by John Smelcer
The low sun was as pale as a seagull egg or a river stone.
Maura sighed as she retreated to her sleeping place, her body searching for the warmth left there. She could see her breath, and her hands were already cold. Winter had come to stay. It would not leave again until spring, six months away. The rest of their journey would be hard going, slower, less certain. From now on there would be thin ice, overflow, snowdrifts and blizzards, and worst of all, occasional days of punishing cold.
Although neither girl had spoken and Millie had not moved, Maura knew that her sister was awake. “Millie, do we have enough clothes to keep us warm when the winter really sets in?”
Millie turned over, toward her sister. “I think so. At least we don’t have to carry the mukluks and parkas. We can wear them. I’m sure we can stay warm during the day while we’re walking. Nighttime will be the hard part.”
“We’ll have to sleep in our parkas, won’t we?” Maura was imagining how it would feel to sleep with no cabin, no roof, no protection but a tarp above them in the knife-edge cold of winter.
“And we’ll have to keep a fire going,” Millie answered. “We’ll have to be sure to tend the fire.” She wanted to sound confident for her little sister, but she, too, imagined the coming cold, the deeper snow, the freezing of the world.
As the morning sun struggled above the rim of the hills, Maura got up and built a small fire with the remaining pieces of dry spruce. While the inside of the drooping makeshift tent warmed, the girls ate what remained of the roasted porcupine, which wasn’t much. A few small bites each. The dogs stared and drooled and begged, but there wasn’t enough to share with them. The meager portions did not even lessen the girls’ hunger.
Millie and Maura thought about food as they put on their winter clothing and packed camp, shaking snow from the tarp before folding it. They hoped to kill another porcupine soon. The dogs searched the nearby woods, perhaps similarly hoping to corner one again.
Although the northland was now buried in winter, the graveled edge of the river was exposed. Delicate sheets of paper-thin ice formed like spiderwebs along the water’s edge. As winter temperatures drop, glaciers stop melting, and lakes and rivers and creeks dry up, retreating into their deepest beds to reveal ever-widening shorelines. In another week, a person would be able to walk across the river in most places.
As they trod slowly and carefully along the exposed-gravel shore, Millie was first to see a flock of grouse near a steep bank, searching for small round pebbles. Grouse are about the same size as chickens, which explains why many old-timers call them spruce chickens. They commonly come down to river and creek beds in the morning to swallow tiny stones. The stones go into a pouch called a gizzard and help the birds to grind leaves and berries and digest them.
“Sssshhh,” Millie whispered as she stopped walking and pointed at the flock.
The dogs, trailing behind, hadn’t noticed the birds yet.
Then Maura, with her walking stick in hand, saw the oblivious grouse pecking at the gravel. The girls knew the birds were not the wariest or smartest of wild creatures. They had seen village boys kill them by throwing stones.
“You hold the dogs, and I’ll try to kill one,” Millie whispered, slowly pulling the heavy tarp pack from her shoulders. She set the rifle aside, across the pack. The big gun was designed to kill moose or caribou or bear, and Millie knew that in the unlikely event that she actually hit a bird with a shot, nothing would be left to eat. She wished that they had not lost the other rifle, which was more suitable for small game.
But it lay uselessly rusting on the bottom of the river.
While Millie crept toward the birds, crouching, careful not to make any noise, Maura knelt and held the dogs, speaking to them softly, calming them. When Millie was close, she picked up two stones. She hurled the first one at the middle of the flock, just missing one bird, which hopped a little in surprise. But the rest only looked up from their pecking, saw nothing of importance, and went back to gathering pebbles.
The dogs saw the birds now, and they began to whimper and twitch. They wanted to chase the grouse, watch them explode into the air when they were almost in their midst. They often did the same thing to seagulls on the beach below the village. They never actually caught a bird. It was just a dog game.
Millie aimed and hurled the second rock, which hit the ground in front of the closest bird, throwing up a little blast of sand. The bird took flight. The rest followed. And Millie and Maura and the dogs watched as the whole flock flew over the treetops, banked sharply, and vanished into the forest.
There would be no roasted grouse for lunch. Everyone’s stomach grumbled. Maura swallowed her impulse to blame her sister for missing the bird, and Millie held back her frustration and self-contempt. How did the boys kill grouse that way? The dogs hungrily sniffed the ground where the birds had been.
Later that afternoon, the girls approached a stretch of river where the water level had dropped so suddenly that several trout had been stranded in a shallow pool, unable to make it back to the channel. It was easy for the girls to build a weir by placing rocks across one end of the pool, trapping the fish in a smaller area. Then they simply used Maura’s walking stick to flip them out of the water onto the gravel flat.
While Maura gathered firewood, Millie cleaned the fish with her sister’s knife. For a long time the gutted fish twitched on the bloodstained stones. Maura suddenly stopped and turned toward the forest. A cold chill seized her.
“Millie,” she said tensely, holding the bundle of dry wood in her arms, “do you think bears will come for these fish?”
Millie continued cleaning the fish, flinging their entrails into the river.
“It’s too late for bears,” she said. “They’ve likely all gone in search of dens.”
She knew how smart bears are. And not only bears. Most birds abandon the northland before the snows. Beavers rarely come out from their mud-and-stick houses, and squirrels leave their nests only to retrieve seeds they collected all summer. Only the most unfortunate creatures, moose and caribou, wolf and man, dwell on the frozen land, hardship a constant companion.
The dogs kept trying to steal fish whenever the girls weren’t looking. But because there were enough, Millie let them each have one. Blue carried his fish into the woods to eat. Tundra took his downriver a ways. After Millie had cleaned the rest, the girls roasted them on willow sticks over a fire. They ate nearly everything, including the blackened skin and the crunchy tails, a favorite. Only the largest bones were left.
With their stomachs filled, despair seemed a little farther away.
* * *
That evening, with an hour of sunlight remaining and the first stars beginning to show, Millie and Maura were startled by an old man. As they were walking on the trail high above where the river had cut a deep channel against the bank, snow crunching underfoot, they saw him standing about a hundred yards ahead of them. From where they were, Maura thought he looked like the drowned man they had tried to pull from the river the day before.
Millie began to shout and wave, trying to catch his attention. Maura joined in.
“Hello!” they called, happy that they would not be alone any longer. “Hello!”
The dogs, seeing the man, bolted down the trail barking, kicking up snow as they ran.
The girls yelled at them to come back.
“Tundra! Blue! Come here!”
Maura even whistled, the way her father had taught her, forcing breath between curled tongue and tightened lips.
But the dogs either did not hear or did not care to stop. The girls ran after them, though not nearly as fast. The bullets in their pockets clinked with their steps. When the dogs had covered a little over half the distance, the man suddenly turned and fled down the steep bank toward the river. With surprising agility he raced to a slender stretch of gravel bar. Millie and Maura couldn’t see him as they continued along the tree-lined trail, but they could hear the dogs barking.
Af
ter making their way down the rocky, root-tangled embankment, the girls came out on the gravel shoreline and there saw the dogs barking at the man, who was now standing on the other side of the river. Each sister grabbed a dog to hold and quiet.
“Hello! Don’t be afraid!” Millie shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth so that her words would carry over the rushing water. “The dogs are friendly!”
The man did not respond. He stared blankly.
“Can you help us?” Millie shouted. “Please come back!”
Millie was about to shout again, but Maura clutched her sister’s arm and hushed her. It was then that Millie noticed that the man was not wet. She looked up and down the river. She could see no place he could have crossed without getting drenched.
The current was deep and fast. No one could have swum across here. It was impossible.
Suddenly, the man flew into the air and perched atop a tall spruce tree. He stood on the very tip-top of the tree, swaying, looking down at the girls and at the dogs, which were barking wildly. He seemed to be frightened. Then he ran away, his feet barely touching the tops of trees as he fled through the air.
The girls never saw him again.
When they started to climb back to the main trail, retracing their route up the steep snow-covered path, they noticed that the only footprints in the snow were the dogs’ and their own. For the rest of the night, they tried to convince themselves of what they had seen. They had heard stories told by elders of how spirits are unaware that they are dead. Elders say that if you touch such a ghost the spirit will fall instantly back into his or her body, wherever it is, and come alive again.
At least that is what they say.
Seeing the ghost made Millie and Maura wonder about all the dead people back in their village. Were their spirits floating through the empty houses? Were Mother and Father among them? And if so, were they looking for their daughters?
Ts'iłk'ey Uk'edi
(Eleven)
For the first time, Raven did not think about his hunger. For the first time, he did not feel like deceiving someone. He pitied the poor woman’s plight. He actually felt sorry for her and her starving children.
“I will help you,” he said.
IT DID NOT SNOW for the next two days, yet it was cold enough that the river began to freeze. Sheets of ice spanned the slowest places. Sometimes the river never froze where the water was fast and deep. In such stretches vapor would rise from the open water, a sure sign of danger.
Maura stopped and planted the end of her walking stick firmly beside her. She raised her head, turning it slowly, sniffing the air.
“Do you smell that?” she asked finally, turning to look at her sister.
Millie also sniffed the wind. “Smoke,” she said, smiling.
The dogs had smelled the smoke for a long time but had given no sign of interest or of fear.
Millie and Maura were aware that lightning strikes, which caused wildfires in summer, held no power in the frozen wetness of winter. The scent of smoke could only mean that someone was nearby, downriver, since the gentle breeze came from that direction. They hoped it was the village they had been searching for, the one Father had said was halfway to the white settlement where the two rivers came together, the one where the man who had guided the two white men had come from.
They walked faster. It was already dusk, darkness beginning to push away the light. The girls hoped to find the village before nightfall.
As they strode around a long bend, they saw a log cabin on the other side of the river. Smoke rose from the roof, and a warm yellow light glowed through a window. This entire stretch of river had frozen over. Maura held the dogs as Millie shuffled across first, stopping frequently to listen to the ice, which occasionally popped and sent splinter lines across the smooth surface. In the near darkness, she could see the humps of great rocks beneath her. The ice wasn’t yet thick. But if it supported her weight, she thought, it would surely support her little sister.
When Millie was standing on the far shore, she gestured that it was safe to cross. Maura released Tundra and Blue, who ran over the frozen river without concern. Neither dog weighed more than fifty or sixty pounds. Maura shuffled across slowly, but she eventually made it safely to the other side.
They approached the small cabin. A moose hide was stretched between two trees, and two quarters of moose meat were hung from a pole. A log lay between sawhorses beside a stump with an ax stuck in it.
Millie knocked on the door.
At first they heard only the sound of movement: rustling and heavy boots on rough boards. The door opened a crack and then, suddenly, wider. A giant of a man stood in the doorway. He was taller than the girls’ father by a foot, and thickly built. His face was hidden within a great beard, concealing every facial feature except the narrow bridge of his nose and his deep-set eyes. The girls could see no mouth. Even his eyebrows were bushy. Bright red suspenders held his pants up.
Both girls immediately recalled the scary stories elders told about Bush Indians, wild animal-like men who dwelt in the forest, their bodies covered in fur, bear-like. Parents often warned children not to wander too far into the woods lest Bush Indians snatch them.
The grizzled man was wary at first, but then only surprised. He was not accustomed to having visitors, being one of those hardy men who stayed in the north at the end of the Gold Rush, more content to live alone in the wilderness than among people, only occasionally rejoining civilization to trade furs or gold for needed provisions.
When he saw that his guests could mean him no harm and were not thieves, like the bears who sometimes made off with his curing meat, he broke into laughter.
“Why, you’re but little girls. Welcome!” said the giant as he ushered the girls inside, kicking Tundra when he tried to follow.
“Out!” he shouted, and closed the door firmly. Millie and Maura did not understand the word, but they understood the act.
The girls noticed a narrow bed built against the back wall, a small table, a chair, cans and tins and boxes and bottles on shelves, a rifle leaning in a corner, rusted traps and furs hanging on the walls, a pot and a black frying pan suspended from the ceiling. In many ways the cabin was like their home back in the village. But instead of a fire pit, the heat came from a heavy-looking rectangular metal box, which stood on short legs. A pot of beans sat on top of the heated box.
“My goodness, what are you girls doing out there alone? How far have you come?” the man asked.
The girls smiled dumbly. They were cold. They did not understand a single word he said.
“Where are your families?” the man said slowly. “Where did you come from?”
The girls could only stare and smile and embrace the warm air with its smell of smoke and beans and unwashed clothing.
Millie asked if they could stay and warm up for a while. She asked if they were near a village. She said she and her sister were hungry.
Now the great, bearded man looked blank and foolish. He did not understand Millie’s words any more than she had understood his. But he could see that the girls were cold, and he could see the way their eyes kept bouncing back to the pot of beans. He gently took the rifle from Millie and leaned it against the wall beside the door. He gestured for the girls to take off their packs and to sit by the warm stove. Millie sat on the chair; Maura stood beside her.
The man jumped to the door, opened it, and then seized a log from his woodpile along with an armful of split firewood. As he stepped back inside, he kicked the door closed with a practiced foot. After positioning the short log alongside Millie’s chair and nodding for Maura to sit, he opened the door on the metal box, shoved a piece of wood inside, poked at it with a stick, and then closed the clanking door. The fire began to roar, and soon the metal sides glowed softly red.
While the girls warmed, the man went outside and returned with a chunk of moose meat, which he cut into thick pieces and stirred into the pot of beans. He added salt and what seemed to the girls to
be black specks from a boxed shaker. The soup smelled good. Millie and Maura were very hungry. They had not eaten since consuming the last pieces of trout that morning.
When the beans and meat were cooked, the man filled three bowls, setting two on the table, with two metal spoons, before the famished girls.
“Soup,” he said, pointing to the bowls. “Soup. Eat up.”
The man took his bowl and sat on the edge of his bed. He blew across each spoonful of the near-boiling broth and then sipped and slurped the soup. The girls watched him take a bite of the meat. That was enough for them. They eagerly ate their portions, blowing and slurping each hot spoonful. They were happy for the food. The man began to laugh, showing his dark-colored teeth, and soon all three diners were laughing in unison. Between mouthfuls, the man spoke to the girls, smiling, though it was hard to tell because his unkempt mustache covered his mouth.
“I reckon you girls are from that village upriver,” he said aloud. He had noted the direction of their footprints in the snow when he was outside gathering firewood from the woodpile.
“I haven’t been up that way in years. But I reckon I know your father. I know most of the Indian men between here and the big glacier. I wonder what brings you girls downriver all by yourself during early winter.”
Millie and Maura continued eating, listening to the kind man who had offered them his hospitality and warm food. Nothing the man said made any sense to them, but Millie was certain that it was the same language the men who brought the box with legs had spoken.
After supper, the man pulled out a slender metallic device, which fit easily in the palms of his hands. He smiled and then raised it to his mouth and blew. Suddenly, the small room filled with music, startling the girls. But they quickly calmed down and listened. They liked the sounds. They giggled at the funny expressions on the man’s face, his cheeks puffing out and in as he breathed into his hands.
When it was time for bed, the man took the bedrolls from Maura’s pack and unrolled them on the floor. He patted the floor and made a gesture to mean sleeping. The girls understood. Besides, it was late, and they were tired from walking since first light. Before crawling into their blankets, Millie and Maura stepped outside to relieve themselves in the outhouse. They gave Blue and Tundra each a small bowl of beans and meat, which the dogs ate quickly, licking the bowls clean.