30,000 On the Hoof (9 page)

While she laboured at this task Logan spread the blankets in the warm sun, then sat down for the first daytime rest. This was not through weariness--he never acknowledged such a weakness as that--but because he became conscious of something no longer possible to put aside. Once released, it surged over Logan, warm, imperious, staggering... his love for his wife and his need of her. Of late she had appeared less strange and no longer aloof. She had worked willingly at whatever task he gave her, and sometimes she laughed. This isolation, he could see, was tremendously hard for her, being used to family and friends, to the social life of a town; but he believed she would grow used to solitude and become engrossed in their great task. Strong emotion, so seldom actuating Logan, and never before like this, came over him. He had been considerate of Lucinda, far more than most husbands would have been, and during these days of toil he felt that she had grown dearer for his restraint. He packed in the warm woolly blankets and threw them in a bundle at Lucinda's feet.

In the subdued light of the cabin she looked pale, and her dark eyes met his questioningly. Logan took her in his arms. "Dear wife," he said, "I love you--and I want you. Will you make our bed--and let me come to you--to-night?"

"Why, Logan! Of course," she answered, shyly. "I'm your wife. And I--I love you, too."

If Huett had been happy before he was happier now. The still, smoky, warm days persisted. He laid his hearthstones and built' his fireplace and chimney. It was a serviceable job, though wanting the finish he had been able to put upon his carpentry. But he was not a mason. When he found that his chimney would draw, and not fill the cabin with smoke, he whooped his delight. Then with boards he had brought in the wagon he built shelves and a table. He drove pegs in the logs upon which to hang utensils. In his mind's eye he saw a fine head of elk antlers on the wall for his rifles. In an opposite corner he constructed shelves for his ammunition, of which he had a large amount, and his few personal belongings. For Lucinda he built a wardrobe with a canvas curtain, and a box-like affair she could use as a bureau. Above this he hung a little mirror.

The hour came when Logan fared out on horseback to attack another important job--the fencing of the gaps on his canyon walls. It took him a week of arduous labour, but labour in which he revelled for many reasons, not the least of which was the sight of deer and elk, and lion tracks and flocks of wild turkeys, and his cattle grazing below. One day he sighted a newly born calf, and thought of that as a herald and a promise of the great herd to come.

His anxiety over the possibility that snow would come before he had rolled and snaked down sufficient firewood for winter was without warrant. November days stayed clear and warm with pale sun. Dead aspen wood by the cord, hard as iron, lay, already felled by the beaver. Huett had but to drag it to the cabin--cut, split, and stack it on the windward side of the wide porch. Dead oak he snaked down from the woods above. And he sawed many sections of pine, to roll them down the slope. Before he completed the cutting, however, the weather changed. The pale sun faded behind gathering cloud, the air lost its warmth, the wind sang the knell of Indian summer. A cold fine rain began to fall.

"Luce, she's coming, and we almost got her beat," announced Logan, stamping in at noon that day...

"Who's she?" interrogated Lucinda, in mild surprise. "Winter, by gosh!

Just let me hang up some meat to freeze--then we're jake."

The drizzle turned to sleet, and when Logan awoke during the night he heard its soft patter and seep upon the cabin. How good it felt to be housed, snug in this strong abode made by his own hands, warm under the woollen blankets beside his young and hot-blooded wife! Logan had no fear of wind or snow or cold. But before he went to sleep he heard the wild bay of hunting wolves. That was different. Wolves were the bane of settlers.

In the morning there was a thin sheet of snow on the ground and white flakes were falling scantily. His horses favoured the lee side of the canyon, where, under the high shelving wall, neither wind nor snow reached them. Logan saddled Buck and, rifle in hand, rode up the canyon.

"Well, varmints," he said to the tracks in the snow, "you better keep off my range." Before Logan had ridden two miles up the draw he crossed tracks of beaver, fox, marten, deer, and cat, but none of cougar or wolf.

While building the fences at the upper end of his range he had barred two elk trails, with the satisfaction of realizing that the elk which had come down could not get back. At length Logan came upon a small herd, feeding in one of the offshoots of the canyon. They were as tame as cattle, but Logan had no compunction about shooting a fine bull. He hung it up from a strong branch, dressed it, and cut off the antlered head.

This he stuck safely in the crotch of a sapling. The carcass he loaded over his saddle. Buck snorted under the heavy load, and packed it unwillingly back to the cabin.

Logan chose the big pine nearest the cabin, and therefore unexposed to sunshine, upon which to hang this meat. He skinned the carcass first, and nailed the fine hide to the wall of the cabin. Then he cut out the haunches and hung the several parts high over a branch, out of the reach of all beasts but the cat family.

Lucinda fried elk liver for Logan that night for supper. She, had learned how to bake fine sourdough biscuits. Logan thought he fared sumptuously, and he told Lucinda so.

"I'll hang up a couple of deer to freeze and some wild turkeys," he went on. "Then, if I can only track a fat bear that hasn't holed up, we'll be jake. Bear-fat renders fine grease and oil. Best to cook with. As good as butter. And a bear rib roasted--umm umm!"

As luck would have it, Huett shot his complement of game without travelling three miles from his cabin. The brakes in the lower end of the canyon appeared to be winter quarters for all kinds of animals. These ravines were choked with splintered cliffs and windfalls and thickets of oak. Buck came in for some hard packing before Logan brought all the meat home.

On the last trip, late one grey November afternoon, Logan came upon the half-eaten remains of one of his heifers. Cougar tracks in the thin snow!

Logan sustained a strong shock: This was an abrupt break in the happy and fortunate sequence of events. The big cat had rolled the skin back and eaten the liver, taking hardly any more. Coyotes had consumed about half the carcass.

Logan vented his rage vehemently to the leaden skies. It was his first set-back. No doubt the cougar had killed other heifers and calves. Logan had no time that night to search, but he swore he would trail that cougar to its lair.

It was dark when he returned to the cabin. He unpacked and unsaddled Buck, to turn him loose. The load of meat he lifted up on the wood pile.

Then he burst into the cabin, where for the first time a bright blaze of faggots in the fire, and steaming pots on the hearth, and Lucinda's pale, pretty face warming at his entrance, failed to elicit a glad shout.

"Wife, what do you think?" he began, his face red and heated. "I found a cougar kill. One of our heifers! Damn cat ate only the liver. I'll bet he's killed others... Why in hell don't cougars stick to deer meat? But when the snow flies they want beef... By God, I'll kill him! Here's a chance to use your dog. Coyote will trail that varmint if I can't... Luce, wolves and lions are the curse of cattlemen on wild ranges. I knew that, yet I overruled the warning... But, I see now--and it's war on the meat-eaters!"

Lucinda looked at him with what seemed surprise and compassion.

"My dear husband! Has it taken that to show you the terrific truth of your trial? I have known it since we got here. All the time I've known it... Don't be discouraged by this loss, or by what it threatens. You will conquer all obstacles."

"Why--bless your heart!" exclaimed Huett, turning his big cold hands to the fire. He felt amazed, ashamed, and something else he did not quite grasp. "Sure, you're right. It's nothing... But how good to feel the fire--to smell that stew--to see you here!"

Chapter
FIVE
.

Lucinda watched the drifting snow. It was late in the afternoon of a winter day. A steely brightness showed where the sun hung over the western fringe of the canyon, and black patches stood out on the south slopes where the snow had melted. The dry, scattered flakes swirled down; ceaselessly the wind moaned in the pines. During these winter months that ghostly wind had been the cruellest of Lucinda's trials. She hated it.

She feared it. For ever it haunted her with the spectre of loneliness and isolation. When the storm-king raged out of the north, sometimes it drove her frantic. In the dead of night, when Logan slept beside her like a log, it was endurable, but she could not refrain from listening. There would come a lull, and then a faint moan far off. It would grow and swell, and sweep through the forest, mounting to a tremendous roar. She could feel the cabin move over the roots of the great swaying pines. The roar would move on, dying to a moan.

Twilight was creeping out from under the walls. It would soon be dark.

When Logan did not come home by nightfall she would fall prey to uneasy worry. It was nearly time to begin supper. The fire was red, the kettle beginning to sing.

The months had dragged by. Logan Huett was not only a natural hunter, but also a rancher who had conceived a passion to kill predatory beasts. Day after day he left Lucinda by herself in the cabin. At first she nearly died of loneliness, but she never let her husband see that. She had her housework, her sewing, and her knitting--tasks she left numberless times to look out, as she was gazing now, unseeingly across the cold, white, black-tipped ridge to the outside world. Logan had killed nine cougars, and many coyotes. The wolves, however, had so far been too keen for him.

His herd, his poor little herd of cattle, had dwindled to the brindle bull and three cows. Calves, heifers, steers all gone, except the furry bags of bones! That had been heart-rending for Logan. He dreaded this would defeat his cherished hopes, yet he was a man whom nothing could stop. His one consolation was the growth of Lucinda's respect and love for him. In many ways Huett was wanting. He was neither callous nor selfish nor indifferent, but his great fault was his blindness to the martyrdom that he had nailed upon his wife. Long since, however, Lucinda had given herself to his project, and nothing could have swerved her from it now. She had resolved to make herself the helpmate of the pioneer. She had every qualification, but her one weakness was her sensitive mind, her emotional nature.

Hours on end she had pondered over the lives of the women who had come before her to this devastating West. What had happened to them? If they had been delicately organized as she was, they had become hardened to meet the callousness and brutality of the wilderness; or else they had died.

Lucinda was heavy with child now in this last winter month, and the feeling of life within her had been the best resistance to the morbidness of the early weeks of that season. She had always loved children. She longed for some of her own. She wanted passionately to give Logan the sons he would need in this long fight to success, but giving birth to them in this desolate hole in the forest appalled her as nothing else ever had. The nursing and caring for them as babies did not loom so terribly; nevertheless, it struck her deeply. When they grew old enough for her to teach--that would be her happy task; and when they were lads, big enough to ride and shoot and plant and chop, to do all Logan talked so fondly of--that would be wonderful.

She fought loyally against the tragedy that seemed inevitable, against the disillusionment which hung in the balance, against the magnifying fears that beset her.

Down across the pale track of daylight upon the snow Lucinda made out the dark figure of Huett, bowed under a burden, with the dog trotting beside him. Turning away from the window, she threw wood on the wire, lighted a pine cone, and set about her neglected supper task. Presently she heard a crunching of snow and pattering sounds, then the thud of a heavy pack upon the porch. The door opened, letting in a cold blast of air and flying snow. Logan came stamping in, virile and forceful, followed by the whining dog.

"You're late, Logan," said Lucinda, "so I thought I'd better wait till you came before getting supper."

"Hello, girl!--Late nothing. I'm early to what I expected," he replied, cheerfully. "Luce, this dog of yours will trail a cougar--any kind of cat, and bear, too. But she won't take a wolf track."

"Blood tells, you know. What did you do to-day?"

"Lord, let me see. What didn't I do?... First off Coyote chased a lioness up a tree--the biggest cat I've killed. After I skinned her out I visited my traps. Had a mink, marten, or beaver in each one of them. I skinned those out. Then I shot and hung a buck. We'll have fresh meat again.

Coming home I had a look at the place we drove down to get in here. Snow all off. Think I'll begin work on that road we need so bad--I can cut trees and brush away, build a fence and a gate where I piled those poles, and be ready when the ground gets soft to grade a road out."

"How soon will that be, Logan?"

"I reckon pretty soon, if signs can be trusted. We must be well into March. Funny I couldn't find that calendar. I stuck it some place... It's getting time we should keep track of days on your account."

"Logan, I told you the baby would come in July."

"No, you didn't... Maybe I forgot. Anyway, I'm glad it'll be midsummer."