Tisha (39 page)

“Down!” Fred yelled at me.

He didn’t have to tell me. That sled was a bare two feet wide and with someone sitting up it was no trouble at all to tip it over from the slightest bump. I slid down until I could just barely see ahead.

I looked over to Cab. We were running almost neck and neck, with him a few feet ahead. “Yah, Pepper!” Cab called to his lead dog. “Move that butt! Pull, you damn crow-bait, or I’ll skin your hide! Yah!”

The teams knew they were in a race and they were pulling their hearts out. A few seconds later both sleds separated to avoid a jag of rough ice. Cab came
around his side too wide and he lost a few feet. Once we were straightened out we were a little ahead of him. The dogs were going so fast they were peppering me all over. One gob got me in the eye and I couldn’t see for a couple of minutes.

Before I came to Alaska I’d always thought river ice froze the way it did on Christmas cards, smooth and even. But it didn’t, at least not as far as a sled was concerned. If this was what Cab thought was without a bump or a bang I wondered what he’d consider rough. A couple of times I thought we’d turn over, but Fred held the sled steady. I looked over at Cab to see how Chuck and Ethel were making out. They’d both scrunched down as far as they could and were probably enjoying the ride.

A half-mile later Cab was a little ahead, but then his dogs had to veer off from some branches that had been blown onto the river and we were two team-lengths ahead of him. He and Fred were yelling up a storm, the echoes bouncing off the hills and yelling it all back to us.

Neither of us was going in a straight line. We veered all over the river, trying to keep to the smooth. One minute Fred and I would be in the lead, the next it would be Cab. When we both hit a stretch of soft snow at the same time and slowed down, Fred and Cab were off the runners and pushing. Cab moved ahead of us.

Once we were through it, both men on the runners again, Cab was still ahead. We were off to his left by this time, closer to shore and gaining on him when all of a sudden a rabbit appeared out of nowhere dead ahead. Pancake saw it, broke stride for just a moment as if he was going for it, and stumbled. It could have been a disaster. As it was it lost us the race. The dogs piled into each other and we ran into the wheel dog. He went down with a yowl and we plowed into three more of them before we could stop. None of them was hurt, but by the time Fred got all the harness straightened out Cab was too far ahead to catch.

He was waiting for us a quarter of a mile away. He let us come pretty close before he mushed on, but we never caught up with him again. We’d gain a little
every now and then, but Cab reached Cross Creek a full two minutes before us.

Fred stopped the sled far enough away from him so the dogs couldn’t get to each other, then he just stood for a couple of minutes trying to get his breath back. Cab was out of breath too. I got out of the sled and went over to Chuck and Ethel. They weren’t any the worse for wear, but they were scared. Ethel put her arms out to me and I started to lift her out.

“Leave ’er be, Teacher,” Cab said. “Sorry you came all this way, but I can’t let you have ’em.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I ain’t gonna let you roon your life.”

I tried to convince him that he was wrong. No matter what I said he shook his head. He was doing it for my good.

“Let her have them, Cab,” Fred said.

“I wouldn’t butt in if I was you,” Cab said. “If Anne wants those kids it’s her right to keep them.”

“I’m takin’ them where they belong,” Cab said. He took off his mittens. “That’s the way it’s gonna be.” He spoke so softly that if you didn’t see his eyes you’d have thought he was being friendly.

“Fred …” I tried to take his arm, but he shook me off. He went to the sled and made as if to lift Ethel out. He never got to touch her. Cab charged right into him and gave him a hefty shove that almost made him lose his balance. “That’s the way you want it, that’s the way you got it,” Cab said.

I wanted to stop it there and then. It wasn’t fair. Fred wasn’t a fighter like Cab. You could see just by the way he stood that he’d probably never had a fight in his life. He just stood there with his mittens bunched up in front of him as if he wasn’t sure how you went about the whole thing. But not Cab. He knew what to do. He circled around Fred, his fists bobbing, while he moved in a little closer with each turn. Then all of sudden his left fist streaked out. Fred tilted his head back, but it didn’t do him any good. Cab hit him on the side of the jaw with his other fist and it made such an awful sound I thought I was going to be sick. Fred fell right
down, stunned. He didn’t even know what had happened for a few seconds. He just sat there shaking his head, his legs spread open. He spat a chunk of blood out and there was a tooth in it. I started to go over to him, but Cab said, “Leave ’im be, Teacher.”

I thanked God he wasn’t drunk, because if he had been he’d have been all over Fred, trying to tear him to pieces. Instead he just stood over him, his fists holding invisible ski poles. “You get up, boy, and you’re crazy,” he warned. “You just say uncle now and we’ll call it quits. Hey?”

Fred looked terrible. He wiped his mouth and smeared blood all over his chin, then he looked down at his tooth. When he looked up again I hardly recognized him. It wasn’t only the blood, it was something else, that same expression he’d had when he’d almost fought Cab back in Chicken. I’d seen him get it on the trail when we had tough going. There wasn’t any fear in it. It was calculating and deadly. His face was as gray as death and as cruel as numbing cold. All of a sudden I knew that the last thing he was going to do was call it quits.

“What do you say?” Cab asked him again.

Chuck and Ethel were on each side of me, Ethel holding on to me for protection. Scared, they’d clambered out of the sled and come right over to me.

Fred didn’t get up fast, but when he did it wasn’t like a man getting up, it was like an animal that was using every muscle in its body even before it was on its feet. As he did it a sound came from deep inside him that I didn’t know a human being could make. When I heard it I felt that something terrible was about to happen, felt it even before Cab got hit the first time. Cab didn’t have a chance. One second he was standing there with his fists weaving in front of him and the next there was blood spurting out of his nose and he was backing off with Fred wanting to kill him. I don’t know how many times Fred hit him before he just toppled over backwards and his head hit the ice with an awful sound. Then Fred pounced on him, his knee landing on the side of Cab’s neck. He wanted to get at him so bad that he sprawled past him only to scramble right back and
start pounding him as if he’d gone insane and Cab wasn’t a man, but something to be beaten down into the ground. Cab kept trying to protect himself, but it didn’t do him any good. Fred didn’t care where he hit him, just as long as he could hit him. He pounded him in the ribs and there was a snap, then he pounded his face.

I kept trying to grab him and pull him off, but he didn’t stop until Cab’s head was lolling like a dead chicken’s, his face smeared so heavy with blood it looked like a messed-up jelly apple.

We sat him up against his sled and put his mittens on him, then Fred set about trying to wake him up. We bathed his face with snow. Even after we got most of the blood off, he still looked terrible. His nose was broken and one eye was almost closed. Even after he healed, he wouldn’t be looking the way he had before the fight.

He
didn’t
come to for almost ten minutes, and at first he couldn’t remember what had happened. One thing you had to say for him, though, was that once it all came back to him he didn’t hold any grudge. In fact he acted just the opposite. As soon as he could stand up he told Fred he truly admired him, that he hadn’t any idea Fred could handle himself that way. Fred said that Cab was pretty good himself and that he hoped he hadn’t hurt him too much. Cab said Hell, he’d gotten beat up worse than that one time in Redman’s Hall at Eagle.

He had to stuff some cotton in one of his nostrils and he didn’t make a whimper. I was really worried about his being able to make it as far as the Indian village and so was Fred, but Cab said he’d be all right. In a way it was almost funny, Fred worrying over him and asking him if he was sure he was fit to travel and Cab telling him not to worry at all, he’d make it. A little while before they’d been trying to bash each other’s brains out. Now they were carrying on like buddies.

Cab even got out a bottle of whiskey and offered Fred some. “Half-breed or not,” he said, “you’re a white man.”

Fred turned the drink down and Cab took a few
swallows while Fred and I started putting Chuck and Ethel into our sled.

“I could go back with you as far as O’Shaughnessy’s if you want,” he said. “Looks like you might run into some bad weather.” He pointed way far off to the southwest where the mountains were disappearing in a darkening sky. Fred told him we’d make out all right, so Cab just leaned back and watched us. We had Chuck and Ethel all bedded down and were about ready to go when Cab’s dogs started sniffing the air and getting to their feet, a couple of them growling and bearing their teeth. Ours started to do the same thing and I thought that maybe they were going to start something between them, but they weren’t. They were all looking back up the river.

Something was coming our way. All there was at first was a tiny patch of white fog moving toward us, then a dotted black line that turned into a string of maybe a dozen dogs. There was a man riding the sled behind them, another one trotting alongside. They were still too far away to make out who they were, but Cab’s dogs turned so mean that they wouldn’t settle down until Cab got a length of chain out and waded into them with it.

“Indians,” he said, after he’d calmed them down. “My dogs don’t take to ’em.”

They were Indians, and one was Titus Paul. They must have been on their way back from their trapline because their sled was loaded. They stopped some distance away, their dogs as ready for a fight as Cab’s. The other man stayed with them while Titus walked over.

It’s funny how things strike you all of a sudden. I’d never thought about why Indians and Eskimos always ornamented their parkas with bright beadwork and plenty of color. I’d just figured that was their way. Until I watched Titus walking toward us. His caribou parka was a real beauty, white fur speckled with brown, topped by a wolf-fur hood, but as he came nearer I suddenly realized that after being on trail all this time I’d become tired and bored of seeing green and white. Looking at Titus was like seeing the whole world suddenly take on color, the slash of it at the hem of
his parka, even the braided leather mitten-string that was attached to his collar. He looked like a Northern prince. Even the way he walked was kind of prince-like, long-legged and slow, chest out, and that small head of his above it all, making him seem taller than he was.

“Howdy, Titus,” Cab called, “you make good catch? Take plenty fur?”

Titus nodded so you’d hardly notice, taking in Cab’s condition without changing expression, then his eyes went flick-flick-flick, taking in me and Chuck and Ethel and dismissing us. Then they flicked to Fred and the dogs, and finally settled on Fred. Fred took off a mitten and offered his hand. “Fred Purdy,” he said.

Titus took off his own lynx paw mitten. “Titus Paul,” he said. Like his partner, he was all dressed in skins. His moosehide breeches were tucked into knee-high “husky” boots—moccasins made from the leg skin of the wolf above the ankle and moose leather below.

Cab took another swallow from the bottle and offered it to him. He took a couple of swallows, then handed it back. “You go Indian village?” he asked.

“Sure am,” Cab said.

“You come see Cathy?” he asked me.

“No, Fred and I are going back to Chicken.”

“We just had a little difference of opinion before you showed up, Titus,” Cab said. The whiskey had already gotten to him, you could see. He was getting a mulish look to him that said he was thinking about something hard and coming to a conclusion about it. I smelled trouble and I wished Fred and I were gone. No doubt Titus had seen Cab’s sled trail farther up the river and then seen where ours joined it. He looked at Chuck and Ethel, then asked them something in Indian.

Chuck pointed to Cab, explaining, then to me.

“You take kids from
skooltral?”
Titus asked Cab.

“Yeah, I take ’em,” Cab said, glancing at Fred and me. “I bring ’em back to Indian village where they belong,” Cab answered. “People in Chicken no like they live there.”

Titus looked at Fred. “Why
you
take from
him?”

“Anne wants them.”

I said, “Titus, they belong to me, their father gave them to me.”

“They Indian kids. Indian kids belong Indian village.”

“Glad you say that, Titus,” Cab said. “Them two kids make this little lady lotsa trouble. Lotsa trouble. White people in Chicken no like
skooltrai
keep them. Make too much damn angry with her she keep them. Make angry with whole Indian village too!”

“Cab, you’re a louse,” I said.

Cab didn’t pay me any mind. “You take these kids, Titus. Take to Indian village an’ white people be lotsa happy.”

Fred spoke up. “Titus, those two kids belong with Anne. She’s been taking care of them. She wants them and they want her.”

“Why you want?” Titus asked me.

“Because I love them.”

The minute I said it I felt tears coming up and I was furious with myself. The last thing I needed right then was tears. I needed to be tough. Titus, he didn’t know anything about tears, so I screwed my face up, and I gave him the meanest look I could manage. “What’s wrong with that?” I said. “Is that a crime?” Somehow it didn’t come out tough.

“Teacher,” Cab said, grinning that dumb fool grin again, “you are the cat’s whiskers.”

“Cab, if you don’t shut up—”

“Hold on a minute, Teacher. Titus, I ask you question. You have law in village—no brave go ’way from village without Council say yes. You savvy me?” Titus didn’t say anything. “This little boy belong in village until Council say he can go. Am I right?”