SNOWFALL

by Mitchell Smith

  The ice was still against his hand, but in his mind the men drew nearer.

  Jack watched a while longer, then turned and trotted back into the forest, following runner tracks and paw prints as he went.

  It was still light, but darkening when he caught up to the Trappers quietly as he could—and was satisfied when Jennifer Weber's lance point came from a tree's shadow to meet him. She tilted the lance's blade away, and looked a question.

  "No one yet," Jack said, went on to stop at Ben Richardson's sled to see how Susan did.. . then trotted ahead to travel with Newton at the lead. Susan had looked up at him, but said nothing.

  They traveled through the evening, and then until dark, when men's and women's faces were pale patches moving amid the trees, the teams' gray fur like a creek barely seen, slowly flowing through the forest.

  At a clearing roofed high by great trees' foliage, Newton said, "Good a place as any." Jack agreed, and didn't argue against fires. They needed fires to take the place of food, for warming.

  Kicking through the dark, they found fallen branches and broke them, stripped old bark for punk, and scraped three fire pits into pine-needled snow. They sparked with flint and steel, and huddled round with their dogs—gaunt men and women looking into the flames as if they might see there all that had been lost.

  They made the fires, but never replenished them ... and when the fires died, the Trappers slept. They slept as still as the dead, with the great pillars of trees, black in filtering moonlight, standing close around them like huge sentinels of a silent army.

  * * *

  In the morning, Lucy Edwards found her brother, George, lying dead in his furs beside the Weber sled. He had lain on his long knife so the blade slid into his heart.

  Tired Trappers came and spit on him, and only Catania and Dummy Olsen would touch the body to drag it to a tree and hang it up by the neck. Then the Trappers broke camp, and left the sinner swinging.

  ... They ran on south. It was hard traveling for people used to open country. Deeper and deeper into the greenwood, wrestling the long sleds, kicking snarling, starving dogs around and past endless great tree-trunks, and through thick damp strands and twining hedges of holly, greenbrier, green lace, and hemlock. The snow lay thin on the ground, but the air was cache-cold, heavy, and wet. Their furs grew soaked, dripped, and weighed them down.

  The afternoon of the next day, faint sunlight sifting through the trees, Joan Richardson and her son, Del, were scouting forward, seeking the easiest way and looking for small forest birds to bring down with blunted arrows. Joan had just struggled around the trunk of a giant fir, shoving a smaller evergreen's foliage aside, when she heard a sudden loud rattling snort.— Standing a few feet away in a narrow clearing, staring at her, was a huge wild bull, shaggy, and spotted black and white. It was the biggest animal she'd ever seen.

  The bull lowered its massive head, snorted again, and hooked its black horns to the left. They were each long as a man's arm, and curved sharply to the tip. The beast's round dark eyes were on her, and green slime swung from its muzzle.

  Joan had never seen anything like it; it was large as two white bears together. It looked too big to kill with anything.

  She heard Del coming up behind her, stopped him with a hiss—and that was all it took, just that little sound. The great bull pawed the snow once, and charged.

  Joan Richardson was a fierce woman, so Del was startled to see his mother come running back around the giant tree-trunk quick as a frightened squirrel. He thought it might be Cree—then the bull came grunting past him at a gallop, brushed him with its shoulder, and knocked him away into the greenery.

  As he struggled up, he saw the huge animal lunge out of sight around the great tree—and his mother come flying out the other side, still holding her lance and running like a deer.

  The bull circled after her, bawling with rage, hooking a sheet of bark from the fir as it came. Del felt the ground shaking under his feet when he stood to drive his lance into the animal's belly as it charged past him. The bright steel struck into a moving wall of spotted black and white, and the lance was wrenched out of Del's hands, spraining his right wrist badly.

  Joan ducked around the tree-trunk again, and the bull hesitated, bawling. Del reached over his shoulder to pull his bow free, but his wrist hurt so much he dropped it. He drew his knife with his left hand, and waited for the bull to charge.

  His mother, running from around the tree, saw him standing there with only his knife. She screamed "Del!" whipped her lance level, ran at the roaring bull's shifting haunches, and struck with all her strength.

  * * *

  Ben Weber, and Bobby and Dummy Olsen, were breaking trail— kicking their way through, bending green branches down and stomping to snap them—when Dummy touched Bobby on the shoulder and stood with his head tilted, cupping his left ear, listening. They were all quiet for a moment. Then, as Ben opened his mouth to say something, they heard distant shouting—a woman—and a terrible roar, like a tiger's, but deeper.

  Ben was gray-haired, but a quick thinker. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the noise—and took off running the other way, back to get help. Bobby Olsen unslung his lance and ran toward the roaring, and Dummy drew his knife and ran after him.

  When Bobby burst through the brush, he saw the great bull whirling round and round in a little clearing of trampled greenery. He thought at first the animal must be trampling Joan and Del to death—then he saw Joan standing white-faced in among hemlock branches across the clearing. She was shooting arrows into the bull as it spun, roaring, then dashed back and forth in short, furious charges. When it turned toward her, Joan faded back into the hemlock boughs. When it turned away, she came out and shot it again.

  Bobby saw Del come running out from the left, yelling to make the bull turn from his mother.

  Bobby knew what the bull was. A salt salesman named May-hew had shown him a copybook of animals, drawn down south. This animal was a wild-cattle bull, but big. Too big to try with a lance, though he saw the Richardsons had done that. There was a length of lance shaft sticking out of the thing's haunch.

  Bobby stepped back a little and took the bow from his shoulder. He pulled a shaft from his quiver, nocked and drew it to his ear, and shot the bull through the throat. It bawled, heaved sideways toward him, and charged, staring with great bulging eyes, hooking and tossing its head.

  Del ran up beside the bull and struck it in the flank with his knife. The animal bucked and turned aside, and as it looked over its shoulder, Bobby shot it in the throat again. It shook its head, spraying a mist of blood. Joan's bow thumped across the clearing—and the bull suddenly kicked, slipped, and fell to its knees with a thud, goring and butting at the snow. Bobby shot it behind the ear. The animal groaned and toppled over on its side, kicking and pissing... and died.

  * * *

  That night, for the first time since Long Ledge, a few of the Trappers laughed—and most of the others were able to sit back against the sleds, talking and resting at ease as they watched the huge sides of beef roasting over thick fir branches in clouds of sparks.

  The dogs, fed on guts and innards, lay growling and gulping under the trees.

  None of the Trappers had ever tasted beef. It was copybook meat—and Lucy Edwards and Louise Sorbane were doing their best, cooking it. They'd hung the meat high on thick whittled stakes, away from the sputtering fir sap, and caught the running fat in wooden stew-bowls to pour down the roasting meat again. They complained of the firewood, but there was only evergreen to be had.

  When Lucy finally called the meat done, the Trappers came crowding. There'd been nothing to eat since the fighting but the last of the jerky, some little woods birds, and one rabbit boiled with spruce needles in a soup.... They hesitated on getting their shares—such thick slabs sizzling, smoking on wide wood-chunk platters, seemed too much, too lucky. They tasted, then began to eat like wolves, a few weeping at the pleasure of it.

  The beef-steaks and ribs we
re the sweetest game, aside from deep-winter partridge, any of them had eaten—except for Tattooed Newton, who had eaten beef, and other meats, before.

  Jack and Catania sat with Susan by Torrey's sled, stripping hot fat from beef-ribs with their fingers, then licking their fingers clean. Susan ate, but didn't talk.

  "Oh, my," Catania said. "Sam would have loved this so...."

  Susan stopped eating, and bowed her head.

  "—Beef. It would have been such a pleasure for him."

  Jack looked at Catania. "Talk about something else," he said. Catania smiled at Susan. "Sam always loved camp meat—even better than your good cooking, sweetheart."

  Susan threw down her beef-rib, and started to cry. She hugged herself and rocked back and forth, weeping and gasping for breath.

  Jack leaned over and hit Catania in the face with his open hand. Then he stood up and walked away. People who'd been watching, turned aside and ate their food.

  The blow had knocked Catania over, and she sat up and wiped her nose—it was bleeding. She'd held on to her piece of meat, and began to pick the snow and pine needles off it. Susan still wept beside her, and Catania whispered in her ear, "Now, little sweetheart; isn't that better? Isn't it nice to cry? Oh, poor Sam. We all miss him so. ... But you don't want his baby to be sour, do you, all sad and full of sorrow?"

  She picked up Susan's beef-rib, cleaned it, and handed it to her. "Now, blow your nose and chew this good meat as Sam would have had you chew it. Swallow this good meat as he would have had you swallow it for your baby's strength—and don't insult your husband's memory anymore."

  That night, Catania was asleep when Jack came in from back-trailing and lay down beside her. He turned her to him, and kissed her face where he'd hit her. He'd hit where she wasn't scarred. "How stupid I was," Jack said, "—to interfere with your doctor business. Forgive me." And held her until she slept again.

  * * *

  The trappers went south five days more, eating fire-dried beef. The forever forest made them nervous. The trees stood too close, allowed no brightness and distant seeing, and their green perfume grew heavy to breathe.

  "These damn woods go on too long!" Chapman Olsen was back-scouting with Tattooed Newton.

  "Keep your voice down, Chappie."

  "All right. But what do you think?"

  Newton looked at him with a show-nothing face. "I like it."

  That morning, Bailey Auerbach and Ellis Sorbane found a spring—and not too soon, the water-skins had been flat for a day and night. The spring was small, a narrow puddle beneath the trees; it took a long time to fill the skins.

  Soon, the snow became shallow and spotty, mixed with evergreen twigs and needles. The dogs hated hauling over it, the sleds always sliding off line. South, as it slowly grew warmer, the sleds would have to be re-built to travvies, and some of their load— furs, arrows, possibles, leather buckets, trade-pots, bowls, and camp kettles—back-packed for carrying.

  Vines grew here and there, twisting up different trees—leaf losers like birches, and a tree whose foliage looked torn and eaten….

  It was sometimes almost warm as three-week summer on the Range.

  The evening of the sixth day, they finished the last of the dried beef, drank spring water—dark, and tasting of tree bark and leaf-mold—and some women began to sing at the fires. This was the first singing since Long Ledge.

  Though it seemed to Jack the singing was necessary, he sent two Auerbachs, Bailey and Philip, to add to the night guard. Then he went out again himself, for a while. It was one of the reasons people did what he said—his doing more than he told others to do. That... and some were afraid of him.

  The singing evening became the best since the roasted bull. Even those Trappers still silent, smiled occasionally.... Belle Olsen, Louise Sorbane, and Sally Auerbach sang together, and Catania made harp sounds to accompany them. The women sang Trick or Treat,' which had clapping in it, and 'Pokey Style,' and 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,' which was true enough at the greenwood fires, and made people laugh.

  Then the women called for a man's song, and Lucy Edwards made her husband get up. People clapped and called "Sing... sing!" and waited to see what Newton's song would be, since he'd been a stranger from somewhere else.

  Tattooed Newton stood up in yellow firelight, big and bulky, his dark hair cut short. He stood still, didn't shift restlessly as Trappers often did when considering this or that.

  Then he cleared his throat, and began to sing a song about teeth. The words made little sense, but the tune was pretty and full of notes that ran up and down like birdsong. While he sang, Newton danced, shuffling backward, then forward. He drew his knife and juggled with it, flipping it spinning in the air over his head, then danced under to catch it by the handle without looking.

  It was nice, and different from Trapper dancing. Trappers usually leaped around to harps and drumbeats, swung each other in circles, jumped fires, and did somersaults. This was a neater kind of dancing.

  When he finished, everyone clapped—and Newton sang another song and danced while he sang it. This was a song with the words Choo-choo in it, and the dance was a strange leaning dance. He would lean one way, doing little steps, then lean the other way, and make puffing sounds.. . . After a while, he sang faster and louder, his eyes tight shut. He sang "Ghatta-choo-choo...." even when the women stopped humming with him, and Catania stopped clicking sticks to his rhythm. He sang as if he were dreaming, and it began to make people nervous.

  Lucy went over to him, and put her hand on his shoulder. Newton stopped singing right away, opened his eyes and looked down at her—a bad look, as if he didn't know her. Then he smiled, shook his head, went with her and sat down.

  Dummy got up after that, and danced his animal dances. No one else did those, except children. The children used to do those dances....

  The Trappers could call out the name of any animal, and Dummy would dance it perfectly. Nodding around a fire on all fours, his hands and feet turned in, his butt wagging from side to side, he was more a bear than a bear was. And when he danced an owl, goggling, swiveling his head, and preening under his arms, he was every owl they'd seen, perched right there.... Dummy was wonderful at that, and at singing fucking songs. When he sang one of those, everyone laughed so loud that Jack came back to camp to see what was happening.

  It was a good evening. And for the first time since they'd left the Range, the Trappers asked Catania for the "Now-I-lay-me-down," and she prayed it after the fires were out.

  We are in the dark woods.

  Continuing spruce tea—good for all.

  Women are coming to me with dreams. They dream of their dead fathers more frequently than others. What does that mean?

  The men are ashamed of losing the war. They will need new women, new families now, or there will be trouble— in spite of my Sundays.

  No one has come to me for Sunday-fucking, anyway. Their lost ones still speak to them.

  The men and women, the little children who were killed, will begin in time to fade from my memory ... as will our lost copybooks, though now I imagine each lying open before me. And I will forget the sea-ship Pequod's crew, the harpooners' wonderful names.

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF DOCTOR CATANIA OLSEN

  CHAPTER 8

  The next morning, Torrey Monroe found a naked girl singing in the forest.

  On scout, moving more cautiously since Joan Richardson met the bull, he had just ducked under thick hemlock branches when there was a high, vibrating sound, like a note on a bone flute. Torrey stopped moving, stopped breathing, to listen.

  His heart was pounding. He was startled to be so afraid, and supposed the fight with the Crees still troubled him. Taking a deep breath, he held it to listen carefully. The sound was like a child singing. Torrey took a two-handed grip on his lance, and went on through the hemlock branches.

  Ahead, hanging vines twisted up into the trees, tangling into a thick blanket of greenery. He eased his lance-head through, carefully wo
rking a passage-way. Beyond, sunlight struck down through the firs into the biggest clearing he'd seen in the forest. The light glowed over a wide snow-spotted slope where a little creek ran through into curtains of vines beyond.

  A girl was washing in the creek, not seeming to mind its chill water, bordered with ice. She was singing what sounded like a children's song, high-pitched and simple. Torrey couldn't understand the words.

  She was naked, except for a necklace of small gold nuggets strung on loops of leather cord, and was plump as a baby. She raised water in her cupped hands, splashed it under her arms and down her breasts, then bent to scoop more water up so her buttocks rounded with the motion.

  The girl's hair, gleaming light brown, was loose to her shoulders. Her skin was white as best-paper, and painted in broad stripes of green that ran across her back and belly, circled her legs in patterns the cold water did not wash away.

  There was no one else in the clearing.

  Torrey watched as she stepped up the creek bank, took a woven brown cloth from a tree branch, and dried her feet. She put on soft leather shoes, then stood in the snow to dry her body, singing her odd melody. The high walls of the clearing, draped with vines in thick folds and falls, made a huge vaulted room, all green and sunlit gold.

  The girl dried herself—gently at her breasts and privates—and that began to give Torrey a hard... until such prettiness reminded him of Charlotte Edwards. Charlotte had been a loving friend to him, and he had seen her walking the ledge path to fight the Crees. Seen her among the others, and shouted down to her... but she hadn't heard him.

  Torrey looked through the hemlock branches once more, then stepped carefully back, and left quietly the way he'd come.

  ... He found Jack Monroe heaving at a stuck sled. The dogs had pulled off-angle, wedging the sled sideways between tree-trunks. Jack listened to what Torrey had to say as they worked together.

  When the sled was free, Jack turned and whistled twice—a jay's harsh call—and the Trappers, strung out along the trail, came to them quietly.