SNOWFALL

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SNOWFALL Page 5

by Mitchell Smith


  The white fat edging the meat slowly began to broil and sputter, and a faint drift of smoke carried the smell of steak cooking. The sun had set, and the night came down as Jack and Torrey sat watching the fat begin to char, the meat turn a rich brown, running juices.

  Torrey leaned forward, speared each steak with his knife, and turned its other side to the fire. "That was the best shot I ever saw."

  "Luck."

  "No, it wasn't."

  ... When the meat was done, each man pulled up a cooking stick—the steak still hanging from it—and began to eat, holding the scorched stick with one hand, biting into the meat, then slicing the mouthful free with a casual pass of their knives.

  After a few mouthfuls, Torrey got up and went to the sled, dug into his possibles-sack, and came back with a small rough chunk of salt. He and Jack scraped some of it onto their steaks, then Torrey put the salt away. That piece was almost big enough for strangers to kill each other for. Salesmen said it was an old saying: Kill a stranger for salt, a friend for steel, a brother for paper.

  Salesmen claimed that some of them, traveling alone with salt to sell, had been murdered down in Map-Arizona—which was very bad, since no Salesman would go that way again, except with others, and for triple prices.

  ... They finished the steaks, and Jack thrust his knife into the snow to clean the meat juice off the blade—then picked up his bow, and got up to go into the woods to shit.... Afterward, he took a wide circle around the camp, then climbed a nearby hilltop and looked out over the country. It was cold for so late in the winter. His breath froze in a glittering cloud, then showered slowly down, a little snowfall.

  The moon was rising, its light glowing on the hilltops falling away to the east. Looking north between Mount Alvin and Mount Geary, Jack could just see the thin bright moonlit line of the Wall. He heard an owl call below the hill, and turned to listen. When it called again, he cupped his hand to his mouth and hooted back the same single mournful note. The owl replied, a little uncertain, and Jack called to it again—a cooing sound, low and gentle. Then he stood still, leaning on his bow-stave.

  For a little while, nothing happened. Then Jack saw a fleeting shadow come racing over the moon-bright snow. He searched the night sky between the shadow and the moon, and found the horned owl flying silent through the air, a swift, soft blur of rounded wings. At the same moment, the owl, nearly overhead, saw Jack—and in a quick tumble of feathers turned in the starry sky and flew away faster than he'd come.

  Jack went back down to the fire, smiling.

  "Was that you fooling around up there?"

  "Yes. That's a lonely owl..."

  "I couldn't tell which was which," Torrey said. "—-Sounded like a pair of lonely owls to me."

  Jack laughed, went to the sled for the parfleche of pemmican, and came to sit on his bear-skin by the fire. They ate slices of pemmican with poor-metal mugs of evergreen tea—snow-water and spruce needles Torrey heated over the fire in a' little metal trade-pot. Susan had made the pemmican with cloudberries, dried partridge breast ground fine, and trade-honey—all boiled with goose fat, then packed in a small roll of cured hide. Sam and poor dead William had decoyed the geese into nets at the melt-lakes beneath the Wall. It was a sweet pemmican, and they ate almost half of it.

  Torrey leaned forward to blow the failing flames a breath. "We've seen no Crees up on the trapline."

  "No. Wouldn't waste their time coming to look for just two men. They'll be moving in a bunch from now on, hunting for the most of us they can find."

  "And why the hell would they do that?" Torrey tossed a handful of twigs into the fire. "Why look for a fight that's going to get some of them killed?"

  "Well... because it's worth it to them."

  "What's worth it to them?"

  "This range," Jack said, and sat looking into the fire.

  Torrey didn't want to ask more questions with answers like that, but after a long silence, he couldn't help asking one more. "I suppose you saw strange things, six years gone."

  "Yes."

  "Well... what was the strangest thing?"

  Jack said nothing for a little while, apparently considering. Then he said, "Chicago City."

  "You're telling me a story," Torrey said. "—Or maybe just a lie." He put his hand on his knife in case this killer-come-back took offense.

  But Jack smiled. "It's east in Old Illinois. There's a big snow-field on the ice, far as you can see, and a frozen lake beside it. Three days travel to cross that lake, and very rough ice.—Buckskin boots on the dogs, or they'll cripple."

  "But you can see Chicago City?"

  "There are twenty, maybe twenty-five big square houses with rows of square window-doors. 'Buildings,' like in copybooks. And it's just the tops of these, sticking up out of the snow higher than Long-Ledge cliff.... There's a very big black one, sticks up even higher than the others. Men on top of that one look like chickadees in the top of a tall tree."

  Torrey was sitting with his mouth open, like a child listening to the book of Walk-on-the-Moon.

  "—The Ojibway go into those houses for steel; they climb in through the window-doors. Did when I was with them, anyway." Jack drank some tea. "They find good knife-makings, broadhead makings, down inside those houses—those buildings. And they climb to the roofs; I saw some of them up there on the black one, waving their arms. They said that one went down under the ice forever; there were square holes inside that you could drop a rock into, and never hear it land."

  "Damn...." Torrey shook his head. "So everything is true. The copybooks are true."

  "Seems they are."

  "And you're not lying?"

  "I'm not lying."

  Torrey sat staring into the dying fire for a while. Then he looked up at Jack with a sad smile. "I'd say the people who used to live in a place like that, they wouldn't think much of us, would they? Running around after caribou, and trapping things." He took the trade-pot off the coals. "I guess we've come a long way down."

  "I suppose we have."

  Torrey poured himself a little more evergreen tea, and sipped until it was gone. Then he stood, shook the snow from his caribou hide, wrapped himself in it, and lay down.

  Jack sat a while, watching the last coals burning... then smothered the fire with snow, and lay down in his bear-skin to sleep.

  "God bless," Torrey said.

  "God bless."

  . .. That night, Jack dreamed of Neesilak and their boy. He dreamed the baby was learning to walk, staggering back and forth between them, his black eyes wide with surprise at this thing he was doing. And Jack and Neesi looked at each other over the little boy, and laughed.

  The dream was so good that it remembered Neesi even better than Jack did. He had forgotten how the fine strands of her long black hair, a true red-blood's hair, would sometimes blow across her mouth when she laughed, so she had to spit them out with little puh-puh sounds.

  Something woke him: the owl, calling over the hill.

  He lay quiet and closed his eyes, hoping the dream would come back, but it didn't. Instead, he dreamed an old dream of his, one he knew very well. He knew it was a dream, even in the dream.

  It was the snow-tiger killing his father.

  Jack stood high on the hillside beside Sam, and they looked down the steep slope as the tiger, huge and bright-striped, with a ruff of white around its throat, came bounding over the frozen stream-bed toward their father.

  In the dream, Jack thought what he'd thought when it happened. I'm going to see my father die.

  He saw, far down the slope, Web Monroe draw and shoot, draw and shoot. Jack knew each arrow struck the tiger, but didn't look to see. He only watched his father; to see as much of him as he could.... Web Monroe dropped his bow, took his lance from where he'd propped it in the snow, and leveled it at the tiger as it came.

  Even from the hill, Jack could see his father's face clearly: it looked stern and impatient, as if he'd had to wait too long for the tiger. Then, all striped in bla
ck and gold, the beast leaped upon the lance and man like a living fire.

  Jack had no dreams after that. Or if he had, he'd forgotten them by morning.

  Drunk all day. Perhaps with happiness; perhaps not. I'm afraid of the Crees. They are men, and they are here, not just foolish tales of mind-magic and monsters more than a thousand Warm-time miles away.

  Drank vodka, played the harp from our best copybook of songs. Is middle C really the note of a well-strung bow? I believe a Warm-time pitch pipe would be worth all we have.

  Ruined one panel of a copy because I was drunk. Martha will be very angry. Ink no help—spruce tar and trade-graphite. It stinks. Copy was of copybook Buck-the-Dog Calls Wild. Read to pieces.

  Lanced a boil—usual good job. Hot pack for drainage, etc. Fundamentally, I am a boil doctor. I am comfortable with boils, vodka or not.

  Jack's still out on the mountain.

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF DOCTOR CATANIA OLSEN

  CHAPTER 4

  Late in the morning, with a ringing shake of harness bells, Three-balls led his tired team across Eight-log Bridge into Long Ledge. Torrey Monroe was at the sled's handles. Jack trotted alongside the load of blood-stiff furs, frozen meat, and jingling traps and chains.

  A patrol of Trappers, Richardsons and Webers, had met them a distance out and passed them through, with some hard looks at Jack Monroe. The patrol had already taken a Cree scout, a white-blood, blond and green-eyed. They'd caught him at dawn, tied him to a tree, and put their knives to him for information—and for William Weber's murder.

  When Jack and Torrey went by, the tribesman was drifting and dreaming at the tree, singing his death song. He was naked and bright with blood. There was blood in the snow all around him.

  Ned and Alice Richardson led that patrol. They were older people—almost forty—and remembered Jack very well. Ned had given him a hard look, but Alice a soft one; she had taught him loving matters when he was a boy, before she married Ned.

  Phil Weber, cleaning his knife from the Cree, had given Jack only a nod. Phil was a good fisherman. When he and Jack were boys, they'd gone for spotted trout and char in the melt waters churning along the foot of the Wall.

  ... Coming into Long Ledge, Torrey drove the team past potato-tubs and smoke racks to the dog-lines. Home was full of busy people. Trappers were in from their hunting, from picking up their traps. Now, at their houses, they were packing sleds with supplies, polishing runners, mending harness, and sharpening lance-tips, arrow-heads, and knives.

  Others gathered in groups, leaning on their lance-staffs and talking. All the men were armed. Most of the young women were armed as well, and the older boys.

  Little girls were going from sled to sled, taking the clusters of bells from dog harnesses and putting them in small soft leather bags for safe-keeping. Silence over the snow, seemed the rule for war.

  People called to Torrey as he went by. No one called to Jack. They glanced at him, then looked away, except for the children, who stared.

  At dog-lines, Jack and Torrey unloaded the sled, staked the dogs out, set melt-water down in big wooden bowls, and fed them. Then, shouldering the elk meat, the skins, and traps, they walked down the Gully's bank to Sam's house... left the goods beside the door, stooped, and went inside.

  The house was crowded with men talking and drinking vodka. They turned to look as Jack and Torrey came in. There were women, too—Catania Olsen, and Joan Richardson, Martha Sorbane, and Susan Monroe. Martha stared at Jack in an unfriendly way. She was related to Auerbachs.

  Sam was sitting by the cold fireplace with his leg up on a stool. The room was hot, packed with so many people that no fire was needed. He waved Jack and Torrey over, and they wove through the crowd; the Trappers there were all elected people—lead hunters, most of them, or craftsmen—the important people from each family.

  "Listen," Sam spoke quietly to Jack. "I talked with Ned Richardson and Peter Auerbach and some others last night. Two things are agreed: you stay a few days while this Cree thing is settled. No family man will kill you, those few days.—But then you go, and never come to the Range again."

  Jack said nothing. He sat cross-legged by Sam's stool, and Susan brought him and Torrey slices of cold venison and little leather cups of vodka.

  "... It was the best I could do, Jack."

  Jack drank some vodka, reached up and patted Sam's hand.

  "Damn you," Sam said. "Well, maybe we could pay the Auerbachs. And if the Monroes begged forgiveness...."

  "I'm not begging forgiveness," Torrey said, and cut another piece of venison. "I'm not the one killed a Trapper."

  Jack finished his vodka. "So, you're going to fight these Crees?"

  "Hell, yes," Sam said. "What else is there to do?"

  "Run."

  Two Sorbanes, nearby, heard Jack say that, and one of them, Rodney Sorbane, spoke up. "Did you say we should run out of here?"

  "That's right."

  "Personally, I have nothing against you," Rod Sorbane said, though he looked angry just the same. "But when a man says something stupid at a time like this, I wonder why he says it. Is he a coward ... or what is he?" Sam and Torrey, who were sitting to either side of Jack, shifted away in case there was trouble. But Jack just chewed a bite of venison and swallowed it before he spoke.

  "I'd guess the scouts are saying these tribesmen came down with their women and kids."

  "Yes. So what?"

  "And how many fighting men?"

  "... A few hundred."

  "At least four to five hundred," said a man standing in the back. It was the tattooed Boxcar-man, Newton.

  "All right," Jack said, and he set his venison aside and stood up. "We have several hundred Cree come down from the ice with their families. Several hundred—and I'd say likely more. And they have attacked our people, which they never did before. No tribesman brings his children to a fight, unless he has no choice. These people have no choice."

  "You're saying they're driven down?" Tattooed Newton had a slurred accent, a sort of slow speaking.

  "Yes."

  "And by who?"

  "Likely Piegan or Ottawas. Maybe Ojibways."

  "Ojibways live way east, up there."

  "Not any more," Jack said. "They were pushed west, themselves. Mohawks pushed them out, because New England was pushing the Mohawks."

  "And how would you know that?" Jim Olsen said. He was sitting with all the other Olsens, except Catania.

  "Because I was there."

  The Trappers sat silent, and if anyone thought Jack Monroe was lying, no one said so. They sat considering how far away that was. More than a thousand map-miles east, and onto the ice.

  "What difference does it make?" said Joan Richardson. She was a tall handsome woman with long red hair. "I don't care why those people are coming down off the Wall. We need to fight them, regardless!"

  "Maybe more than four, five hundred warriors," Jack said. "What do we have? One hundred and sixty, maybe one hundred and seventy fighters?"

  "Nearly two hundred, if you arm boys over twelve years old," Catania Olsen said. "—And the stronger women without little children."

  "Two to one against us," Jack said.

  "At least," said Tattooed Newton.

  "Then we'll just kill them all!" Joan Richardson was pale as paper. "What's the matter with you men? There are little children outside this house. Who is going to guard them against those Cree?—Men with no balls?"

  Newton laughed, and Joan turned on him. "You come outside," she said, and put her hand on her knife. "You come outside, Spotted-face, and laugh at me!"

  "Joan," Sam said, "—we don't have time for this."

  But Joan kept her hand on her knife. Tattooed Newton was smiling, watching her.

  "This is my house, Joan," Sam said. "Behave yourself or get out."

  Joan took her hand from her knife, but slowly. She seemed to dislike Tattooed Newton, and argued with him always—though some of the older women doubted the disliking.

&nbs
p; "Monroe," Rod Sorbane said to Jack, "I'd like to hear you say it—that we can't beat a pack of no-book savages, I'd like to hear you say that."

  "What I'm saying is: win or lose, it will cost you too many people killed! I'm saying you will have more people killed than this range is worth."

  "Sounds like coward's talk to me," Rod Sorbane said.

  "Mountain Jesus. ..." Tall-David Richardson was sitting with his wife. "There's nothing south but tundra prairie ... and south of that, only forest forever. If we run, where would we run to?"

  "We would run to wherever there are no five-hundred Crees," Jack said, and he walked through the crowd, and went outside.

  People were quiet after he was gone, then the tattooed man said, "He made sense."

  "Are you saying 'run,' Newton?" Martha Weber had never liked Tattooed Newton—a stranger, a roamer come from nowhere onto the Range three years ago. He had stayed and worked and kept quiet until Lucy Edwards, who had no sense at all, fell in love with him, married him, and made him by marriage a Weber-Edwards and a Trapper. "—You saying 'run'?"

  Newton considered, then in his soft slurring way, said, "Fight first. Kill some, see how it goes. If it goes well, stay. If it goes badly—run."

  And after another long while of talk and arguing and several near fights—the women particularly fierce—it was decided so.

  * * *

  Once the meeting was over, Rod Sorbane stood outside for a while talking with his cousin, Perry, then walked up the Gully to his father's house and went round back to the privy.

  He was standing in the narrow stone coop, pissing in the tanning bowl, when Jack Monroe came in behind him, struck Rod on the back of the head with his fist and knocked him to his knees. Then Monroe took him by the neck and drove his face down into the piss bowl.—And quickly as he'd done it, Jack let Rod Sorbane go, and walked out of the privy without a word.

  Rod, his face wet, the collar of his fine caribou parka soaked and stinking, started to leap after Jack, enraged.—But he had what copybooks called 'second thoughts.' He thought Jack Monroe would surely kill him. So he wiped his face and stayed in the privy while his parka dried a little, so ashamed that he wept.

 

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