All will shine in silver under the moon.
So play thy praises, you morning birds,
Of apricot suns and breezy apple days,
And leave to our poets' painting words,
The evening's fine dusk and cool array.
As the owl has a richer note than any lark,
So may our dying be but rising up, at dark.
This poem was called 'An Ode to Evening.' It was written by Sir Thomas Terhune, who lived from 1627 Warm-time, to a date I cannot recall... as I cannot recall the copiers' names. Soon, all names, all passages will be forgotten. As we will be forgotten.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DOCTOR CATANIA OLSEN
CHAPTER 6
They ran south with Penny Weber dead on Torrey's sled. Some tribesman, come to the fight too late, had seen them passing and tried a lofting shot
Jack rode the back of that sled for a while, until he could take deep breaths. Then he stepped off, and soon was running at the front, leading even Torrey and Jim Olsen. He ran as if he had as much to run to, as away from.
The Trappers and their dogs fled through the night at first in clear starlight. When a late-winter storm came following from the mountains, its shrouding fine snow hardly slowed them, since it was the memory of their dead they ran from, as well as the Crees.
Behind them—when they finally staggered to rest, and rest the dogs—they could hear the Wall growling under the storm. Through the long last of the night, they heard great ice-towers falling away, so the air trembled like a beaten drum-head.
... In clear morning, they shook snow off a dwarf evergreen that stood alone in the prairie by a little frozen creek, then chopped it down and made a fire.
"South?" Torrey said, as if they hadn't already been going south. He was standing by the fire with his mittened hands held out to it.
No one answered him, since there was no other way to go where there would not be Cree, soon enough.
They stood by the fire, and chewed jerky as if there had been no battle, no loss. As if they were only traveling on a hunting trip, and had nothing so new or important to consider that talk was necessary.
Joan Richardson, Lucy Edwards, and Catania took Penny Weber down to the creek, stomped on the ice to crack it... then took off Penny's clothes, put her in the water, and washed her clean of blood and the shit that had come out when she died.
They cleaned her, and let her rest there for a while.. . . When they took Penny out, the water froze and glazed on her in the wind, and she could stand up straight in the deep snow, armored in ice. Then they brought more water up from the creek in the dogs' leather water-buckets, and poured that over the body until it shone, sheathed and glittering in the morning sunshine. So, though she would not stand her winter watch on High Hill—as Trappers always had before their families took them for burial— her eyes were open, looking north to the mountains.
Catania whispered, in Penny's ear, a message to take to the others. Then she said the Lord's Prayer aloud.
When she was finished, Jack said, "Time to go," kicked the dogs up, and ran them out at an easy trot as the Trappers fell in beside their sleds. No one else said anything—as if, it seemed to Catania, what was not spoken of, could not be.
* * *
On the Gully field at Long Ledge, the night's storm over, a hundred bonfires roared. The tribesmen were burning the Trapper dead. It was a great celebration—the sending of any revengeful spirits up to the sun to be calmed and given other hunting country.
In wolf robes and bear robes, in fox masks and masks of wolverines, the Cree danced the hopping dance that other tribes made fun of. They ate the Trappers' food—meat, onions, and potatoes— while they waited for scouts to bring their women and children back to them from the glacier.
It was no light matter to seize new country. No light matter to have to name these new everythings—mountains and creeks and springs and caves—name each thing, and be certain the names were lucky.
Seven war chiefs had gathered around the smallest fire to begin naming. This fire was a cleansing fire, and burned copybooks only. This being done not from notions of prideful ignorance, since none of the chiefs were fools, but rather to insure that the tribe dealt with what was real and present, instead of matters only recalled or imagined, however interesting, useful, or amusing they might once have been.
There was an old saying: 'Proof of the pudding'—though there was some question what a pudding had been. But 'proof of the pudding'; these copybook people had lost their lives and their home. And the Cree had taken both.
The youngest chief—Richard Much—was the fiercest chief, and he was demanding a judgment while he stirred the fire with a stick. A shaman's son, Buddy Chewapa, only one-quarter red-blood, had performed a bad act, so bad it might rot the tribe's winning. He had killed a blind girl, simply because she'd fought and cut him with a knife—and so might have ruined the sight of things-to-come for everyone.
Buddy Chewapa's father was an important shaman, though he sent no curses, so the other chiefs might have let that go.—Not Richard Much. He had once asked Buddy's father to send curses to his brother-in-law, and Buddy's father had refused. Richard Much took any refusal as spit in his face, and never forgot it.
"He must be sent." Much poked the fire up to snarling. Leaves of paper curled and crisped and sailed up into the air in the smoke. "Look at this. There's a ton of this ancient crap."
"She cut him. Maybe she was asking to be killed." Bill Chase had been an important man once, but Chief Chase was getting
"You saying you'll read the future for us, Billy? Now that this has happened? Blind girl murdered?"
"I didn't say that."
"Damn right you didn't. And nobody else is going to, either." Much bent close to stir the fire like a man teasing a tough dog, daring it to snap. "Buddy Chewapa has to get our looking-luck back. A few of those people ran—so let him go after them, and bring us their ears, and forgiveness."
The other chiefs were older men, and more reasonable. But they were tired from the fighting, had lost friends... and three of them were frightened of Richard Much.
* * *
At the second halt, at noon, the Trappers' dogs lay down in snow to sleep and couldn't be roused.
Men and women, still silent, wrapped themselves in furs and lay down beside their teams. Only Jack and Tattooed Newton stayed awake to back-trail a while, to be sure of no close pursuit.... When they returned, in late afternoon, they woke Torrey and Ben Weber to watch, then lay down to sleep—Newton with his wife, Lucy, Jack with Catania.
When Jack woke, it was night, and snowing white feathers by moonlight. He lay still, listening to Catania breathe beside him.
He'd been dreaming of the blond woman he'd let fall at Long Ledge cliff. In the dream, she fell and fell. . . but still stayed near him, just below, then slowly reached out and touched his foot. Jack lay warm in furs, the snowfall stroking his face, and wondered if he'd been right to let the woman go, even though dead. It was a question, duty to the dead. His ribs still ached from the rope.
He raised a little on his elbow, and saw the sleeping dogs and Trappers mounded by snow, white under moonlight, and still. Susan lay under snow and furs on Torrey's sled, and a man with a lance was standing beyond.... One of the Auerbachs, watching.
In soft late-winter snowfall, the Trappers slept as still as the dead. Some would be dreaming, Jack thought, dreaming of their wives and children, their lovers and friends. These dreamers would have the* worst awakenings.
Catania murmured, and Jack threw back his furs and stood up. It was a failing snow, and wouldn't hinder them. He walked out to the Auerbach on guard.
"I'll stand for you," Jack said. "You go back and get them up. We need to be travelling."
"There's no fucking hurry now," Bailey Auerbach said. The snow was caked silver in his eyebrows and beard. "People need the sleep."
"They can sleep later," Jack said. "Go get them up, but quietly."
Bailey stood looki
ng at him. He was yellow-haired, a big, heavy-boned man, like most Auerbachs. He was thinking whether to do what Jack told him to.
"Go on," Jack said. "Do it."
Bailey considered, then nodded and lumbered away. The snowfall was so light, now it was barely a fall. By dawn, it would be clear and colder for fast traveling. Fast traveling for them ... fast traveling for others.
Though told to be quiet, some Trappers woke weeping, calling out. A girl sobbed as she remembered. Many wandered the camp like children, clutching fur robes, seeking comfort.
A man named George Edwards sat with his head in his hands, and wouldn't stand up. His wife and three children had been killed at Long Ledge. Although Torrey Monroe and others grew impatient with him, since everyone had lost those they loved, George paid no attention.
"Put him on a sled," Tattooed Newton said, and other Edwards picked George up as if he was wounded, and put him on Ben Richardson's sled.
When Jack came back to the camp, he said, "We move," and most of those who had the strength to argue with him, chose not to.
But Catania argued. She ran up beside Jack as he led out Torrey's yawning dogs. "Why push them so? They're very tired."
Jack turned and gave her a look she'd never seen from him, impatient, and cold. She thought at first he wouldn't answer, but he did. "For two reasons. To sweat out sadness—and to stay ahead of the Crees."
Catania considered the medicine of sweat, and saw its value. "I see. But the tribesmen aren't coming after us."
"Maybe not, unless a thinking-ahead chief finds a reason to send after us, kill us all."
"But why?" Catania saw that Jack's ribs still troubled him. He was not running as smoothly; there was the slightest hitch to his stride.
Jack clicked his tongue at Three-balls, who kept turning in harness to bite a slacking bitch behind him. "Why? So his grandchildren can sleep at Long Ledge, and not dream our grandchildren are coming back." Running, he reached down and took Three-balls by the scruff of his neck. "Don't you turn again," Jack said. "—You understand?"
Three-balls looked grim, but kept hauling and didn't turn again.
Catania asked no more questions. She kept up with Jack for awhile, helping break trail for the runners behind them, then dropped back to be with Susan. Susan, riding Torrey's sled, had said nothing to anyone since Jack had brought her up the cliff. And said nothing when Catania trotted alongside, worried about the baby, only a few weeks to due.
They ran the night out—moving swiftly, but stumbling often, they were so weary. They ran the night out, and into the day, farther south than even hunting scouts had traveled. There was game; they saw elk herding into a shallow draw off to the east. A herd worth following, if they'd had the wish and days to do it—and a home to bring the meat to.
But they hunted no elk, chased no foxes for the fun of it, had no traps to set along the rare creek beds. The dogs hauled, and the Trappers ran stiff as celebration stilters ... until they had to walk awhile before they ran again. The snow prairie lay almost flat as far as they could see, and empty now but for the shadows of hawks' wings once, as two swung over.
At evening, they cold-camped again, ate crust-ice and the last of their battle jerky, and sat silent on fur robes in the snow. George Edwards had ridden Ben Richardson's sled all day, and hadn't answered his sister, Lucy, when she'd gone to speak to him. But now, as night came on, he got up from the sled and went to Ben Richardson and apologized for adding load when Ben's team had been so tired. Then George took his lance and went out on watch.
Jack woke them before dawn—and then some men and women said no to going, wanting rest and rest for their dogs. They argued, but Jack didn't answer them. He went and whistled out Torrey's team, then ran away beside the dogs and never looked back.
"Mountain Jesus damn that son-of-a-bitch," Jim Olsen said, and was slow to roll his furs and follow—as many others were slow to follow, but followed just the same.
The day after, with many wearied to sickness, they saw the line of forest green stretching across the horizon.
I have no medicine for sorrow.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DOCTOR CATANIA OLSEN
CHAPTER 7
Buddy Chewapa's arms hurt, and hurt worse the harder he gripped the handles at the back of his father's sled. The prairie snow was smooth going. Fast going. And cut arms were a small thing when such good luck had followed bad luck.
One quarter red-blood, and born into the brown-bear clan— Buddy had cut his arms like a woman to express his surprise to everyone, his shock at such an occurrence, in no way his fault. The girl on the ledge had seemed to see him. She had struck at him with the long double-edged knife all the snow-devils carried. He had ducked away, and when she struck again, had killed her with his hatchet.
It was true he'd noticed she moved oddly the second strike— stabbed where he wasn't. He'd noticed that, but his right arm and hatchet hadn't understood it in time.
But after he killed her, he knew. And Paul and Edwin-Jim had seen it. They'd stood staring at him with their hands over their mouths, while others along the ledge were shooting up at the rising devil. "Uh-oh...." That was all Paul Kisses-the-Girls had to say. "Uh-ohhh...."
"She wasn't blind!" At once, Buddy knew it was the worst thing he could have said. How many times had his father told him? "Nothing is true and complete, until it is spoken of."
Then he'd cut his arms and sung about his bad luck, and also mentioned the Windigo as having come to cause it. But none of that helped, and he expected the chiefs would blind him as justice for bringing down such bad fortune.
Who would have supposed that such an error, such lousy luck, would have turned out so well by the chiefs' kindness—and left him a war-leader of more than fifty men following to finish the last snow-devils? The youngest war-leader since Sam Shevlin.
So, running behind his father's sled—"Take it," his father had said, "and live to bring it back."—running with seven sleds and fifty-two men, it seemed to Buddy that sore arms were a small price to pay.
* * *
The Trappers halted just short of the treeline, reluctant to leave the prairie's spacious light for such greenwood, dark even in the day.
It was no sole stand of trees. There was no end to this forest risible east or west. The crowded ranks of fir and hemlock seemed, with only the slightest dips or rises, to roll on south forever.
"If we go in there," Bailey Auerbach said, "—we'll never come out."
No one else said that was so. But no one said it wasn't. Tattooed Newton went up to Torrey's sled. "How's the finger?"
"Probably doing poorly without me," Torrey said. "What do you think of these woods?"
"Sooner we're in, sooner we're out."
"If there is an out," Torrey said. "And I've got some hungry dogs, here."
Joan Richardson heard him, and came over. "We all have hungry dogs. We should be hunting now, not still running away from nobody."
Jack had been standing looking at the forest. He walked back to them, and said, "We need to be getting on."
"What about going east for a while," Newton said, "—travel alongside those trees, but stay in the open?"
"No." Jack didn't appear to intend to say more, but the three of them stood looking at him, unsatisfied. "We need to go in now and learn its ways, not be driven in and scattered if some Cree have come after us."
"Come after us?" Torrey looked angry at Jack for saying such a thing. "They won! They killed all our people! What makes you think they'd bother coming after us?"
"Because I would," Jack said, and walked away toward the forest line.
"I'd like to know," Torrey said, "—who made Monroe lead dog out here. I sure as shit didn't mark a vote for him."
"No," Newton said, "—but I say okay," using that handy Warm-time word. "I say follow along. He makes good sense."
"Speak for yourself," Joan said to him. "You don't speak for me."
Newton smiled at her.—Likely, Torrey thought, the only smi
le from any of them for some time. But Newton had often smiled, or laughed, since he'd come to the Range. Seemed to be easily amused.
... Jack walked into the forest as if it were a wind-storm, bending into the foliage, using his bow-stave to ward off the thick, damp-needled branches. His buckskins were soon soaked, then freezing. Many of the trees—firs—were the biggest he'd seen; four men couldn't have circled the trunks with their arms. Some of the trees were even bigger than that, and more than a bowshot tall. Where those trees stood, the forest opened into aisles.
Still, there was no seeing any distance in these woods. Fighting here . . . who stays silent longest, wins. It was a thought so sad— more fighting, more Trappers dead—that it stopped Jack's walking, and he stood for a while as if sick. It seemed to him that coming from war, he'd brought war with him back to the Range.
He heard the Trappers following, managing their teams and long sleds over pine-needled snow between the tree-trunks. The going was just good enough for sleds lightly loaded with extra arrow-quivers, furs, and possibles-sacks. Only Susan Monroe was riding.
Jack heard the dogs panting as the teams moved past him. Dogs and Trappers equally weary, and hungry.
He let them all go by, watching to see they were together and no one left wandering behind—then trotted back the way they'd come. Back through the trees to more trees, and through those ... and through more, until almost by surprise he was out of the forest and into the open again, where the sun, sinking to afternoon, shone gold on white along the prairie's snow.
Jack stood and watched for a while, seeing nothing to the north but distance. He saw nothing in the true world, but saw clearly in his mind a swift black line of men and dogs sliding south over the snow. He saw them so clearly he could almost count them, almost find their faces where they'd thrown parka hoods back in the warmth of hard traveling.
So sharp was this imagining that he took off a fur mitten, bent, and put the palm of his bare hand on the crusted surface of the snow, to feel the faint vibration of men coming on.
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