She lifted her fingers from the marbles and scratched at the window. Ice crystals dusted like cold ashes onto her shoes.
“They don’t even know I’m here,” Effie said.
Effie’s sadness added to Bridget’s, and she felt torn between worry for Effie and worry for Jake. At the sound of shouting, she cracked the door open just wide enough to peer out. Deet and another man carried out the yoke. They settled the heavy top piece over Jake’s shoulders, ignoring his collar, then the bow under his neck, and inserted the iron pins.
Knocking on Jake’s knees with the toe of his boot and geeing and hawing, Deet backed him to the sled. He secured the chains in the rings, and three men dropped their steel traps on the bed then climbed on. Jake leaned into the weight and they headed upriver, leaving the remaining three men behind to drink and play cards.
Bridget closed the door and dropped her head against it.
The trappers always made the ache in Effie’s stomach swell and spread. In Omaha, she was sure they ate big meals of roast beef, potatoes, warm bread, fruit stewed in juices. Even trying to imagine their parlors and the fine dresses their wives wore felt like trying to enter some impossible fantasy, a world apart from the nightmare that held her.
Her stomach growled, and she eyed the nearly empty pan on the table. They’d eaten the bread-like concoction warm the two previous mornings, then had slivers again last night. Cold, but dribbled with their last drops of molasses. There might be pigeons later, or the scrap in the pan might have to last until she found the energy and courage to face Graf. If ever she could. Was it three days already since she’d stumbled into the mercantile to the stony face of Graf ? “Your bill’s been paid,” he said.
A wave of relief passed over her, but before she could enjoy the moment and wonder if Rev. Jackdaw had been in town, Graf stopped her. “I don’t like it. A man ought to pay his own, but paid is paid.”
His stance, like one of the long icicles hanging from the eaves in front of his shop, frightened her. “It wasn’t paid by Rev. Jackdaw?” She could think of only one other person who even realized she lived there. “Was it Mr. Thayer?”
“Chief.”
A wash of disgrace and shame burned her face and steamed down the length of her back. The Injun had heard her fighting with Graf. But to pay the bill! Did Graf now think they associated with one another? Did he think . . . ? She couldn’t bear the thought. She began backing away. Everything she’d believed was good and right was spinning out of control.
Graf reached under the counter and lifted out a pound sack of corn meal. “Infested,” he said. “No charge.” He pushed it in her direction. “At Andersonville, men would have killed for much less.”
Was it another test of her neediness or how like each other they were? What man saved such a thing? She picked up the sack she scarcely wanted to touch, let alone eat. She’d reached a new low. So had Graf.
Not yet out the mercantile door, she caught a glimpse of Cora stepping through the curtains, but she didn’t stop. She heard them whisper behind her, then, “Oh, Mr. Graf, you didn’t!”
What did Cora know of facing Rev. Jackdaw’s jerking eye? What did she know of hunger? Or the shame of having to accept charity? From an Injun, no less. Could she ever understand how accepting infested meal carried less emotional debt and hurt than accepting good?
Back at the lodge, she spread the flour across the table with the flat of her hand. She picked out the black weevils and the squirming larva and tried to make bread.
Bridget was still at the other window, her head wrapped in rags like some sad cap. She’d gotten taller in the months since their arrival in Nebraska, but she was skinny and underfed.
There were times, frightful-awful times, needles in Effie’s brain, when she lost her temper with Bridget for no reason. She knew what it was: pain swelling to her outer reaches, pain exploding through the ends of her nerves.
She longed to reach out, call Bridget over, hold her, and keep her safe. But affection might be as cruel as neglect. Bridget was better off not feeling any attachment to her. The child might still get away, and the less strings, the easier her escape.
Bridget checked the door every hour for the sight of Jake returning safely. Late afternoon, with winter’s early dusk settling, she saw him coming out of the trees. Lumpy shapes on the sled were two men with their long, wide boots dragging off the back, furrowing the snow and making extra work for Jake. But he looked unhurt. Nothing else mattered.
They wasted little time removing the yoke and climbing the slope. They fastened feedbags to the four horses they’d unhitched but kept tied to the sides of one wagon. Climbing into the second, they headed for the hotel in Bleaksville.
Bridget grimaced as she worked one painful foot into her too small shoe and then the other, carving the blisters deeper as the toes scraped against the rock-hard leather. The long arms of Rev. Jackdaw’s tattered coat meant she could pull the sleeve ends inside and hold them closed. She thought to tell Effie she was going out, but Effie stared at the window, the glass sealed over with frost.
Bridget soothed the four draft horses, speaking to each one as she pulled the head straps of the feedbags first over one ear and then the other. She poured the oats from each paunchy bag into her pail. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, re-attaching the empty bags. She remembered Rev. Jackdaw questioning her at the school in New Ulm. “No,” she said aloud, “I’m not scared of animals.”
She fed Jake only a small portion of the oats. She’d read in Dr. Chase’s book about the ill effects on animals of a sudden, too-rich diet.
“You can have more tomorrow.” She rubbed his shoulders where the yoke had rested. “Only one more day,” she promised. Then in a whisper to herself, “One more long day.”
Her feet hurt too much for the trek to Old Mag. She led Jake to Wilcox-the-tree and sat, looking out at the frozen river. Down nearly to Pete’s back yard, steel traps lay waiting. They would snap through the night, and by morning the men would have pelts. She couldn’t help the animals any more than she could spare Jake the morrow. The traps were invisible even in the daylight, covered with leaves and dustings of snow. If she tried to find them in the dark, she’d likely step in one, and the men would find her frozen there in the morning. And she’d leave footprints the men would know were hers. Deet would force her and Effie to leave, and she’d lose Jake forever.
She tucked Rev. Jackdaw’s coat tight under her burning feet and huddled in the tent of wool. “Mum?” She looked out over the frozen water. “Are you there?”
No answer came and she dropped her face into her knees. In the distance, a fox yipped. Then a long rope of agony unwound in the night. She rocked as the eerie, agonizing howls rent the blue-black dark.
In the morning, while Effie still slept, Bridget reached into the last bit of Chief ’s salve. Her fingers touched the bottom of the jar. She spread the ointment on her toes’ weeping blisters and wrapped dry strips of newspaper around them. Only the thinnest layer; her stiff shoes were already too small. She tied the broken laces and hobbled back and forth in front of the fire, coaxing her feet into accepting the pain.
When Effie woke to the sound of the trappers returning, Bridget watched her leave the bed with the quilt around her shoulders, a red slash of fabric settled over her heart, and sit again at the window. Only blurred shapes of the men were visible through the thick ice covering the glass, dark and shadowy figures yoking Jake and climbing on the sled. Effie stared just as she had the day before, her bottom lip tucked beneath the top. “Rev. Jackdaw has abandoned us.”
“No, he hasn’t.” Bridget said. “But Nell is old and the roads always have so much snow.”
Effie’s face struggled. She’d slept in her green dress and the front had places the size of Bridget’s palm where the damaged fabric looked shattered. “He could ride with Deet. Take the train.”
Bridget wanted away from Effie and how Effie’s thin fingers clawed the quilt around her shoulders. Away from Effie’s ho
llow cheeks and Effie’s drifting eyes that saw invisible things. But Bridget had to give the men a head start.
Logs crackled in the fire. Flames reached up, but every corner of the lodge held winter and every wall breathed drafts. Effie continued to stare at frost white as a blindman’s eyes. “I could hide under their tarps, but in Omaha I wouldn’t have no money for a train ticket home.” She looked down at herself. “I don’t want Ma, or Johnny, seeing me like this.” Her voice caught. “Pa wouldn’t let me stay. He’d want quit of me again.”
Bridget’s stomach twisted. Effie had no way of leaving her, but she wanted to do so.
The hem of Rev. Jackdaw’s coat was ragged from weeks of dragging on the ground and through scrub. Thorny thistle seeds had worked into the fabric pocket-high. Bridget pushed her arms into the sleeves and opened the door one cold inch.
The way the men cussed at one another on the second day no longer surprised her. Nor did the increased flash of whiskey bottles and flasks. On the second day, eyes were redder, the men moved slower, and they were angry. As if they’d not slept the night before, but gambled and lost their money and drank till dawn in the Bleaksville saloon. They were not only tired, the hardest work remained: recovering the traps, harvesting the pelts, reloading the wagons. And paying off debts. All of which made them meaner. On the second day, too, no longer concerned about their scents and noise, all the men went out.
“Step on,” Deet yelled, and Jake leaned into his yoke.
She let them go into the trees in the direction of Pete’s house and counted to ten before hurrying down the ramp on her sore feet. Following was dangerous. Effie thought it plain stupid. But Jake knew she was there. He knew she hid in the trees and watched him and that was everything. He knew he wasn’t alone. Just as Grandma Teegan had held Bridget tight after Mum left, tight after Rowan died. Even when they needed to step a few feet apart, Grandma Teegan kept an invisible rope tied around Bridget. The other end tied around herself. When Bridget fell weeping, when she couldn’t sleep or eat, Grandma Teegan felt a tug on the rope and held her again.
Snow began to fall. Bridget kept well back, avoiding the wider, easier path, crouching and working her way through the thick brush. All that mattered was Jake knowing she was there, and he did. He was smarter than the men. The two of them were best friends, and friends stayed with friends even when staying right there was the only help they could give.
Men recovered traps and the iron hit the sled with loud clangs. The bodies of mink, beaver, and even a frozen wolverine landed with duller sounds. The smell of animals, blood, and death—kept low by the cold air—rose from the sled. Bridget looked away from the carcasses and promised herself Jake was doing fine. Today there wasn’t going to be any trouble.
At the next stop, Bear-man climbed off and kicked at one of his traps. He bent and lifted the gruesome stump of a fox’s foot. He hurled it into the river. “That goddamn varmint stole my pelt.”
Bridget shivered. She thought of the pair of small foxes with their black-tipped ears and white muzzles that lived in the trees. She’d seen them darting, one on the red tail of the other. How many hours had it taken the snared fox to eat off its own foot? And how much pain?
“Next time,” Bear-man growled, “I’ll kill the sonabitch.”
That day, Bridget knew, would never come. The fox was already dead. Or would be soon. A three-legged fox—even if it hadn’t bled to death—wouldn’t survive in the wild.
Jake was yelled onward. The men continued drinking and pulling traps from runnels where the river cut in under grass and scrub. Or snares set along paths where tracks had been seen. With each recovered trap, Bridget tried to reassure herself everything was fine. Her feet hurt so bad she struggled to keep up, but the day was nearly over. Soon she and Jake would be home. She could take off her shoes, sit by the fire, and warm her feet.
A quarter of a mile farther on, with Pete’s house up ahead, Jake was stopped again. They’d nearly reached the end of the run, and the sled looked to hold as many traps as it had the day before when they left the clearing. Bridget crouched, waiting for the trap to be recovered.
Her feet felt swollen to three times their normal size. They throbbed and burned so bad tears ran down her cheeks, and she fought the urge to rip off her shoes. If she could just rub each foot for a minute or two. But she knew she might never be able to work her feet back into the awful leather. Panic washed over her. Could she make it back to the lodge?
“The son of a bitch stole my Newhouse.”
Bridget’s heart squeezed; they weren’t done yet.
Bear-man cussed at a felled birch tree half on land and half submerged in the river under thick ice. Still-visible links of chain proved his trap had been pulled under the trunk.
“Walk that plank,” a voice goaded. “Go get the sucker.”
Bear-man paced, his face turning red. “Jesus Christ couldn’t walk that log. Ain’t no way of pulling that trap up in one piece. ”
More squabbling, though most of it was carried off in the wind and muffled by the bare branches sawing against one another over Bridget’s head.
“. . . not losing another pelt . . . my best Newhouse.”
Then one remark, stark in its clarity: “That skinny, worn-out old ox.”
The words hit Bridget with the force of a fist.
More arguing, then Deet. “I’ll take that bet.” He unharnessed Jake from the sled and took him to the water’s edge. Again, the geeing and hawing and tapping on Jake’s knees until Deet had him lined up. They fastened the chains hanging from the two sides of his yoke to the end of the tree.
“Step on,” Deet yelled. And before Jake could move, “Heave!”
Link by link, the chain caught and snapped tight. Jake’s hoofs dug into the snow as he leaned into the load, his head stretching out, his legs straining. The ice cracked behind him and small white splinters raced out from around the tree, but it didn’t move.
“Christ, I’m cold,” someone grumbled. “Leave the damn trap.”
“Heave!” Deet bellowed again. “Heave!”
Again Jake leaned, his shoulders rolled, his front knees bent, his neck stretched long, and his whole body strained.
Bridget couldn’t watch. She pulled her arms in tighter to her chest and slid down the backside of the tree she used for cover.
“I put a dollar on the blasted tree,” Bear-man sneered. “Pay up.”
Bridget peeked to see Deet searching for something to use as a club, then stepping up to the steel traps on the sled. Chains, closed jaws and pans.
Deet stood wide-legged, struggled a moment for balance as though an invisible hand pushed him into leaning forward, then into leaning backwards. He hoisted a trap.
Bear-man spat tobacco juice and put a bottle to his wet lips. His Adam’s apple went up and down.
Deet blinked slowly, his ears bright red, and he stepped up to Jake. “I’ll make the buzzard bait do it.” He fisted the trap by its closed jaws; the chain and six-inch spike swung in the cold air. “He can’t pull out that tree, I’ll shoot him myself.”
Bridget whimpered as the spike whipped at the end of its chain.
“Heave!”
Jake lurched sideways with the hit, his right rear leg jumping as the iron landed with a thud on his flank. He pulled again, the motion rolling up the length of his body, the chains straining. More ice cracked, shattering farther out from the tree in all directions. The tree trunk shivered.
Bridget’s hands trembled deep in the sleeves of Rev. Jackdaw’s coat. She slapped them over her ears. If she tried to stop Deet, she and Effie would be sent away. Jake needed her. No one else would move to the lodge and beat snow off scrub, steal hay, even corn shucks from Effie’s bed.
With the next strike, Jake’s lowing was a long moan. His back arched, his hind legs tried to step up under his body, his lungs sucked in blue air and heaved out white.
Deet dropped the trap and slumped forward, one hand gripping a knee, the other clutchi
ng his chest. He puffed clouds. “My heart can’t take this.”
“You goin’ to shoot that ox, Deet? Or you a liar?”
“Not now,” a man snorted. He shot snot from one nostril and pinched it off. “I ain’t walking. Get us back first.”
Bridget’s stomach twisted hard. Deet won’t do it, he won’t. He is a liar.
Deet took his gun from the sled, opened his coat to the vest beneath and pulled a shell from a row of sewn notches. He cracked the gun, thumbed in a shell. “I said I’d shoot the thing. I’ll shoot the damn thing!”
Bridget jumped from hiding and pain shot from her feet up to her knees. She tripped only a few feet from where she’d started.
Deet pointed his shotgun at Jake’s head.
She screamed, the sound cutting through the underbrush, echoing off trees, and running out ahead of her. “Hit him harder; he can do it.”
Through the brush, she saw heads turn in her direction. But they couldn’t see her. They couldn’t see her just as they couldn’t see Effie sitting at the window wanting to go home. She was nothing to them, just as Jake was nothing, and nothing had no shape or size.
But Jake knew her voice and didn’t understand why she’d turned on him.
Deet lowered his gun. With one hand on the gunstock and one hand on the barrel, he handed the weapon to Bear-man. He picked up the trap again—this time by the spike. The pan, with its clamped, half-moon of forged iron, swung in the air. He used the trap like a ball bat.
“Heave!”
Jake bellowed and jerked with the strike and a wide swath of skin on his flank opened like a small door on a flooding red room. His shoulder muscles shuddered and rolled.
The tree slid up onto the sand. The end of the broken chain glistened. No beaver. No trap.
The men finished retrieving their traps, but Bridget’s feet hurt too bad to follow the sled the long trek back through the trees. She worked her way, climbing up toward the road through thick snowy brush. Several times a foot sank into a hole and needed pulling out. Reaching the road, her knees nearly buckled with defeat. She had well over a mile to home.
River People Page 18