... When the meeting people had left Sam's house—Joan Richardson and Jim Olsen the last to go, reluctant, unsatisfied— Susan and Catania unwrapped the bandage on Sam's leg, and Catania squeezed the arrow wound gently, until a little pus ran out. Then she bent, smelled the pus, and pressed the wound again, so Sam winced at the pain. When no more pus came out, Catania washed the wound with vodka, and bandaged it with cloth hot and steaming from Susan's trade-kettle.
"It's good enough to fight on," Sam said.
"It will do for standing with a bow," Catania said. "—Not for fighting with knife or lance."
"... All right."
Susan sat on the bed, held her swollen belly, and said, "Sam ... oh, Sam."
"Little Mouse," Sam said, and hugged her. "—Nothing is going to happen to me. I'm too old and ugly to die."
"You are not," Susan said. "You are not…."
Catania took her medicine pack, and left. She walked down the field along the Gully's bank and heard troubled voices as she passed the houses. Women's voices, high and thready with uncertainty. Men's lower, attempting comfort. Catania felt the gifts of medicine, the accomplishments of it, shrinking as she walked— as if, merciless, Lady Weather leaned over the Range, bringing a storm that had no treatment, no preventitive.
... In the evening, the third relief of scouts went out from Long Ledge and swept in widening spirals through snowy woods and fields, then the rises and foothills of the mountains. A left-hand party led by Michael Auerbach found a Trapper named Bert Weber-Edwards—who had been with the second relief of scouts— shot with arrows and scalped. The left-hand tracked two Crees from that place, caught them near High Hill, and cut their throats.
With the scouts out, and evening light faded to full dark, every man fit to fight—and thirty-three of the strongest women—left Long Ledge. Except for Catania, Joan Richardson, and Lucy Edwards, who were nearly thirty, the women were all young. Some had lost babies; some had no children yet; and others loved to hunt and wanted to fight the tribesmen. Joan Richardson's boy, Del, went with them, though he was only fourteen, and perhaps too young.
The Trapper army numbered one hundred and ninety-three. With only Sam Monroe riding, they ran beside thirty gliding sleds and muzzled dogs, silent as owls flying over the bone-white snow. Only the stars were out, so no shadows ran before.
Behind them, they left the older women, and those with babies, or pregnant. They left the children, and sick, and the few elderly.—These all climbed the cliff's steep and narrow track up to the long ledge with the valuables of their households—copybooks, tools, salt, and furs. All the women carried lances. Most slung bows as well, and double quivers fat with arrows, while others carried babies on their backs.... The young boys and girls led the little children.
When these people had filed up the path to the ledge, and stored their goods in the shallow caves where Auerbachs lived, there was no one left below. The Gully's houses were all empty and dark.. .. They posted sentries at the ledge. The moon had risen then, and the lance-heads shone in its light.
* * *
The second relief of scouts had found nearly three-hundred Cree camped along the Hollow, where Butternut Creek came down from the hills and out into the snowfields and stands of birch. The second relief had found them; the third's left-hand had confirmed they were settled for the night. All these tribesmen were warriors. No women, no children were with them.
The Trappers raced toward the hills, a long cold run, and now by moonlight. The sled runners hissed over a glittering sand of snow as they ran.
Michael Auerbach was waiting where the birches began. His parka was stiff and black with blood. He waved the sleds down to slow sliding, the trappers to an easy trot, and led them away through the trees. Past bare birches—and north, distant between Mount Alvin and Mount Geary—the Trappers could see the Wall shining, sparkling in moonlight, a great band of jewelry let down from heaven to mark the limit of the Range.
Sam Monroe had gotten off his sled to trot with the others, limping badly, but keeping up. Catania stayed beside him, and took his arm when he stumbled.
The Trappers filtered through the trees, and the moon threw their black shadows before them, shuttling and shifting as they came on.
At the edge of the Hollow, a Cree guard—who had been sitting against an icy birch—stood up stiffly and wrapped his marten robe closer around him. It was a robe of thirty-six skins, beautifully tanned and sewn. The tribesman, a young blue-eyed white-blood, not much more than a boy, yawned and stood leaning on the tree. Two fires still glowed along the creek bed. The others were dark, men asleep around their ashes.
There was a sudden sharp whacking sound as a long arrow hit the young man's head, went through and nailed it to the birch's trunk. He sagged, fastened and dying.
Now, the frozen woods around him were alive with running men and women. A tall girl paused to lance the boy as she went by, and the Trappers rushed out and struck the Cree camp.
There were almost three-hundred warriors there, wrapped sleeping in their furs. They slept—since they were not blessed and costumed for battle-—only as men and not as spirit animals of their clans.
The tribesmen were all awake before the Trappers reached them, but 'awake' is not up and out of the robes and ready for battle. Forty or fifty men lying near the woods were lanced before they could fight.
Then the bitter air was full of arrows. The light, owl-feathered Indian shafts flicked almost silent. The Trapper longbows sent their arrows humming.
The Trappers had come in three columns—one straight into the camp, one up along the creek bed, and one through the woods to the tribesmen's flank. Caught between, the Crees were slowly driven together, so they fought at last crowded in a bunch. Their numbers made a massed target of moonlit men cursing, shouting challenges, and singing their death songs as the blizzard of Trapper arrows—each bound to strike a man—came whistling in.
Even then, so many and so brave, the tribesmen might have done better, but those men lost tangled in their furs at the fight's beginning could not be made up, and their names, called out as the Cree fell, did not bring them by magic back to battle.
Still, it was savage fighting. The Trapper columns had charged in deep, and some were too close for bow and arrow. Here and there, they and the tribesmen came together with knives, lances, and hatchets.—The frightened died when they flinched or tried to turn away. The brave stabbed and slashed through their enemies to turn and charge again.
Sam stayed out of it, afraid he would stumble, and some Trapper die to save him. He limped here and there, and shot the Crees he could mark for certain in such swift shouting confusion. He saw Catania fighting with her knife, saw tall Joan Richardson, her red hair floating black in moonlight, kill a man with her lance. That man died in dumb-show, his cry lost in the shouts and screams of others ... dull sounds of savage blows, and the bright chime of steel on steel.
A little later Sam saw his brother for a moment in the sudden moon-shadows of the battle. Jack was wading through the fighting as if it were a winter storm, and no tribesman stood long against him.
... In this last of the battle, Ned Richardson was killed, and Alice, too, as she stood over his body. Toby Edwards, Gale Sorbane, Ted Monroe, and many others died. Sam heard the Cree singing their death songs together. Beautiful singing, though they still fought hard. A war leader stood in front of them, shouting in book-English for one of the Trappers to come against him. He was a tough-looking old man—a true red-blood—wearing a bear-claw necklace, with a broken feather in his hair.
Some of the Trappers, angry at the friends they'd lost, drew their bows to shoot him down, but Torrey Monroe waved them back. He took a running jump at the old man, struggled in a glitter of knives ... tripped him, then stabbed him to death. When they saw that, the Crees rushed at Torrey, and the Trappers had to shoot fast to save him. Jack Monroe and Tattooed Newton ran in then, and together killed two more tribesmen, one after the other.
Tor
rey walked from the fight laughing as if he was drunk. The little finger of his left hand had been cut off, but he seemed not to mind it.
The few Cree left threw down their weapons, and refused more hopeless fighting. It seemed they thought it undignified. They stood staring at the Trappers with contempt, and turned to slap their buttocks at them, laughing among themselves.
Each stood still then to keep his honor, and sang his song until his throat was cut.
... After the battle, some of the Trappers were sick, and walked into the woods to vomit. Catania went to work on the wounded men and women, binding and bandaging, giving them trade-drugs, flower-juice drugs of various sorts, and water and honey—except for people wounded in the belly. Those, if their guts were torn, she rolled gently onto their sides, prayed for them, then thrust a mercy-needle up into the base of their brains.
Trappers walking among the tribesmen dead didn't approve when Tattooed Newton butchered one of the Crees, and cut a piece of celebration meat. Though, after a moment, he threw the meat down and walked away.
The Trappers let it pass, but it seemed to them that Newton had picked up bad habits, where he came from.
Big fight. Forty-three men and nine women killed. Twenty-seven seriously injured.
We won.
Lost Ned and Alice. Morgan Weber and Phil Weber. Three Sorbane brothers. . .. Tom Monroe, and many others. The Auerbachs and Richardsons have lost the most.
Brady Auerbach has a compound spiral fracture of the right femur. I don't know what to do with it.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DOCTOR CATANIA OLSEN
CHAPTER 5
The dawn came soon after the fighting was over, as if it had been frightened to come before.
By its light, the Trappers saw the Hollow—smelling like a privy—was puddled with freezing blood. They counted the Cree dead, so many scattered, so many more in heaps where they'd stood together at the last. And the Trappers saw their own. Fifty-two dead in the fighting; eight more given peace by Catania, or sure soon to die.
Sixty dead; another nineteen badly injured.
That left one-hundred and fourteen fit to fight.
Sam was sitting on a dead tribesman, resting his leg while he and Jack talked, their breath smoking in frosty morning light.. .. Torrey Monroe joined them; he looked sick. Catania had put a fire-heated Cree knife blade to the stub of his lost little finger, and the pain—the first he'd felt since the fight began—had been surprising. "Well," he said, "—what do you think?"
"I think we lost too many," Jack said. "And we'll lose too many more, fighting this way."
Jim Olsen came over. He had dried blood down the right side of his head, where one of the Cree had hit him with a hatchet. "And what other way is there, Monroe?"
"To hunt them," Jack said. "—Not fight battles with them." His parka's sleeves were sliced, his forearms cut where knives had reached him.
"But we have women and children," Sam said. "We have homes. We're not free to scatter and hunt these tribesmen, wear them down in a year or two—"
"Might not work, anyway," Jack said. "There are a lot of them."
"Less than there were," Jim Olsen said. "Good many less."
"Less of us, too." The stub of Torrey's finger hurt as if the hot steel was still smoking against it. He was sure it hadn't hurt at all until Catania did that. Doctors.
Jim Olsen gave Jack a hard look. "You've brought us wonderful luck," he said, turned and walked away.
The Trappers put their wounded in the sleds, then prayed for their dead and raised them into the birches, tying them to branches there. It was not what should be done, not visiting time on High Hill, but it was the best for now.
Bobby and Dummy Olsen sat by a fresh-made fire, fixing recovered arrows that had been damaged striking bone. They straightened the long shafts across their knees, rolling and bending them .. . then dampened the bloody fletching with snow and spit, combing out the flight feathers with their fingers. They checked that each broadhead or pile-point was still firmly set, and put each restored arrow in a bundle with its fellows: Richardsons fletching edged blue; Olsen-Monroes, yellow; Weber-Edwards, green; Sorbanes, red; and Auerbachs, black.
Nathan Sorbane and Don Richardson walked over to Sam, Jim Olsen following them, and Don said, "We think it's important to keep after them, but there are men worried about leaving their families too long." Don Richardson was a hard man, but now he had no brother, and tears had frozen on his cheeks.
"Then let's swing back home," Sam said. "But swing wide, north to Hot Spring, so we can strike them if we find them on the way."
"That would make sense," Jack said. His hands were black with freezing blood, his and other men's. "—Make sense if we knew how many there are. But together, we can hold Long Ledge no matter what, so I say get home right now, do our patrolling from there."
"Who said you have a say?" Jim Olsen said.
"That's enough." Sam got off his dead tribesman and stood with a grunt of pain. "We can send a strong scout to the Ridge to check the east country. If they see trouble they can't handle, they can run south to us, cut our trail at the Spring.... At least we'll have a better idea what we're up against."
"All right," Don Richardson said. "But the doctor wants the wounded sent home—wants to go with them."
"Send them home," Nathan Sorbane said. "But keep Catania. If we fight again, we'll need her."
"Sam," Jack said, "—listen to me. We should get back to the Ledge now. Don't waste time circling up to the Spring."
"Why don't you go back with the wounded, Monroe?" Nathan Sorbane was pale as paper. Since the fight, he'd had a bad pain in his chest, where a Cree must have struck him. "We don't need you."
"Nathan," Don Richardson said. "Michael Auerbach's dead."
"I didn't know that. I thought he was—I thought I just saw him."
"He's dead—arrow through his throat. So you'll have to take the scout out to the Ridge. Strong scout, thirty or forty people. You can catch up to us past the Spring, the long way home."
When this scouting party was called for, many Trappers were too tired from fighting, or had had enough fighting for a while. Others, who were stronger or still angry, gathered to go north to the glacier ridge with Nathan Sorbane.
Jack, Tattooed Newton, and Torrey Monroe came—and Lucy Edwards, Newton's wife. Jim Olsen also, with Tom, Chapman, Bobby, and Dummy. There were several Auerbachs, Joan Richardson, and her boy, Del.—Catania came also, complaining about leaving the wounded.
Almost thirty other men and women gathered with them by the sleds. They were all weary, some had been hurt, but it seemed to them there was no resting yet.
Torrey's sore finger-stub gave him trouble harnessing his team. Three-balls had found a dead Cree's arm, wanted to take it with him, and had to be kicked to good conduct.
While the dogs were being harnessed, Nathan Sorbane walked the line to be certain none were too tired to haul, and no Trapper too badly hurt to run.... Then he went back to the lead, and whistled them out. The Hollow's snow, streaked and crusted with frozen blood, stuck and peeled where the sled runners passed, as the strong scout of eight sleds slid away in morning light.
Sam stood leaning on his bow-stave and watched the sleds track north.... Jack didn't look back.
* * *
Just after noon, Nathan slowed them in fields bordering a stand of hemlock. He was an older man, and though very strong, couldn't catch his breath for the pain in his chest. The Trappers and their teams were all weary, the dogs drooling through silencing muzzles as they hauled along.
Nathan called a halt, and the Trappers stood in bright sunlight blazing off the snow, while Jack Monroe and Chapman Olsen worked out to the left and right for any trail or trace.
The others stood watching them, resting from so long a run from dawn to the fat of the day. They had found no sign of the Cree. A wolf-pack—the lead bitch, a big male, and two bachelors—had followed the sleds for a while, trotting two bow-shots back in bright sunshi
ne, then had veered away into evergreens.
Jack, searching far out on the field, paused to look again, then started back. But Chapman, down at the wood's edge, was kneeling, and did not get up.
When they reached him, the Trappers saw he knelt in a confusion of sled ruts and moccasin tracks. Hundreds of snow-marks led along the forest, going east.
Nathan pulled off a mitten, bent, and picked up a dog turd. "Frozen." He washed his hand in snow.
Jack came over to them, paced through the trackway. "Two ... three hundred," he said. "Anyone see a man's moccasins here?"
Chapman Olsen shook his head. "No men."
"Then we have their women and children," Joan Richardson said. "We can run them down."
Torrey looked at the tracks. "Kill them?"
"What else?" Joan said, and plucked her bow-string so it sang.
"Question is," Jack looked back to the west, "—where are the rest of their fighting men?"
"Running out." Harold Auerbach was seventeen. "Running out, if there's any left."
"Running up our asses is more like it," Jack said. "I've known other tribesmen to do this. They send their woman and kids in a big circle, away from the fighting. They go, turn in a few days, and swing back."
"These won't be coming back," Joan Richardson said. "Let their men fuck trees from now on, to get babies."
Chapman, who was tall and thin, drew up one leg and leaned on his lance to rest. "Didn't these women care we might search them out—and no warriors with them?"
"I'd say those men in the Hollow were their back-trail guard," Jack said. "If they were still alive, they'd be coming up behind us now."
"I doubt that," Nathan Sorbane said. "Near three-hundred men to spare for a back-trail guard? I don't believe that for a minute."
"Depends how many they have, all told," Jack said. "We need to forget about these people"—He kicked at the moccasin tracks. "—And get home."
"You don't order this scout," Joan Richardson said. "Nathan, do we go after them?"
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