[Canadian West 02] - When Comes the Spring

by Janette Oke

  Suddenly I thought of something. I turned slightly in the sleigh.

  "Wynn," I hollered against the swishing of the sled runners and the yipping of the dogs. "Do I need a boy-name or a girl-name?"

  There was laughter in Wynds voice as he called back, "A boy-name, Elizabeth."

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Jeffli7y yn

  I named my dog Kip. If someone had asked, I really wouldn't have been able to explain why. It just seemed to suit him somehow. He was a smart little thing, and Wynn said that it was never too early to begin his training. So I started in. I didn't know much about training dogs. Wynn told me obedience was of primary importance. A dog, to be useful and enjoyable, must be obedient. Wynn gave me pointers, and in the evenings, if duties did not call him out, he even worked with me and the young dog.

  It was amazing how quickly Kip grew. One day he was a fluffy pup, and the next day it seemed he was a gangly, growing dog. He turned from cute into beautiful. His tail curled above his silver-tipped, glistening dark fur. He was curious and sensitive and a quick learner. I loved him immediately and he did so help to fill my days. Aware of his needs, physical and emotional, my own life was enriched.

  Kip needed exercise, so I took him out for walks, bundling myself up against the cold. It was a good way to get my exercise as well. When the snow got deeper and more difficult to navigate, I asked for snowshoes so that I might still keep up the daily exercise program. Wynn brought some home and took me out to introduce me to the use of them. They were much more difficult to manage than it seemed when watching Wynn maneuver in them. I took many tumbles in the snow in the process of learning. Kip thought it was a game; every time I went down, he was there to lick my face and scatter snow down my neck.

  Eventually I did get the feel of snowshoes. The cold or the snow no longer kept me confined. I walked along the river trails, along the treeline to the west, and to the settlement. Whenever I went to the store with Kip, I picked him up and carried him. He was getting heavy and he was also getting impatient with me. He hated to be carried; he wanted to run. But I was fearful about all the dog fights I had seen on my trips to the village. I did not want Kip to be attacked. And so, as the weeks went by, each time our outings included the store, or Nimmie's for Bible study, I picked up my growing, complaining dog. I wondered just how much longer I could manage it. I hated to be stuck in the house, and I hated to leave Kip at home alone. I guessed that eventually all our walks would have to take us away from the dogs and the village and into the woods instead.

  As the weeks went by, more snow piled up around us. The people began to be concerned about food and wood supplies. It took all their time and attention to provide a meal or two for the day and to keep their homes reasonably warm.

  Christmas seemed unreal to me. There was no village celebration, no setting aside of this important day. Wynn and I celebrated quietly in our home. We read the Christmas story, and I shed a few tears of loneliness. I tried not to let Wynn see them, but I think he was suspicious. We did not have a turkey dinner with all of the trimmings. We had, instead, a venison roast and blueberry pie made from the berries I had gathered and canned. The Indian women had dried theirs, but I knew nothing about the drying process. Besides, I thought I preferred the canned fruit; to my way of thinking, they did taste awfully good in that Christmas dinner pie.

  In the afternoon, Wynn suggested we take Kip for a run. It was fun to be out together, but the weather was bitterly cold, so we did not stay out for long. I think even Kip was glad to be back inside by our warm fire.

  We were soon beginning a new year. Repeatedly, Wynn had to dig us out from a new snowfall in the mornings. If it had not been for Kip, I'm sure I would never have left my kitchen. He would whine and scamper about at the door, coaxing for a run.

  The trappers now and then brought home meat for their families. The women supplemented this with some ice fishing in the nearby river. It was cold, miserable work; and I ached in my bones for them. Children and women alike were often out gathering wood from the nearby forest. I wondered why more of them did not prepare for the winter by stacking up a good fuel supply. Most of the Indians gathered as they needed it, and that was a big task when the fires had to be kept burning day and night.

  I still met for studies with Nimmie and Miss McLain, though she still had not thawed out much. She seemed so deeply bitter and troubled. Little by little I learned her story. She had been orphaned at the age of three; Ian was five at the time. A fine Swedish family in the East had taken pity on the two children and raised them along with their own six. They had been treated kindly enough, but the family was poor and frugal, and all the children were required to work at an early age.

  Schooling was one thing the family had felt was important, so each one of the children had been allowed to attend the local school as high as the grades went. When they reached their teen years, they were soon on their own. When Ian left the family, he apprenticed to a merchant in a nearby town as a bookkeeper and stock-checker. The man was German, and Ian lived in his home and learned German. Katherine had her heart set on being a schoolteacher, and so she found employment in the home of a doctor as housemaid and took classes whenever she could crowd them in.

  The woman of the house was impossible to please, and young Katherine often found herself the victim of fits of fury. She would have left if she had had any place to go. At length her schooling was completed and she was able to obtain a position at a local school. The doctor's wife suddenly realized that she was losing good help, and she tried to bar Miss McLain from getting the job. It didn't work. Miss McLain was hired and moved out of the home and into a boarding house. There was a young man staying at the boarding house as well; and, after some months, they became attracted to one another and eventually engaged. Miss McLain was now a happy girl. For the first time that she remembered, she had a job she loved, a salary on which she could live, and-most importantly-someone who loved her.

  The young man seemed happy, too, and he was anxious for the wedding to take place. Miss McLain told him she had to wait until she could afford her dress and all the other things she needed. The man declared that he hated to wait longer and then came up with a lovely plan. He had a sister in town. He was sure she would be ever so glad to help them.

  They boarded a streetcar and went to see the sister. Miss McLain was excited. If her John was correct in assuming his sister would help, she would soon be a married woman with a husband and home of her own.

  When the streetcar stopped and they walked the short distance to the sister's home, Miss McLain could only stand in frozen bewilderment. There must be some mistake. They were at the home of her former employer.

  She did go in, but things did not go well. Not only did the angry woman refuse to help her, but she raged and ranted about her dishonesty, her ill temper, her laziness, and even her bad name. John only stood there like a statue, not even defending his Katherine.

  In the end, the rift between them was so great that it could not be repaired, and John called off the engagement. Miss McLain left behind her school and her dreams and headed for her brother, who was by now living in the North.

  She had never buried her bitterness. In her twenty years in the North, she had nursed it and fostered it and held it to her until now it was a terrible, deep festering wound in her soul. She was miserable; she deserved to be miserable; I think she even enjoyed being miserable; and she did a wonderful job of making those around her miserable, too.

  In spite of her bitterness and her anger with life, I began to like Miss McLain. I felt both sorry for her and angry with her. Other people had suffered; others had been treated unfairly. They had lived through it. There was no reason why Miss McLain could not pull herself out of her misery if she had a mind to.

  Nimmie was always patient and loving with her. Miss McLain, in turn, was spiteful and cutting with Nimmie. She didn't bother much with me. Perhaps she didn't think I was worth the trouble, or perhaps she thought I would not be intimidated
by her; I do not know.

  In spite of the difficulty, we were able to proceed with our Bible study. As we went through the lessons together, I was sensing a real change in Nimmie.

  There was an eagerness, a softness, an openness that really thrilled me. She was so disappointed if a storm kept us from meeting. After a morning of study, she would share with Ian at night the things that she had learned. I was surprised and delighted that Ian seemed interested in what Nimmie told him. He, too, seemed eager to hear truth from God's Word.

  In the middle of January, a had storm hit. In all of my life I had never seen so much snow fall in so short a time. I was worried about Wynn; he was somewhere out in that whiteness with the dog team. I knew that dogs had an unusual sense of direction even in a storm, but I paced and prayed all day that the animals wouldn't let us down now.

  The temperature dipped and the water in the basin again glazed over with ice. I worked hard to keep the cabin warm, adding fuel to the fire regularly. Kip whined at the door to go for a run, but I put him off. He was so insistent that eventually I sent him out for a few minutes on his own. I had never let him out alone before and I was afraid he might not come back. But he was soon crying at the door to be admitted to the warmth.

  I fed Kip and made myself tea. Still Wynn did not come.

  It was dark outside when there was a thumping at the door. I ran to it with my heart in my throat. Who could it be? Wynn did not knock at his own door. Who else would be coming and why? Has something happened to Wynn?

  But it was Wynn, and in his arms he had a bundle. I opened the door wide for him.

  "It's Crazy Mary," he said. "She was alone in her cabin with no heat and no food."

  I hurried ahead of Wynn and tossed the cushions from the cot to make a place for her.

  He opened the blankets, and she lay shivering. For a moment, I wondered if she was conscious, and then her eyelids fluttered and she looked at us. I smiled, but it was not returned.

  "Do you have any food ready?" asked Wynn.

  "There's soup in the pot, and I just made tea."

  "A little soup. Not too much. I'll have to feed her."

  While I went for the soup, Wynn finished unbundling the blankets from Mary, and now he removed the moccasins and wrappings of hide from her feet. He was working over her feet when I came with the soup. He went to take the bowl from me, but I indicated her feet. "I'll feed her," I said. "You do whatever is necessary there."

  At first she refused the soup on the spoon; but when I was able to trickle a little of it into her mouth, she opened it ever so slightly and I was able to give her more. She swallowed several spoonfuls before I decided it was enough for the time.

  "Should I give her some tea?" I asked Wynn.

  "A little," he replied, and I got a cup of tea and spooned some of it into the woman's mouth.

  She still shivered. I had never seen anyone who looked so cold. I went for more blankets.

  We fixed a bed for Mary on the cot and looked after her throughout the night. Several times I awoke to find Wynn absent from bed and bent over the old woman, spooning hot soup or massaging her frostbitten feet.

  The next few days were taken up with nursing Mary. Her toes swelled to a disturbing size. There didn't seem to be much more we could do for them. About once an hour I would spoon-feed her. She ate more heartily now, though she still was unable to feed herself.

  I knew she could talk, but she did not speak to me. I had heard her talking to Wynn the day we had visited her on her trapline. She had been quite vocal then. I knew her silence now was not because she couldn't speak but because she chose not to. For whatever reason, I decided to respect it. Oh, I talked to her. I talked to her as I fed her and as I cared for her feet. I talked to her about the weather as I moved about the house doing the dishes or feeding the fire. I talked to her much like I talked to Kip-including her in my activities but not expecting an answer.

  She lay on the cot, her black eyes watching every move I made; but she said nothing.

  When the worst of the storm was over, Mrs. Sam and Evening Star came for tea. It had been some weeks since I had had their company and I was so glad to see them. I suspected they had come to see Mary. They may have, but if so they certainly kept it well hidden. After one glance in the woman's direction, they completely ignored her. They crossed to my kitchen table where they knew they would be served, and seated themselves.

  They talked about the storm, the need for wood for the fire, the difficulty in catching fish-mostly communicating with waving, expressive hands, though they did add a word here and there. Evening Star played with Kip, seeming to like my dog. The Indians were not accustomed to having a dog in the home, and it must have seemed strange to her.

  When they rose to leave, I followed them to the door.

  "Mary is getting much better," I said quietly, to introduce the subject of her stay with us into the conversation. "In a few days, we hope she will be able to sit up some."

  There was no response.

  "As soon as she is able to sit, we think she will be able to feed herself, and then before too long she will be able to get around again. It's going to take a while, but she is getting better."

  I wasn't sure how many of my English words the two women understood, so I used hand gestures to accompany them.

  Mrs. Sam was shaking her head. She turned at the door and looked at me.

  "Not stay," she said clearly.

  "Oh, she must stay," I persisted. "She needs lots of care yet. She couldn't possibly care for herself for many days."

  But Mrs. Sam still shook her head. "Not stay," she insisted. "She go-soon."

  Mrs. Sam was right. When we got up the next morning, Mary was not there. How she ever managed to drag herself from our home and back to her cabin I'll never know. She had been so weak and her feet so swollen, and yet she was gone. Wynn immediately went after her. She was already home-sitting in her cold cabin, her scanty blankets wrapped around her. She refused to move.

  He gathered wood and built her a fire and made her a cup of tea from the supplies he always carried with him. Then he spent the morning gathering a wood supply for her.

  He went out with his rifle and was rewarded in his hunt with a buck deer which he cleaned and hung in a tree close to Mary's cabin. Preserved by the cold, it would supply meat for many weeks for the lone woman.

  He gave her instructions about caring for her feet, unloaded all of the food supplies he had with him, and left her.

  I cried when Wynn told me. I . felt so sorry for the little woman all alone there.

  "There is nothing more we can do," Wynn comforted me. "If we brought her back here, she would only run away again; and next time she might not make it."

  I knew he was right. He had done the best he knew how for Mary. We hoped it was enough to keep her alive.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ✓he Clform

  Storm after storm hit the little settlement. We lived from one day to the next, accepting the weather as it came. On the good days, when the wind calmed down, I went out with Kip. On the days of snow and wind, I shivered and stayed in. I came to hate wind. Not only was it cold and miserable, but it was confining and, I was soon to learn, deadly.

  One brisk, windy morning, Wynn returned from the Hudson's Bay Store where he had gone for a few needed supplies and reported that he had to take a trip south.

  "Today?" I asked incredulously. It was bitterly cold. The windchill must have lowered the temperature to -50°F or worse.

  "Now," he answered, "I'm on my way as soon as I get the team."

  Wynn came into the cabin long enough to add some extra clothing to what he was already wearing and to pack his supply sack with more food and medical equipment. I felt panic seizing me as I noticed his precautions. It looked as though he expected delays.

  "I may not make it back home tonight, Elizabeth," he said, straightening up and drawing me into his arms. "Don't worry about me. There are several trappers' shacks along the trail, and if
the storm gets any worse I can take cover. Do you have everything you need?"

  Me? I was all right. He was the one going out into the storm. Wynn checked the wood supply.

  "There is plenty more wood stacked right outside the door if you should run out," he informed me. "Don't leave the cabin until you are sure the storm is over. And then if you do go out, be sure to take Kip."

  I nodded. It sounded as if he was planning to be gone forever! Tears welled up in my eyes.

  "I'll be fine," he said, brushing the tears away tenderly. "I love you."

  I tried to tell him that I loved him too; but it was difficult to get the words out. My throat felt tight and dry.

  "Where-where are you going?" I finally managed to ask.

  "Word just came in that a trapper out near Beaver Falls hasnt been seen for a couple of weeks. His friend says he always shows up at his place for a Friday night card game, but he hasn't been there for two Fridays now. He's worried about him."

  "Doesn't he have a cabin?"

  "They checked it out. He's not there."

  "If he's been gone for two weeks," I said, annoyed, "why didn't someone report it before-when the weather was decent?"

  "I can't answer that; but it's been reported now, and I have to go."

  I was angry with the careless trapper. I was disgusted with his friend who had let it go for so long without reporting it. I was even a little put out with Wynn for taking his duty so seriously. Surely it would be wiser to wait until the weather improved.

  I kissed him goodbye and let him go, because there was nothing else I could do.

  Even Kip wasn't much help in filling in the long day. I talked to him and fed him and petted him, but my heart was with Wynn. I hope he makes it home before dark, I anguished inwardly.

  Night came and Wynn did not come. I sat up, curled in a blanket and tucked between pillows, on our cot. Kip snuggled at my feet, now and then lifting his head to listen intently to the sounds of the night. I heard the howl of a wolf above the wind, and Kip heard it too. He stirred restlessly but did not answer the cry.