"Good advice I've learned late," Jack said. "And keep watch on the cavalry-men. The others can set distrust down—but you, never."
"I understand," Torrey said, and stood. "We had fair trapping, didn't we? That time on the mountain...."
"Fair trapping," Jack stood with him. "And a brave wolf."
"Take my travvy and team with you."
"No," Jack said. "You'll need them in the north."
"At least take Three-balls. He'll fight for you, and give you warnings."
"He's more likely to bite my hand off," Jack said.
But Torrey didn't smile, only shook his head and looked sad, though Jack put an arm around him, and hugged him as if they were brothers.
.... It was sun to middle-sky, and very warm, when the Trappers harnessed their teams to travvy, prepared to travel north. Jack, Catania, and Newton, carrying their packs and weapons, had come to them to say goodbye.—Now that they were parting forever, Trappers who had never been friendly to Jack and Newton became friendly, spoke kindly, and hugged them.
Dummy Olsen brought small spring beetles, black and green, as parting gifts—though from what he said, it was plain he thought they were parting only until next morning.
The women came to Catania—all except Joan Richardson—and asked her last questions about body-things that concerned them. They made soft sounds at the sleeping baby, stroking and kissing him until he woke blinking in the bright sunlight. Catania saw they wanted to take Small-Sam with them, but none asked her to let them do it. They saw no in her eyes.
When the Trappers were ready to travel, the Colonel and Minister-Charlie went to their riding-horses. The metal horn made its high hard sound, and the cavalry-men climbed onto their animals. The harsh horn called again, and all the riders, except two, turned their horses west and rode away in ranks together.
The Colonel and Minister-Charlie raised their hands in goodbye as they went past. And the two Map-Texas cavalry-men left behind, came riding over to the Trappers. Each had a long woven line tied to his riding seat, and twelve horses trailing, tied along that line.
One of the cavalry-men was very big; the other not so big.
The big man had heavy shoulders under his iron-ring shirt, blue eyes, and a long wind-burned face. There was a red birth-stain, shaped like a small hardwood leaf, at his left temple. "Who's runnin' you people?" he said.
Torrey walked up to him. "We run ourselves." "Run yourselves poorly," the big man said, and the other horse-rider laughed. "Now, we're ordered to go north with you an' these horses, an' try an' teach you somethin' better than step-pin' in dog-shit." He smiled, leaned from his riding seat, and reached down to hold-and-shake Torrey's hand. "Patterson," he said.
Torrey reached up and took the big man's hand. "Torrey Monroe."
Patterson gripped Torrey's hand, and didn't let it go. Muscles stood out down the man's long bare arm.
Torrey tried to take his hand away, then tried again, holding his face still against hurting. The big man held him a little longer, then let him go, and sat back in his riding-seat, smiling.
Jack had been walking along the travvies, saying goodbye. When he'd said goodbye to Martha Sorbane and Myles Weber, he walked over to the big cavalry-man's horse. "Jack Monroe," he said, looking up with his left eye bandaged, his right eye rimmed red. "I won't be going with you. Have lucky traveling." He held out his hand.
"Not going with us?" Patterson said. "Oh, dear." The smaller rider laughed as the big man leaned down to take Jack's hand, smiling. The muscles came up on his long arm.
For a little while, Patterson kept smiling. Then he stopped, and his face grew grim. "Let go," he said. But Jack still held his hand, looking up in a friendly way. The leaf-mark at the big man's temple turned deeper red. "Let go my hand," he said—and there was a little snapping sound, like a twig breaking. Then Jack let him go.
Trappers with lances had come to stand near them.
"Torrey," Jack said, "—people with strung bows should travel beside these two. If they draw weapons or try to ride away, kill them, take the animals, and teach yourselves horse-riding."
"We will," Torrey said.
The two cavalry-men said nothing. Patterson sat on his riding-seat holding his hurt hand with his other hand, to comfort it.
As the Trappers travvied out—the two riders and their led horses with them—Catania settled the baby on her hip, loosed the nanny's line to let it graze, and stood with Jack and Newton, watching them go.
...The riders on their tall horses could still be seen for what they were, long after the dog-teams and Trappers were only movement through high grass, and gleaming lance-heads. And though their harness-bells were gone, taken for silence in war, still they seemed to sound faintly.
"Farewell," Newton said.
Catania had read that word many times, but had never heard it used.
The baby makes do with goat's milk—but because of it, I'm washing many crapkins whenever we find water. What strange creatures women are, to find pleasure in washing crap-cloths. ...
I dream of Trappers now, more often than of the Running-dog Bus and Flying Mary. Sleeping, I see their faces more clearly, and know them better, than I saw or knew them on the Range. In only this way, losing has been gaining.
Garden May took my medicines and medicine books, and might as well, since none of them helped Jack. He cannot see with his left eye, and sees less and less with his right. Now, too late, I think I know what was in Mary's vodka. I believe it was fine powder seeds from a forest mushroom.—How like her to have used what I'd first challenged her to use against us. I'd forgotten that she did not forget.
If it was fine powder seeds that settled, and grew to spoil Jack's eyes, then only right-away rinsing might have helped him, and I did not do it.
... We three and the baby have gone the rest of the goodbye-day, then another, and now camp to sleep and let the nanny graze.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DOCTOR CATANIA OLSEN
CHAPTER 18
Jack had tried to sleep apart from her the first night traveling, also the second night. But both times, Catania took the baby and her bedding, lay down beside him, and he'd let her stay.
Under only fox fur, with the baby sleeping between them, Catania closed her eyes against starlight and moonlight to better imagine this was the way she would always lie—with Jack and Small-Sam—until the baby was grown to a boy and became restless for furs of his own.
Jack had traveled the day in front, as always, carrying his pack, his bow and quiver, his lance balanced in his hand. He'd trotted only a little more slowly than before, his head cocked for better seeing with his right eye. Newton had stayed back, as Catania had stayed back, and let Jack lead them over this country's slow rises and falls, its brown, rustling, deep winter grass, its soft feathers of spring green appearing.
Catania lay with her eyes closed, and knew how bad a person she must be, how selfish not to mind entirely that Jack was going blind and could never leave her. These were thoughts so terrible, it seemed to her that Jesus, if he heard them in the mountains, would certainly come down to punish her. But what woman would not wish, in dark secret, to have Jack Monroe for her own, with a beautiful baby sleeping between them?
Turning on her side, Catania wept quietly as she could for her lost Doctor's-honor.
.. . She woke at moonset. Jack was up out of the furs, standing with his lance in his hand. Newton, across the fire pit, stood naked, listening. His knife-blade shone in starlight.
There was no wind, but Catania heard something like soft wind combing in the grass to the west, the way they'd come.
Jack walked back-trail, and was gone in shadows. Newton stayed in camp, silent, while Catania armed herself.
There was a sudden thrashing of struggle out in the dark, then the sound of a blow struck. Catania and Newton ran that way through the grass, and were met by Jack, all silver and shadow, coming out carrying someone in his arms. He walked to the fire pit, eased the person to the ground besi
de it, and said, "Only her."
Catania struck flint and steel to start the fire burning. And the three of them, Jack's head cocked like a hunting dog's, watched as the firelight bloomed and showed them Joan Richardson lying asleep, blood at the side of her mouth.
She slept a little while longer, then woke, said, "Someone hit me," and seemed to go back to sleep again.
"She drew her knife," Jack said.
After a while, Joan opened her eyes and lay whispering to herself. When Catania knelt to her, Joan made a sound and shoved her away. Then she looked up, saw Newton, and held her arms out to him like a child.
Newton stood watching her, but didn't move.
"Do what you should do," Catania said to him—still surprised at Joan's coming, despite what she and other women had long suspected. "Newton ... Lucy's gone. And this woman has waited for you long enough."
Newton stood and said nothing for a little while. Then he said,
"Floating Jesus...." and bent to pick Joan up. She gripped him and
clung to him as he carried her past the fire to furs and set her down. She wouldn't let go ... whispered and whispered to him.
"Jack," Catania said, "—did something happen to the others?"
"I don't think so. I think she just came following Newton."
Catania could see he was trying not to laugh. "It's not funny."
"I know," Jack said. But he started to laugh, and had to put his hand over his mouth to be quiet.
"It's not funny."
"Then what is it?" Jack said, and went on acting in a very childish way.
... In the morning, except for always being beside Newton, touching him, smiling at him—though he didn't touch her, or smile—Joan became Joan again. "Any fool," she said, "—could have followed the trail you people made through this old grass. And nanny-goat shit left on the trail, too. You're careless travelers."
"The others are all right?" Catania said.
"They're all right," Joan said, and from the way she said it, Catania saw she had set the Trappers aside.
... Late in the day, Jack trotting ahead, parting the tall grass before him with his lance, they came to steeper rises. And from the highest of these, all of them but Jack could see stands of trees to the east.
"At last," Joan said. "We will be out of this trail-telling grass, that makes such poor fires."
They camped in early evening—and had made their last grass fire—when several animals came past, rooting and grunting out of sight of the camp. Jack, Newton, and Joan had picked up lances to follow, when one animal, perhaps curious, came back and stuck its head out through grass-stalks to look at them.
At first, Catania thought it was a very ugly dog—then she saw it wasn't. "It's a copybook pig!"
The others shouted and began to chase, while Catania stayed with the baby. She had a strange fear they might lose the camp in such high grass, lose the baby there and never find him again. So she stayed while the others hunted.
The little copybook pig—or something very like a copybook pig—was a fast runner. Catania could hear grunting and shouting going away as fast as sled dogs could travel. The sounds curved one distant way, then another, then circled half around the camp. When Catania stood tall and jumped a little, she could sometimes see Jack and the others running far away, before they were lost in the grass again down some slight slope.
... Near dark, when the three came back, Catania heard them laughing and knew they brought meat. The little copybook pig had been too curious.
"Peccary," Newton said, while sliced meat was cooking over twists of grass. "Not an actual pig, but almost. Actual pigs are the best animal-meat eating of all."
" 'Actual,'" Joan said. "Newton knows more Warm-time words than anyone...." And she smiled at him as she'd been smiling at him, though he didn't smile back
Late that night, almost morning, Catania heard angry whispers across the fire, then someone was hit with an open hand. There was struggling ... then silence.
Soon, there was softer, slower struggling, and Joan said, "Oh... thank you. Oh, thank you." Then Catania heard the sounds of fucking, and covered her ears to give them privacy.... Though when they were done, she heard Joan say, "My dear, I know I can never become her."
After that night, they were five friendly travelers, walking now up through low hills and hardwood. Joan argued less, and only once asked where they were going.—It was a question that hadn't occurred to Catania. She supposed she hadn't cared.
When Joan asked, Jack had answered, "Going to choose. Maybe Map-Mexico, very south—"
"I can't go down to those provinces," Newton said. "My people aren't welcome there." They were hunting in trees between two hills, all but Jack with arrows to their bowstrings, for deer. His bow rode on his shoulder as it had for many days, unstrung.
"All right," Jack said. "Then we might go very east, to Map-Tennessee. Would be long traveling, but there're supposed to be mountains. Soft mountains." He cocked his head to see Newton better. "But we have to go through Middle Kingdom to get there, and over the river."
"Jack, we can get through Kingdom," Newton said, and seemed annoyed. "There are always travelers going through."
They found no deer that day—but Joan shot one the next, a small buck in velvet. And for six days after, eating peccary-pig and venison, they went deeper into the hills and seasonable trees, so they camped with fine hardwood fires. The last of winter's snow still lay in hollows where the sun couldn't reach, but the air stayed summer warm…. They had the good dried meat to eat, and birds' eggs, and spring onions come up with the new grass. Small-Sam made faces on the nanny's teat, at the taste of wild onions from her grazing.
On the seventh day, Newton found bear-shit in the morning. "Oh, good new meat," Joan said. Jack came and they handled the scat, breaking it in their fingers.
"Fresh by half a day," Joan stood and wiped her hands on her hide trousers. "Maybe fresher."
"That's cub crap," Catania said. "—Small-Sam has made me familiar."
"Yearling cub," Newton said.
"Still, the mother will be near." Jack lifted his head, as if to smell the mother bear. It was something he did more and more. "Out of their winter den, and hungry."
"Bear meat!" Joan tossed her lance and caught it.
"They'll be moving," Jack said. "Eating spring greens already, down in this warm country." He shrugged off his pack, setting his bow and quiver beside it. "Let's climb the hill... watch for them." He walked away upslope, his lance-head dipping to touch ahead from time to time, moving brush aside that might have tripped him.
Joan and Newton dropped their packs and started up after him. Catania put her pack down, made sure the baby was tucked deep into his blanket-poozy on her hip, then tied the nanny to a bare-branch bush, and followed.
It was easy climbing up through spring grass and sapling trees. The trees already showed green buds and tiny leaves along their branches. But it seemed to Catania a fragile green and temporary, beside memories of spruce, fir, and hemlock on the Range, whose green—dark as evening—had never failed .. . whose perfume had drifted over snow and steamed from carved tea-mugs when friends gathered.
The memories struck her like a blow, so she paused to catch her breath before she climbed again. The people and places of the past seemed too much to have lost, unfairness unbearable compared to this strange horse-ride-or-walk country with its brittle trees hiding their foliage from winters. Warm country—though probably it would not have seemed warm to the Warm-time people... people only inconvenienced by Lady Weather, until the cold came and killed them.
At the crest—bare, broken gray rock—they looked out over hollows and the nearest hills.
"They'll be on slopes," Jack said. "Where the sun is striking. ..." He turned his head as if he were looking with them, as if he could see clearly out over the country. The wind was from the north, cool through the sunshine, and was pushing clouds along so their shadows drifted over the hills.
The baby woke,
making the high humming that came before his crying. Catania reached down and put the tip of her finger to his mouth. "Shhhh. ... No noise, hunting." Small-Sam hummed a while, regardless; she felt the soft vibration at her finger. And it was then, on this hill in warm country, that a page of love never copied, never read by her before, turned over. The baby had done nothing to earn it, but it was given, nevertheless. And what had been only Catania and much of Jack Monroe, was shoved over for room, and that small space taken.
They saw nothing for a while. Then Newton said, "Next hill over." He pointed with his lance—and a small brown bear, dark as tree-bark, was suddenly easy to see and surprisingly close. It was rooting in bushes across a two bow-shot hollow.
Jack looked as they were looking. "Hillside ... ?"
"Yes," Joan said. "Halfway up. A yearling cub."
"Mother'll be around the hill," Newton nocked an arrow to his bowstring. "Maybe feeding a little higher."
"We can climb and kill the cub before she comes," Joan said.
Jack started down the hill toward the hollow, going down fast into brush and through it.
"He's making noise!" Joan hissed after him, "Go slower."
"Jack...." Catania called, softly. But he paid no attention, and the three of them went after him, going quietly as they could.
It was steep down to the hollow's hardwoods, and once, when she couldn't see him, Catania heard Jack's lance shaft tap against a tree-trunk.
"He's going too fast." Joan came sliding, jumping down the slope past Catania, who was being careful because of the baby. "He's going to scare the bear away!"
Catania fell behind... and when she came out of brush into the hollow's stand of trees, the others were already through them and climbing the next hillside.
When she caught up with Joan and Newton, they were standing in knee-high grass, watching Jack above them.
"Stupid," Joan murmured. "He's going to scare that cub to running." She looked at Catania. "If he can't see to hunt anymore, then he shouldn't hunt, and cost us meat."
Catania saw Jack on the hillside above them, almost a bowshot away. He was going slowly now, carefully, to get closer to the young bear—moving a little ... then not. Stalking in a sort of swaying way, as if the wind was responsible for how he went.
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