Tisha

  It was three weary hours later that we pulled up by a small cabin buried up to the eaves. The owner had dug a path from the door and uncovered the window, but otherwise you’d have hardly known there was a cabin there at all. “You stay here,” Fred said. “I hear this man isn’t too friendly.”

  There was smoke coming from the stovepipe and a faint yellow light coming through the window. Inside, a dog growled threateningly when Fred knocked.

  “Who’s there?” a gruff voice asked.

  “Fred Purdy.”

  “I heard of you. You live up to Chicken.”

  “That’s right,” Fred said.

  “Keep on a-goin’,” the voice said. “Don’ know you an’ don’t wanna know you.”

  “I have a lady with me. We’ve been on the trail over six hours and we’d like to stop a few minutes.”

  “This ain’t a roadhouse.”

  “We don’t want any of your grub. All we want is to get warm.”

  “Build yourself a fire. Keep a-goin’, bud.”

  Fred muttered something I couldn’t hear and I said, “Fred, let’s go. We don’t have to stop here.”

  “Listen to the lady, bud,” the voice said. “She’s makin’ sense. I got a thirty-aught-six pointed at that door and it’ll blow your ass clear to White Horse you try to come in here.”

  Fred jumped away from the door fast. “Did another sled mush by here in the last few hours?” There was no answer. “Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you.”

  “Well, did it?”

  “I ain’t sayin’ it did and I ain’t sayin’ it didn’t.”

  Fred was mad. He walked back to the sled, took out his rifle and unsheathed it. Then he went over to the cabin door and threw the bolt. “Did you hear that?” he said.

  “I heard it,” the voice answered with a little less gruffness.

  “Now, you inhospitable sonofabitch,” Fred said. “I’m gonna ask you the same question again. If I don’t get an answer I’m gonna knock out every damn pane in the window. Did another sled mush by here recently?”

  “… Yeah.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Maybe three hours. Cab Jackson it was. He wanted to come in and I told’m the same as I told you.”

  “You sure it was that long?”

  There was a pause. “Three hours and fourteen minutes. I got a book here I wrote it down in. I always write it down when anybody mushes by.”

  “Thanks.” He came over to the sled. “He’d go on to the O’Shaughnessy roadhouse. Probably stay there overnight. It’s eight miles. We can build a fire and rest a while or we can push on. I’m for pushing on if you can make it.”

  “I can make it,” I said meekly. He looked so mad I’d have said I could do double cartwheels on the sled if he wanted me to. I’d never seen him like that before. In a way I kind of admired him for how tough and hard he could be, but it upset me too. Up to then I hadn’t thought about what might happen when we caught up with Cab, figuring that somehow I’d be able to reason with him and talk him into letting me have Chuck and Ethel back. But suppose I couldn’t? Cab could be pretty unpredictable. He could get mean about it and start saying some nasty things. Fred just wouldn’t stand by and let him. I began to conjure up all kinds of things happening, maybe even shooting.

  “Fred, will you promise me something?”

  “What?”

  “When we reach O’Shaughnessy’s, you’ll let me handle Cab.”

  “Promise.”

  “Cross your heart? I don’t want you getting into a fight with him.”

  He smiled. “That makes two of us.”

  Those eight miles to the roadhouse must have taken us almost four hours. Even though Cab was following the trail the freighter had broken for him coming in, and he was breaking it even more for us, it was still hard going. And I was holding us up. You needed stamina for the trail—the kind of stamina you don’t have unless you’re used to it. All I had to do was trot alongside the sled most of the time, but I was still a drag. Fred never said a word about it, never told me to move faster. He just kept going.

  The wind didn’t help any. It started coming at us right after we left the cabin and beat at us so hard for a while that we were pinching ice off our eyelashes every few minutes. Then one of the lead lines broke and we had to spell each other mending it, each of us working till our fingers were too cold, then the other taking over.

  When the O’Shaughnessy roadhouse came into view I felt I’d never seen anything so warm and inviting as the yellow lights in its windows. We pulled up to the welcome yips of dogs tied up in the barn and no sooner did we stop than a bundled up figure came out of the roadhouse door. It was Mr. O’Shaughnessy.

  “Inside with ye,” he yelled over the wind when he saw I was a girl. “Oi’ll help yer man put up the dogs.”

  I didn’t need any urging. I went to the door so sure Cab would be on the other side of it that my stomach started doing flip-flops. When I opened it the wind shoved me in and nearly tore the door out of my hand. A man who’d been sitting down jumped up and closed it behind me. The heat of the place hit me with a lovely warm sting and the quiet almost made me reel. Mr. O’Shaughnessy’s Indian wife had already pushed the table close to the oil-drum heater. She took me by the arm and led me over to it. “You sit down quick, Teacher. Get warm,” she said comfortingly, then bustled over to the stove to pour a cup of hot tea. I was surprised she remembered me. I hadn’t seen her in over five months, when I’d stopped with Chuck and Mr. Strong.

  I plopped down and looked around. There was no sign of Cab. Some blankets were strung across part of the room to shield the bunk beds and I wondered if he and the kids were behind them. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy put the cup of steaming tea down on the table and helped me off with my parka. The man cleared his throat.

  “Some night to be out on the trail,” he said to Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. He was really talking to me, but he was being courteous. When people came in off the trail they were cold and tired and you didn’t talk to them until they talked to you first. A snore came from behind the blanket.

  I kept my voice low. “Is Cab Jackson here?”

  Mrs. O’Shaughnessy shook her head. “No.”

  “You looking for him?” the man asked me. From the way he asked it I had the feeling he already knew the answer. He was tall and pale, and he wore glasses. One of the lenses was cracked and ringed with adhesive tape.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s too bad,” he said. “He’s been here and gone. Left about a half hour ago.”

  XXI

  “No, ye’ll not catch oop with that bludy rascal bafore he’s ta the Indian village,” Mr. O’Shaughnessy said in his thick accent. A friendly pixie of a man with sauerkraut eyebrows and a veined nose, he was trying to convince Fred and me it wouldn’t be any use for us to try and catch Cab. “Stay an’ have yersilves a good noight’s sleep. It’s too foine a sthring of dogs the man has. Too foine fa the loikes uv him. Not that yer own sthring ain’t a dandy,” he said quickly to Fred, “but thim a his are greased loightnin’. An’ Jaysus, man,” he exclaimed, “he’s an hour’n a half hid start on ye already!”

  Cab had stayed only long enough to warm up and eat, he’d told us after we’d changed clothes. He’d made up his mind not to stop for sleep until he reached the Indian village.

  “You’re sure that maybe he won’t stop anywhere else?” I asked him.

  “An’ where would he be stoppin’?” He seemed surprised I’d even ask such a thing. “There ain’t nahthin’ ’twixt here ’n the Injin village but one lone cabin.”

  The steak his wife had pan fried for us was thick and delicious, but I “could hardly finish half of it. Once I found out that Cab had pushed on I didn’t have much of an appetite.

  “What made him go on?” I asked. “What’s his hurry?”

  Mr. O’Shaughnessy looked over at the man with the broken glasses as if asking him, then answered the question himself. “Because he’s daft! Oi to
ld’m he wuz daft, too. It’s an outra-a-a-geous hardship for the little tykes,’ I sez to ’im. Wud he listen? He wud not. ‘Oi’ve made up me moind,’ sez he. ‘Oi has a mission Oi’m on, ‘n’ Oi shall not sleep until Oi’ve finished with it. Oi makes no stop till Oi’ve done whut Oi’ve set out ta do.’ Did he say that or shall Oi be kicked inta Hell seven toimes for loyin’?” he asked the man.

  The man nodded. He was a neighbor named Joshua Potter and he’d just dropped by for a visit. “That’s just about what he said,” he agreed.

  “Oi’m sorry, lass,” Mr. O’Shaughnessy said to me.

  Mrs. O’Shaughnessy came over to the table. “You not eat,” she said.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  The man sleeping in the bunk started snoring again and kept it up until Mr. O’Shaughnessy went behind the blanket and poked him. He hadn’t waked up the whole time we were there.

  I looked over at Fred. There were dark circles under his eyes. He’d hardly spoken a word since we’d come in. “Suppose we went over The Drop,” he asked Mr. O’Shaughnessy. “You think we’d have a chance of catching him then?”

  “The Dhrop?” He crooked his head and made a grudging sound. “It’s a bad toime for takin’ that trail. Bad indeed.”

  “It would save us two hours.”

  Mr. O’Shaughnessy looked at the other man. “Phwat do you think, Josh?”

  “You might catch him,” he said to Fred, “if your sled holds together.”

  “You have some chain I can borrow?” Fred asked.

  “All ye need,” Mr. O’Shaughnessy said.

  Fred glanced at me. He was tired. We both were. He looked away quickly. “If you’ll tell me where it is I’ll go get it,” he said, standing.

  “I’ll go with ye.”

  Fred collected his clothes. As he was about to go out, I said, “Hey, you’re forgetting something.”

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “My duds,” I said, getting up. I’d used the term to make him smile and he did.

  “Oh. Yeah …”

  I collected my own clothes and gave them to him.

  “What’s The Drop?” I asked Josh after they went out.

  “Ptarmigan Drop. A pass. Bad one.” He raised one hand and held it flat. Then he tilted it steeply. “Drops like this,” he said. “This time of year it’s half ice.”

  I thought about Chuck and Ethel. “Is there any chance Cab would take it?”

  “Probably would if he weren’t carrying whiskey.”

  “How about children?”

  “Be glad he’s got the whiskey,” he said.

  I heard the dogs yipping as Fred and Mr. O’Shaughnessy led them out of the barn. I sat back and closed my eyes, enjoying the last few moments of warmth and thinking how nice it would be to sleep before going out again. It was almost two in the morning and we’d been on trail for over eight hours. Suddenly I thought of something that made my eyes pop right open—the way Fred had almost walked out with my clothes. I was up like a shot.

  I slipped and almost fell before my moccasins held onto the caked-down snow. The dogs were all harnessed and Fred was bending down in front of the sled. He was checking the spring fastening that held the main tow-line to be sure it was holding. It had given us trouble. As soon as I reached the sled I knew I had been right in coming out when I did. The tarp was lashed down over the load and Mr. O’Shaughnessy had my clothes bundled under his arm.

  “You were going without me,” I said to Fred.

  “Cab’s got a big head start,” he said. “I’ll have a better chance of catching him if I’m alone.”

  “I’m going.”

  “Anne—”

  “You’re not going alone. I mean that.”

  “It’s going to be tougher from here on, and you’re tired …”

  “You’re not going to catch up with him all by yourself.”

  I stood my ground and he gave in. We had to repack the load to make room for me to ride when it was possible, then we went back in and said good-bye to everyone.

  I was able to ride for about a mile, and every time I thought about what he’d intended to do I’d get a lump in my throat. When we came to the bank of a slough we had to cross I got out. I put a hand on his arm.

  “Fred.” I pulled my scarf down. “I’m so proud of you.”

  He put his arms around me and held me for a few moments. “I feel the same way about you,” he said. Then he let me go and we went on. I felt as if I could take on anything after that.

  For as long as I lived I’d never forget those next six hours. Old-timers like Ben and Uncle Arthur had told me dozens of stories of forced mushes they’d made, and of how more often than they wanted to remember they’d almost frozen to death, but on that trip I found out I hadn’t had the least idea of what they meant.

  Compared to the trail we now took, traveling on the river had been a breeze. We sidled up hills that grudged us the narrow paths that bordered them and kept trying to edge the sled off. Twice, for stretches of a quarter of a mile, Fred had to put on snowshoes and break trail across snow that would have swallowed us up to the waist, while I stayed at the handle bars inching the sled forward. Time and again we both had to push from behind as the dogs labored to pull the sled up a steep bluff or the sharp bank of a creek. Half-buried bushes caught in the runners and tore at our moccasins.

  Aggravated from lack of sleep, exhausted from pushing and falling and being whipped by the wind, I sat down once and cried, telling Fred to go on and leave me, that I couldn’t go any farther.

  It wasn’t all bad, though. Rounding a sharp turn in the trail once while I was on the runners and Fred trotted alongside, the dogs decided to speed up suddenly and I lost my grip on the handles. I went flying off down an embankment, and braced myself for a sickening jolt. Instead I did a flip, landed on my back and sank down in a soft fleecy bed, with my legs straight up in the air. I stared up at the sky, while Fred ran after the sled. I was still in the same position when he slipped down the embankment and his face loomed over me. “Anne, are you hurt?”

  I knew how ridiculous I had to look, like a bug on its back. “Hurt my eye.” I wiggled my legs for him. It was just what we needed. The two of us started to laugh hysterically. Even after we were on the way again all we had to do was glance at each other to make us giggle.

  It was almost as if it was a turning point, because in a little while the trail eased and we pushed ahead up a winding creek. Even the wind started to help us, blowing at our back and giving us an extra nudge to speed us up.

  “There it is!” Fred yelled finally, “Ptarmigan Drop!” I looked for it, but I didn’t see anything that resembled a drop.

  “Where?”

  “The other side of that hill.”

  It looked pretty steep from where we were, but not half as steep as it did when we reached the base of it. The top was half a mile away, and it seemed impossible that the dogs would be able to pull the sled up. It was an obstacle course of ledges and clefts, boulders and stunted spruce. Even with the wind in back of us, it would be a tough climb.

  “Isn’t there another way up?”

  “There is, but we’d lose too much time,” Fred yelled. “We’ll make it. Let’s go!”

  I got behind the sled with him and we both started pushing to help the dogs. After a few minutes I had to stop and rest. It was like trying to roll a boulder uphill, shoulders behind the handlebars, struggling upward a few hundred feet, then rest. I could feel every stab of willow, every rock, through my moccasins. It was as hard on the dogs as on us. They panted and clawed for purchase where there wasn’t any, panted and strained where there was.

  And finally we were at the top, all of us flopping down limply as if we were parts of one big body. My feet were bruised and I knew a couple of my toes were bleeding. I lay on my side, taking in huge gulps of air. Fred lay beside me.

  “If you feel like crying,” he said between deep breaths, “go ahead. I’ll join in.”

&nbs
p; A couple of minutes later I sat up and looked out over the country that lay behind us. We were at the top of the world, and even as played out as I was my spirits lifted. The gray wide line of the river wound northeast through mountains whose sides were shrouded in mist. Above the mist loomed white pinnacles that stood out sharp against a midnight blue sky spangled with stars. Stretching directly below us was a long sweep of slope that was as inviting as a magic carpet, a carpet that led into a wonderland of dark green distant forests. It was dizzying.

  I wondered how far down the slope went. After the climb we’d just had it looked like a dog musher’s dream. The dogs would be able to take it at an effortless trot while Fred and I rode in style.

  “That couldn’t be The Drop,” I said.

  “No. It’s down below.”

  “How far?”

  “Couple of miles.”

  We took them as easily as I thought we would, leaving the wind on the other side of the hill. It was like traveling through a stage setting, the air clear and tingling, the moonlight sparkling off bushes laced with frost. The slope ended in a plateau and we veered to the right, skirting a sheer drop until the ground dipped and we rode down a wide trough for a short distance. The left side of the trough gradually lowered, the curved bottom flattened out and we came out onto a narrow ledge. There below was The Drop. I thought of how scared I’d been to ski down the hill at Joe Temple’s cabin. This one made Joe’s seem level. I didn’t have to ask how it had gotten its name. It was obvious: you needed wings to climb it and wings to go down. It was just one long cascade of snow and ice-covered rock that ended half a mile below at Ptarmigan Creek. Even on foot you’d have to slide down most of it.

  “Fred, we can’t go down that in the sled—it’s suicide!”