Heart of the Wilderness (9 page)

“Mother Earth is coming awake,” she said to Nonie one morning as they stood in the cabin door drinking in the freshness of the spring air.

Nonie nodded, making no return comment to the child.

“We go,” said Nonie after sniffing at the air and studying the sky.

They wrapped themselves in their deerskin jackets. Nonie had made Kendra a long-fringed buckskin of her very own. Then Nonie wrapped their moccasins with strips of leather thongs and rubbed them generously with bear fat to keep the dampness of the trail from penetrating. They collected their baskets, ready to go.

Nonie chose the trail along the banks of the stream. Kendra was fascinated with the tumbling, frothy water that bubbled and splashed its way over the rocks she knew lined the bottom, though they could not be seen now through the foam.

“Sister River is in a hurry,” she said to Nonie.

Nonie nodded silently. She never had called the stream “Sister River,” but the child seemed to have taken all of nature into her family.

They were nearing the point where the stream made its sharp turn and headed almost back in the direction from which it had come, giving the Indian people the name of Bent River, when a strange moving in the water caught Kendra’s eye.

She stopped short, knowing that the movement was unusual but not able to figure out what was different about it.

She turned to Nonie and saw that the woman had also stopped, her dark eyes clouding as she looked toward the same spot. Strange words escaped the woman’s lips. Words Kendra had never heard before. Nonie seemed upset.

Then Nonie’s chilling cry filled the air and she raised her arms over her head and began to call to the heavens. “Aiyee—aiyee,” she wailed, making Kendra’s eyes fill with fright, her spine tingle.

She didn’t know whether to cling to the woman’s skirts or turn and flee toward the cabin.

“Aiyee,” called the woman again, entreating the sky in a nameless petition.

Kendra began to cry. In the water the strange thrashing continued, and Nonie kept up the pitiful cries to the skies.

Soon Kendra was frightened into action. She darted to Nonie, yanking on the woman’s skirts, her own wails filling the air around them.

Nonie stopped her strange chants and reached her hands down to the child. She still moaned from somewhere deep inside her.

“What is it? What is it?” Kendra cried, shouting her words above the cries of Nonie and the noisy gurgling of the stream.

“Brother Beaver,” moaned Nonie. “Brother Beaver.”

Kendra’s eyes widened. She had seen many beavers. Many times. That had never caused concern before. She liked to watch them. Nonie liked to watch them. They had spent many hours on the banks of the stream watching the beavers fell their trees and build their dams. Nonie had never wailed before.

“Trap,” said Nonie. “Trap.”

Kendra knew of traps. Her grandfather had traps lining one entire side of the cabin. Traps had never been cause for lamenting either. She was puzzled by Nonie’s strange behavior.

Her eyes dropped to Nonie’s moccasined feet. Her grandfather had warned her to watch the trails for hidden traps, though he had assured her that no trapper would set a trap on the foot paths used by the people of the area. Still, he had told her of the dangers of traps and had set and sprung some in her presence to show her their strength. They had snapped small sticks as if they had been kindling wood. Kendra had vowed to watch carefully for traps.

But there were no traps attaching themselves to Nonie’s feet. Kendra lifted her eyes again.

Nonie was still moaning and swaying, rocking the body of the small girl along with her.

Kendra looked back at the stream.

And then she saw it. A large beaver had managed to pull itself to the bank of the stream. On one front leg dangled a piece of redwet ugly metal. The beaver thrashed and pulled, its tail whipping the water, its large eyes wide with terror. A strange agonizing sound escaped its throat. Kendra had never seen anything so awful. Never heard anything so pain-filled.

“What happened? What happened, Nonie?” she cried. “How did it get in the trap?”

“Aiyee,” wailed Nonie, letting go of the child and lifting her hands again.

“We’ve got to help it, Nonie,” said Kendra, her eyes filling with tears. “We’ve got to get it out.”

But Nonie had turned them both around and was moving down the trail away from the beaver—away from the stream—away from the ugly sight.

“We’ve got to help it, Nonie,” Kendra said again, trying to pull back from the hand that pulled her along.

They had gone some distance before Nonie stopped her wailing and lifting her hands to the sky. The dark eyes were still shadowed, but the woman now hurried Kendra along the trail, and nothing more was said about the trap.

But the fearful event did not leave Kendra’s thinking. All day as she played with Oscar or watched Nonie move about the cabin, she kept reflecting on the scene and wondering why Nonie had done nothing to help the entrapped beaver.

When Papa Mac came home, Kendra would be waiting on the doorstep. Nonie talked when Nonie chose to talk. Kendra had the feeling that Nonie would not be discussing with her the incident that had spoiled their day.

But Papa Mac talked. Kendra felt that she could ask him anything. Tell him anything—anything, that is, except the stories that Nonie shared with her about Mother Earth and the Brothers of the forest. Already Kendra had caught the displeasure of her grandfather regarding Nonie’s strange tales.

So Kendra waited patiently for her grandfather while Nonie stirred about the cabin behind her. Oscar lay at her feet, chewing on a piece of well-worn bone. Kendra wondered absently why he continued to chew. All the meat had been removed long ago.

As attentive as Kendra was, it was Oscar who alerted her to the coming of the team. He lifted his head and sniffed at the air, a whine starting somewhere deep inside him and escaping his dark, curled lips.

“They’re coming,” said Kendra to the dog as though she had been the first to know.

She reached her hand out to Oscar to hold him to his spot. She didn’t want the dog to be the first one to greet her grandfather and the approaching team.

In spite of her hand, Oscar rose to his feet, his whine deepening, his ears perked forward.

Soon Kendra could hear the soft yapping of the dogs, the rumbling of the wheels as they stumbled over the rocks of the trail.

She waited. She knew that it wouldn’t be long until the team would come into view at the far end of the clearing.

Just as she had expected, the dogs entered the clearing first, her grandfather close at the rear of the sleigh-wagon. She could see the pile of darkness that meant her grandfather had had another good day at the traplines. She was pleased because she knew he would be pleased. He had told her that the final catches of the spring were important. That soon the trapping season would be over for another year.

Normally Kendra ran to greet him, her voice calling out words of excited welcome, her moccasined feet beating a rhythm on the soft ground as she hurried to him to be scooped up into his arms and carried back to the cabin on broad shoulders.

But tonight she sat where she was, her fingers tangled in Oscar’s heavy coat, willing him to wait with her.

The sled dogs raced directly to where her grandfather always parked the sleigh.

“Well,” he called across to her, “are you too weary to meet me tonight? Has Nonie been dragging you through the woods all day?”

Kendra shook her head quietly. She did not stir from her seat on the step.

With an order to his dog team to lie down on the spot, he moved toward her, sensing that something was wrong.

He lowered his big frame down on the step beside her, pushing back Oscar who wished to get a share of the attention. His arm slipped around the slight body and drew her close.

“You look sad,” he said after holding her for a moment. “Did something happen today?”

Kendra nodded her head, her eyes filled with tears.

“Did you and Nonie have a spat?” he continued.

Kendra did not know what a spat was. She had no one to spat with. She looked up at him, her eyes questioning his words.

“Did you and Nonie have a fight?” he asked her again.

Kendra knew what a fight was. She had seen her grandfather separate sled dogs on more than one occasion. But she couldn’t imagine getting into such a fuss with Nonie.

She shook her head slowly, the tears spilling over as the picture of the trapped beaver filled her mind again.

“A beaver,” she managed, “a beaver got caught in a trap.”

There was total silence. The arm about her tightened.

“He got caught,” explained Kendra, her eyes large, her lip trembling. “Nonie wouldn’t help him.”

Her tone was accusing. Kendra had not been able to understand why Nonie hadn’t rescued the animal.

Again silence. The arm around her was joined by her grandfather’s other arm until Kendra was encircled. She heard him take a deep breath and then he spoke softly, slowly. “Nonie couldn’t rescue it,” he said, and there was pain in his words. “She would have been in big trouble if she had.”

“But why?” sobbed Kendra. “He was caught and he was bleeding and—”

The arms lifted her up onto his lap, where he cradled her against his chest.

“No one can ever interfere with someone else’s trap,” he explained.

“But the beaver was caught—by its foot. It was crying and—” The small girl was sobbing too much to go on.

“I know. I know,” her grandfather tried to soothe her. “But Nonie couldn’t let him out. He was already hurt too bad to be—to be set free anyway, and when whoever owned the trap came to get his animal, he would have been very angry with Nonie. He—he needs the money from the pelt. He—”

But Kendra sat bolt upright and pushed away from him. The word pelt had caught her attention. She had watched her grandfather many times as he had worked with pelts, cleaning them, stretching them, sorting them according to worth. Never once had Kendra thought of the piles of warm, thick furs as animals. Never once had she seen the traps on the walls of the cabin as instruments of horror. Never once had she dreamed that her loving grandfather was capable of causing suffering—to anything.

Now her eyes opened wide as she began to put the words, the images together. Her green eyes grew larger, her sobbing stopped. She stared at him as the truth began to sink in to her childish mind, and then she pushed back from him, her eyes wide with terror and anger, her voice choked with the intensity of discovery.

“I hate you!” she cried, springing from him. She stood in front of him, her green eyes flashing, her small body trembling. “I hate you!” she screamed at him again. “You hurt our brother animals. I hate you.”

With a look of pain, anger, and defiance, Kendra lifted her arms heavenward and screamed out the strange and eerie cry, “Aiyee! Aiyee!”

It came from the depths of her troubled spirit—just as it had from Nonie’s.

“Aiyee,” she wailed again and ran from her grandfather, across the wooden porch, through the door to the cabin, past a startled Nonie, and threw herself upon her moss and pine-bough bunk bed in the corner of the room.

“I think we need to talk.”

They had finished the supper that Nonie had left for them before she returned to the village. It had been a silent meal. He had tried to coax conversation from her a time or two, but she had been unresponsive. Now she sat sullenly before him, picking at her food with her fork.

She raised her eyes and nodded. Already she knew that the pain deep within her needed attention. She didn’t want to be angry with Papa Mac. It made her hurt all over.

He pushed back his chair from the table and held out his arms. “Come here,” he invited.

She went to him, prepared for another good cry in his arms.

When he had soothed her and the sobs had stopped, the tears had been wiped away, he began to talk.

“Trapping is not—not nice for the animals. I know that. But— but people need the furs—the pelts—to make things. Like coats and moccasins. Oh yes, the moccasins that you like to wear, they came from animals, too.

“Animals get killed. We don’t like that. But they do get killed. Some of them by man, some of them by other animals. Some of them get old and hungry and can’t hunt anymore—and they die. It’s not nice—but it’s the way it is.

“Traps can be—can be terribly mean things. Like the trap that caught the beaver. Good trappers know how to set the traps so that the animal doesn’t suffer as much. But they always suffer some. I admit that. And I don’t like it either. But I need the money from the pelts. That is how I live.”

Kendra did not stir. He wondered if she was listening. He wondered if she was still hurt. Still angry with him.

“I am always sorry about the animal. About the fact that I take their life in order to make a living—to have pelts to sell so that people can have warm clothes for our harsh winters. But I try—I try hard not to make the animals suffer very much.”

Kendra sat in silence, thinking seriously about what he had said.

“I wish—I wish that I could tell you I won’t trap anymore. But I can’t. And I don’t want to lie to you. So I won’t tell you that it doesn’t hurt the animals. I know it does. But trapping—trapping is a way of life. If we raised animals—cows or sheep or even chickens—for our use—our food and our clothing, they would have to die too. Traps are perhaps a more cruel way to die, but if one is a good trapper the animals can be spared suffering. I’m sorry, Kendra, but that’s the way it is.”