“Didn’t it never snow in Vermont, Isaac?”
“It did, yes it did. But you could reckon it, you didn’t spend yer days and nights beatin’ the sag out of a tent to keep from bein’ buried!”
“Why this is a gentle winter, Isaac,” I said.
“That may be but it’s m’ first and last in this hole, I’ll tell ye.”
“Than go and farewell,” Zar screamed.
“I’ll go, I will, don’t ye fret. When that stage comes I’ll be on it when it goes—”
At that moment Miss Adah stopped her song. And in the sudden silence Isaac looked around and cried: “But that stage’ll never come. We’ll all be dead before that stage comes again!”
Those were the lonesomest words I nearly ever heard. Not a night had passed lately when I hadn’t thought the same thing; but I’d never said it out loud and neither had anyone else. Isaac took the fear in all our minds and put it in the air. A chill ran through the room and in the quiet we heard the wind outside blowing desolate across the earth. I saw a wilderness of snow-crusted flats between us and the rest of the world, and not a track on it.
A moment later Isaac left. Then Molly got up and went off quickly. Mae leaned against the bar and fingering her hair said: “See you next Christmas, honey,” softly, as to herself. Zar slumped down at a table and put his head on his hand. Our gathering didn’t make any more sense, each of us was alone as himself, I wrapped up the boy and we left too.
The forlorn feeling of that Christmas night grew as time went on. There were days of such pure cold that it was like swallowing frost to take a breath out of doors. The weather had us holed up good, almost in spite it seemed like, and if I thought about the spring it was as a lost possibility. How could you remember the warmth of the sun when through one bleak day after another the winter danced around you with every fancy step it knew? We huddled in that cabin, bent grey sticks with eyes in them, I couldn’t even worry that one day we might not have what to eat or make a fire with: it was a worse dread to feel so lost on the earth, a live creature in a lifeless land.
What I’m trying to do now is account for the way things went, this winter had a lot to do with it. Under such conditions even the plain doings of a day had no reason. It was foolishness to eat just to stay alive inside that room; it was foolishness to lie down for the night since you would only wake up to the same day again. Once Molly looked at the door and said: “We’re buried as sure as those people frozen in the ground out there! Oh Christ but we know it, that’s all the difference.” And Jimmy, with that picture of his father, jumped up hugging her and crying as if to make it not true.
Sometimes we could hear through the wind the awful rows Zar made with his ladies. It sounded like murder. The Russian was drinking up his own stock and it made him mean. He knocked a tooth out of the tall girl Jessie’s mouth and on one occasion Miss Adah had to put him to sleep with a stick, he was going at the Chinagirl so.
Leo Jenks took to walking out in the storms and firing his guns into the wind. Once he stayed out too long, claiming he had seen a pronghorn; he may have or he may not, but his fingers froze to his rifle and when he stumbled into Zar’s place they pried it loose and the skin went with it.
And Isaac Maple kept to himself in that tent, marking off each day as a mistake on his pocket calendar. He never talked when you went to buy something from him, not trusting in any exchange of words, but got you out again as quick as he could. On an especially bitter day, when the wind made your teeth ache and froze your lashes, he went around to each of us in turn—Zar, Jenks, me, and then over to the Indian—offering to sell a partner’s half of what he had on order with Alf Moffet Nobody would buy and this convinced him that he was right, that he’d been horse-traded and that Alf would not show up again. From then on he charged us double his price for flour and sardines—which is all he had left—and finally he refused to sell altogether, claiming he needed the food for himself.
When this happened Zar came to see me with his shotgun, saying: “Let’s kill him.” Zar meant what he said, but I did some talking and instead we trudged over to the stable, where Jenks was nursing his sore hands, and we took a look at the horses. They all had loose hides and hanging heads. What feed there was they had eaten up, where there was bark on the stalls they had chewed it off. The Major’s pony seemed worse than the rest, his eyes were dull, his bones stuck out and he had ulcers all over his legs. I borrowed Jenks’s pistol and shot the pony behind the ear.
Not one of the other animals stirred with the sound. Zar took the gun and killed one of his team; and we spent the afternoon dressing down the carcasses. It was something we would have had to do sooner or later, what Isaac did was just as well, another week and there wouldn’t have been any meat to dress down. I got back to the cabin, my hands and feet were numb and my clothes were stiff with blood, but there was a cache in the snow outside the door that would keep us awhile.
We used everything of that poor thin pony, a splinter from his ribs made a needle and his sinew made thread. There was no bark to tan with, but Molly fleshed the hide with the stiletto and for days she beat it with a stone, rubbed it with dirt. She finally got it soft, although she didn’t think she would, and she sewed up a rough jacket for the boy. And I made us covers for our shoes. I will say here that all this—even the slaughtering—helped my spirits. It was doing something purposeful. Molly too worked with a will. But I suppose Jimmy had an attachment for that pony, and although he wore the jacket when it was done, and ate the soup Molly cooked from the bones, he didn’t bother to look at me any more.
Of all the miseries of that winter not the least was waking up to Jimmy’s dislike. I don’t believe in the human intelligence of animals, or that they are to be used in any way but the most useful; I didn’t think when I shot that pony but that it was something that had to be done. However the boy made me regret it. You see once I saw how he felt it made me realize that his feeling was nothing sudden, but like a divide that had risen between us as time went on. I felt less close to him now than the night I sat up with him when his Daddy died. How many ponies had I killed besides this one?
Molly had no such trouble with the boy’s affections, many times she would say something to him that I thought cruel, or she would look at him like he was nothing but the orphan boy he was—but her treatment only made him doggish. Since his illness he had gotten this way, following her with his eyes and waiting patiently for whatever morsel of attention she might throw him. Now I could see in Molly’s face a shadow like she didn’t want him so. It unsettled her, it was nothing she asked for. If I regretted some of the love he gave her I’m sure she did too. I can’t be too clear about that, it makes me sad to remember. It wasn’t until a night about two weeks after the horse killings that I felt properly frozen for the winter.
In the dugout something brought us all awake. It was an unearthly scratching sound. I turned up the lamp and we followed it with our eyes. There was an animal on the roof, scratching at the warmth. I grabbed my gun and just as I did a slat was pushed away, and in a fine sift of snow a thick tawny paw slipped in from the night and clawed at the air above Molly’s head. She screamed. I shot once, twice, not at the paw but through the wood where the heart would be. The paw was gone before my second shot. I thought of the meat we had left outside the door and ran to it, holding the lamp, and from the open door I saw in the dim cast of lamplight a shadow bounding off through the snow. Well the crash was still in my ears and my heart was banging hard when I went around to put the board back in place; and I can’t forget the sight, looking down through there, Molly and Jimmy were hugging each other for all their lives, they were fastened in their terror. After that she got to be as doggish to him as he was to her. She was no longer put out by his regard, but took care of him warmly, often giving him kisses. And I don’t think any of us but me kept remembering, always with a banging heart, the sight of those claws, sharp as scythes, swiping at us from the night.
There had to be an end to w
inter or an end to us. By the time March came in I was ready, like Isaac Maple, to bet with the winter. Hard dry winds blew day after day, sweeping the snow, skimming the top of the bared frozen ground and blowing up circly storms of sand. But one afternoon I thought I smelled rain. I went outside: John Bear was standing over by his shack, he was facing west and looking into the dusty bleak sky—he had smelled it too. The air was cold but the wind was just a murmur of what it had been, and if you stood very still you could feel now and then a warmth in it, a dampness. I kept my hopes to myself but that night I woke up and heard it, a soft fall on the roof, not a shower but a small steady rain. And at dawn the sun spread over the flats with a rush.
I stepped outside into that new morning and I couldn’t believe it. The sun filled my eyes with a warmth of hazes, pink, pale green and yellow, and all over the flats white mists were rising like winter being steamed out of the ground. I swore I could feel the earth turning. Everything was new in my sight, I looked around at the short street of buildings—cabin, windmill, saloon, tent and stable—and it seemed like a row of plants just sprung. The Chinese girl peeked out of the saloon, holding her hand up against the brilliance, and I waved to her. A few minutes later everyone was out of doors, blinking in the sunlight, standing silent in the face of something that was hard to remember. Then Jenks gave a hoot and threw his hat into the air and all of a sudden everyone was stretching, calling out, Zar went around hugging everybody, Adah was shaking Isaac Maple’s hand, the girls were kissing each other, Jimmy was holding Molly’s arm and pulling her this way and that. Jenks went into his stable and drove the horses out, there was much mingling, we were all smiling like fools, we were all pasty and thin in the fresh light but alive even so.
8
Now I would write about that spring in its every minute if I could, using up my strength and time and going no further through the pain of seasons. But it is no pleasure to me now; and it is all I can do to remember it for my purposes which is to tell the way things happened.
This was the time when Swede settled and Bert Albany came down, the hurts were healing in the warm sun and the expectations were nourished into life. A greenness of hopes grew up like the scrub along the rocks coming up green.
I remember another spring, much before, when I repped with an outfit that ranged along the Big Mo: how the river thawed with great groans and cracks, and the ice broke and rose in the air to be carried off in the surge, until the water had its full bed and was running swiftly from one bank to the other. It was a grand rout of winter. Well the change was just as sudden here, a bit of sun drew all the frost from our bones and the blood ran swift in our veins. Alf Moffet pulled in with his coach low on its springs for all the freight it carried, and the miners began to ride down again. They had been working most of the winter and they all had a hankering to spend some of their pay somewhere besides the company stores. In a couple of Saturday nights Isaac Maple forgot he’d been horse-traded, he and Zar, too, made enough to start bringing Alf back regular every two weeks. With my commission on their orders I made enough to buy up a stock of tinned food, coffee, sugar, flour, saleratus, beans and salt pork. And I’ll tell you we commenced to eat good.
Each morning and night Molly would do up a batch of pancakes and we dipped them in sugar and ate them rolled. We had beans and pork and maybe whole tomatoes from a can, and good black coffee to wash it all down. We ate till we couldn’t remember the taste of that horse, and it wasn’t long before the flesh filled in between the bones and we began to look human once more.
We were still ragged as Indians but with the sun rising higher each day the need for Hausenfield’s well rose too; and I fixed a price of a dollar a day for every person who drew from it. I was lucky with the windmill, I nailed the blades back up and fixed some loose boards in the scaffold and it worked fine, bringing the water up fresh and cool, bringing up the dollars. I went into Isaac’s tent one day and I walked out with a miner’s jacket and small-sized boots for Jimmy, laced shoes and calico for Molly, and a razor for myself.
I remember that alright. Straightaway I went over to the well, put those things down and found a rock to hone my new razor, and with the piece of lye soap there I shaved off my beard right down to the skin. I had not shaved since I lost my old razor in the fire, and it was something I had been itching to do ever since. Although like most I favor mustaches, I am not given to beards, I don’t like their feel nor the way the lice will take to them. When I was done—feeling slick as a calf—I took those things into the cabin and you should have seen the looks on their faces. Molly and the boy went into a proper reverence, I don’t know whether it was the new things or me. “Well look at that,” said Molly, smiling, and I think she meant me.
Jimmy was all smiles too—until Molly made up her mind he would have to wash himself before he could put the jacket and boots on. So he had to go outside and sit in the tub and while he did Molly took his pants and shirt and scrubbed them down in a pail of water. Later Miss Adah, always of a generous turn of mind, came out of the saloon and offered Molly a scissors. What surprised me was Molly took it, what surprised Jimmy was that she put it to his head. When he was all done, dressed in new boots and a jacket, and a clean dry shirt and pants, with some of his hair trimmed—well he was angry but he looked fine. “A proper boy,” Molly said, gazing at him.
Molly was fair to look on as she said that. Just the day before she had washed her hair and gone to sit up in the rocks aways to let the breeze dry it. She had handsome features for all the pockings, the frown was gone from her forehead and there was a softness in her face, a measure of joy in her eyes. I couldn’t grudge her hold on Jimmy, they were doing each other good, maybe giving each other a rest from the past, why should I have felt anything but glad?
All I am describing happened on an afternoon of deep gold sunlight over everything, with air that was sweet to breathe. Over by his shack John Bear was fooling with his garden. Jessie was working one too, she didn’t know and I wasn’t going to tell her that only the Indian could raise anything out of this ground. Smoke was coming up from Zar’s still behind his saloon. Away in the distance Zar and Jenks were running out their horses in big circles over the flats. There was a feeling of celebration in everything that was going on.
I went over to Jenks’s stable and looked over his horses one morning, it was not the boy’s feelings I had in mind, you just don’t like to be without something to ride. I liked the looks of the mule best of all, his ribs showed through his hide but he’d wintered better than the grey or the sorrel. Knowing my man I went to Jenks and told him I wanted to buy one of his horses. A sly look came into eyes and he told me he’d deal only for the mule. We settled on the sum of seventy-five dollars, to be paid in water rights at a dollar a day not including days of rain, if any. I took out the mule and brought him around to the cabin and hitched him to the buckboard. He stood there the best part of a day until Jimmy wandered over like he didn’t care, and hefted the reins like it didn’t mean anything and finally stepped up on the seat and gave him a try in the flats.
It gladdened me to see him romp off that way. Pretty soon he came back in but it was just to pull Molly, protesting, up on the seat; and then there they were spinning away, she laughing and holding on tight and Jimmy shouting in a cracked voice, standing up and flipping those reins and getting more and more run out of the mule. I went about my business and it seems now just a moment before I turned around and they were hardly in view. They had made circles further and further out but all I saw was a funnel of dust going down in a straight line. Where were they going? For a moment my breath stopped, I thought well goodbye to them, it serves me right, they’re gone and she’s still laughing.
But Jimmy had only seen something and gone to take a closer look. For a long time the rig was a black spot in my eye and finally it moved; and a while after they were back at the cabin.
“What’s out there Jimmy?” I said.
He looked at Molly. She got down and went inside an
d he followed her.
I went after. “I said what’s out there, boy, where’s your voice?”
“Wagon.” Another look at Molly. Her mouth was set tight.
“One wagon?”
“Yes.” And then with a rush: “It’s busted in the back and the man’s settin’ up there and she’s screamin’ at him.”
“Who is?”
“Why that woman, she’s—”
“Jimmy!” Molly said.
“Who are they?” I turned to her.
“How should I know who?”
“Well didn’t you speak to them?”
“Oh sure! I’ll go around greetin’ every lowlife on the prairie!”
I went out and found Zar and told him what they’d seen. He was busy with his still but he said I could take his team and wagon. I hitched up four and Jenks reckoned he’d come along and we got up and started off. Why was I taking Zar’s wagon and not the mule and rig? I guess Molly understood better than I: We passed the cabin and she came out of the door, Jenks tipped his hat to her but she cried: “I know what you’re doing! Go get ’em Mayor, more fools for your town!”
We found it due south, sitting on the trail that edged the flats: it was just as Jimmy said, an old Murphy wagon stuffed to its cover, a man was sitting on the box and the back wheels of the wagon were splayed out like a new colt’s legs. The man was yellow-haired and beardless, his hands hung down between his knees and he watched us with eyes as baleful as his oxen’s. No woman was screaming at him, but further off walking away through the scrub with a shawl over her head she was raising her arms and shouting at the sky.
The man said: “Ay ben looking for Svedes.”
I said: “Well there’s none hereabouts so far as I know.”
He nodded as if he didn’t expect otherwise. Jenks and I climbed down to take a look at the axle, and when we did the man stepped off his box and he was the tallest fellow I ever saw, he must have been six and a half feet. He walked clumsy like a big man; he was fair-complected with strawberry skin, on the side of his neck there was a wen the size of a cannonball.