Dawn on a Distant Shore
Page 6

"You begrudge the judge a young wife?"
"Of course not." And then in response to Curiosity's raised eyebrow: "If I were to worry about this at all, it would be that Martha might deserve a better sort of husband, after Moses."
Curiosity put her fists on her hips. "The judge might be a good enough husband, with the right kind of wife. And Martha alone, with three little ones. If it ain't the judge, it may well be Charlie LeBlanc, and he ain't got a hiccup to call his own."
She poured the second bucket of hot water into the tub and then produced a cake of soap from her apron pocket. "Come on now, let's set you to soaking some of them sore spots away. Got some of the soap that Merriweather woman left behind. You'll smell like a tavern maid lookin' for a cosy man, but I suppose that don't matter none. Quick, now, afore the men come back and let the cold air in."
"Where's Nathaniel?" Elizabeth asked, climbing carefully out of bed.
"Out in the barn with Liam," Curiosity said. "Talking man talk."
Once, Nathaniel could have been ready for this trip north in an hour. With the buckskins on his back, a supply of no-cake and dried venison, all the powder and ammunition he could carry, he would have simply started walking. But these days he and Liam were the only men at Lake in the Clouds, and that made leaving even harder.
"Firewood alone will keep you busy," Nathaniel said, repeating something he had said before and that Liam knew anyway. But the boy didn't seem to mind hearing it all again: Liam was a good worker: dogged, and thorough. Book learning was a chore for him, but he could track a buck all day and never lose the trail, and Nathaniel had never heard him complain, or seen him walk away from a task, no matter how dirty. They had taken Liam in last fall when his brother Billy died, and the boy worked hard to earn his place at Lake in the Clouds.
"You call on Galileo or Jed to help out if things get too much for you," Nathaniel said. "I already had a word with them about it."
"I can manage," Liam said. He squinted out into the snowdrifts beyond the barn door. "How long do you think you'll be?"
There was the question that gnawed. Nathaniel pushed out his breath in a cloud.
"If the rivers don't break up before time, four weeks. If they do, and the rains come early, six. I'll stop at Kayenti'ho on my way north, let Falling-Day and Many-Doves know what's happened. They may send Runs-from-Bears this way, once they hear."
A small flickering in Liam's pale eyes. "I can manage the work," he said, his voice cracking.
"I know you can," Nathaniel said, remembering what it was like to be fourteen: raw and untried and dead curious about the world, resentful of being led; afraid to move on alone. "Listen to me now, Liam. If Bears comes this way, that don't mean I don't trust you. I do. I wouldn't leave Elizabeth now if I didn't."
The boy looked down at his oversized boots. When he raised his head again, there was a shimmer in his eyes.
"Don't know why you should."
Nathaniel put a hand on the bony shoulder. "You look in the mirror and you see your brother. But I'm here to tell you that I knew him better than you did, and you ain't nothing like Billy." For a moment Nathaniel struggled with a set of memories he could not share: the brother that Liam had only suspected, but would never know, if it could be helped.
He said, "Would I leave my wife and children in your care otherwise?"
Then he walked away, letting the boy sit with that for a while. Nathaniel busied himself hanging the deer he had shot and cleaned this morning; when he looked up, Liam's face was splotched, but dry.
"I'll do my best by them."
"I know you will." Nathaniel wiped his hands on a piece of sacking. "I'll be leaving at sunrise, but there's something to do this afternoon first, and I'll need your help."
In winter, Hidden Wolf was mean-spirited: quick to punish any misstep, and unforgiving. Nathaniel focused on the wind, feeling the mountain talking to him through the web of his snowshoes. Liam followed closely. They had things to discuss but it wasn't wise in such a wet cold, the kind that would settle in the chest if you gave it the chance.
They walked uphill through stands of beech and maple and birch. All around them pine and hemlock were heavy armed and dragging with snow. Grouse startled and fussed as they passed; overhead the squirrels whirred and screeched at them, flinging beechnut shells. There was plentiful evidence of the wolf pack that roamed the mountain. They didn't hide the remains of their prey: small game, mostly, but they had feasted recently on a young buck, leaving nothing behind but gnawed bone, a sprouting two-point rack, and a tattered hide.
Nathaniel made a wide berth around a hump that another man might have climbed right over, an elevation that looked like nothing more than a downed tree covered with snow. He pointed out the vent hole and the faint mist of rising breath to Liam.
"It's there for the taking if things get lean."
Liam looked around himself, taking his bearings. Later in the season he would almost certainly come back here to brush away the snow and put a bullet through the bear's eye. The hard part would be getting the carcass back to the cabin.
On the backbone of the mountain they were met by a merciless wind that wanted nothing more than to send them flying out over the forests. Moving carefully on the exposed ridge, they made their way to a small plateau where a few boulders provided a windbreak. There they stopped to take off snowshoes and strap them to their backs, and then they started down a cliff face. Liam grabbed at stunted juniper to steady himself on the way down, catching himself easily when he began to slide. Nathaniel saw him taking his bearings again; the boy wasn't lost, and could find his way back to Lake in the Clouds alone if need be.