The Great Death (11 page)

After walking a little farther, she decided to stop and wait for Millie, who would surely notice that she was missing and turn back to find her. Millie was okay. She
had
to be. And Millie was strong and capable and organized. She
would
find Maura. This was a good plan. Maura's father had taught her that when a person is lost in the woods, it is sometimes best to stop walking, which only makes matters worse. Besides, it was so dark and the storm so unrelenting that she might easily step off the trail and find herself in the middle of nowhere.

Blue, who had been leading the way, sat down beside her.

Maura kicked away snow from beneath the base of a spruce tree alongside the trail. She managed to break off a few low-reaching green boughs from neighboring trees, and she piled them on the ground as an insulating pallet, preventing the frozen ground from sapping her warmth. After untying her bundle, she called Blue over to her, and they snuggled under the blankets, sharing a piece of dried salmon and their body heat. There would be no fire or windbreak. Millie had the matches and the tarp.

Maura wondered if she and Blue could survive the night huddled as they were under blankets. Already Maura's toes and fingers were tingling with the onset of numbness. Maura wondered where Millie was and how she could outlast the night without blankets. She wondered why Millie wouldn't have stopped on the trail at some point and waited for her. Had she accidentally stepped off the trail and gotten lost? Was she somehow behind them? If so, would she soon catch up?

Had something terrible happened to Millie?

Maura held the dog close.

“Millie will come looking for us,” she whispered sadly.

Blue licked her face.

“Don't worry, boy. She'll find us.”

*   *   *

Finding no sign of her sister or Blue at the deadfall where she had last seen Maura, Millie could only conclude that Maura had taken the wrong trail at the junction behind her. Millie calculated that Maura and Blue could be miles up that trail by now. She decided to return to the fork and spend the night. Perhaps Maura would realize her error and turn around.

By the time she arrived where the two trails split, Millie was very tired, not simply from the day's labor, but also from worry and a growing horror that her little sister might be freezing to death. It was too dangerous to travel any farther. In the darkness and storm she might accidentally step off the trail and get lost. Besides, if Maura turned back, she'd have to come to this point. Millie built a lean-to using the tarp and sat beneath it beside a crackling fire, watching the swirling snow and listening for her sister. She got up many times to collect more firewood, each time shouting Maura's name. Only the sound of trees creaking in the wind answered.

The long night passed slowly for Millie, who was afraid to fall asleep and let the fire die, afraid that her sister might inadvertently pass her in the darkness. She wondered if Maura would know enough to turn back or at least to stop and wait, or was she still out there wandering farther and farther as she struggled to find her older sister?

Sometime long after midnight, the blizzard slackened and finally passed. In the terrible silence Millie fought off images of Maura frozen beneath the snow. Why had she allowed her to get lost? What would she say to her mother's spirit when they met and the terrible question would come:
Why did you abandon your sister?

In the morning, she shook snow from the tarp, folded it, and carefully tucked the blackened cooking pot and the jar of matches inside the bundle. When she was done, she tied it into a pack, slung it over her back, and jumped lightly to adjust the load. She strapped on the snowshoes, took up her rifle, and started down the game trail that led away from the river, in search of her sister.

Not long after leaving the fork, Millie encountered a pack of five wolves. At first they kept their distance, curiously observing the girl from behind trees. But then they grew more daring, encircling her, snarling and growling and snapping their teeth. Millie worked the lever of her father's rifle and fired a warning shot into the air, startling the wolves, which bolted back into the trees. Millie kept trudging down the trail, holding the rifle ready, alert to any movement around her.

After regaining their courage, the pack began to stalk her again, more wary this time.

Millie aimed at the closest wolf, a dark-colored dominant male—the pack leader, most likely. She pulled the trigger and just missed hitting the animal in the head. This time the wolves ran away in the direction Millie was heading, in the direction of her sister.

*   *   *

Maura awoke to the sound of a rifle shot echoing in the hills. She and Blue, huddled together in a mound of snow-covered blankets, had not moved all night. She sat upright and listened. The sky was cloudless, and she could clearly see the surrounding hills. A few minutes later, she heard another shot. Blue pricked his ears in that direction.

Millie,
Maura thought as she jumped up and stood looking down the trail. Her feet were numb, but her hands were warm. She had entangled her fingers in Blue's thick fur as she slept.

Quickly, she rolled up the blankets, bound them tightly, and threw the bedroll over her shoulder. She laid both snowshoes flat, stepped onto one, secured the strapping across her mukluk, and then put on the other. The movement made her toes tingle, which was good, she thought. They had feeling, which meant they weren't frostbitten. She could wiggle them slightly in her mukluks. As soon as she was ready, having donned her thick mittens, Maura took up her walking stick and set off in search of her sister. Blue was at her side, struggling in the deep snow.

A little ways down the trail, a pack of wolves emerged from around a bend. At first they did not see the two, but suddenly they stopped, stared hard at the girl and the dog at her side, and then dashed after them, kicking up snow as they ran. A dark-colored wolf was in the lead, his tongue hanging out of his mouth as he bounded toward them.

Blue started barking and raced for the wolves.

“No, Blue! Wait!” Maura shouted.

She swallowed her panic and felt a hot wave of anger flow up her back and into her arms. Not even five feet tall, Maura took the hatchet from her rope belt and waited, the hatchet in one hand and her walking stick in the other. Blue launched into the lead wolf when it was close. The two canines clashed in a fury of dark fur and teeth. It was difficult to tell them apart. The other wolves watched with a kind of detachment, keeping their distance and yelping among themselves.

“Blue!” shouted Maura, trying to call the dog to her. “Blue!”

Wolves often kill and eat village dogs. It happened every winter. Though terrified for Blue and for her own safety, Maura stood her ground and screamed at the wolf.

“Stop it! Get! Get!”

The valley echoed with the sounds of the furious battle. Another of the wolves suddenly charged at Maura, who struck it across the nose with her staff. The wolf yelped and retreated, frantically rubbing its snout between its paws.

“Get out of here!” Maura screamed again and again, waving the long walking stick, desperately trying to frighten away the wolves, which paid little attention to her.

Just then Millie came around the bend. She was out of breath, having run for a long time after hearing the ruckus. From where she stood, she could see her sister shouting and swinging her staff to keep the wolves at bay. She could also see Blue tangling with the same lead wolf she had shot at and missed earlier. Although she was far away, Millie fired her rifle into the air. The wolves turned and saw her. She fired again, and they ran away as they had done before, into the wooded hills, bounding through the deep snow. Hurriedly, she loaded several bullets from her pocket into the rifle and ran toward her sister.

Blue was lying in a circle of trampled and bloodied snow, whimpering and bleeding from several wounds. Maura knelt beside him, holding his head and crying, speaking gently to the dog, stroking his wet and matted fur. By the time Millie reached her sister, Blue was dead. He had protected Maura the way Tundra had protected them both from the terrible man. Maura stood up and clutched her sister, her body trembling as she sobbed aloud.

“Oh, Millie, he gave his life to save me.”

Although it arced closer to the horizon than to the vaulted sky, the sun was bright on the deep, new snow. A raven cawed as it flew from the hills toward the river. A white hare, which had come out of its hole to see what the commotion was, hopped behind a stand of willows. The two sisters stood hugging each other for a long time. Neither spoke a word. There was little to say. Both wondered what they would have done without the other.

When they were ready, the sisters set off for the fork in the trail, where they would continue downriver to the trading settlement they had never seen. As they had been at the very beginning of their journey, Millie and Maura were again alone.

Denc
'
i Uk
'
edi

(Fourteen)

Because of Raven's kindness, the woman was able to feed her children. Many years later, when the three boys had become strong young men, they returned to their old village during a time of famine. The people were starving.

T
HE TEMPERATURE DROPPED
quickly after the storm. By the afternoon of the second day, it was already twenty degrees below zero, maybe colder, dangerous conditions for moving about.

As usual, Millie was leading the way, breaking trail in the deep snow. She was sweating from the labor, the perspiration making her clothes wet against her skin. And although the exertion warmed her at the moment, the wetness quickly robbed her clothing of the ability to insulate her whenever she stopped moving.

If she had known better, Millie would have opened the front of her parka to cool down or removed it altogether, the way her father did when he cut or split firewood in the front yard. But she was too inexperienced in the wilderness to realize the danger of wetness in below-zero weather. Her father knew it. Her uncles knew it. Anyone who labored in the north in winter understood the danger. The sisters understood cold. For most of the year, the cold was their world. But they hadn't yet faced this particular danger themselves. Whenever they'd broken into a sweat outdoors—playing or helping Mother or Father with a chore—they'd been in their village, just steps away from a warm home where their clothes could dry out.

As Millie walked ahead of her sister on the frozen river, shivering whenever she stopped to rest even for a few minutes, she began to see caribou tracks, hundreds of them. A great herd had moved through the area, crossing the river. Because it had snowed only two days before, she knew that the tracks were fresh. She also knew that the herds, some of thousands of migrating animals, take days to pass through a region. Stragglers often wander around for weeks after the main herd has moved on, easy pickings for wolves. Millie slid the rifle from her shoulder as she walked, eagerly scanning the forest ahead.

“Maybe we'll get a caribou,” she said.

Millie tried to sound confident to help keep Maura's, and her own, spirits as high as possible. But she was beginning to lose hope. They had found no survivors in the village behind them, and she had no idea how far it was to the white settlement. What if it was too far? She worried that winter would only become colder and colder every day. What if it reached sixty below, which wasn't uncommon for this time of year? Could they survive the cold? She was tired of walking, and Maura—little as she was—must be even more exhausted.

“Let's keep a sharp eye,” she said.

Maura liked the idea. Caribou meat tastes different from moose meat. People usually prefer one over the other, and caribou was Maura's favorite. When the girls walked around the bend, sure enough, they saw a small band of caribou milling around on the frozen river.

“Stop,” Millie whispered, holding up a hand.

Eight caribou, mostly cows, scuffed the snow away from the river's ice coat with their small antlers, looking for grass or moss. Bulls lose their antlers each year after the mating season in late fall, but cows keep theirs to scrape snow from the ground in search of food and to protect their young. Two young bulls were walking amid the cows.

The girls eased a little closer—Maura stooped immediately behind her bigger sister, placing her feet exactly in Millie's tracks—so that Millie had a better chance of sneaking up on them. They moved slowly, keeping out of sight by staying in line with a brushy deadfall by the river's frozen edge. Several times they stopped, thinking a caribou was looking their way. When they were crouched behind the deadfall, Millie pulled off her right glove with her teeth and slowly worked the rifle's lever, which was stiff from the cold. Though she was shivering, she aimed carefully and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. She pulled back the hammer, aimed again, and squeezed the trigger.

It was so cold that the firing pin would not slide freely. In such cold weather, experienced hunters know to wipe excess grease and oil from all moving parts. At twenty below, even oily lubricants freeze. But Millie, as a girl, was not an experienced hunter. In fact, as a girl, she had never been allowed to hunt with her father.

The caribou were slowly making their way across the river. In another moment, they would reach the tree line on the other side and she would miss her chance. Just then, one of the bulls stopped and stood sideways to the girls, an easy target.

“Hurry, Millie,” Maura whispered excitedly.

“I'm trying,” replied Millie, working the lever again, ejecting the unfired bullet into the snow and manually feeding another one into the chamber. Millie didn't realize it, but the motion of the hammer twice striking the firing pin loosened the frozen oil, allowing it to move freely.

She aimed at the broad side of the caribou, held her breath, and pulled the trigger. This time the rifle went off in a cloud of smoke and jerked hard against her shoulder. The small bull caribou jumped away, ran a few steps, and stumbled. It fell over, kicked for several seconds, and then lay still. The rest of the band had bolted into the forest.