Tisha (41 page)

We went on a little farther until we all stopped at almost the same time. There a little above us was some kind of a ledge where there shouldn’t have been one. It was right smack in the path of the slough, almost as though someone had built a curved platform across its banks. But it wasn’t seeing the ledge that made us stop. It was what was on it: a pack of wolves circled around something. We were downwind from them, so they hadn’t caught our scent, and with the wind blowing they hadn’t heard us approach.

I counted seven of them. The smallest wasn’t under a hundred and fifty pounds. They looked like ghosts through the flying drift, all of them staring at something, milling around as if they didn’t know how to get to it. And that was the weird part. There was nothing there, at least nothing I could see.

Two of them were more restless than the others. Long-legged, with a gait like a cat’s, they kept loping
around the perimeter of something, stopping every so often to peer down. I didn’t know what it was about wolves that made people think of them as enemies, but people did. Maybe it was because they were so smart, working together to bring down what they were after. Or maybe there was just something in the human mind that couldn’t help itself, like the way fishermen hate sharks. But after I’d just seen what was left of the two sled dogs they’d taken, I didn’t feel too friendly to them myself.

They saw us a few seconds later. Whatever it was that interested them, they didn’t want to leave it, so they waited to see what we were going to do. The way they sized us up made my skin crawl. I’d always thought of wolves as smart dogs. This close they didn’t resemble dogs at all. No dog had the huge head and powerful jaws these animals had, and no dog had their cold, shrewd gaze either. They were almost human. Or inhuman.

Fred went down on one knee, took aim, and his rifle cracked. The biggest of them, which must have weighed close to two hundred pounds, went right down. He rolled down to the end of the ledge, then just disappeared into a bed of soft snow below it. The rest of them took right off.

Fred told us to stay where we were and made his way up along the border of the slough. He glanced over to where the wolf had disappeared below, then moved out onto the ledge. I still couldn’t figure out what it was, an ice bridge across the banks or what.

Fred went down on his hands and knees and inched forward. He stopped at right about the place where one of the wolves had been peering down and I thought I heard him call out, say something to somebody. I couldn’t stand the waiting any longer.

“Fred, what is it?” I called to him.

He turned and waved me over. “Leave the kids there,” he said.

I followed the same path he took, stepping in his tracks. I didn’t know what I expected to see when I got there, but something told me it wasn’t going to be pleasant. The ledge was bigger than I’d thought, bulging up
a little towards the center. It wasn’t solid either. There was a jagged hole almost in the middle of it. It was big, maybe four feet wide and three times as long. The whine of a dog was coming from it.

Fred pushed himself back from the hole before I reached him. He stood up, the front of him painted with snow. He pulled his scarf down, and his expression was awful. “Take a look,” he said, “but be careful … It’s Jeannette and Elmer.”

I crawled up to the edge of the hole and peered in. My first thought was that whatever I was seeing couldn’t be real. It was like a scene from another world. Underneath me was a huge domed ice cavern, and there in the darkness a dozen feet below, her face partially covered with a fur robe, her eyes boring into mine, lay Jeannette Terwilliger. I thought she was dead until her eyes blinked, and I saw the glint of tears in them. I heard myself say, “Oh dear God.”

She was lying on her side among the rocks of the slough bed, a fur robe wrapped around her. Beside her was the smashed sled. She pulled the robe down a little, but her face was still hidden by her scarf. Elmer was a short distance away from her. All I could see were his legs. He’d crawled up the side of the slough, where he lay now, not moving. I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.

In a split second I saw it all as it must have happened: the loaded sled moving across the innocent-looking snow, the domed roof of ice under it giving, shattering like an egg and the sled falling, crashing to the ravine below. It must have happened so fast that they were falling before they heard the hollow sound of the shell ice breaking under them.

Two dogs had been pulled down with them. One of them had already clambered onto the over-turned sled and was making motions as if to jump up at me, whining in eagerness. But the distance was too great. The other dog lay among the rocks, its neck broken. Jeannette hadn’t taken her eyes from me.

“Jeannie?” I managed to croak out her name.

She made some sounds. That was all.

“We’ll get you out,” I said. Then, knowing I’d burst
into tears if I stayed a moment longer, I inched back and the scene disappeared.

“You’re not going to cry,” Fred said harshly. “We don’t have time for crying. We’ve got to get her out of there.”

I bit my lip. “What’ll we do?”

Chuck and Ethel had come up on the ledge and Chuck started to edge forward. “Stay away from there,” Fred said.

“Want see,” Chuck said.

“You’ll see later. I need you with me.”

We followed him to a big fallen spruce where he started scooping snow out on the side of the trunk that was out of the wind.

“You’ll stay here with Ethel,” Fred said when there was a hole big enough for Ethel and me to huddle in. “I’ll take Chuck with me.” He gave me his rifle. “Hold onto this. You probably won’t need it, but keep it anyway.”

“Where are you going?”

“To find that cabin. I know where it is now.”

He and Chuck went off to get the sled. From where Ethel and I were we could see the whole ledge. Ethel pointed to it and asked me something in Indian.

“It’s a hole,” I said. “There was an accident there. A bad accident.”

“Hole?”

I thought about the baby. I hadn’t seen her. I’d been afraid to ask Jennie about her, afraid she was dead. Now a whole bunch of terrible images crept into my mind. She could be under the sled, crushed, or she could have been thrown out. I kept seeing her flying out of Jennie’s arms as dogs and sled crashed through the ice, kept seeing her lying in the snow and the wolves moving toward her…. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Stay here, Ethel,” I said. I crawled back to the edge of the hole and looked down. Elmer was in exactly the same position as before. He must have been dead.

“Jennie … Jennie?”

She turned her head a little, but her hood still hid her face.

“Can you answer me?”

She groaned.

“Patricia—where is she?”

Her arm moved under the robe that covered her, then her mittened hand pulled down her scarf and I saw why she couldn’t talk. Half of her face was white as snow, dead-looking. It was frozen.

“Ee-e-e-uh-h-h,” she groaned.

“Here? Is that what you’re saying? She’s with you? Nod your head if you can and I’ll know it’s yes.”

Her head moved slightly and I thought, thank God. Then I wondered if she was alive, but I couldn’t ask Jennie that, “Hang on, Jennie,” I said, knowing how stupid it sounded, but not knowing what else to say.

I went back to Ethel and while the two of us huddled together, I kept thinking about the accident and how it had happened. Jennie and Elmer had probably done exactly what Fred and I had—hit bad weather and come up here looking for the same cabin. Like us, they’d had trouble finding it, so they’d searched around blindly. Maybe they’d been caught in ice fog, or blizzard, but for some reason they hadn’t seen that the ledge was false, a covering for a huge hollow blister. It had probably formed when water came rushing down the slough in a flash flood. The water must have gotten dammed up in some way and been held fast. By the time it drained out the surface of it had frozen, leaving just a shell. And Elmer hadn’t seen it until it was too late. The same thing could have happened to anybody—to me and Fred. I’d heard of it before. I wondered how long Jennie had been down there. It could have been as much as three days, three days of lying in a frozen dungeon with hardly the barest chance of being found, and the wolves circling around above. If it hadn’t been for the wolves we’d never have gone to the spot at all. She and Elmer probably wouldn’t have been found until spring, maybe not even then, for then water would have come rushing down the slough, tons of it, washing everything before it into the river.

Over an hour must have passed before Fred came back with the sled. “We’ve found it!” he said. It was drifted in, just as he’d thought. He’d left Chuck to finish
the job of clearing the door. He’d brought a strong slender birch trunk with him that he’d chopped down. Tying a rope around the center of it he went over to the ledge and placed it across the narrowest width of the hole. After he made sure the ice on each side would hold, he let himself down the rope. I watched from above.

The dog that was uninjured was overjoyed. Fred had to cuff it a few times before it would stop jumping all over him. Then he lifted the sled off of Jennie. Half of the load was still in it, the rest of it—picture frames, a gold scale, mining tools, traps—was scattered all over the ravine bed.

He made Jennie as comfortable as possible and put another robe over her before he looked around. The slough was flat at the bottom, the banks sloping up gently to where the ice met them. He picked up a mattock that had spilled from the sled and chopped a good-sized rock loose from the frozen ground. “Anne, move over that way about ten feet.” He pointed to where the ceiling arched down to meet the top of the bank. “Tell me if you can hear this rock hitting.” His voice sounded hollow, as if it came from a tomb.

I did as he told me, listening.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I scrambled back to the hole.

“I heard it.”

“I’m going to try to dig out of here.”

“You want us to come down?”

“No. Somebody’s got to stay up there just in case.”

“Fred, what about the baby?”

“I think it’s all right. It’s under her parka.”

“Can you hand it up to me?”

“Jennie’s arm is broken. I don’t want to touch her until we can get her out … You’re going to have to make out as best you can. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take to chop through this ice.”

He moved out of sight and I heard him start chopping.

I went back to Ethel and we waited. She fell asleep again before Chuck came back. When he did I told him what Fred was doing and he went over to the hole to see if Fred needed him. He must have, because
Chuck swung himself over the birch trunk and disappeared.

It began to snow.

I got up once or twice to stamp around and keep the circulation going in my legs. The dogs had all curled up, still in harness. Nothing bothered them, not the wind or the driving snow. Noses tucked into tails, they lay as contentedly as if they were in a warm living room, letting the white pile up around them.

I kept looking towards the spot where I thought Chuck and Fred would come out for so long my eyes started doing tricks on me. Then finally I saw a small hole appear. After that the snow began caving in like quicksand, and I roused Ethel. Chuck’s head popped up and he levered himself out of the hole as Ethel and I headed over towards him. “We digged out!” he yelled excitedly. The uninjured dog scrambled out right after him, yelping and frisking around Ethel and me, almost knocking us over.

I lowered myself into the hole slowly. My feet touched the solid bank and I felt Fred grab me. Then I was below the ice and Fred helped me down the bank.

It was like a gloomy world where time had stood still. Overhead was a dome of ice that stretched across from one bank to the other and maybe thirty feet up and down the slough. Outside the wind was howling, but it was quiet in here, snow flakes drifting down through the opening above. Elmer was stretched out on the bank opposite, his head almost touching the ice above him. He was frozen, one hand still upraised. There was a hunting knife in it, and above him you could see where he’d tried to chop away at the ice. One of his legs was horribly twisted, bent at a sharp angle where there was no joint. He’d managed to crawl up the bank, and he’d died there.

I went over to Jennie.

“Jennie …”

She opened her eyes.

“Jennie, do you want me to take the baby?” My voice bounced off the ice above.

She nodded. I pulled away the furs that Fred had covered her with, and lifted up her parka. The baby
was lying against her stomach. Somehow, even with a broken arm, she’d managed to protect her. She was still wrapped in her blanket. When I lifted the blanket from her face my heart sank. At first I thought she was dead. Her face was a sickly blue, her little body still. She wasn’t dead, though. The barest wisp of vapor curled from her mouth. I put her inside my own parka and she felt cold next to me, a cold little thing that didn’t move.

“S-s-s-e-e-e,” Jennie said. “S-s-e-e-e.” Her eyes pleaded.

“Let her get warm first, Jennie,” I said. “She’s cold.” I didn’t want her to see the baby the way she was. She had enough misery already. Her eyes closed.

Ethel and Chuck had come down through the hole. Fred set Chuck to work making the hole wider, then he knelt beside Jennie. “She’s out,” he said. “Thank God.” He picked up a man’s shirt that lay in a pile of other clothes. “Rip that up,” he said. “I’m going to set her arm.”

He went after the sled with an ax until he had two lengths of wood for splints. After that he rolled Jennie on her back and eased the broken arm out of her parka. Even under the sleeve of her long underwear, the break was clear. He sat down and braced one foot against her armpit, then pulled on her wrist slowly. I turned away until I heard the bone snap into place. While he set her arm in the splint I walked up and down the slough bed, hoping I could jostle the baby into making even the smallest move. It didn’t do any good, though. She lay still.

Fred kept working methodically and I marveled at how he could act so coolly. If everything had been on my shoulders I’d have broken down long ago. When he was finished he climbed up the bank alongside Chuck, took the mattock from him and chopped some more ice away. When he was done he tossed the mattock down and looked over at me wearily.