SNOWFALL

by Mitchell Smith

  It was so quiet, Sam could hear one of the Olsens, probably Tom, whispering to himself, praying.

  Sam found himself getting sleepy from the cold and the wound in his leg. The blood was frozen in the moccasin now; it felt like snow when he wiggled his toes. Looking out, it seemed to him the pattern of the forest had changed a little, a shadow had shifted in the darkness. There was one more—or one less—black tree trunk out there; he was sure of it. What he was seeing now, wasn't what he had been seeing.

  He rose, bent his bow—the yew creaking in the cold—and shot at what was different.

  A man yelped like a hurt dog, and what might have been a tree trunk rolled away, thrashing, then slowly settled... and after a while lay still.

  When the Cree began shooting at them again, they shot carefully, aiming to skim just over the Trappers' fallen trees. Soon, Sam and the Olsens had to lie flat behind the logs, and couldn't raise up for even a quick shot back.

  The moon was rising now, and the woods, which had been so dark, began to be lit here and there by slender beams of moonlight filtering through spruce boughs. The snowy forest floor glowed pale silver.

  Jim reached out to touch Sam's foot, and whispered to him, "They're going to come in on us pretty soon."

  Sam could see Olsen's teeth shine in the moonlight.

  "—We should run out of here right now. Some of us would make it...."

  Jim looked at Sam expectantly, as if Sam was going to say, "Yes. Let's do that, and see how far I get with this hurt leg, how long it takes these Crees to catch me and cut my throat."

  Sam didn't say it. He lay looking at Jim until Olsen turned away. Son-of-a-bitch wants to get those skinny hands on Susan... wants to be head hunter, too. Sam reached for his knife where it stuck up from the log, and worked the blade free. He was sorry he'd thought about Susan; that made the whole thing worse.

  It had gotten colder; Sam had to put his fur mittens on. Tom Olsen tried to raise up, find a target—and one of the Crees put an arrow through the top of his right ear. Tom lay down fast, with his hand on the side of his head, and said, "You motherfucker!" which was something no one said, because of Lord Jesus' mother.... Then the Trappers lay still, huddled with William's body between the fallen trees. They couldn't even look over the top of the logs, the moonlight now made them such fine targets.

  They lay quiet, their long knives in their hands, and waited for the tribesmen to make up their minds.

  Sam wondered if the Crees might just stay back and let them freeze to death. It would be smart of them to make a fire back in the woods, then take turns watching while we freeze. I hope they're not that patient. I hope they come soon, so I can still move and kill one.

  He felt sorry even for Jim, now. And his leg was hurting so much he began to weep. The tears froze on his face. Snot ran out of his nose, and that froze, too. He wiped his nose with his parka sleeve, shifted his knife to his right hand, and took a better grip on it.

  One of the tribesmen screamed in the forest. Then another man called out, yelled something. Suddenly, men were running through the trees.

  The Trappers struggled up, long knives ready.

  Goodbye, Susan. My little sweetheart.. ..

  Another Cree howled, and the tribesmen came rushing, their moon-shadows shuttling among the trees as they leaped and dodged past the Trappers and off through the forest, brushing aside thick branches, their moccasins thudding in the snow as they went.

  Crouched gripping their knives, their mouths open in astonishment, Sam and the Olsens watched the Cree run past them and away. . . . Then, the tribesmen were gone, and the forest silent as if they'd never been.

  "What happened?" Jim's bony face looked like a skull in the moonlight.

  "I don't know." Sam tried to stand up straight. His leg was very bad. I'm going to have to ask Jim Olsen to help me. That's what this has come to.

  "Why did they run away?" Tom still held his knife, ready to fight.

  "What about William?" Jim said.

  It seemed to Sam the Olsens were full of questions. "We take him."

  "Take him?" Tom said. "Carry a dead man, when the Crees could come back on us? We're damn near dead, ourselves."

  "We take William with us!" Sam took a step and stumbled. Couldn't help it.

  A voice sounded from the forest. "Sam ... you're getting old."

  I have been consulted on the potatoes. Notion apparently being that a physician should be able to heal a tub nearly frozen, so the buds were burned. My advice was to take a strap to Lucinda Sorbane, who is old enough to tend a fire.

  Speaking of Sorbanes, Peter has coughed too long. Doctor Monroe was always worried about tuberculosis. Mountain Jesus and Weather help me, if that has come to the Range.

  Treatment is rest. Rest and exposure to dry, cold air— the last no problem for us. In Warm-times, there was medicine for some strains of this so-tiny bacteria. Apparently not medicine for all strains. ...

  It occurs to me the copybooks do us few favors. They give us our language, our phrases, and old information— at the price of reminding us what we have lost.

  The Salesmen also remind us of what we have lost, with their history tales, and lying travel tales of discovered Warm-time treasure, and monsters made in pregnant woman.

  Peter Sorbane, that clever man, has been coughing too long-----

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF DOCTOR CATANIA OLSEN

  CHAPTER 2

  A tall man walked out of the trees into a shaft of moonlight, and stood leaning on a lance, looking at them. He had a longbow over his shoulder. A quiver and rawhide-web snowshoes were strapped to his back.

  He wore hide trousers and boots and a thick fur parka of silver fox. The hood was up, shadowing his face.—Sam noted the silver fox. There was no mottle to the pelts; this man had come from the east.

  "How do you know my name?"

  The tall man threw back the hood of his parka. He had a short black beard down a lank-jawed face and a long straight nose above a flowing mustache. Deep-set eyes were shadowed in the moonlight.

  "What, Sam," he said, "—no welcome for your little brother?"

  "... Jack?" Sam had to clear his throat. "Jack, you son-of-a-bitch!" He felt Jim Olsen stiffen beside him.

  "Jack Monroe," Jim said.

  "That's right," the tall man said. "And you'd be which Olsen? Jim?"

  "Yes. Did you drive those tribesmen off?"

  "I killed a couple. Guess they thought your right-hand party had come up on them."

  "Well, then," Tom said, "Let's get out of here!"

  Jack Monroe walked over and took Sam's arm to help him across the log. "You men bring that boy along. Looks like a Weber. William?"

  Chapman Olsen started to say something, but Jim shook his head, and motioned to him to take William's legs.

  The boy had frozen stiff and was hard to carry. When they were out of the forest at the edge of the mountain's valley, the Olsens put him down, and Jim sat on the corpse and pulled the head up until the body bent in the middle. Then, one man could carry it easily, and Tom picked it up and lugged it across his shoulder as the Trappers worked their way west through the valley's deep drifts.

  Sam's leg gave him more and more trouble. Shouldn't have left our snowshoes behind on the sleds, just because we were going to be hunting high. First mistake....

  They traveled in a line, Chapman coming last, carrying William's bow, quiver, and knife as well as his own. Chapman looked back to the forest from time to time, to see if Cree might be chasing. Moonlight sparkled on the snowfields behind them, but no one followed from the forest.

  Jack was half-lifting Sam along, and pacing fast. Even stronger than he used to be—and he has his damn snow-webs. Sam's leg didn't hurt anymore, but it weighed on him like a piece of frozen wood. He dragged it through the snow, leaning on his brother.

  "You rendezvous at Hot Spring?"

  "Same as always, Jack." Sam could hear the others laboring along behind them, kicking through the soft snow in mo
onlight. ... William lost—and all that good meat left behind. For certain, those Cree sons-of-bitches wouldn't have run too scared to pick that up.

  To the east, the moon—a sliced moon—was still high above Mount Geary's shoulder. Sam could see his breath and Jack's mingle before their faces in a small cloud of frost. When the moon set, it would be full dark, the darkness before dawn when only owls sailed silent above the snow. The Crees might follow, then.

  It was going to be no pleasure to tell Helen Weber that her brother William was dead with an arrow in his back. She'd know who to blame, and she'd be right.

  The leg no longer hurt, but after they stopped for a moment so Jim could take the boy's body from Tom, Sam had trouble getting back into his stride.

  "Want me to carry you?"

  Sam didn't have to look to see Jack smiling. "Kiss my ass," he said—a useful copybook phrase. It always reminded Sam that Warm-time people had been no different from people now. Only luckier....

  Jack moved fast, and Sam managed, and the Olsens kept behind them, silent. Once, Chapman started to run up to the front, take a turn breaking trail, but Jim stopped him and motioned him back.

  Though nothing had been said, Sam knew what had happened behind him. He'd heard Chapman stomp off their trail, come up ... then stop and step back into place.

  Jim Olsen ... The look on his face when he saw it was Jack come out of those woods. After six years thrown out, here comes my brother Jack Monroe back again, and saves our bacon. Something I've never had. Pig's bacon. Supposed to be salty and fat. Wild boar bacon's not the same....

  They reached Hot Spring at moonset. Jack left them without a word, and went up to see if Cree might be waiting. After a while, he came back. The Spring was all right.

  They built a little damp-wood fire by the water, and huddled round it. The Spring flowed from under a rock shelf, and its hot water steamed and smoked in the night air.... The water here was no good to drink; it gave the trots. But it was wonderful to lie down in naked, so hot and soothing.

  Sam, nursing his bad leg by the fire, wished he could do that— get out of his dirty furs and go and lie in the hot water. The water would ease him, take the cold from his leg, then take the pain. He imagined living the rest of his life in the Spring, swimming in steaming warm water though the years, even when winter blizzards came screaming off the Wall.

  Jack had taken a stick of jerky from his parka, and sat cross-legged, chewing on it, looking into the fire. The three Olsens didn't say anything, though they glanced at him from time to time.

  Sam sat with his bad leg stuck straight out. The wound was thawing in the fire's heat, and hurting more. Look at those Olsens. Jim doesn't know whether to shit or go blind—another fine copybook saying. But only the Weather knows what the Olsens and Auerbachs are going to do about this. It was Auerbach Olsen that Jack killed, after all.

  Sam moved his leg away from the fire. It felt better frozen. What a fight that was. Never saw a fight like that in my life. Old Auer was tough as a white bear, but not tough enough that morning by Butternut Creek.

  After a while, then a while longer, the stars faded over both mountains and the eastern sky began to turn blue. Jack Monroe and the Olsens had stayed awake, but Sam had gotten sleepy, and nodded, sitting back from the fire. He jerked awake once, when a branch cracked in the flames, then drifted off into a dream of remembering.

  Jack Monroe was one of the best hunters on the Mountain Range. Not as good at trapping, true—he hadn't the patience for it. But he was a very good hunter, very strong, and a really fine bowman, probably the best archer in the six families.

  The Monroes had been the second family on the Range. First the Richardsons had come, then the Monroes ... and afterwards, Olsens, Sorbanes, Weber-Edwards, and the Auerbachs.

  There had been, over the years, good and bad blood between the families, depending on marriages, hunting luck, where trap lines were placed, and whether the caribou herds came down early or late. Even so, they never fought, not family against family. They'd voted a law against that kind of fighting, and against duels. Later each family voted against any kind of killing, even inside the family. They felt this was proper as a rule of the Mountain Jesus, and sensible for people who needed every bow alive and healthy for trapping and the hunt.

  When this law was broken—and it was, sometimes—the man who won the fight was sent away, and never came back to the mountains.

  One had tried to come back, thirty-two years ago. A boy named Michael Sorbane had killed a Richardson and run away. Two years later, this Sorbane had come back to the Range. . . . The Richardsons had wanted to kill him, and to prevent that, his own family had had to do it His uncles had killed him with their lances.

  That was the way the rule worked on murders and killing fights in the Mountain Range. And that was the way it had worked when Jack Monroe beat the brains out of Auerbach Olsen at Butternut Creek.

  Sam had been there—and now dreamed it very clearly, so he saw that sunny afternoon again. In the July thaw, six years ago, a number of people had been at the creek, cleaning hides. The women scraped the skins as thoroughly as they could, then put them in the creek to soften and let the minnows clean away the tiny scraps their knives had missed.

  Naomi Sorbane had been working there. She was Auerbach Olsen's second wife. His first, Sally Weber, had been killed by a black bear two years before.—Auerbach hadn't cared much for Sally Weber, but he loved Naomi. She was a skinny red-headed girl, what the men called a laughing fucker. She had liked to make love to many men, until she was married. Then Naomi had settled down and behaved very properly until Jack Monroe came after her. Jack was known on the Range for being a good lover, and Naomi started to have fun all over again.

  Sam and Charlie Weber had been sitting under a tree, fletching arrows—anyway, Charlie Weber had been fletching. He was a wonder at it, stripping the long gray flight feathers, notching the arrow shaft, then fitting the feather vanes in with a line of hot glue dipped from a little trade-pot of boiling turpentine and caribou hoof.

  Sam and Charlie Weber had been sitting there, talking, when Auerbach Olsen came walking up the other side of the creek. They saw him stop and say something to Naomi, who was bent over, working on a hide. Naomi said something back-—and the next thing anyone knew, Auerbach was beating her, hitting Naomi with his bow-stave and kicking her, too, as if he wanted to kill her.

  It happened so fast that nobody moved for a moment, then two women ran at Auerbach to make him stop. But he was a big man, and strong, and threw the women back.

  Sam, Charlie, and another man, Allen Richardson, had all started across the creek when Jack came out of the tanning hut and saw what was happening to Naomi.

  ... Sam dreamed he saw Jack's face clearly, as it had been that sunny afternoon. Charlie and Allen Richardson had seen his face then, too, and stood still while Jack ran along the creek bank and went for Auerbach Olsen.

  It was a terrible fight. Jack knocked Auerbach down and twisted the longbow away from him. But Auerbach drew his knife and got right up again. Sam was across the creek by then. He tried to come between them, and Auerbach cut him hard on the arm. After that, he and the other men stayed out of it. Two women took Naomi away; others kept the children back as Jack and Auerbach fought along the shallow side of the creek, Jack with the bow-stave, Auerbach with his double-edged knife.

  He cut Jack right away, first on the hand, then low on his left leg. Auerbach was a big man, almost as tall as Jack, and heavier, but he was quick as a boy ... at least at first.

  Then Jack began to hit him with the bow. Ducking away from the knife, he stepped in and swung the bow-stave at Auerbach's legs, trying to break the big man's knees. He did this twice. Then Auerbach sliced down Jack's left side, but he was limping, and couldn't quite reach to kill him.

  Both men stood back from each other for a moment, catching their breath. Jack's blood was spattered on the creek bank's pebbles.—Catania, who had just become the Doctor, called to them
to stop fighting, but they paid no attention to her.

  When they started again, Auerbach crouched low and went straight at Jack like a bull elk, to knock him down and under the knife. But instead of striking at his knees, Jack thrust his bowstave into the big man's face, and the pointed tip struck him in the eye.

  Auerbach's eye was knocked out of his head, and hung bleeding from a knotted red cord. He shouted at the pain, stumbled—and Jack raised the bow-stave high in both hands, then swung it down with all his might.

  Everyone heard Auerbach's head break; it was a bad sound. ... Sam dreamed harness-bells were jingling as he and the others stood watching Auerbach Olsen die. Then he woke, and still heard the bells ringing softly on the cold morning air.

  The sun had risen. The old snow on the meadow below Hot Spring had softened, then frozen again. The morning sun shone off the ice so brightly that Sam had to put on his slit-goggles to watch the sleds come in.

  The right-hand hunters were trotting beside their three sleds. Each long sled was made of flexible lengths of spruce bound with fire-shrunk rawhide. The runners were railed with ribbons of thin beaten steel, and the sleds slid over the snow smoothly as sticks floated down an early August river.

  There had been six men in the right-hand hunt, led by young Torrey Monroe—and there were six men still.

  Sam got to his feet by the fire, leaned on his bow-stave to ease his leg, and watched them come in. Two sleds were loaded with meat. Three bucks, at least. And all I brought back was a dead man.

  Torrey Monroe called and waved to them up at the Spring. Two of the men with him were Richardsons, Don and Tall-David. Nathan Sorbane was with him, and two Olsens: Bobby Olsen and Dummy, his son.

  The six men were laughing as they braked the sleds, cursing the dogs to a stop. There were seven dogs to a team, lively dogs now, full of caribou guts. They were big solid animals, half wolf, savage, and very strong. Many had the round blue eyes and thick black-and-white coats of Sorbane breeding. Those were the best dogs in the mountains.

  Torrey and his men climbed up to the Spring, still laughing. They came to the fire, and saw Jack Monroe sitting across from Jim and the other Olsens, saw William's body laid out on the snow by the smoking water. Then they were quiet.