by Robin Moore
Jake shook his head and watched as Maggie crept up to the firepit and lifted out one of the charred rib bones. She held it up, as either a weapon or an enticement, whichever was needed. The dog was sitting upright now, his eyes fixed on Maggie's slowly moving form.
"You're not a wolf," Maggie crooned. "You're a dog. We both know that. You know about fires and people."
Then Maggie noticed something hanging from the dog's neck, trailing out on the snow behind him. She could see that it was a hank of busted rope, maybe six feet long.
"So," Maggie said softly, "you ran off from home did you? People there treat you bad? Well, we'll help you, boy."
The dog watched her closely, his body tensed and trembling. Maggie circled around behind him and, ever so slowly, stooped and closed her bare hand around the rope. Then, cautiously, she worked her way along it, until she was less than a foot from the quivering dog. She dropped the bone in the snow before the dog then reached out with a bare hand and laid it on his back, stroking him gently. The hound dipped his head and sniffed the bone.
For the first time, Maggie had a clear look at him. He was a hunting dog, with a tawny, well-muscled body, flopped-down ears and a noble snout. Maggie could see dozens of white quills protruded from the dogs guivering face, tongue and lips. She noticed that a few more quills were driven into his right front paw.
"You poor devil," Maggie breathed.
"Jake," she called, "put that fool rifle down and come over here and help me."
The old man reluctantly set his smokepole aside and stepped up to the firepit.
"If yer aimin' to do this, we best build up the fire," he advised. Without waiting for an answer, he set to work at it: stacking fresh wood on the coals and fanning them into flames.
When the fire was burning briskly, Jake cautiously walked up to the dog and knelt down beside him, running his hand over the hound's back.
"How do we do this?" Maggie asked.
Jake scratched his beard.
"Well, I seed my of friend Gimpy Weaver unquill a dog one time. He dipped his fingers in wood ashes to get a grip on them slippery quills and pulled 'em out, one by one."
Maggie nodded. "Sounds good to me. You hold him, I'll yank the quills."
"Are you sure you want to do this?" the old man asked.
"Why, Jake, I never knew you as one to shy away from adventure."
"Don't give me none of that. Adventure is nothing but a romantic name fer trouble. And that's 'zackly what we got here, a four-legged, bristle-bearded combobulation of trouble."
"We'll give it a try," Maggie said confidently.
She scooped up a handful of wood ashes from beside the fire, poured them into a tin cup and set it near at hand. Meanwhile Jake stroked the dogs sleek back and head, shaking his head.
"Yer gettin' yerself an education," he said to the dog, "I doubt you'll ever tangle with a quill-pig again."
The dog followed the man's movements with watery, anxious eyes, but he seemed to understand that they were trying to ease his pain. That was enough to keep him from pulling loose and bounding away. Jake got a firm grip on the rope encircling the dog's neck.
"If I was you," Jake advised, "I'd start on the paw and work my way up to the tender parts."
Maggie nodded. She dipped her fingers in the cup of ashes and closed her thumb and forefinger around a large quill, embedded deep in the dark pad of the hound's paw.
Then, she took a deep breath and gave a quick, sharp tug. The poor dog let out a heart-rending yelp and struggled to pull free. But Jake held him firmly.
Maggie held the quill up in the firelight. It had come free, barbed tip and all.
For the next two hours, Maggie worked steadily, yanking quills from the poor dog's paw, neck, jowls and snout. The quills came out pretty easily. But Maggie had to force herself to ignore the hound's pitiful cries as each barbed dagger was pulled free.
At last, they came to the most difficult task: pulling the quills from the dog's quivering lips, gums and tongue. While Jake held the hound's mouth open, Maggie pulled quill after quill from the tender, pinkened flesh. She noticed that his tongue had swollen to twice it's normal size, almost filling his mouth, threatening to cut off his air supply.
At last, Maggie extracted the last quill from the dog's sore tongue. The dog slumped down into the snow. She gave him a lukewarm pan of sassafras tea, which he drank gratefully, lapping away with his swollen tongue. Then he stretched out by the fire and fell into a deep sleep, snoring loudly.
"Well," Maggie said when she had dropped the last of the quills into the fire, "He's not a wolf."
The old hunter poured himself a steaming cup of tea.
"Prob'ly a farm dog, "Jake said.
"But there aren't any farms around here. What's he doing out up in the hills?"
"He was prob'ly chasin' deer. It happens to farm dogs now and then. They start runnin' deer at nights, while the family is asleep indoors. During the day, they act like a normal dog. But at night, they head up inta the woods and run down them deer. Once they get that chasin' inta their blood, it's hard to break 'em of it.
"Sometimes they run off inta the woods and their masters never see 'em again. I've even heared of dogs who joined up with wolves and hunt as one of the pack. 'Course, they never forget farms and people and such. That's why he wasn't afraid to come down to our fire, lookin' fer help. A wolf would never do that."
For the first time, Maggie was aware that the wolves were no longer howling up on the ridgeline.
Jake unrolled his blankets and laid them out on the spruce boughs inside the shelter.
"You kin stay up and admire that hound if ya want to," he said, "but I've had enough excitement for one night. I'll see ya in the mornin'."
Maggie stroked the hound's back, "I'll just sit up with him for a while, just to make sure he's breathin' all right."
"Suit yerself," Jake said. And then, in a moment, he was snoring.
Maggie listened to the dog's breathing. It was labored, but regular. She thought he would be all right.
Maggie took off her belt and laid her weapons handy. Then she dusted the snow off her moccasins and rolling up in her blankets, she drifted off, too tired to dream.
When Maggie awoke the next morning, the dog was gone. Jake was already up, setting a kettle on the fire to boil for their early-morning tea.
Maggie twisted in her blankets. "Where is he?"
The old man pointed with his chin off into the woods. "He prob'ly took off huntin'. I saw him get up about the same time I did. He yawned and stretched hisself and then, without so much as a goodbye, he took off for them woods."
Maggie felt a pang of disappointment. She hadn't known what to expect. She hadn't thought that the dog would be hers exactly. But she hadn't expected him to leave so suddenly.
Maggie and Jake had their morning tea and a quick meal of biscuits and jerky. Then they began the familiar motions of breaking camp: they rolled up their bedding, loaded the toboggan and were just about to douse the fire with handfuls of snow when Maggie saw something prancing down through the trees. It was the lost hound, loping along with a dark, limp object dangling from his mouth. As he came closer, Maggie could see that it was a fat porcupine.
The hound trotted up to the firepit and dropped his quarry in the snow. He eyed Maggie and Jake, his eyes gleaming proudly, his mouth bristling with quills.
Jake turned to Maggie. "I've seen smart dogs and I've seen dumb dogs. And that is a dumb dog."
Maggie sighed. "Get me some wood ashes."
Again, she plucked the quills from the poor dog's face as he whined and growled and groaned. She was more expert, and considerably less gentle, than she had been the night before. In an hour she had him de-quilled. She washed his wounds in sassafras tea and watched as the poor dog slumped by the fire, a dazed look in his eyes.
Meanwhile, Jake had not been idle.
"Dog," he said, "Yer gonna get yer revenge."
He drew his knife and proceeded to
cook up the porcupine. First he laid the quill-pig in the coals and singed off the quills. Then he skinned the animal, parboiled him in an iron pot and forked him up on a green stick over a bed of red-hot embers.
"I've never eaten porcupine," Maggie admitted as Jake drew the steaming carcass from the fire.
"Tastes a bit like sucklin' pig, "Jake said, '"Specially the tail, almost as good as beaver tail, to my way o' thinkin."
Jake was right. The porcupine meat was sweet and pungent and dripping with savory juices. Maggie and Jake devoured their portions.
As for the dog, he hardly touched his piece. He just mouthed the bones a little bit and looked up at Maggie and Jake with pathetic eyes.
"Think he'll stay with us?" Maggie asked when she had finished her meal.
"I hope not," Jake said, "a dog that dumb could be a lotta trouble to look after."
"No," Maggie said softly, stroking the dog's back. "You wouldn't be a lot of trouble, would you boy? Think of the extra meat he would bring in, Jake."
The old man snorted.
"So what do you say, boy? Are you willin' to leave that wild wolfy life behind and come upriver with us?"
The dog reached out with a swollen tongue and licked Maggie's hand.
"What do you say, Jake? Should we take him with us?"
"I don't know that he's gonna give us a choice, now that he has someone to doctor his wounds. Don't blame me when he starts huntin' black bear, comin' into camp at night with claw marks all over 'im."
"No," Maggie said, "You wouldn't do that would ya, boy? Let's take him Jake. He looks like he needs us."
The old man ran his fingers through his beard. "If ya got yer heart set on it, I guess we can give it a try. The best I can say about it is that it'll prob'ly make a good story someday. But you'll need to give him name. What will you call him?"
Maggie stared into the fire, stroking the dog's back, grappling for a name that would suit him.
"You could call him Porky," Jake suggested.
Maggie made a face.
Jake tried again. "How about Wolf-Bait?" "Jake, stop." Then it came to her.
"I'll call him Poordevil," she said, "that was what I called him when I first laid eyes on him."
Maggie patted the hound on the head, "What do you say boy? I'll call you Devilish for short."
Poordevil stuck out his ridiculous tongue and panted, his eyes shining.
"Well, girl," Jake said, "it looks like you got yerself a dog. Not a very smart dog, but a dog all the same."
Maggie stood up. "Come on, boy," she said, kicking some snow onto the fire, "It's time to hit the trail."
Jake lashed down the last of the cooking gear and slipped the sled harness over his shoulders. They strapped on their snowshoes and Maggie led the way back through the trees, toward the riverbank.
Poordevil pulled himself to his feet and, wobbling a bit, followed them up the river trail.
Chapter Three
Over the next ten days, Maggie, Jake and Poordevil fell into a routine of steady travel during the days, camping, feasting and fending off the cold at night. The weather held, cold but clear, and on good days they would make eighteen or twenty miles before darkness forced them to camp.
It was Maggie and Jake's custom to travel single-file, with one person walking ahead, clearing the way, while the other trudged behind, hauling the toboggan by a six-foot rawhide drag-rope which was attached to a leather harness, worn over the shoulders. Breaking the trail was hard work. But so was hauling the loaded toboggan. So they switched off throughout the day, making regular stops to break up the monotony of travel.
This part of the journey became tedious for Maggie and Jake. The countryside was barren, white, lifeless, with nothing to offer the eye but ice and snow and windswept groves of hemlock trees, half-buried in the drifts.
But Poordevil never seemed to lose interest in the landscape. Despite Jake's observation about the lack of game, the hound was always alert, hunting, smelling, running ahead or lagging behind the travelers. He never passed a day without giving chase to some animal, a rabbit or a field mouse. And the fact that he rarely caught what he was after never seemed to discourage him. Day after day, Poordevil pranced ahead, his nose powdered with snow and ice crystals, sniffing his way north.
They were in the upper reaches of the Allegheny now, in rugged, craggy country, where the hillsides rose sharply on either side of the river.
They had taken to traveling directly on the ice. As long as the ice was smooth, the toboggan slid easily and they didn't have to flounder in deep snow on the steep hillsides. They could lash their snowshoes down on the sled and travel, fast and free.
At the beginning of the trip, Jake had been very stern about laying down the rules for traveling on ice. He had taught Maggie to read the ice, just as a literate person can read a book. If the ice was white, Maggie had learned, it was generally safe to walk out onto. But if the ice was gray or black, it was bad ice, too thin or flawed to support the weight of a person.
Maggie knew that walking out onto bad ice was an invitation to disaster. She knew that if she fell through the ice and plunged into the river, she would die in a very short time. Even if Jake managed to fish her out, get her to shore and get her into dry clothing and warmed by a fire, she still might not survive. If she did live, there was a very real possibility that she would lose her toes and fingers to frostbite. Then they would have to use Maggie's hatchet as a surgical tool, sealing off the stubby wounds with a red-hot coal from the fire.
Knowing all this, Maggie had been very cautious about walking out onto the ice. Her first few times, she edged ahead, expecting at any moment that the surface beneath her feet would collapse and dump her into the river. But it never did. In over a hundred miles of walking on the ice, they hadn't had a single mishap.
The ice had always held her weight and the weight of her companions. So, in time, Maggie had come to trust the ice. This was a mistake. Because ice doesn't know about trust and betrayal. Ice is just ice.
An hour before sundown, on their tenth day of walking, the travelers began the familiar routine of searching out a campsite, a place to make their nightly stand against the cold.
Maggie threw back the hood of her blanket-coat and glanced up the meandering river, shielding her eyes from the glare of the sinking sun. Ahead, on the eastern shore, she saw a cluster of spruce trees. She knew there would be shelter from the wind there and dry firewood.
Maggie was walking in the lead, reading the ice, while Jake trudged along twenty paces behind, hauling the toboggan by the drag-rope. Maggie glanced back over her shoulder at Jake. She caught his eye and pointed a mittened hand toward the spruce grove. The old man nodded in agreement, his breath coming in fast clouds.
Maggie was eager to get in off the ice. It had been a long, cold day and she was looking forward to the comforts of camp. Maggie wasn't thinking about the ice beneath her moccasins, or the gray chilling waters that gurgled and swirled just inches below the soles of her feet.
Instead, she was thinking ahead to the camp in the spruce trees on shore. She could picture herself sitting before a blazing fire, wearing dry socks and moccasins, wolfing down venison stew and drinking sassafras tea.
Then, fifty paces from shore, in a place where the ice looked absolutely trustworthy, it happened. It happened so quickly: There was a sharp cracking sound. Then it seemed that the whole world fell away beneath her as Maggie plunged feet-first into the gray waters of the Allegheny.
The cold water sent a shock-wave through Maggie's body, forcing the air from her lungs. For a long moment, she struggled to take a breath and found that her lungs had collapsed. Then, in a great gasp, she took in the cold air and found herself standing up in two feet of water. Acting on pure instinct, she waded up to the edge of the ice and heaved herself up out of the river.
Maggie managed to thrash up onto firm ice and crawled a dozen feet away from the hole, laying there with her cheek against the glassy surface of the river,
panting in great gasps. She pulled herself up on all fours but found she couldn't rise. Her wet mittens and pant legs had bonded to the ice, holding her down. With a terrific effort, Maggie ripped herself free and stood up, swaying on the ice.
Maggie felt her body turning toward shore. She saw the snow and the grove of spruce trees. Abandoning the idea of walking on the ice, her body surged ahead into the shallow frigid water, her feet punching holes in the gray ice as she went.
Within a dozen steps, her outer clothing was frozen hard as iron. Another dozen steps and Maggie couldn't feel her feet. She had to look down to make sure that she was truly walking. All she was aware of in those terrible moments was the wooden feel of her body, the labored sound of her own breathing, and the great gray numbness that was creeping up into her chest, toward her heart and lungs.
Then, at last, she was on the shore, shaking the ice from her feet. She was vaguely aware that Jake and Poordevil were there. The dog was jumping around, barking excitedly, and Jake was talking to her. He was excited too, talking loud and fast, but Maggie's brain wasn't taking any of it in.
Jake led her over to a sheltered clearing among the spruce trees where a large dead spruce tree had fallen on its side in the snow. Jake laid Maggie down on the toboggan and drew his belt knife.
Jake sawed through the frozen wool, wrestling her arms out of the coat and casting it aside where it stood on its own, at a crazy angle, in the snow. The old man pulled a blanket from their bedroll and wrapped her in it. Then, working quickly, Jake cut the thongs that wrapped round and round her moccasins tops, pulling the frozen leather from her bluish feet. Maggie felt powerless to help him. She just lay on her back on the toboggan, trying to talk. She could move her lips, but no sound came out.
It was just as well. Jake was not interested in conversation. He was working rapidly to build them a fire.
First, he tromped down a circle of snow with his mocassins then laid out a platform of branches for to fire to rest upon.
Next, he removed his mittens and worked bare-handed, snapping thin twigs from the downed spruce and carefully heaping them up on the log platform. When he was satisfied, he laid on larger sticks, first the size of his finger, then the size of his wrist, forming a pyramid of dry wood.