by Robin Moore
But somehow Maggie knew that it would have been even crazier to remain behind. In the early weeks of winter, Maggie had laid awake many a night in the sleeping loft of the tavern, listening to the wind howling outside and knowing that somewhere out there, in all that cold and whiteness, her little boy might still be alive. Sometimes she pictured her boy, huddled in the arms of the Ragpicker as the old woman poked through the snowy garbage heaps, looking for something to eat.
At last, the agony of waiting became too great. In late January, after the worst of the storms had passed, she talked the old man into going upriver with her. Actually, Jake didn't need much persuading. The old woodsman had been restless all winter, drifting back and forth between Franny's tavern and Fort Pitt, wasting his time in card games and idle drinking and bad company. When Maggie told him what she wished to do, he had the sled packed in an hour.
Of course, Franny and Uncle Thomas were not happy about them going. But they could see that there was no point in holding her. Some of the more outspoken regulars at the tavern predicted that they would freeze solid before they reached the Genesee. But Maggie's mind was made up.
So, in the last days of January, Maggie and Jake loaded their toboggan, strapped on their snowshoes, and headed north, up the frozen river, in search of Hoot Owl.
The weather had been cold and clear, with no storms to delay them. They had made eight or ten miles a day, walking the river trails, sometimes walking directly on the river ice. At night, they camped in ravines and under rocky ledges and in the towering stands of trees that bordered the river.
Tonight's camp was an especially good one: Out of the wind, with plenty of dry firewood and sturdy trees to hang the food bags, safe from wolves. Maggie and Jake had lashed up a temporary shelter there in the trees, thatched with hemlock branches and carpeted with fragrant spruce boughs.
Snug in their make-shift shelter, they sat up by a crackling fire, feasting on a meal of sizzling elk ribs; Callahan biscuits, slathered in bear grease; and cup after cup of tangy sassafras tea, laced with the sweet syrup of the sugar maple.
Maggie gnawed the last scrap of meat from her elk rib and dropped the curved bone into the fire, watching the flames turn greasy and blue.
Maggie was seventeen years old now, and no stranger to danger and hardship. Just as the winter wind shapes and scars and scours the deep-drifted snow, Maggie's years on the frontier had shaped her, making her what she was: Strong-limbed and strong-willed, worth her weight in wildcats. She was built small but strong, with long red hair, eyes that were dark and direct, and the sharply-chiseled features of the Scotch-Irish.
Maggie was dressed for the weather in a combination of buckskin and wool: next to her skin she wore layers and layers of woolen shirts and breeches. Her legs were protected from the deep snows by a sturdy pair of buckskin outer-leggings, fringed with red wool. On her feet she wore a double layer of woolen stockings covered by a pair of thick-soled elkhide moccasins, heavily coated with bear grease. Her buckskin mittens lay near at hand. On her head, Maggie wore a cap made from muskrat fur, crested with wild turkey feathers.
Her outer garment was a knee-length greatcoat her Aunt Franny had made for her from a single red woolen blanket, cut full, with generous sleeves, red fringes at the shoulder seams, and a well-fitted, peaked hood.
On the broad belt at her waist, Maggie carried her possibles: the absolute essentials she would need to survive if she ever got separated from Jake or the toboggan. In an otterskin beltbag she carried her fire-making kit: flint, steel, char-cloth and plenty of dry tinder. On her right hip, she carried her only weapons: A six-inch butcher knife in a rawhide sheath and a short-handled hatchet in a buckskin scabbard.
The old man was dressed similarly, but in a more old-fashioned way. Nearly every article of Jake's outfit was taken directly from the woods. His principle garment was a smoke-cured deerskin hunting shirt which trailed down past his knees. On his legs were buckskin leggings, tucked into knee-high elkhide moccasins, stuffed with deer hair for extra warmth. His bearskin mittens were tucked into his belt.
Jake's outer wrap was a bearskin jerkin with no sleeves, the blue-black hair turned to the inside for warmth. On his head, Jake wore a cap made from the entire pelt of a red fox, the hind legs and bushy tail trailing down the old man's back. The foxy ears were pricked up, open and alert, as if they were still listening in the cold air.
Jake wore his hair unfashionably long, trailing down the back of his bearskin coat. His beard, wild and tangled, was streaked and gray and reached almost to his belt buckle. The mountaineer's face was creased and lined by more than 50 years of wind and weather. But his eyes sparkled, like starlight on gray river ice.
On their toboggan by the fire, Jake had piled his shoulder-slung hunting pouch, with powder horns, skinning knife and tomahawk attached. Leaning against a nearby tree, where his hand could get it quickly, was his long, heavy-barrelled flintlock rifle.
Lashed down on the sled itself were the canvas food bags of dried beans, jerked venison and wheat flour, along with their cooking pots and their bedrolls, woolen blankets and extra changes of clothing and footwear.
With these simple provisions, and a good measure of the hunter's luck, Maggie and Jake could travel through the woods for the rest of the winter, and right up until the green sprigs of spring came sprouting through the snow.
Maggie sat with her back against a tree, staring into the fire.
"What do you think, Jake?" she said at last, "What do you think our chances are of findin' him?"
The old man took his time in answering. He was using his front teeth to pull the last piece of scrappy meat from his elk rib. At last, he dropped his rib into the fire and wiped his greasy hands clean on his beard.
"I spec' he's up there somewheres," the old man said, "if he is, we'll find him. A red-haired baby like that shouldn't be hard to locate. How old do you reckon he is now?"
Maggie counted on her fingers. "He's almost nine months old. He was just four months old in September, when I lost track of him."
The old man licked his lips. "I don't know if I should be sayin' this —but he won't remember you, you know. If you just left him with the Seneca, he'd prob'ly never know the difference."
Maggie nodded. "Maybe not, but I would. I wanta find him, Jake."
"I kin unnerstan that, I sure kin." Jake let the conversation sit for a moment.
"Now the way I got it figured," he said, " that village is prob'ly emptier than a wolf's belly in January. I hear most of the Seneca have moved up north to Niagara, to winter with the British. I don't see how anybody could stay alive there in this weather. With no food 'er shelter. From what you said, when Gen'ral Sullivan swept through there in the fall, he didn't leave so much as a cornstalk standin'."
Maggie nodded, her eyes turning dreamy in the firelight. "You should have seen how it was before the army came, Jake. You should have seen Little Beard's Village at harvest time, when things were green and growing. It was the most beautiful spot I've ever laid eyes on.
"When I was first captured, when the war party was taking me upriver, I thought they were bringing me out into the wilderness, away from civilization. I thought I'd end up as a slave to a band of savages in a cluster of dirty huts in a clearing in the woods. But it wasn't like that at all."
Jake nodded sympathetically, poking the fire with a stick.
Maggie snapped a twig from a nearby branch and sketched out a map of the village in the snow as she talked. She drew a waving, graceful line.
"This is the Genesee river," she said," and here, this is where they beach the canoes. From this point there is a main road which runs straight as an arrow to the west, like this, it runs through the whole village, a hundred paces wide. On either side of the road were houses, maybe a hundred of them, and not just shacks, I'm talking about good square-hewn log houses, with cedar shake roofs and real glass in the windows. Each house had a neat yard with herbs gardens and fruit trees.”
Maggie drew i
n broad strokes now.
“Out here, beyond the houses, were the fields, hundreds of acres of lush corn and bean and squash gardens. Pumpkins bigger than a man can lift. Cornstalks twelve feet high with husking ears three feet long.
"And beyond that, out where the horses frolicked and the mules grazed, were acres and acres of lush grasslands. And out beyond that, the forests where we went to collect firewood and hickory nuts and maple sap."
Jake studied the snow map. "Took Sullivan two days to burn it to the ground," he said grimly.
Maggie stared at the map, her vision blurring. A tear coursed down Maggie's cheek and fell into the ashes of the fire. "I was one of them, Jake. I was a Seneca woman, for a while."
Jake nodded. "I think I know what you're sayin', girl. I spent a couple of summers out with the Lenape on the Susquehanna when I was just about your age. I had myself an Indian wife and two little boys."
Maggie was astonished. "Jake, I never knew that."
The old man smiled sadly. "It were a long time ago."
"Do you know what happened to them? I mean, do you know where they are now?"
The old man shook his head. "I think about 'em, now and again, but we just lost track of each other over the years. I spec' the smallpox took them, but I just don't know fer sure."
There was a long sad silence. But just when Maggie was about to press him further, Jake changed the subject.
He gestured toward the map, "So where is this old woman's hut? What do you call her?"
Maggie nodded. "The Ragpicker, you mean. Well, her place is down here, beyond the cornfields, on the other side of the garbage heaps, in the thicket down by the river. I figure that's where we'll start looking. That's where I saw Hoot owl last."
"Sounds right to me." Jake agreed.
Just then, up in the hills on the other side of the river, they heard the howl of a timber wolf. A moment later, two or three others joined in, raising their voices in a quavering, eerie chorus which made Maggie's scalp feel like it was being pricked by needles.
As if he were reading her thoughts, Jake settled another log on the fire.
"Don't you worry 'bout them," he said, "long as we keep this fire goin' they'll stay clear of us. The last thing a wolf wants is to tangle with a human."
Maggie knew it was true. She had heard many times that a healthy wolf will never attack a human. But still, she was afraid. She remembered the nights when the wolves had come, up along the upper Allegheny, when she and Firefly and Frenchgirl and Cornstalk had been elk hunting last winter.
Then, staring into the flames, she could see other things: images from the past. She saw the butcher elk meat sitting on the rocks and the frozen hide and the wolves' eyes gleaming in the dark. Then she saw the severed stub of Firefly's ankle and the blood that looked black on the snow in the moonlight.
Maggie closed her eyes, shaking off the dark memories. A dozen wolves had joined in now, howling. She could picture them up on the hillside above the river, raising their snouts to the cold stars, howling to the thin crescent of moon that had crested the hill.
"Why do they have to howl like that anyway?" She asked.
"Well," Jake said, "Them wolves howl fer lotsa reasons. To find a mate, to gather their famblies together, sometimes I spec' they do it out of pure loneliness.
"That's the 'empty belly' cry we're hearin' now, calling the pack fer a hunt. They'll set off a a little while and run all night if they have to. If they're lucky, they'll pull down a deer or run down smaller game, rabbits or mice, maybe."
"They live on mice?"
"This time of year, they live on whatever they can git. Listen: if you prick yer ears up you can separate out the male and the females."
"How's that?"
"Well, the she-wolves, they go like this: " Jake tilted his head back and opened his mouth wide, letting out a quavering, high-pitched yowl. "Ouuuuuuuuuu..."
"Then the he-ones, they go like this:" Jake cupped his hands around his mouth and let out a deep, throaty howl which filled the clearing. "Howuuuuuuuu..."
Up on the ridgeline, the wolves began barking and howling in excitement, as if they were answering the old man's call.
That worried Maggie. "Shush up," she said, "you don't wanta attract 'em."
Then, realizing that she was being foolish, Maggie tried to make a joke of her fears, saying, "They might come down here and ask you to join up with them. You would have made a good wolf, Jake."
The old man grinned, "Naw," he said, "I don't have the teeth for it for one thing."
Maggie smiled. It was good to see Jake like this, out away from the tavern and the soldiers and the whiskey. He was almost his old self again.
"And what about me?" Maggie thought, "Am I my old self again?"
But before she could form an answer, they were startled by a scream that came from somewhere back in the woods, on their side of the river.
"What was that?' Maggie asked.
"I don't rightly know," Jake said. He said it casually, but Maggie noticed that as he spoke, he was reaching for his rifle.
The sound came again, closer this time. It sounded like an animal in pain, a ferocious, pitiful yelping that pierced the cold air.
Jake snatched up his powder horn, snapped open the frizzen on his rifle and shook a spot of priming powder into the flashpan, snapping it shut.
"Knock that fire down," he said, "I might need my night vision fer this."
Maggie used a stick to collapse the pyramid of logs and stirred the fire down to a bed of glowing coals.
Now the call came louder, fifty paces to their right, heading their way.
"You best climb a tree," Jake said.
Maggie didn't argue. She swung up into the branches of a young hemlock and kept climbing until she was about twenty feet off the ground. Jake crouched with his back against the tree, his rifle ready.
"If you see anything, you let me know," He said.
Maggie prized her eyes back into the dark woods, in the direction she thought the sound was coming from. Her vision was adjusting to the moonlight now. The wind came up, blowing the hemlock branches around, making eerie shadows on the snow. Maggie strained her eyes, peering into the darkness. She thought she saw shapes—the shapes of dozens and dozens of wolves, forming, then dissolving and forming again.
Then, at last she saw something that was not a shadow: it looked to be a lone wolf, hobbling along through the snow, headed straight for their smoldering fire.
Chapter Two
The animal, running with a slight limp, came up to within a dozen feet of the fire and sat on its haunches, pawing at its head, first with one leg, then the other.
Jake stood up and slipped behind the tree, holding his rifle ready. He whispered up to Maggie: "I can't make out nothin' in this light. Kin you see anything from there?"
Maggie climbed down for a closer look, sitting in the branches just above Jake's head. "That's no wolf," she said quietly, "look at his ears, they're flopped down like a hunting hound's."
"Dagnabbit," Jake swore, "my eyes ain't so good in this light. I kin hardly make him out. You figure he's a dog?"
Maggie strained her eyes, watching the poor animal roll around in the snow.
"It's strange," she said at last, "He looks kinda like you, Jake."
The old man's voice took on a sharp edge. "Quit foolin' now. What's he look like?"
"No, Jake, I'm serious. He has a long beard, like yours. He looks to be a bearded dog."
Jake strained his eyes. He had to admit. The dog did appear to have a set of white chin-whiskers. The animal pawed at his muzzle, as if he was trying to scrape away the dangling beard.
The old man watched closely for a while, watching the animal's strange movements. Then, he understood. The old man lowered his rifle.
"That ain't no beard," he said, "them's quills. That dumb dog went and got hisself porcupined!"
"Porcupined?"
The old man nodded. "I've knowed it to happen. That dog bit into the
hind end of a porcupine and got hisself a mouthful of quills."
Maggie looked more closely and saw that Jake was right. The poor dog whined and gagged, blinking his eyes and trying to unswallow the sharp quills that had found their way into his mouth and down his throat.
Maggie dropped down beside Jake.
"What do you think will happen to him?' she asked.
The old man shook his head. "He's done for. Them quills is barbed and stuck in there fast, each one of them will just fester and ause his throat to swell up, cutting off his air, so’s he can’t breathe. And even if that don't happen, even if the cold weather does keep the swellin' down, he won't be able to eat. He'll starve before them quills will fall out. I spec' in a few days the wolves will find him and make a meal of him."
Jake nestled the stock of his rifle into the crook of his shoulder.
"I best put him out of his misery," he said quietly.
But before he could pull the trigger, Maggie placed a hand on Jake's shoulder.
"Jake, wait. We could help him, couldn't we? I mean, what if we pulled the quills out? He's be all right then wouldn't he?"
Jake lowered his rifle. "Well, maybe so," he said doubtfully, "but first you'd have to ketch him, then you'd have to hold him still while you pull out them quills. He must have a hundred stickers in 'im. It would prob'ly take you half the night."
Maggie stepped forward, "I'm going to try."
The old man shook his head. "Don't be crazy, girl. It just ain't worth it."
Maggie smiled in the dark. "Come on, Jake," she said, "if you had a faceful of quills, I'd stay up all night and help you." "But I'm not a dog," he protested.
But it was too late. Maggie was already moving forward, talking to the dog in a low, calming voice. "He'll take yer hand off," Jake warned. "No, he won't. You said yourself, he can't even bite down."