" 'Some time' could mean anything," Mary said. "And 'food' could mean any amount of it."
"Two Warm-time weeks, then, and food enough so none of us stays hungry. Then food enough to travel, with none of us hungry, for another Warm-time week."
"A lot of food," Mary said.
"Food is eaten and gone," Catania said. "Knowledge rests forever." '
"You've given me a lesson of eye-pupils, Catania Scar-face— but I don't need lessons on the worth of things from you, or from anyone."
"I apologize."
Mary shifted on her cushion, raised her left haunch slightly, and farted. "And your people will accept this, and want no more? Your men will accept it?"
"I'm sure they will."
"Your Jack will accept it?"
"... Yes."
"Very well," Mary said. She spat in her palm as Salesmen did, and reached to strike Catania's outstretched hand. "It's a sealed bargain."
"It's a sealed bargain."
Mary stood up, easily for one so fat, and stretched. "Some of my people thought it would be better to kill you all. But that would have cost us fighting men."
"Well," Catania said, "—you could poison us. Isn't there foxglove in your woods? Aren't there bad mushrooms? I was told there were poison mushrooms, death-angels, in the forest."
Mary looked down at her. "I like you, Catania. Your people are lucky to have such a wise woman.... Very wise to open yourself like an interesting copybook, so I will not want to kill you and yours, even if I find a reason for it."
Catania put her plate on the floor and said nothing.
"You see this, May?" Mary One-eye said. "Our woman from the mountains, our wise Scar-face, even knows when to be silent."
Catania still said nothing.
"Now, you go," Mary said. "Carlson will take you and Nine-fingers back. Go, and be certain our bargain is your people's bargain."
Catania was starting to climb from the house, noticing that the entrance roots were trained into narrow steps leading up, when Mary called after her. "And for poisoning with death-angel mushrooms, physician—what warning? What remedy?"
Catania stepped back down. "Doctor daSilva's Primer says no bad taste, and so no warning. Treatment is only vomiting—vomiting soon." Then she turned and climbed up into cool air and sunshine.
* * *
"We're not children," Jim Olsen said. "You don't decide for us, Catania." His face was drawn; faint fire shadows ran from his eye-sockets to his mouth. The Trappers had gathered in deep shade at the freshest fire, some standing, others on sleds set around it.
"Garden Mary decides for us, while we're here," Catania said. "Carlson says he'll show us where she wants us to camp."
"And if we just keep going?" Martha Sorbane said, "—and have nothing to do with these people?"
"The bull-beef is gone; we have no food. And we're tired; we need some days of rest, and eating." Catania thought of adding that their sorrow needed a resting time as well, but decided not to. "It doesn't harm us that they copy my three books."
"We found bull-beef once," Joan Richardson said. "We can find it again, or take what we want from these people. I think they would give us food, rather than fight."
"They don't have many fighting men," Torrey said. "I think only about two, maybe three hundred."
Tattooed Newton was lying on a sled with his head in Lucy's lap. "Whichever," he said, "—more than enough to clean our clock." Certainly a Warm-time phrase, though none of the others had read it.
Jack had stood leaning on his lance, listening. "Catania says they've been watching us for days. Did any of us know it?... They're better than we are in the woods."
"So you say," said Bailey Auerbach.
"Do we have them?" Jack said. "Or do they have us?" And he walked away.—That was a thing that annoyed many of the Trappers. Jack Monroe would say something, then walk away as if all was settled. And who then could chase whining after him to disagree?
A stone's toss from the fire, Garden Carlson sat cross-legged in his green robe on gathered hemlock branches, rubbing grease into the wood of his crossbow with a little piece of bird fat. His gold bracelets caught a shaft of sunlight as he worked.
"I've made a bargain," Catania said, "—and it makes sense. These are dangerous people to disturb. So we rest two Warm-time weeks, then go."
"I'm tired of Cree people and green people," Dummy said. "I want to go home."
There was a silence. Then Bobby Olsen said, "We're going on a long hunt, Dummy. That's what we're doing."
"I want to go home and see Lala," Dummy said. That was his name for his sister, Lorraine. "And I want my puppy."
No one said anything to that.... Then Myles Weber, who'd been sitting by the fire, stood up. "Let's follow that fucking gold-bracelets over there, and camp where they say. I'm sick of talking about it."
And as if he'd heard from so far away, Garden Carlson got up, slung his crossbow, and stood waiting for them.
Mary One-eye likes me, but is afraid of Jack, so she may have him killed if I'm not careful. She and her Garden people would be happier if Jack and Newton weren't with us. Some of our other men, too. They aren't as civilized
as people who listen to a Lady…. Well, Newton may be civilized, but not in the Garden way.
I've felt hard kicks from Susan's baby—a great relief for me. Susan seemed not to care. Her mourning can't be good for the little one; it will be born sad.
Mary took me up the valley to a long house propped on tree-stumps. It's their copy-house. Only women copy, and they sit on a fine shining wooden floor. There were stacks of wonderful paper, and southern steel nibs for their pens, not goose-quills. They are making two copies of each of my medicine books, tracing the drawings through the thinnest paper I've ever seen.
Mary let me watch the work, but perhaps, once we finish our talking, she intends to keep her secrets by feeding me death-angels. It would suit her sense of humor, after my mentioning them.
Sense of humor ... sense of humor. What wonderful phrases jump out of copybooks, gifts from Warm-times.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DOCTOR CATANIA OLSEN
CHAPTER 10
Buddy Chewapa had signaled a rest, and stood to catch his breath from running.... He could have killed Edwin-Jim days ago, but he hadn't. They'd been friends since they were little boys, and Edwin would have been too great a loss. How many friends to the bone did a man make? Very few.
Still, he could have killed him, because the sinful man found hanging in the tree had cost them four days sitting and praying, waiting for a sign to go past that unlucky place and track down the last snow-devils left alive.
Edwin-Jim had found the bad thing—had smelled it stinking, and of course knew why it had been hung up to rot. He might have come and said, "Dead deer." Or "Dead Trapper dog."
Instead, he'd made a fuss, and men had gone to see. It was a twice-killed man up in a tree. Bad luck and no shit. One of the snow-devils hanging by his neck for anyone to see, with his suicide knife left stuck in his heart to pin his ghost to him, so it couldn't get away.
Edwin-Jim had come and told; the men had gone to see. Then all of them camped on the trail and wouldn't move until good luck came along. . . . Buddy had thought of ordering them to go on, then decided not to try that and fail. Better to wait.
And there they'd sat for four days—talk talk talk—with the Trappers' trail so plain a child could have read it. A losers' trail with runner ruts left plain, dog shit unburied, and, the day before, a length of woven leather line dropped and left behind them.
The snow-devils were running from bad luck and dying, but bad luck and dying were chasing right behind them—or had been, until the hanging man.
Then, Buddy had understood why chiefs were so bad-tempered. It was because most men were fools, and had to be kicked in the ass or pulled by the nose to get anywhere. Realizing that, he'd taken care to have a dream of okay last night. He woke shouting that a white bear had appeared to him as he slept and wal
ked away south through the forest, looking over its shoulder to be certain he was following.
This dream, when he told it—all false and a lie—had gotten the men up and back on the snow-devils' trail. Now, Buddy knew why chiefs were bad tempered—and not to be trusted for truth.
But he had the men moving again, and was leading them fast. They would chase the battle-losers the rest of this day, and perhaps catch them the day after next.
* * *
The Trappers had been taken by Gold-bracelet men far down the creek valley to camp along the stream. They'd driven their dogs over pecky snow to the paper-making buildings, where white water fell down steep rocks under ragged crusts of ice. Then they'd been led across a log bridge and on down the valley to a slope wooded lightly with pine saplings.—They'd gone like tired children, as they were told.
"Stay in your camp," one of the Garden fighting men said, and set three other Gold-bracelets to watch them.
The dogs were fed from wooden buckets of mash the Garden people brought, then were staked in lines, and the sleds checked for cracked frames or nicked runners. The John trench was dug high on the valley's slope, away from the creek.... The Trappers settled in, ate from the baskets of vegetables and smoked birds brought to them—then, in evening dark, rolled into their furs and slept.
It was restless sleeping, still sick with bad dreams, so some sounded like sleeping dogs, whimpering as they hunted the dead through their lost mountains.
... In the morning, a Gold-bracelets walked into the camp as if it was his, and took Catania away with him to visit Mary One-eye.
"You eat eggs?" Mary said, when Catania climbed down into her house. Mary was alone, cooking in a trade-pan at the hearth.
"Yes. From ducks ... geese, when the birds fly in and stay."
Mary stirred yellow eggs in her pan. "We keep crows in cages. This is crow eggs and onion and cheese from our goats."
"It smells very good," Catania said, though it smelled odd, likely from the cheese.
"You are the worst liar." Mary lifted the pan away from the fire. "What haven't you had?"
"Cheese." . "Never?"
"Never. But I've read about it many times."
"Sit down ... sit down." Mary bent her head to smell the eggs. "Wonderful. There is no civilization without cheese."
"I'm sure it's going to be very good."
Mary held the pan back over the fire. "Tell me, tall person: don't you people lie?"
"Of course we lie."
"About what?"
"About hunting... and about love."
"That's all?" Mary left the pan over the fire a little longer, then took it away. "We're ready to eat."
"What else is there to lie about?"
Mary stared at her, then used a big carved spoon to serve the eggs onto two wooden plates. "Eat every bit of this. It's good for you." She gave Catania a smaller spoon to eat with, then came and sat on a cushion beside her.
"... Well?"
"They're ... they're very good. Salty."
"That's the cheese. Never put salt in cooking eggs, Catania; it makes them tough. Well, is it good?"
"It is good, very good. I taste the cheese; it makes my mouth feel funny."
"You don't have to finish it—I'll let you not finish it just this one time."
"No ... no, it's good."
"Sure ? If you don't want it, don't eat it. My husband will eat it."
"No, I do want it. It's salty, like char eggs, but it's good."
"All right. Did you have southern pepper?"
"On the Range? No, we couldn't afford pepper. It's like tobacco, it's so expensive."
"Well, there's pepper in those eggs."
"Pepper in here?" Catania took a considering bite.
"The tiny black things are pepper." Mary was eating fast.
"That's what's harsh?"
"That's it."
"This is what the chefs did with Warm-time food, isn't it? Complicated things all made together."
"Chefs did that, Catania, yes—and cooks did simpler."
"Well, this is very good."
"I suppose I am a chef," Mary said. She finished her eggs, and sat back on her cushion with a sigh.
Catania hurried to eat the last bites. She liked the taste of pepper better than the taste of cheese.
"Give me your plate." Mary stood, took them to the hearth, and licked them clean. "I'm going to show you how we make paper.... Well, I'll show you some of how we make paper."
"I'd like to see it," Catania said. "The eggs were very good— and now I can say I've eaten cheese from goats' milk."
Mary looked at her. "Yes, you can," she said.
... When they went down the valley toward the growling noise, Catania first walked beside Mary, but the fat woman put out her arm and gently pushed her back a step, so then Catania went a little behind.
As they passed Garden people, the men and women stopped whatever they were doing, and bowed. Showing respect to Mary, it seemed to Catania—or perhaps they were afraid of her.
They walked down paths along the creek to the big houses— the buildings—just past the bridge across the water. The growling noise was loud enough there to make the ground tremble a little. Catania had a sudden imagining of a great bear chained inside one of the buildings, and that Mary was leading her there to be killed and eaten by it.
It was such a well-pictured thought that Catania sniffed the air for a bear's rank scent, but smelled only a strong glue-pot odor.
As they came to the first building, which was as high as three men standing on each other's shoulders, Catania saw it was very old. All three buildings looked old. They were made of wide fir planks adzed roughly even, then pegged together as a Range smokehouse was built, though they were so much bigger. But old, and slowly rotting over the waterfall's foaming current.
Their roofs were covered with dark narrow boards overlapping, that might be copybook 'shingles,' — could very well be shingles— and along the edge of the roofs were large figures carved to look like vegetables, with peoples' heads growing from them. All these heads had their mouths open, as if they were singing. The carvings were very fine, though the wood was splitting from age and weather.
The building smelled of glue and spoiling wood. Mary pushed at planks; they squawked and swung aside and she walked into the building... I am walking through a door, Catania said to herself, following, and was surprised how much sense a door made if you had no thick hides to hang. She stepped onto a trembling plank floor and into the sound of deep growling, and water rushing underneath.
It was dark inside the building; there was only a small fire burning in a stone pit. The Garden people being cautious of fire, apparently, in such an old wooden place.
Catania saw something very big moving in fire-lit darkness. She ducked away, drawing her knife.
"No, no," Mary said, laughing—and Catania saw, after a moment, it was a great shadowed boulder of rough granite-stone, turning and turning in the wall of the building.
"It's a wheel!" And it was a wheel right out of copybook drawings, but gigantic, and turning with a big age-blackened log through its middle to hold it up. And as the stone wheel turned, it ground and ground at another big log—a new white log with its bark gone—that lay slanted down a shelf of thick timber, so its end rested against the turning stone that chewed at it, slowly eating it up. That eating made the growling that shook the building.
There was a pit beneath the turning stone ... and the wheel was spitting out shreds and chips and crumbs of wood down into it, everything it chewed from the end of the white log.
"That's first-pulp!" Mary had to shout over the wheel's growling. "It goes into the pit, and we take it out and grind it under a smaller wheel in the next building. Grind it finer—that's second-pulp. Then we soak it in hot water!"
The sound was hurting Catania's ears. She started to cover them with her hands, found she was still holding her knife, and sheathed it…. She watched, saw what was happening—and sud
denly realized what must be causing it. "The water falling down is making the wheel go around!"
Mary nodded, smiling…. Garden people, all of them men,
came out of the darkness and went under the wheel to the pit. They moved strangely, in a line, all stepping together—right foot, left foot—as if they were dancing. Some ducked side by side under the wheel, down into the pit, then began handing up wooden buckets filled with the shreds of log, the little, bits and pieces and crumbs. Buckets of first-pulp.
Those waiting took the buckets and walked away all together in a line, high-stepping as if to music. Then the ones in the pit climbed out side by side, and danced away into darkness where the firelight didn't reach.
"Come look at the wooden wheels!" Mary beckoned Catania to follow her. She went close beside the great wheel, then down narrow wooden steps that shook and trembled.
The stair descended through the building's floor... and out into air and sunlight and misting water almost under the great wheel—the rough stone close enough to reach up to touch. The noise was very loud, and Catania put her hands over her ears, ducking low. It seemed to her there could be a bad accident if anyone was caught by the wheel. She imagined blood coming down into the pit, so that first-pulp became red pulp.
Here, huge square beams went this way and that way over the rushing water, supporting smooth round logs stuck through big wooden wheels beneath the turning stone. Each of these wheels was a different size and had pegs sticking out of its edge—pegs thicker than a man's leg.... Catania saw that the pegs of each wheel fitted into the pegs of the one below, so they all turned together, some faster, some slower.
She looked down through noise and water spray, and saw that the lowest wooden wheel was the biggest. It stood on its edge and stuck into the falls. The edge had wide wooden feet like a duck's all around it, and the wheel turned and turned in the foaming water so it made Catania dizzy to watch it.
"Called 'gears'!" Mary had to nearly shout, since all the wooden wheels screamed and groaned as if they were hurting as they turned.
Garden men had come down here, also, and were dancing their work as they did above. They carried little wooden buckets and dipped fat from them—fat from the goats, Catania supposed. They dipped the fat all together to the rumble and squeal of the wheel-gears, then poured it into where the wheels were turning.
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