He did not care if he’d died alone, far from home, among strangers, and during that time, he met the Métis and the Lord and together they hunted and there came a steady flow from the interior of ivory, honey and beeswax, specimens dead and alive and traveling back up the trails were cloth, beads, brass wire, powder, lead, and chains.
“I am so sorry,” Elizabeth now said. “I am so sorry,” she repeated, and she could not help herself and began to cry her tears wetting his skin.
“I am better now,” he said. “Better than I was before.”
In his recuperation he ate when he was hungry and buried himself beneath blankets and slept whenever he was tired. As she kept her accounts, he’d leave the bed to stand with his back at the fire and then return. Or he’d lounge by the fire, wrapped in a blanket and drinking warm tea. With each day he was getting better by degrees, able to sit up and then stand and then walk, able to blanket and saddle Khyber and then lift himself into the saddle and ride the land. But as with times previous, the fever left him chastened and dependent and in a languor he could not analyze.
In camp he became wandering and friendly. It was more than being returned to life after a great trial. There was a lassitude, a profound lethargy, an inability in his being. He had the distinct sense of an identity divided and separated, one watching and the other behaving.
One cold morning with Khyber he saw John going off to milk the cows and went to the cowshed with him. John sat beside the first cow. He washed the teats with water, and then holding the pail between his knees so she wouldn’t kick it over, he milked her out. It did not take long before he had a quart of fresh milk and then spread a little Vaseline on the teats to stop them from cracking.
He watched as the boy’s head drooped with tiredness.
“Mind if I give it a try?” Michael said.
By way of answer John stood from the stool, wiped his palms on the seat of his trousers, and handed him the bucket.
Michael sat on the low stool, close to the warm and companionable cow. He leaned his forehead into her stifle. He drew a hand along her mammary vein to her fore udder. She made a step and he moved the stool forward. He sat down again and leaned his head into her again. Feeling the warm udder, he took a teat in each hand. He pressed and pulled the withered teats at the same time. She let down her milk and he began to draw forth the warm milk and it foamed in the pail.
The milking relieved her of the pressure in her udder and she stood peacefully, chewing her cud and swishing her tail.
With Michael doing the milking, John rationed corn and hay and a little salt to lick. Then he brushed their black and white coats. He brushed their necks and down their backs. He brushed their shoulders and barrels, their fore ribs and flanks, until they were glossy in the morning light.
When they finished with the milking John let the cows to water and Michael carried the two pails of milk suspended on a shoulder yoke to Aubuchon’s fire. The milk sloshed over the rim, splashing his trousers as he stumbled along. In the evening, when all was quiet and the first stars were just visible, he’d return to the silence of the cowshed. He’d sit again close by on the milking side, his face transfigured and he’d draw the hissing white streams into the pail. He’d close his eyes and see green pastures and horses knee deep in the silky grass and the dews that fall when the shadows climb. He’d see pointed firs and a pond and a house with white clapboards. He’d breathe the cow-breath.
Chapter 31
The air was cold with a nip of frost, the wind in the south, and then for five days the weather held and winter was like summer and even the evenings ran hot and sultry.
Then the wind died. There was a perfect calm and it was as if they could hear for miles. The world was as if in suspension, poised on its axis, waiting, expecting, and a deep uneasiness set in. A big event was coming. They knew it down into their bones. Their voices dropped to whispers as they moved about cautiously and warily, their eyes on the horizons north, south, east, and west.
A strange fog began to drift in that early morning and Michael told Elizabeth how thin his blood had become as they rode quietly through the hollow air, following on the heels of the skinners the source of the rifle fire. They carried food and water and belts of cartridges for Matthew and Mark. The boys had received a letter from their mother addressed to Matthew, which Michael carried to him.
Matthew read quietly and then abruptly handed the letter to Mark. Their father had passed. There was a description of his last peaceful days in town, quotations of his last words. He wished for them a vineyard and fruit trees, straight fences, square barns, shade, an endless source of fresh water. “We will soon be drinking at the fountain,” he’d said, and “Remember me with all love,” and then he passed. Whatever sorrow they felt, the boys kept to themselves.
Elizabeth would have stayed with the boys, but both were so reserved in their grief that Michael suggested they leave them to be with each other.
“Beware,” Michael said to them, in parting, “This day is a weather breeder.”
Soon the storm clouds rolled in. The wind was slowly picking up in the north and in short time became strong enough to lift sand and flatten the grass. Beneath him, Khyber was nervous and twitchy, as if there were electricity in her legs, and even Granby, stolid and sure as iron, seemed edgy. It was getting blacker in the north and cooler and the wind picked up.
They were halfway back to camp when the sky darkened. A storm of biblical proportion was rising on the edge of the round world and was as if sourced in the undivided essence of terror. In the north, it rose up as if a great black wall. Michael tipped his head back to see its height and there was evidence of a great turbulence in the blackness overhead. Then everything shifted so fast. The temperature dropped and the wind began to make a hollow roar. Its fury increased. It moaned and it drove a cold that went through the blood and bones.
“What is it?” she said.
“It’s going to break,” he said. “We are in for some god-awful weather.”
She held the hair that was blowing about her face with a gloved hand. The horses moved under them, stepping sideways away from the wind. She looked to the looming sky with fear-bright eyes. Her face flushed with the cold air.
“Ride to camp as fast as you can. Don’t look back,” he said, and then ominously: “Do not save the horse if you have to.”
Michael spun Khyber around and lowered his head and they rode off into the maw of the storm. The cold piercing wind came down on him. The rain was laced with ice. He rode on, and by the time the gale exploded with paralyzing fury, the wind so fierce he could not breathe, he calculated Elizabeth in sight of the bluff. The storm screamed all around him, like artillery or a hundred locomotives.
When he found the skinners and butchers they were islanded as if shipwrecked. The green hides in the wagons were already frozen, as were the ones they’d wrapped around themselves. They thought they’d hunker down and wait and soon they would be dead and frozen.
Michael came down on them with his whip. “Move,” he yelled, lashing and snapping the air about their backs and faces. He gave the whip to the hides they wore. “We’ve got to run,” he said as he delivered cracking blows. The men aroused themselves from their torpor and they panicked to life, fought to free themselves from their frozen cocoons. Shivering they climbed onto their feet and found they could not stand upright against the wind. Their thighs quivered, their legs gave out, and they fell down. They tried to force the blood to their extremities, swinging their arms and stamping their feet. They took the rope he handed down and passed it along, tying on more lengths as they went from one wagon to the next. Every effort made their lungs wheeze and their hearts race.
Matthew and Mark rode in. They dismounted and heaved their bodies into the sides of the oxen. They twisted their tails and beat them on their flanks. The rest of the men joined in as the will to live surged up inside them. The wheels cracked free and there was the screech of frozen axles inside the moan of the wind as
it tore through them. The boys remounted and dropped lariats over the horns of the lead oxen and stepped off east following Michael, the blinding, stinging rain slamming into them, the gusts staggering the horses as they moved heavily forward.
Drenched to the skin, Michael knew they had to shelter. They all had to shelter, but they could not stop. To stop was to die. They had to move faster.
“Keep on,” he cried as the freezing rain encased them in icy shells. The exertion caused them to sweat and their sweat was freezing on their skin.
For hours they labored on. Their muscles ached with the buffeting, every nerve, fiber, body, and brain, and they all wondered if they would die. At times they slipped and fell or the wind flung them to the ground and they were dragged by the rope until they could struggle to their knees and crawl forward and find their feet.
Michael could not tell east from west, north from south. Tired and weak he rode by feel and they traveled on in the direction he thought true. His hands throbbed with pain until they became too numb to hold the reins. He let them slip from his fingers and left Khyber to go at will. Before them there was nothing to see, nothing to touch. Khyber held her pace and direction over the miles. Her flanks heaved and her breath was coming hard and at the last extreme she fell to a slower gait and they were going over the bluff and down the wagon road and desperate not to be run over by the grinding wheels. They skidded over the frozen creek and into the camp and down there the storm was somewhat less severe, although they could hear a roaring overhead and still feel the bite of the frozen rain.
They unhooked the chains and pulled the pins, dropping the yokes where they stood. They set free the oxen and then the men pale and haggard crowded into the cook tent where Aubuchon had a hot fire burning and pots of stew and kettles of coffee. Their lips were blue and their teeth chattering. The tent walls rippled and snapped and threatened to tear away at any second.
Nearly frozen, and weak, his hands cracked and sore, Michael slipped from the saddle and fell from the horse and to the ground. His knees buckled and he dragged himself upright. He pointed in the direction of Elizabeth’s tent and following his hand Khyber led him down the path. He untied the door to Elizabeth’s, where a fire roared in the little stove and brought Khyber in with him. Granby was there as well. Stiff legged, icicles hanging from his coat and hat, he passed through the curtain and only then, when he saw her sitting on her bed wrapped in a blanket with Sabi beside her and flames in the stove cherry red, was he relieved.
“You’re safe,” he said. His throat was frozen and his voice was a raspy and scraping sound.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, her eyes wide. “What about the men.”
“I have brought them in,” he said. “Everyone is accounted for.” His hands and limbs numb and cold, he went for his quinine, and when he returned, the red dog slipped in behind him and took a place by the fire. Elizabeth poured out brandy, but shaking so badly, he spilled most of it in trying to drink.
She caught him by his shoulders and helped him into a chair beside the bed. He tried to kick off his boots, but he couldn’t lift his leg. She reached down and took his boot by the toe and heel and worked it back and forth until it came off. It was full of water.
“I’ve made the fire hot,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
In her parlor he peeled off his dripping clothes and his skin pinked and prickled in the warming air. He added more wood to the flames and found towels to wipe down the horse. Khyber had given so much and now he needed to save her. Elizabeth took up a towel and they both rubbed her vigorously and dried her limbs and flank, her neck, her back and head that she not become stiff and chilled.
Michael placed his hand over Khyber’s heart. He waited for her to nuzzle him and she did.
“Go in there,” Elizabeth said, and he slipped through the curtain to her bed and he collapsed onto the ticking.
Elizabeth banked the fires and tucked him in, bundled herself, and picked up her medical bag. In a momentary lull in the storm, she ran to the cook tent, where the rest of the men were.
The men—their faces were now wet where once icicles hung from their mustaches and beards. Many had frozen their feet and fingers, ears and noses.
She told Luke, Charlie, and John to tether themselves with ropes and fetch all the blankets they could from the other tents. The men stripped off their wet clothes and wrapped themselves in the blankets. She inspected their hands and feet and faces and applied cloths that they’d warmed by the fire. In the medical bag was tincture of iodine and this she applied to the feet and frozen limbs and hoped amputations would be averted.
She told the three boys it was their job to tend the cook fires all night long and they tied off and went out for wood. Everyone was to stay where they were and work to keep warm. Charlie came back shortly thereafter, a split of wood in one hand and carrying the axe in the other. He dropped the split and let go the axe, but it did not fall. He held it up with his hand, frozen to his palm as if a neat trick.
“Aren’t you a smart monkey,” she said. “Get yourself to the fire.” Charlie joined the other men, another casualty of cold.
Outside the wind lashed the tents as if with heavy whips and at times was a scream, shrill and whistling. The men lit their cigarettes and let them sizzle close to their fingertips. They were not hungry until they tasted Aubuchon’s stew and then they could not get enough.
“Mr. Gough,” she said to Ike, and he offered his hands the way a dog would offer a paw. She turned them over in her own and then swabbed glycerine on his cheeks and nose and told him to gently rub it in, and for all of this, the men felt her heart was full of kindliness toward them. When she was through, she told them their bodies would soon be in agony. She then tethered herself to return to her tent. She bent her head to escape the rain that filled her eyes and nostrils and froze her cheeks.
Michael lay there and watched the fire in the stove while Elizabeth sat by brushing her tumbled hair. The tea boiled. At her feet was a basket of food she’d brought.
“Cold night,” she said, and told him he’d saved many lives.
She poured herself a cup of tea and was to offer one to him, but his eyes had closed and he’d fallen asleep. She sat close to the fire and sipped her tea and in the basket she found a wedge of corn bread. Everyone was safe and accounted for, and however tired she was, she wanted this moment to last.
Chapter 32
While they slept, the temperature dropped fifty degrees. The rain turned to snow and the snow blew and fell in a blinding descent. It beat against the walls and swirled about the roof. It piled up on the south side of everything as the wind swept the north sides clear and left patches of blasted dirt and frozen grass.
When Michael awoke, the blanket held the outline of his body in hoarfrost. The bedding around his head was stiff from his frozen breath. Elizabeth was curled up beside him, down inside the bedcovers. Pulling the blankets back over her, he stood by the bed. There was wood and with the last embers he was able to renew the fire in the bedroom and parlor stoves. From beneath the bed he pulled a quilt from under the warm dogs and wrapped it around his shoulders.
The red dog lifted his head as he entered the parlor. The horses were there as well and Khyber was no longer in danger. Outside the snow was drifted and banked high. The surround was heavy and dense and white and the light was silvery and frosty and the edge of all things was as if cut with a knife. From the cook tent there came a steady stream of gray smoke. Overhead the sky was vast and slate blue and the wind a sighing moan. The creek was reduced to a thin black channel soon to be frozen over. Everywhere were the huge snowdrifts and frost and sparkling ice.
All that day long, Aubuchon kept hot water for tea and the coffeepot boiling and there was bread and stew and there was meat thawing and grilling on the cook fire. The men went out on stout ropes, working furiously to stock as much wood as they could inside the cook tent.
In the afternoon the wind died down and the air
cleared and became as if crystal. In places the wind had swept away the snow and the frost. By needful habit he ascended the bluff to witness a vast ocean of white, the ice cracking beneath his boots.
Cupping his hand, he blew warm air to his eyes and he could see again, but there was nothing to see because the snow was everywhere and unbroken. He walked the bluff west until he came to a place where he was able to see the buffalo, their immense black forms coated with hoarfrost and hung with icicles against the white landscape. They browsed the frozen earth, rooting through to the frosty grass and turning their noses bloody.
To the north an old bull was being harassed by wolves. They’d surrounded him and were taking turns assaulting his flank. His legs were shredded and there was blood streaming down his sides. His nose was torn to pieces, his tongue eaten out, and he’d lost his tail. But he braced and fought on, turning and turning as they moved in on him, and at his feet there were three he’d killed.
He wanted to feel something for the old bull, but he did not. To feel something was an idea in his mind that could not find its way to his heart. He was not naive. He’d been to the dangerous limit of the world. He was not innocent. Michael turned back east and made for the wagon road. He’d been out longer than he should have.
That night the darkness came on instantly and this time the storm struck from the south and ever more viciously and did not let up for the entire night and into the next day. Finally the moon rose and they could hear the coyotes. Their pealing cry was loud and harsh and then it softened, and when it came again it was a wild, lonely, mournful haunting. There came a piercing answer from across the valley sharp and staccato.
As the temperature continued to drop they could hear the freezing land boom all around them. From the creek there came sounds like gunshots. From the woods came the sound of trees exploding. Elizabeth, in her random thinking remembered, How like a winter hath my absence been. From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
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