the distance, an apparently abandoned house nestled in the snow near the river. It was two stories with a long porch across the side facing the road. Cottonwoods lined the riverbank with a sprinkling of silver aspens winding in and out. Closer to where she stood, fir trees clumped together, and red willow bushes, their branches heavy with snow, bowed to the wind. Three magpies whined, as if she were an enemy invading their territory, and clots of snow dropped from the willows with whispered phuts. The air, smelling of cold steel, was such a contrast to the oppressive atmosphere in the auto that she hated to return. On the other hand, she was freezing.
“You need snowshoes if you’re gonna scout around like that,” Rosy said, when Nellie climbed in.
“Does anyone live in that cabin back there?”
“That ain’t no cabin. It’s a house. Last Chance Ranch.” Rosy put the car in gear and began a U-turn.
“I want to explore some more. Won’t you drive farther out?” Nellie really wanted to return to town and take a hot bath and sit in front of the fire in Mrs. Bock’s dining room, she was so cold. But maybe there was a better place. “I’m not paying two dollars for this trip unless you do. I’ve hardly seen anything.”
“I’m thirsty, and my bottle’s empty.” Rosy completed the turn and headed back to Ketchum. “And we got to wait for more snow to melt. Can’t get through.” Automobile tracks extended up the road, giving the lie to his words. “I’ll throw in the second trip for free.”
Satisfied with her bargain, Nellie stared back at the house. Last Chance Ranch. A strange western name. Whose last chance?
“A family lived there—wife, husband, two boys. Wife died, boys went back East, man drank himself to death.” Rosy’s voice was matter-of-fact for the economic telling of a tragedy.
Snow fell that night and again the next day. How could Nellie photograph a full moon and its shadows if the sky kept shedding bits of white? Her planning would go for naught if the snow didn’t stop. She couldn’t afford to wait another four weeks. Until her train ride across the Idaho desert and then north to the mountains, she had not known how bright the moon on snow could be, or that it could cast shadows deeper than those from sunlight. All the light she was familiar with came from electricity or candles. In Chicago, the stars and the moon counted for little.
But the stormy weather gave her time to prepare for a night out. She needed pants and snowshoes, as Rosy advised.
“We don’t get much call for pants for ladies, Miss.” The man at Jack Lane’s dry goods store didn’t laugh, although his eyes flashed a merry spark. “We’re a sheep and mining town. All the ladies I know wear skirts.” He didn’t add, like they’re supposed to, but she heard it in his voice.
“Ladies in Chicago wear pants,” Nellie said, sorry the minute the words were out of her mouth. He didn’t comment. Instead, he found the smallest pair of wool pants in the store and the shortest belt to hitch them around her waist. In the mirror, she looked like a little girl dressing up in her father’s clothes.
“We’ll take ’em up for you—have ’em to Mrs. Bock’s tomorrow first thing. Anything else?”
“Snowshoes.” As she hoped to spend time out in the snow, night and day, spending money on snowshoes felt like a necessity.
“What does a young girl like you want with pants and snowshoes?” He placed his hands on the counter and peered down at her.
Nellie mumbled about exploring in the snow. He shook his head and led her to the back of the store. At twenty-five, she didn’t feel so young. Her acquaintances in Chicago considered her an old maid. She knew she looked younger. Maybe it was her dark curly hair that never seemed quite tidy, no matter how careful she was about fastening it at the back of her neck, or the fact that she was smaller than most western women she’d seen so far.
The clerk held up a pair of snowshoes. “These’re used, but small enough so you won’t trip over ’em. They’re broke. I won’t charge you for ’em. I’ll get ’em patched up and deliver ’em along with the pants.” A calendar sat on the back counter with a picture of the clerk. He stood in front of the store’s sign: “Eat Lamb. It’s Delicious!”
“You’re Jack Lane.”
“Yep.” Mr. Lane held out a pair of wool socks. “You’ll need an extra pair of these, too. I’ll throw ’em in for free.”
Nellie didn’t ask Mr. Lane how to use the snowshoes, nor even how to fit them to her boots. The shoes seemed so big and wide. She would have to walk bowlegged to tramp through snow. With socks in hand, she paid, thanked him, and left.
Late the next afternoon in her room, Nellie checked her camera pack to be sure she had everything necessary for a night out. “Miss Burns.” Mrs. Bock’s voice from the hall was followed by a knock on the door. “Rosy said he’s ready any time you are.” Mrs. Bock knocked again and then opened the door. None of the doors had keys for the locks, a peculiarity of Idaho. A peculiarity and an irritation.
“Thank you.” Nellie tried to sound polite. “I see it’s still snowing.”
“Humph. It’ll stop ’bout five. This storm has had its day. A few patches of blue are peeking out now. Can’t keep the sun hidden for long around here.”
“Did Mr. Lane bring by my pants and those snowshoes for me? He promised they’d be repaired by now.”
“Just been having coffee with him. He’s mighty curious what you want with snowshoes. Mostly he sells them to hunters and prospectors and the like.”
Nellie had already told Mrs. Bock about her plans. Her landlady offered the use of a small sled to carry camera gear, an offer Nellie had gratefully accepted. Nearly everyone during her trip had remarked on her traveling alone and with so much luggage. What was a city girl doing in a small mining town in the middle of the Wild West? She knew she intended to become an artist, known for her photographic landscapes, able to sell her work so she could live independently. But saying so seemed presumptuous and slightly mad.
“If you still have some hot coffee, Mrs. Bock, I’ll come down shortly.”
The collection of wrinkles on Mrs. Bock’s face took an upturn. “If it ain’t hot now, it will be in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. And I’ll fix you up some supper, too. You can’t go out hungry.”
If Nellie had ever been hungry, she had ceased to know what that meant. Every meal was planned to feed miners after a long day underground. Two miners lived at Mrs. Bock’s boarding house, along with an old-timer who spent most of his time rocking in front of the fire and talking to the landlady. The working men shared an auto to drive to the Independence Mine when work was available. The last boarder was another woman who disappeared each morning and returned after dinner each night. Mrs. Bock kept a plate hot for her in the oven, saying she worked harder than any man around there and for less pay, too.
If only Mrs. Bock were right about the snow stopping. The clouds would break up and dissipate, leaving a clear sky, a pattern she’d already observed in the time she’d been in Ketchum. “The bathroom is empty and the water reheated,” Mrs. Bock said and turned back to her kitchen. “You need to dress warm if you’re still set on tramping around in the snow tonight.” By now, the whole town probably knew what this “young girl” was doing there.
In the snow north of town, Nellie was alone in the world. All she saw and felt at that moment belonged to her and to no other soul. Although she could not yet see the moon, she beheld its effects. She had identified Jupiter, Saturn, Orion’s Belt, but they paled in comparison to the dazzle on earth. The snow meadow at her feet glistened like an ever-shifting dune of stardust. Tufts of long wheat-like grass cast precise, narrow shadows on the snow, as did the crooked reaching arms of aspen trees.
All the difficulty of persuading Rosy to accompany her at night, strapping on the wood frame and gut snowshoes, wading with her feet apart through snow light as powder so that each step sank to the depth of her boot, and pulling a sled as heavy as a body might be—all were worth it, if she succeeded i
n taking the kind of photographs she wanted. Even if Rosy drove away, as he had threatened to do.
The silence alone was worth the effort. She wished she could photograph it, so that anyone viewing the photo would feel drawn in and given respite from the noise of the world, the same way Nellie felt. For a long moment more, she gathered in the night, the snow, the shadows, the quiet, the cold. Then she turned to work, sorry to disturb the serenity of scene and self. Setting up her equipment took time. Waiting for the moon to rise above the eastern mountain took patience. Waiting for it to move would take more. The six sheets of film in her pack should be enough.
She untied the sled’s rope from her waist and plowed in her snowshoes closer to the grass tufts. Yes, the grass in the foreground, the aspen trunks white in moonlight against the dark fir background. Until the moon rose higher, this would do. She stepped in her own trench back to the sled and moved it another dozen feet closer to her envisioned photo. Where she had trampled in the snow looked as if a battle had taken place.
The moon topped the mountain and was so white, so astonishing, Nellie gasped. The man in the moon beamed down at her and she grinned back. Really, she wanted to whoop with joy, but Rosy might think she was in trouble.
With her tripod on as firm a footing as she could manage with her large 4×5 view camera attached to it, she retrieved her black cloth and covered her head and the camera to look at the scene reflected on the ground glass, then opened the shutter and moved the bellows on its rails to focus. The scene of wheat-grass, aspen, and snowy background was upside down and inverted, allowing her to see pattern and composition rather than objects. After a few more adjustments, as the light grew brighter and the shadows deeper, she set the aperture and shutter, slid in the film holder at the camera back, and removed the dark slide that protected it from light. From her pocket she drew a round timepiece, a present, her mother had said, one that had been intended for a son. Her mother’s statement had been tinged with embarrassment, but also, Nellie liked to think, a smattering of pride.
The light was strong enough to see the second hand. At the hour, Nellie opened the shutter and followed the sweep hand around once, twice . . . A sound somewhere off to her right caused her to look up briefly, but she didn’t lose her place. Five minutes. That should be enough, she guessed, and closed the shutter, replaced the dark slide, extracted the film holder, wrapped it with velvet cloth for protection, and placed the bundle in the film case with the unexposed sheets.
Nellie peered toward the direction of the sound, but heard nothing more and saw no motion. A still night. A forest critter, perhaps, watching her. That gave her a queer feeling, but she shrugged and went back to work.
Silver light bathed the meadow and the cabin she had ignored while focusing on the first photo. Last Chance Ranch, but this time she was on the other side of it and much farther from the road. The moon and the abandoned building might work to convey what existed in the West side by side—beauty, dereliction and hard work, disappointment and riches. An idea about photographing miners at work blossomed at the sight of the house. Even Rosy would fit into such a series.
Moving the sled with her heavy camera gear and tripod to a better vantage point used up so much energy, Nellie wondered if she could complete her task. After a short rest on her sled, she set up the tripod and camera and focused again. To complete a photo with the moon in it, she would have to take one picture of the cabin first without the moon in it, then wait for the moon to rise higher, and take the same picture on the same sheet of film with the moon. Otherwise, during the time the shutter would have to be open to capture the cabin, the moon would move, creating a blur. So she would take two photos of the same scene—one without and one with the moon. She snowshoed back to the sled, pulled a film holder from the pack, stood next to the camera, and inserted the film in the camera. She set the aperture at f8 and exposed the film by pulling out the slide and opening the lens. The click sounded loud. After another five minutes, she replaced the dark slide. Now she would have to wait for the moon to arc higher in the sky.
To fill time, she ate half the sandwich Mrs. Bock insisted she take and absorbed the shadowed beauty around her while she thought about her last confrontation with Sebastian Scotto, the man she had worked for at the portrait studio in Chicago. Even now she cringed at his words when he tore two of her photographs in half and dropped them on his desk.
“If you have time to waste on this . . . this foolery, you aren’t working hard enough. I should never have hired a girl. Bah!” He pointed to one-half of her photo of buildings along Lake Michigan, drenched in sunbeams after a storm. “Sentimental drivel. You waste my film. Just as you waste my paper in the darkroom. You re-print too much.”
“But you’ve told me adjusting a print is learning.” They stood in his office and she walked to a bin with photographs and pulled out one of an elderly woman, wrinkled as a witch but with an ancient wisdom blooming from every line. “This one. You liked this one.” It was one of the few Nellie felt was art, not just a photo of a person.
“That one is mine.” He grabbed the photo. “Don’t you dare take credit for my work!” His voice dropped and his eyes half-closed, like a snake’s. “I’ve had enough of your incompetence and emotions. Leave now.”
Stunned, Nell struck back. “That is my work. See this brooch.” She pointed to an intricately wrought piece of jewelry at the woman’s neck. “Your photograph had no brooch.”
“You stupid woman. You have no eye. You have no art. Get out!”
Nellie left his office, afraid she would cry in front of Scotto, but not so afraid that she didn’t collect her own portfolio first and gather her book of notes and her scarf, hat, and purse from a shelf in the darkroom she shared with two men. Even if Scotto would say the portraits in her portfolio were his, and she had nothing to prove otherwise, she wanted samples of her work. Somewhere, somehow, she would take photographs that were all hers.
She scouted toward the river to hear the whooshing sound muffled by snow, similar to a train on tracks in the long distance. A series of sharp yips from across the river raised gooseflesh on her arms. Coyotes? Wolves? Her trip alone at night became a foolish venture before the echoes died away and all was quiet again. This night, this place, belonged to the creatures of the dark. The moon’s expression became a leer. She wished she had a lantern. What if she lost her way back? She could freeze and be covered with snow and no one would know.
The photo, remember the importance of the photo. The moon’s arc traveled above the cabin. Nellie approached the camera again and this time set the shutter speed for 1/30th of a second in the moon’s bright light and exposed the same sheet of film again. The photos she took of moon on snow were hers. If the scene wasn’t as bright as daylight, it seemed so because of the surrounding snow. With full moonlight illuminating the cabin, that should be enough to bring out the flat cut logs of the side wall and the pattern of river rock in the chimney. Perhaps it would also catch the tendril of smoke as a white line against the dark firs behind. Nellie caught herself. Smoke? No, she must have imagined it. She lifted her dark cloth, watched the chimney, and saw nothing.
The moon slid behind a cloud and Nellie shivered. She had been photographing for several hours. It was too cold and too late to take another photo with and without the moon. A full moon lasted two nights; maybe she could talk Rosy into bringing her to this place again. After a glance at the sky, she realized there was only enough time left to return to the road before her heavenly light dropped behind the western mountains. She carefully secured her exposed film holders, wrapped her camera in its case, and folded the tripod. It was during a last look around, when she had ceased making noise herself, that she heard a tapping, over and over, so soft it might have been background noise for some time.
What was it? She studied the cabin again. This time, she saw at the side window a reflected gleam that came and went, a flash, and not regular. The sound was a tapping on glass.
The road was too far a
way to see. Was Rosy there? She’d better hike out, sled and all, and seek his help. He might have a lantern. Her knees shook. She didn’t want to admit she was afraid. Instead, she began to re-trace her snow trough. Then the snowshoe thong holding her boot broke. The moon was slipping toward the trees. Yips began again. Tap, tap, tap.
Nellie debated trying instead for the house. There were no such things as ghosts. The distance was hardly a hundred yards, and it was much farther to the auto. Coyotes, not wolves. She had told him hours. Scrambling to the house was going to be difficult with only one snowshoe. “No ghosts.” Her own voice reassured her.
Pushing her sled to break a path, Nellie struggled toward the cabin, arriving at the door as the moon dropped to the line of mountains. The tap, tap, tap sound moved from the window to the door. When she turned the handle, the door opened and Nellie fell forward.
A black shape leaped up on her, grunting and squeaking, and a tongue slathered her face with saliva as she dropped to her knees. A dog. He wiggled and squirmed and then barked, a half-bark, half-yip. Nellie sat back on her heels and pushed the animal away. “You’re not a ghost!” Then, in the last glow from the moon, she saw the form of a man splayed out on the floor, his face a mask of ice, one hand visible, his fingers curled around an axe.
CHAPTER 2
Nellie opened her mouth to scream, but the dog pushed against her, whining. It was real, not a ghost. Black, not white. And the dead man wasn’t a ghost either. What should she do? The cold inside the house felt danker, more intense, than the cold outside. A whiff of something lingered. If she yelled for Rosy from the porch, would he hear her? Maybe he was growing anxious about her long absence and would look for her. More likely, he was probably passed out in his car, and even with the sheepskin he had pulled around himself was at risk of freezing to death. She began to shiver.