Heart of the West (70 page)

"The mercury's at minus thirty and falling," the sodbuster said as he helped Gus tie a tarpaulin down over his load of hay bales.

"I reckon maybe the snow will let up, then," Gus argued, though more to convince himself. "It usually does when the temperature drops so low." Cold like this was going to make for a ball-busting trip back home, but then, a man took what he had to take. "I reckon that about does it," he added as he threw the last diamond hitch and hauled tight the slack, damp rope.

The sodbuster stuck out a hand to seal their deal, the snow icing the beard around his grin. "You're welcome to stay until the weather turns."

Gus looked at the man through a shimmer of tears brought on by the bite of the cold. He clasped the proffered hand, nodding his thanks. "That's generous of you, Mr. Laurence, but I got a pregnant wife waiting for me and two little ones. And, besides, if I hung around till the weather turned, you might still have me on your hands come spring."

The farmer laughed and stepped back as Gus hauled himself up into the sled. "That's Montana for you," the man said.

Gus's laughter joined the sodbuster's, and clouds of white smoke billowed around their heads. He took up the reins and geed the reluctant team into motion, toward Rainbow Springs and home.

Within seconds he was cold enough to spit icicles. His face felt pinched, the skin drawn tight and numb over his cheekbones and nose. He kept sucking at the biting, ice-spangled air, but he couldn't seem to draw a deep enough breath. His lungs felt clogged with ice, and his mustache kept freezing his lips shut. His hands and feet were like dead stumps, and his joints grew as stiff as a new saddle.

It was a silent cold, like having your ears stuffed with cotton. The falling snow and the still, heavy air muffled all sound, except occasionally the jangle of the harness chains, the cutting rasp of the runners, and the crunch of the horses' hooves breaking through a crust of old snow. And, once, a raven calling out as it flew overhead, although he couldn't see it.

But in a way, he thought, the cold itself was a sound. A shriek that a man heard only in his mind. Or deep in the guts of him where the fear dwelled.

He looked out over the winter-ravaged land. The river was smothered under a blanket of fresh snow; the willows, cottonwoods, and pines were all fringed with it. The prairie was like a sheet of beaten silver. The whole world was frozen dead.

He knew this country as he knew the curves and lumps of the face he shaved every day. But landmarks could become invisible during a blue norther, buried or shrouded by the wind-driven snow. The snow was drifting down lightly now and there wasn't any wind. But the practical, cautious side of him, which he hadn't wanted to listen to before, knew that could change at any minute. There was an ominous weightiness to the air now. And a stillness.

That's Montana for you.

No sooner did the thought seep into his head than it began to snow harder. Great wet clots of flakes as big as fists. He looked back over his shoulder, blinking hard to get the ice crystals off his lashes. He could still see the holes left in the snow by his horses' hooves and the parallel grooves of the hub runners, but they were filling in fast. Sometimes in a bad blow a man could lose sight of the horizon, lose his sense of direction and wind up going in circles.

He snapped his head around and peered through the curtain of falling snow ahead of him. He saw plainly the blinders and collars and straps of the harness, the backs of his cinnamon-colored horses. And beyond them—just barely, but he could still see it—-the tree-lined river that would lead him home.

An hour later there came the first shrieking, biting gust of wind. It sent the falling flakes spinning and whirling crazily and whipped at the loose snow on the ground. The knife-slash of the wind ripped through his clothes and shredded his lungs.

He resisted the urge as long as he could before he finally looked back over his shoulder again and saw... nothing. Nothing but icy flakes whipping past his face. He scrubbed his eyes with his sleeve, knocking off the icicles that had formed on his brows. No tracks, no horizon, no ground, and no sky. Only snow. It must be snowing, he thought, even on the moon.

A strange feeling of utter and horrible aloneness gripped him. Slowly he turned back around... and saw nothing ahead of him except his reins, disappearing into a coiling swirl of whiteness.

The wind smacked against the house, startling Clementine awake. She was disoriented for a moment, aware only of the cold that lay thick and deep around her. Then a fresh gust slammed against the north wall, making it moan. She sat up on the sofa, the blankets crackling as she disturbed a layer of frost. Saphronie slipped a fresh cup of whiskey-spiked coffee into her hands. She and Saphronie had taken turns staying awake during the night, making sure the children's noses and ears stayed covered so they wouldn't freeze.

The blizzard that had threatened throughout yesterday and last night had finally struck. The walls trembled and creaked beneath the battering force of the wind. The noise roused the children. Daniel whimpered, and Sarah demanded that the fire be made hotter and no amount of talking convinced her the fire was as hot as it was going to get. Clementine fed them some hominy, which quieted them some, and then Saphronie got them interested in playing bears-in-a-cave beneath the furs.

Although the house was tightly built, still the driving snow sifted in around windows and beneath the door. Saphronie remembered some old canvas tenting down in the cellar, and they nailed it up where they could to keep out the invading blizzard. But they couldn't keep out the cold. Even with the stove stoked like a blast furnace, the inside pump froze. They weren't likely to die of thirst, though. There was so much snow out there, Clementine thought, that, melted, it would have drowned the world.

"You don't think he'll try to make it back today?" she said, voicing aloud a fear that had nagged at her all through the long night and morning.

Saphronie pursed her lips in thought, wrinkling the teardrop tattoos on her chin. "Say, give him time to find the sodbuster, buy the hay, and load it. By then it would already've started to get real bad. He's lived here long enough not to try to set out for anywhere in the middle of a blue norther."

Clementine nodded, but she wasn't so sure. Her husband had always been likely to lose sight of an unpleasant present when he got his eye fixed on a promising future. In his head he'd have himself home and toasting his toes before the fire and with his cattle all fed, before he'd gone even a mile down the road.

She was pulled to the window, as if Gus might already be turning into the yard, even though she knew it was impossible. She pried loose the piece of blanket, but she saw only darkness and the reflection of lampshine. A half an inch of ice coated the glass.

Suddenly she felt imprisoned and panicked, as if she'd been buried alive inside a cave. When she couldn't stand it anymore she heated a flatiron and held it against the glass to thaw the ice and let in some light. But all she saw beyond the oval-shaped melted spot on the window was the driving snow.

By midafternoon they had run low on wood for the stove. She and Saphronie tied lariats together and then argued about who would make the first trip out to the barn and the woodpile. Finally they flipped a coin and Clementine won. She added more clothes to her bulky figure, knotted the rope around her waist, and set out into the blizzard.

Even after seven Montana winters, she hadn't known it could snow this hard or be this cold. It seemed the wind blew the stinging, biting flakes right through her, as if she were invisible. This country had always had that ability, she thought—to make a body feel insignificant before the awesome forces of nature.

She fed the animals while she was in the barn. There were only the saddle horses—the chickens had all died long ago, during the first big freeze, and the hogs had been butchered even before then. The horses stood in their stalls, hunched and sad against the wind that slashed through the cracks in the barn walls. She worried about the broncs out on the range, and the cattle that were probably stacking up like cords of wood against the drift fences.

Her hands were as clumsy as clubs, her arms and legs stiff, as she pitched hay to the horses and broke the ice in their water troughs. She stacked as much wood as she could onto the red pung. With all the moisture freeze-dried out of them the logs were so light she could have juggled them like balls. But every time she drew a breath of the icy air into her shrunken lungs, it felt as if a knife were sliding into her chest.

She made countless trips back and forth to the woodpile. Then Saphronie made countless trips. After that they looked at their stockpile and figured they had enough to see them through until the following morning.

It had been dark a good hour when they heard the knocking noise. With the wind blowing hard enough to peel the bark off trees, Clementine thought it had peeled something loose off the house. Then the wind stilled a moment, as it did sometimes, as if sucking in its breath to blow even harder, and they heard it again.

It was a definite knock, and on the door. A thump-thump that could have been made by nothing but a human fist.

Clementine started for the children, ready to comfort them if they awoke frightened, but they both remained asleep. She met Saphronie's startled eyes. "It could be Gus," she said, except that she knew it wasn't Gus. Gus would've been banging the door off its hinges and bellowing to be let in.

"Maybe whoever it is will go away," Saphronie whispered, as if whoever had knocked could hear them through the door with a blizzard howling outside.

"We can't turn a body away on a night like this, no matter who it is."

Clementine picked up the rifle and made sure it was loaded. Saphronie lifted the lantern off its hook. They had to use their combined strength, pulling on the door, to break the ice seal.

The storm snatched the door out of their hands and banged it against the wall. A drift of fresh snow fell over the threshold. The wind's roars turned shrill.

"Who's there?" Clementine called out, the words getting snatched away by the shrieking wind.

Saphronie lifted the lantern. It threw a pale glow on the ice-glazed gallery. Something was hunched deep inside a blanket coat and furs, hovering at the bottom of the steps on the edge of the light. A small dark figure in whose face no mouth was to be seen, only the gleam of two narrowed eyes.

"Indians," Saphronie whispered.

Gus McQueen pounded his arms with his fists, which accomplished nothing except to dislodge the snow caked on his buffalo coat. He ached with cold deep inside the bones and heart of him.

His hand was a frozen claw wrapped around the hames on the harness collar of the near horse. Some time ago he had gotten off the sled to walk beside the team. He told himself it was to ensure they followed the meandering line of the river. But maybe it was also to be close to something else living in the howling white void.

And besides... he hadn't seen the river in some time now.

He trusted the bale-laden sled to be connected still to the traces that disappeared into the swirling veil of wind-driven snow behind them. It had been a while since he'd been able to see the sled as well.

The team slogged through the shifting dunes of snow, floundering and staggering as if drunk. The horses' sides heaved, matching his own labored breathing. Icicles hung from their snoots, and white clouds rose like steam around their heads. He thought he must look like the horses, though he could no longer feel his face.

Although it seemed he'd been walking for years in a perpetual dusk, he sensed the hour was truly getting late. When night fell it would be as dark as a plugged barrel. And he'd be done for then.

He slogged on. The wind struck in volleys, driving the corn-hard pellets of snow into his face. He stumbled, went sprawling, and got mired up to his knees in a fresh drift. The horses jerked free of his frozen hand and went on without him, disappearing.

Scythes of snow slashed at his eyes. He saw nothing, heard nothing but the constant scream of the wind. And underneath, the whoosh and suck of his breath and the heavy thumping of his heart.

He thought he would stop a moment, here in this drift. Maybe lie down and rest a little while. He was so tired...

He had to get home, couldn't leave her, couldn't leave Clementine alone with a dying ranch and three children to raise. Had to get home to that roaring fire and that pot of some good-smelling thing bubbling on the stove. To that girl with hair the color of a wheat field in August and eyes like a pine forest at dusk. Clementine... She needed him. He couldn't die on her, couldn't die on himself, couldn't die.

He told his legs to move and they wouldn't, and then they did, somehow on their own, fighting free of the sucking, clinging snow. He slogged forward, fell, got up, and slogged forward, hit something... the sled. Oh, Christ, the sled. The horses had stopped, then, and he felt his way up to their heads and clung to the harness collar, sobbing with fear and relief and then fear again.

He couldn't see the river. The river was nowhere, and he was nowhere, lost in a world of white light, white cold, and white ache.

Indians!

Clementine almost ran back into the house and slammed the door. But then the flickering lantern light flashed off the frightened faces of two children lying on a skin hammock hung between skid poles... An instant later they were swallowed by the driving curtain of snow.

The figure with the narrowed, gleaming eyes took a step forward, and two other bigger, bulkier shapes materialized behind it. A voice, high and tremulous, floated on the wail of the wind.

"Mrs. McQueen... do you remember me? Joe Proud Bear's woman."

Saphronie hissed something behind her that Clementine couldn't hear over the thundering beat of her heart. She had to swallow twice before she could speak. "And the others? Who else is with you?"

"My children and my man... And his father, Iron Nose. Please. We need warmth and shelter or we will die."