Trial by Winter

by Anne Patton

  Dorothy stared in silence at Mr. Herbert, while she tried to digest this sad story.

  Mam put down her teacup. “Please pass on our condolences.”

  Mr. Herbert shook his head. “Baptiste has never spoken of this to me. I heard of it from another freighter.”

  “Talking about freighters,” Frank said, “I have to get a move on if I’m to do my job.”

  “Right you are,” said Mr. Herbert, pulling a paper from his desk drawer. He and Frank spoke privately for several minutes.

  Then Frank announced, “All aboard family. I’ve got my supply list and I’m off to Battleford.”

  Mr. Herbert shook hands with Mam and Lydia. “I look forward to doing business with you.”

  Dorothy was dying to know the details of their business arrangements but no one enlightened her. Before she could ask, Frank whisked her out the door. Soon they were swishing across the snow back to the homestead. When they pulled up at the soddie, Frank checked his pocket watch. “It’s half past eleven. I have to head out.”

  “Where will you stay tonight?” asked Mam.

  “At the eastern edge of Britannia there’s a couple who put up travellers. I hope to reach their house by nightfall. If I’m late there’s a full moon to travel by.”

  Dorothy carefully brushed the snow off her moccasins before stepping inside the house. Mam got straight to work on a new pair of socks. Dorothy learned that the four pairs she had left at the store were already sold, and Mr. Herbert had orders from several more men.

  “That’s great, Mam! Mr. Herbert will sell every pair you make.”

  “Exactly what he said, Dodie.” Mam seemed quite pleased with herself. “He added a carton of wool to Frank’s supply list. If there’s none available in Battleford, they will telegraph the order to Winnipeg.”

  “He’s sure he will sell all my cookies, too.” Lydia was stirring a pot of soup on the stove. “I’ll make another batch when Frank returns.”

  After dinner Dorothy was itching to try her new wraparounds in deep snow, the kind she’d find in the woods. Mam couldn’t complain about the weather; the sun was shining and the breeze was light. “I’m going to the woods to check my rabbit snares.”

  She waited for Mam to object. Mam was sitting by the window clicking furiously. “What did you say, Dodie? The woods? Fine, be careful.” Astonished, Dorothy rushed out the door before her mother realized what she had said.

  Away from the soddie Dorothy followed the sleigh tracks across the open field to the edge of the woods. She stepped off the sleigh tracks and ploughed through deep snow to the thicket where she had laid her first snare. Her footprints were still visible, the snare was still in place, but there were no signs of animal life. Disappointment lumped in her throat.

  She lumbered back to the tracks and ventured deeper into the woods, trying to remember the location of her other snare. Marks in the snow clearly showed where she and Frank had dragged the windfallen trunks to the sleigh. Following these lines, Dorothy found the jumble of branches she had piled up to make a safe haven for an unsuspecting hare.

  She approached warily half hoping, half fearing she would find a hare in her trap. Her heart stopped when she spied a glint of wire and a lump of white fur. Dorothy pressed her hand to her mouth, frozen between remorse and excitement.

  From somewhere behind her, a brown blur raced past and snatched at the rabbit carcass. It must be a stray dog from someone’s homestead.

  “HEY!” Dorothy screamed. “That’s my rabbit!”

  The creature turned and bared its blood-soaked teeth at her.

  Dorothy’s heart pounded. She stepped back. Instinctively she snatched something to protect herself – a long branch from the jumbled pile. The dog returned to the prey, yanking it from the snare.

  Dorothy was incensed. Her boiling anger overwhelmed caution. She dashed forward with her branch and swatted the animal’s rump. “GO HOME! That’s my rabbit!”

  The stray dog stood its ground over the prey. Its intense eyes bored into Dorothy’s. A deep growl erupted from its throat.

  Dorothy backed up. Her heart thumped, her chest heaved and her blood raced.

  She stepped forward again. “My rabbit,” she hissed.

  The dog snarled. She stepped back. They were at an impasse.

  The dog let out a howl that was answered from somewhere in the trees. Another yelp echoed from a different spot in the woods. Dorothy heard branches snap and the yips of approaching animals. In horror she realized that this dog was a coyote!

  A family of coyotes lived in her woods!

  And they were converging on her!

  Convulsed with terror, Dorothy fled back to the sleigh tracks. Her terrified mind screamed, Run! Run! Her moosehide moccasins kicked through snowdrifts as if they were dust.

  Partway down the tracks she bent over, gasping for breath. How long until they attack me? At that moment a coyote darted through the underbrush. Her pulse thundered!

  Thank the Lord! He ran right past; he wants the rabbit, not me.

  Dorothy’s thudding heart slowed as she broke into the open field. She checked over her shoulder – no coyotes in sight. On shaking legs she trudged home, replaying the scene over and over.

  What were you thinking, challenging a wild animal? Especially one with sharp teeth? Dorothy decided not to tell anyone about her foolhardy defiance. Not even Victor.

  12

  Deep Winter Descends

  Just as Dorothy reached the stoop, a voice rang in the frigid air. “Dodie! I need help!”

  Dorothy swept her eyes across the landscape.

  Lydia was waving frantically at the stable door. Did a coyote break in? Panicked by a vision of blood-soaked teeth, Dorothy ran to her sister.

  “We have to haul this to the house.” Lydia pointed at the sawhorse she had dragged to the doorway. “It’s too heavy for me to carry alone.”

  Is that all? Dorothy calmed her annoyance with several long breaths. “Why didn’t you ask Frank to bring it in the wagon?”

  Lydia shrugged helplessly. “He left too quickly.”

  Dorothy eyed the sawing trestle. Built from sturdy logs, it did look very heavy. Drawing in a deep breath, she hefted one end and helped Lydia lug it out the door. Lydia slipped in the snow and lost her grasp. Gratefully Dorothy dropped her end. Her arm muscles were already throbbing.

  An idea occurred to her and she rushed back inside the stable. She reappeared, hauling out a rubber groundsheet. “This was underneath the hay. Let’s put the sawhorse on it and drag it up the hill.”

  They manoeuvred the awkward structure onto the groundsheet and tugged it uphill. When it slid down the sheet, they shoved it higher and pulled some more. Finally the girls wrestled the sawhorse to an upright position beside the tipi of logs.

  Lydia bent over, huffing for breath. “I’m knackered. Let’s go inside for tea.”

  “Don’t we need the bucksaw, too?”

  “You get it while I put the kettle to boil.”

  Dorothy ran back to the stable. With alarm she saw they had left the door wide open. They would be in real trouble if coyotes stole the meat stored in the rafters. She carefully latched the door. Holding the bucksaw like a weapon, she scanned the horizon for predators all the way to the house.

  Lydia had already hammered a spike into the wall just inside the door. When Dorothy entered she pointed. “Hang the bucksaw there.”

  Mam set down a half-knitted sock and joined them for tea. Afterwards Lydia announced, “Dodie, you and I have to bucksaw as much firewood as we can until Frank returns. We’ll store the chunks under Mam’s bed to dry them out.”

  Only two days ago Dorothy had thanked her lucky stars she didn’t have to help with that gruelling job. She wanted to curse Frank for leaving. She wanted to whine that she wasn’t strong enough. But she didn’t say any of these things: she just followed Lydia out the door.

  The chore was even more exhausting than Dorothy had imagined. She helped her sister disentangle a
long pole from the tipi. When the twelve-foot log finally came loose, Dorothy catapulted backward into the snow. Her mitten snagged on a twig and flew right off her hand. She flailed through a snowdrift to retrieve it.

  The girls dragged the log to the trestle, dropping it into the cradle formed by the crossed end poles. Then Lydia pulled the saw-blade across the log and Dorothy pushed from the other side. The blade often stuck and Lydia had to lift it out and try again. Sometimes Dorothy had to let go of the bucksaw and grasp the log to keep it from rolling.

  After bucking the log into one-foot rounds, Lydia huffed, “We need to saw another pole.”

  “Right now?” Dorothy’s arms burned in protest.

  “Right now.”

  Gritting her teeth, Dorothy helped Lydia untangle another log and position it on the sawhorse. She pushed and pulled the saw, trying to maintain Lydia’s rhythm. When the last round of wood tumbled to the ground, Dorothy frantically shook her arms. “My muscles are on fire!”

  Lydia picked up several pieces of wood. “I feel more prepared now.”

  “I feel half dead.” Dorothy crouched painfully to gather chunks into her arms.

  Together they assembled twenty-five stubby lengths of firewood on the stoop. After they brought them inside, Mam rewarded them with hot soup, thick with chunks of venison and potatoes.

  For the next week the main activity was amassing firewood.

  At the beginning of December a blizzard descended that kept the family indoors for days. They were grateful for the stockpile of dry wood that Dorothy and Lydia took turns splitting. Without sunlight filtering through the window, Mam took to her bed behind the hanging blanket. Lydia had to coax her to rise even to eat.

  The weather was too dangerous to retrieve meat from the stable, so Lydia prepared every meal from navy beans. Each time she opened the large canvas sack of dried beans, she called it their lifesaver in bad weather. Dorothy hated beans; they never cooked long enough to become soft.

  When they weren’t working, the sisters huddled under a quilt near the fire. Lydia saved the coal oil for emergencies, so they sat in the gloom and shared their thoughts.

  “I want to be a doctor, Lydia.”

  “A doctor?” Lydia sounded stunned. “Can a girl become a doctor?”

  “Yes, there’s a lady doctor at Onion Lake. Frank said he would take me to meet her.”

  “You would need a lot…” Lydia hesitated. “I mean, how do you study to become a doctor?”

  “I don’t know. Will it be too hard for me?”

  “Not too hard, but maybe too expensive.”

  “Ohh,” sighed Dorothy.

  “Never mind,” Lydia said wryly, “you have many years to save up the money.”

  And so the days went on with nothing to do but remember the past and contemplate the future. Dorothy marked five days off the calendar before the snow stopped blowing.

  Finally sunshine returned to their house. Mam roused herself and offered to make a venison stew if someone got the meat. Dorothy and Lydia ventured to the stable for several slabs.

  On the way uphill Lydia stamped her feet. “I swear the temperature is far colder now.”

  Dorothy checked the thermometer on the outhouse wall. No matter which way she turned her head, she couldn’t see the silver line in the tube. “The mercury has shrunk into a tiny ball inside the bulb,” she reported. “That means it’s colder than minus twenty.”

  “Mercy!” Lydia gasped. “The locals said our English thermometers would be useless in winter but I thought they were joking.”

  “At least it’s sunny. Maybe the sun will warm up the air.”

  Sadly Dorothy’s optimism did not influence the temperature. For the next three days the sun shone but the weather remained bitterly cold. Lydia fretted about using water from the steel barrel that was reserved for blizzards. Finally she dressed in double layers and hauled the axe to the dock.

  She returned with empty buckets. “The confounded ice is too thick to chop through! We can’t get any water.” For a long time she sat beside the fire with her head in her hands.

  Finally Dorothy whispered, “Don’t give up, Lydia.”

  No answer.

  “If you give up, I’ll be all alone.” Dorothy’s voice quivered.

  Lydia lifted her head. “I’m not giving up. I’m just indulging in a moment of despair.”

  “The emergency barrel is still half full. We’ll refill it as soon as the weather warms up.”

  Lydia wobbled a smile at her sister. “Right. This ghastly deep-freeze can’t last long.”

  Dorothy joined Lydia at the fire, praying her sister’s prediction would prove true.

  •••

  Somewhere in the night Dorothy awoke, too cold to sleep. She bunched into a ball under her covers. Is the fire completely out? Inching her gloved fingers above her head, she pulled the comforter down to her chin to check for the glow of the stove.

  Her eyes wouldn’t open.

  She raised her eyebrows and crinkled her forehead.

  To no avail.

  In a panic she yanked off one glove and felt ice crusted over her eyelashes.

  “Lydia!”

  Her voice sliced through the frigid air, jarring her to alertness. Now she heard the wind whistle and felt snow spray across her face.

  “LYDIA! HELP ME!”

  Finally a grunt sounded below. “Stop thrashing about so. What is your bloody problem?”

  “Snow is c…coming through the roof.” Dorothy’s teeth chattered. “My eyes are frozen shut.”

  Frantically she patted the cold mattress ticking. She had to find the glove she had just ripped off her hand – the soft cashmere glove Gram had knit, warm enough for the Canadian winter.

  Hardly, Dorothy thought bitterly. Not even warm enough for my bed. She pulled Gram’s glove back over her stinging fingers and curled up with her eiderdown tight around her.

  From the bunk below came an extended sigh. “Lord, you’re annoying. All right, I’m coming.”

  Glass clinked and Dorothy perceived a glow through her closed eyelids. Lydia had lit the lamp. “Lord Almighty! There’s a gap between the wall and the roof large enough to put your fist through. You can’t sleep here!”

  Lydia’s breath warmed Dorothy’s face. Lydia huffed until the ice crystals melted and Dorothy blinked her eyes open. Her sister’s face peered over the top of the upper bunk. In the amber lamplight Lydia looked like a mummy, wrapped tight in her comforter.

  “Come down and get into bed with me. Just let me build up the fire first.”

  Dorothy eyed the cast-iron stove. The red embers glowed, just like every night; the fire had not gone out. She watched her sister push kindling and split logs into the firebox. When the hot embers burst into flame, Lydia blew out the lamp and dove back into bed.

  Dorothy scurried down the ladder, draped in her own quilt. She crawled in beside Lydia. “Why didn’t we notice the crack under the roof before?”

  “I don’t know. The temperature is colder? The wind is wilder?”

  “We’ll freeze to death!” Dorothy winced at the shrillness of her voice.

  Lydia pulled Dorothy into a close embrace. “No we won’t.”

  Dorothy nestled into the comfort of her sister’s arms. Lydia was gruff, but she could be counted on, not like Mam who stayed abed whenever problems arose. She wondered if her mother was cold in her double bed behind the curtain.

  Eventually a dull light seeped through the frost-covered window in the east wall.

  Lydia sighed, “I suppose I shall have to brave the cold and stoke the fire.” She made no move to relinquish her cozy cocoon beneath the eiderdowns. “On second thought…I already stoked the fire this morning. It’s your turn.” She gave Dorothy a sharp nudge.

  “For pity’s sake, don’t push!”

  Dorothy set her feet on the floor. The frozen earth stabbed through her woollen stockings. Hopping from foot to foot, she snatched split logs from the wood-box and fed them to
the stove.

  “It’s too early to be dancing,” Lydia chortled. “Put on your boots, you lumphead!”

  Dorothy held her moccasins in front of the fire for a minute, then thrust her feet into them. “Mercy! They’re so cold they’re stiff.” She laced them up under her flannel nightgown. She held Lydia’s slippers at the fire awhile, then brought them to the bed. “Rise and shine, lazybones!”

  Reluctantly Lydia peeled off the blankets and pushed her feet into her slippers. Buttoning her woollen jumper to the neck, she stood and smoothed out her nightgown. “It’s so flippin’ cold I’m wearing my coat, too.” She yanked her coat from its peg and held it to the fire to warm. Fingering the thick felted wool she scoffed, “Best quality beaver cloth, warm enough for the rigours of Canada. As if a draper in Yorkshire had any idea about a Canadian winter.” She thrust her arms into the coat. “Barely warm enough for inside the house.”

  Lydia began the breakfast routine. Pulling the ladle from its nail and the pot from the shelf, she bent towards the water barrel. “Dear Lord,” she exhaled, “it’s frozen solid.”

  With her hand pressed to her mouth, Dorothy stared into the 50 gallon steel drum. Frank had refilled it before he left for Battleford two weeks ago. When they used the water during the blizzard the drum always had a skin of ice, but you could break through with a rap of the ladle.