SNOWFALL

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SNOWFALL Page 7

by Mitchell Smith


  "Yes," Nathan Sorbane said.

  The Trappers went on, following the trail the Cree women and children had made. The snow grew softer with sunshine, so they had to stop and strap snowshoes on. They ran, shuffling fast as they could with those, until some of the women and boys grew sick with tiredness, staggered, and dropped into the snow.

  Nathan would let no one ride a sled and burden the tired dogs. When Trappers fell, others lifted them and helped them along. One of the Webers, a handsome boy named Pat, went down and was helped up. But a little farther on, he sat down in the snow again, and wouldn't get up and run.

  Jack Monroe came back, knelt and spoke to him—but when the boy just sat and shook his head, Jack hit him in the face and broke his nose. Pat fell back in the snow ... and when he got up, bloody to his chin, Jack had already gone back to running by Torrey's sled.... Pat, no longer handsome, blood freezing to icicles down his face, drew his knife, and ran after the sleds.

  When he caught up, Jack paid no attention to the boy, didn't look at him—just kept running, running alongside Torrey's sled... . Then Pat sheathed his knife, ran beside Jack, and kept up all the rest of the day with blood frozen on his face.

  Nathan halted them in spruces when the evening light was gone. The Cree women had camped there before them; they had made twelve fires, and left a baby's bone rattle behind.

  The Trappers fed their dogs frozen caribou guts, and left them to lie in harness. Then they ate handfuls of show with pemmican, wrapped themselves in fur robes unpacked from the sleds, and lay down in the snow to sleep.

  Torrey Monroe stood first south-side guard. He drifted through the spruce, and knelt for a while to stick the stump of his little finger into the snow to cool it.

  ... At moonrise, Lucy Edwards came to relieve Torrey. And while she stood still in spruce branches—listening, watching moon-shadows—her husband, Tattooed Newton, came quietly to join her. Lucy was a slight woman. Her husband was large. They stood together, silent, in a bower of green branches.

  At the deepest dark before the dawn, Jack Monroe went from sleeper to sleeper and woke them. But when he touched Nathan Sorbane, Nathan didn't wake. He had died in the night—of a mistake in his heart, Catania said, when she examined him.

  The Trappers buried Nathan in snow; there was no time for tree-tying. Bobby and Dummy Olsen prayed the Fear-no-evil for him—then Jack Monroe led them out at a run, following the frozen trail the Cree women had left behind them.

  Late in the morning, the tracks led them up a steep climb to the glacier's ridge. The Trappers had left the sleds back on the level to rest the dogs, though Joan Richardson argued they'd need them to chase.

  "First, let's see," Jack had said. "—-Let's see what we're chasing."

  Joan, eager as a hunting dog, was first to the ridge crest and stood looking out over the great glacial valley, her long red hair blowing in the wind from the Wall.... She called no cry of chase.

  Jack and Torrey came up to her.

  As he looked, Torrey put his hand up to shade his eyes. "Jesus in the Mountains!"

  The snowfields below them fell away to the wide ice-river, the Old Man, that ran past Mount Alvin and on to the south-east. Huge crevasses broke the glacier here and there, and the ice shone like a trade-mirror in places where summer melt had frozen.

  The Cree women and children were five long bowshots below the ridge, a winding rank of buckskin brown against the brilliance of the snow. Burdened with packs, humpbacked with slung babies, their dogs—fan harnessed—hauling sled loads at an easy trot, the Cree were moving along in no great hurry. Perhaps two hundred of them—perhaps more than two hundred.

  They were crossing the glacier, moving to meet a distant band coming south. Those more women and children, since no adult forked figures could be seen, but only the tiny silhouettes of robes and buckskin skirts.

  There were seven to eight hundred Cree in that great band.

  "We can still go down and kill some," Joan said. "We can drive them like caribou."

  Tattooed Newton had come up with the others, and was standing watching the tribespeople. "But they're not caribou, and there's a good thousand all together. We're forty-odd. If we go down there, those women will be doing the killing—not us."

  "This many women come down," Jim Olsen said, looking out across the valley, "—this many women, means that many men."

  "We need to get home," Jack said.

  Joan Richardson set her lance's butt into the snow. "We're supposed to meet our people at Hot Spring."

  "Home!" And Jack was off, back down the ridge at a run.

  Joan called out, "You are not the leader here!" But Jack was gone down the slope, and the others after him.

  ... It was a long haul past the base of Mount Alvin, some men and women staggering with fatigue, so now a few had to ride the sleds for a while behind laboring dogs, before getting off to run again.

  They ran through the afternoon as if to pass their long shadows and" leave them behind. Some dogs failed, had to be taken out of harness and put on the sleds. And even those Trappers who had always treated their teams harshly, standing no nonsense, now called to them like lovers, crooned their names to urge them on as the sun lowered west to nearly touch the mountain peaks.

  ... They heard the battle before they saw it.

  As they raced south across the wooded slope above Long Ledge cliff, a sound like many people singing badly came through the sunset air, filtering like a wind through spruce and hemlock.

  Most of them had never heard a sound like it. They and their dogs cocked their heads to listen as they ran.

  But Jack and Tattooed Newton, running, glanced at each other—and Newton shouted, "Battle! ... Battle!"

  The Trappers whipped their dogs and ran like madmen beside bounding sleds, reaching to snatch bow-cases and extra quivers from the loads. They raced through the woods kicking clouds of snow, leaping over buried boulders and icy scree, until at last they broke from the trees, coursed along the rim of Long Ledge's granite cliff . . . and could see.

  Sunset light shone richly across the snowfield beneath Long Ledge, heated the colors of hide sheds and rows of houses along the Gully far below—and warmed as well the rich and various colors of the Cree warriors' furs.

  Tribesmen held the Gully and home. The Cree were costumed, pelted, and masked as their clan totems, so it seemed that huge minks, wolves, bears, and foxes ran among burning houses, while strong bands of giant wolverines guarded Eight-log Bridge.... In the wide white tundra meadows out across the Gully, hundreds of warriors were killing the men of the Six Families.

  "Our people came home too late," Newton said. The tattooed dots on his face stood out like best-ink on best-paper. "Cree got here before them."

  The scout Trappers stood high on the cliff's rim, and stared out at dying fathers and brothers and sons. Their loved ones were only distant tangled knots of gray-furred figures, standing in swirling floods of masked and costumed tribesmen.

  The Cree had crimsoned their hands and animal masks for the fight, so the last of the Trapper army seemed to the watchers to be drowning in blood rapids. And the faint uneven roar of shouting was like the sound of such a summer river.

  "Let's go! Let's go!" Del Richardson, only a boy, and other young Trappers tossed their lances and began to run along the cliff's edge toward the long forested slope down to the Gully.

  "Hold them!" Jack shouted, and the older men and women lunged to grip the young ones, and wouldn't let them go. When Del fought against her, Joan Richardson struck her son with the butt of her lance, knocking him down. The other young people were tripped, wrestled, and held, so none got free to go and die. Torrey cried out "Oh, no—oh, no!" He was staring down the sheer cliff face at the ledge that ran across it. The narrow path that led steeply from the ledge to the field and Gully below was lined with people descending. The women and children were going to join their men.

  The scout Trappers leaned over the cliff's granite rim, yelling for the wo
men to turn back. But the wind from the fields below, that had carried the sounds of battle to them, now blew their voices back into their mouths. A few of the distant figures beneath turned white faces up, but then went on along the path.

  The men with wives and daughters there raved and howled in anguish, screamed out the women's names and the names of their children ... threw rocks and pieces of ice down to get their attention. Again, some of the women looked up, and children pointed to the top of the cliff. But the women must have thought the little yelling figures, outlined in the glare of the setting sun, to be only more Cree, and turned away to file down the narrow path to Home and the field of battle.

  The struggle there was almost done. Only small whirlpools in the tide of tribesmen could be seen on the meadow snows. Only disturbances here and there on wooded rises showed where men were fighting.

  Below the cliff and its long ledge, Crees had seen the women coming down to fight rather than hold fortress the little while they could.... These bands of warriors, the totem wolverines who had been guarding Eight-log Bridge, turned and ran to meet them.

  High on the cliff, Trappers wept as they watched the women reach the Gully field and file out in a long battle line. The women, some with babies on their backs, held their bows ready to draw. On each woman's left, her oldest child stood with a lance to guard her while she shot. Younger children stood to her right, holding high the quivers of arrows.

  One of the women was singing a copybook song. The Trappers heard a little of it on the wind.

  Then the Crees came on, more and more of them running in from the meadows and across the bridge. There was a soft booming sound, and a hiss as the first flight of the women's arrows flew.

  Jack lay in the ice at the cliff edge and looked down. A few figures still wandered on the long ledge below ... then went into the Auerbach caves.

  "Ropes!" he called, and was up and running to the nearest sled, snatched the coil of leather dog-line, shook it out, whipped an end of the braided leather around his waist, and knotted it tight.

  Myles Weber saw what he intended, seized a coil of line from another sled, and reached to take the end of the first rope to knot the lengths together. Chapman Olsen brought a third length and tied it on.

  Catania called, "Jack—" but he was gone over the rim so fast that the Trappers had barely time to get their grips on the braided line, dig moccasin-boots into ice and snow to hold him.

  There were nine men on the rope holding Jack's weight... paying out line. These were lucky men; they had something to do, rather than stand at the cliff's edge and watch the women and children dying far below. They were lucky men—but still, they heard.

  Jack swung for yards back and forth through freezing air along the cliff's granite face. He fended off the rock with hands and feet as he struck it. The men above were lowering him fast—in a few seconds he was only seventy or eighty feet above the long ledge. His hands were bleeding from warding off the stone. The dog-line was thin and very strong; it cut into him as he went down, and twisted so he spun, swinging, striking the cliff. He saw gray rock and snowy meadows whirling in his sight with the shouts and screams of distant battle. The spinning made him sick, and he swallowed vomit as he went.

  The rope paid out, and out, and dropped him to the ledge with a jolt that knocked him to his knees.

  Then Jack was up, his knife in his hand in case Cree had passed the women on the path. But the long gallery was empty, cave entrances covered by hide curtains.

  The battle noise was worse. Below, women were screaming like snared rabbits. Jack looked down just once, and saw at the bottom of the path a semicircle of women still standing before the cliff face, children gathered behind them. The women seemed like tiny jointed dolls drawing toy bows, thrusting with slender lances at the warriors battering against them.

  Jack looked down that once—then ran along the ledge shouting, "Come out! Come out to me!" The rope snubbed suddenly, yanked him to a stop. The men above must have seen it; they slacked him more line so he could run farther, calling past cave mouths.

  An old woman he knew looked out from an entrance. A Weber ... what was her name? She stared at him, and he called to her. "Where are the others?"

  She shook her head and pointed to the fields below. A tall blond woman came out to stand beside her. The woman was pregnant, her belly bulging under her buckskin shirt.

  Another old woman, and Susan Monroe, walked out on the ledge. Susan looked at Jack as if she didn't know him. Her face was white as a Christmas mask, her belly swollen as the blond woman's.

  Jack heard shouting, and steel on steel sounding behind him down the ledge path. A woman called out, and was silenced. The Cree were coming up.

  An old man, and the blind girl, Sarah Richardson, came out of the cave and stood with the others. They held knives.

  When Jack stepped toward them, the rope tugging at his waist, they backed away as if he'd come to kill them, even after he sheathed his blade. He reached out and caught Susan by the wrist. When he touched her, she seemed to know him at once, and said, "Sam's dead."

  Jack picked her up, cradling her swollen belly against him, and ran back down the ledge, the braided rope whipping above him. He threw back his head, whistled a shrill hunting whistle—and the leather line snapped taut and bit into him like an animal. He was yanked up off his feet, then dropped a little.

  The blond woman came awkwardly running, hugging her belly. She said nothing, but reached up to grip his shirt as the rope bit into him again and he was rising off the stone. He had Susan in the crook of his left arm, and lifted the blond woman with his right. Lifted her up and held her to him.

  Someone was screaming down on the path. There was the sound of moccasins, running. The line seemed to be cutting Jack in half as it raised him ... raised him so he swung slowly up into the air, then higher.

  He felt the surges of effort through the line as the men above heaved and heaved again. The rope permitted no breathing. He couldn't fend off the cliff rocks as he swung and struck. The women were being hurt.

  Something silent flicked up through the air just past Jack's head. He heard it whack against the stone higher. Then another— and a shout. The Cree were on the ledge, shooting. An arrow came up and touched his shoulder before it rang on the rock and struck a spark he saw.

  There was a hissing by his head, and Jack strained his neck to look up. Small figures high above were leaning over, bending their bows, shooting down as the Cree shot up. First two and three, then a flight of Trapper arrows hummed down and passed him like sleet. They hummed... then hissed as they went by. Jack could see only their quickness, the disturbed air.

  He no longer knew that he was rising, barely knew he held the women to him with arms hardly his. The rope was what he knew. And a blizzard of arrows—silent ones coming up, sounding ones coming down—so he and the women were in a shroud of speeding steel and feathers.

  Jack looked down and saw Cree on the ledge, shooting. Saw three lying dead, bristled with arrows.

  The blond woman jolted against him, and sighed. Jack saw an arrow's owl fletching risen from her back.

  Susan began to slip. He felt her start to slip down, begged his left arm to hold her tighter, and prayed to Mountain Jesus to help him, which he hadn't done for many years. Men were calling. He wasn't sure from where. He looked down, and saw the blond woman's eyes were white, turned up into her head. She was dead.

  He tried to let her go, but his right arm was cramped, reluctant. Slowly, slowly it straightened, so she fell away looking beautiful, turning in the air.

  Jack brought that arm across to Susan, and was able to hold her tight.

  When the Trappers hauled them up over the cliff edge, they had to pull them apart, wrestling to get Susan free. Jack couldn't get his breath; the rope had cut his breath out of him. Catania saw that, pushed him down in the snow and knelt shoving and pounding at his chest and belly to drive air in and out so he could catch a short breath ... then a longer one.
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  The Trappers had picked Susan up and put her on a sled, wrapped in furs, when Del Richardson called "Cree!" and pointed down the cliff rim's wooded slope. Distant men in animal masks were coming up through the scattered hemlocks. One or two were running closer.

  The Trappers jumped to the sleds, shouted their resting dogs up, and whipped the teams to a run—sliding in swift hissing circles, undecided which way to go.

  "Where?" Jim Olsen called, "—Where?"

  "South," Jack said, up and staggering to stand at the grips of Torrey's sled. He took a breath to call it out. "South!"

  Big battle. We lost. All men dead but a few. All women dead but a few. All children dead. Only forty-three of us alive.

  Mountain Jesus—how have we deserved this?

  An arrow came after us in the strangest way, when we were running free and the Cree far behind. It flew as. if to say farewell, and struck Penny Weber in the throat.... That laughing girl strangled as I wrestled with her on Torrey's bounding sled. I went mad with people dying, and struggled with her, trying to suck the blood from her mouth so she could gain a breath.

  What doctor is a doctor, who cannot make a gift of one more breath?

  Our copybooks are gone. Our Bible, and three hundred and fifty-one others, all gone except for the medical books and journal in my pack. And how can we perfectly remember the passages of our books? We will half-remember, quote almost—tell the stories, but less and less correctly as the seasons pass, so we become slowly less civilized, forget the Warm-time world, and settle to savages.

  Before it is forgotten, here is a poem blessing darkness over light, that might have been written for us. I only remember it now, because I put it to harp music.

  On deathbed couch, all those who sigh

  As shadow comes, would, if wiser, cry

  "Alas" for all the blossoms so bright,

  But fated not ever to colour the night.

  For daylight won, means nightshade lost,

  And sunny blooms do darker petals cost.

  Yet every gaudy day must end, and soon

 

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