Winterbound (14 page)

“I'd love to. Only …”

“There's this ten dollars; part of it anyway. I might get another job of some kind, and if we ever hear anything from our advertisement woman there'd be some of that money, too.”

“She'd have written long ago if she was coming,” Kay said. “We'll never hear from her.”

“The old buzzard,” Garry commented. “People just make me sick anyway. I think she might answer even if she isn't coming.” She spread the silk out, viewing it critically as it lay across her knee. “What's your trouble
now?
”

A faint wail had drifted down through the register from the room where Caroline was supposed to be asleep.

“All right. I'll get him for you.” Garry laid aside her work to hunt round the room for the coon kitten, who, with the ingratitude of all cats towards those who seek to do them undesired kindness, had fled the warmth of Caroline's bed and was sitting with tucked-in paws as far under the sofa as he could squeeze. “That's the third time I've hauled that wretched kitten upstairs. Nothing will persuade Caroline that coon cats don't like being cuddled.
I hope the next time someone gives her a pet it'll be a tortoise; at least they can't run so fast.

“Do you know, Kay,” she went on when they were settled once more, “I had an idea the other day. I don't know that it's brilliant, but it might work. Remember those funny pictures you used to make up for the kids when they were little—the Pilliwig family?”

“
Those
things?” Kay looked puzzled. “Martin used to like them. I haven't thought of them in years. I don't even remember how they went.”

“I do. I'd remember Mrs. Pilliwig's hat and the way the little Pilliwigs looked if I lived to be a hundred. You used to make up the story and draw the pictures as you went along. Kay, I believe if you were to do a series of those any children's magazine in the world would want them.”

“But they were just nonsense.”

“Some of the best stuff in the world is nonsense,” said Garry stoutly. “It's what everyone likes, anyway, and there's precious little of it that's any good. Those were fine just because they were nonsense and you weren't worrying about how they came out, but just went ahead and drew them.”

“Wait a minute. I remember now I once made some on the back of another drawing.”

Kay crossed the room to rummage through a portfolio of old sketches.

“It was when that little Cary girl came to tea. I wanted… Yes, here it is. It's about the zoo.”

She smiled as she held out the paper for Garry to see. Garry was right. There was life and humor in the ridiculous little figures. There was more, too: a freedom of expression and a sure use of line that Kay didn't always get in her more studied drawings.

“See what I mean?”

“I don't know. I might be able to make something out of them if they were better drawn.”

“There you go!” said Garry. “They don't want to be better drawn. They want to be just like you have them there.”

“Eleven o'clock.” Neal looked at his wrist watch. “What do you say we push on towards the ledges there and find a place to eat our sandwiches?”

They were halfway up the last rise of hillside. Below them there stretched a bare sparkling slope broken only by the track of their own footsteps and by a few gray bowlders thrusting here and there above the snow. Overhead the moon sailed in a sky dotted by tiny scudding clouds.

They had walked for miles, but Martin didn't even
feel tired. There was something in the pure keen air, the dazzle of moonlight on the snow, just the excitement of being out at night in an unfamiliar place, that went to his head like wine and made him feel wider awake, more alert to every sight and sound about him, than ever he had felt in the daytime. Everything looked strange and different. The patches of black shadow cast by bush or pasture wall stood out sharp and distinct; an old twisted wild-apple tree took fantastic shape in the moonlight, and the occasional faint lights of houses snuggled far down in the valley seemed to belong to another world.

So far they had seen one fox only. They were following an old wood road when he crossed their path unexpectedly in a clearing just ahead, a silent furtive shape that stood for a moment, head turned, and vanished. Jimmie had fired, but his hands shook with excitement and when the smoke cleared only some scattered pellet holes in the snow showed where the fox had stood.

“Passed clean through his fur and never touched him,” Neal said, pointing to the marks. “Too bad!”

Across the shoulder of the hill now they could hear old Sam baying on another scent, two high-pitched notes, clear and mournful, like the sound of a bell at intervals on the frosty air. Neal listened.

“He's working round towards this way. We'll sit up there by the ledges and wait for him.”

They climbed the slope to a little plateau between flat outcropping ledges of granite. Neal found a sheltered hollow where they could sit, their backs to the rock and facing the open.

“See that big flat rock ledge straight in front of us?” he said. “When a fox is bein' hunted and he gets far enough ahead he'll always make for the highest place he can, so's he can take a good look round. Once you know that, and you know the country pretty well, you don't need to waste time followin' the hounds. You can get a good idea of which way they are workin' by listenin' to 'em, and then you go ahead and wait right where you know the fox is bound to come out. He'll be comin' up the other side of the hill now, and right there on that flat ledge is where he'll be likely to show himself, square against the skyline. He ain't in any hurry, no mor'n we are. We'll hear from old Sam when he's getting nearer.”

He laid the gun down beside him and pulled the sandwiches out of his pocket.

“Guess some hot coffee'll taste good. You ain't cold, Martin?”

“Not a bit.”

They ate their sandwiches and drank their coffee in turn from the little cup on the flask, talking in whispers. At intervals old Sam's voice reached them on the still air, sometimes nearer, sometimes further off.

“Workin' in a circle,” Neal said. “He'll be another half hour, maybe.”

Yesterday's wind had blown the loose snow from the ledges; in this sheltered angle it was warm and still. Martin finished his sandwich and leaned back against the flat slope of rock, his hands behind his head. Watching the moon as it fled in and out between the small fleecy clouds, rainbow hued in its halo, he felt as if the whole hillside were turning under him, and he sat up suddenly to find everything about him dizzy and strange. Neal laughed.

“That's the way folks get moon struck. When I was a kid mother was always telling me if I lay in the moonlight I'd go looney. That was one of her ideas, and the other was about night air being bad for you. Well, I managed to grow up in spite of both of 'em!”

The sandwiches were gone, the coffee finished. Neal racked his brain for hunting stories to while away the time as the minutes slowly passed. Jimmie was getting chilled and restless; he hated to keep still for long at a stretch and his missed shot earlier in the evening still rankled. He shifted his position several times to peer about, fidgeted here and there, and finally settled down again facing the other two, the .22 always ready in his hands. For a long time old Sam had been silent.

Suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, Neal's voice
paused. He made a movement towards his gun, then drew his hand noiselessly back, and instead his fingers tightened on Martin's arm beside him. Martin looked up.

There on the flat rock just above and behind Jimmie's head stood the fox. Unseen he had crept round behind them and now he was so near that Jimmie, had he known it, could have put out a hand and touched him. Martin could see the drawn-back silent snarl of his lips, the fixed eyes staring. Every hair of his coat stood out sharp and electric like spun glass in the moonlight. For what seemed a full minute he stood there motionless, one paw lifted, while Martin scarcely dared draw breath. Then Jimmie turned his head; the spell was broken. There was a blur and a flurry on the snow, something whipped past them like a flash of color and was gone. Neal rose to his feet, but it was too late.

“What a shot! Oh boy, what a shot!”

“Where—where?” Jimmie clutched at his rifle, staring wildly round.

“Right back of your head! I could have got him easy, but I wouldn't have risked it. Just sneaked up on us from round those bowlders, and us sittin' here all the time. Well, he got the laugh on us this time, I reckon.”

A moment later old Sam loped up to them, puzzled and disappointed, to stare from one to the other and then
thrust his black muzzle reproachfully into Neal's hand.

“No more hunting tonight,” said Neal cheerfully, shouldering his gun. “That's settled it, hey, Sam? Don't know about you boys, but I'm just about chilled through all of a sudden. Guess we'll make tracks for home, and better luck next time.”

It was as Neal said. For the first time Martin felt suddenly chilled and stiff. The excitement of the evening had dropped from him; drowsiness was creeping through his limbs. There was still a long walk before them, and by the time they had crossed the last stone wall into the pasture and saw the lighted kitchen window shining through the dusk he was ready to drop with sleep.

As he closed his eyes that night he seemed to see again, like a picture flashed on darkness, that swift moonlit vision of the fox in the snow.

On the Crooked Esses

GARRY came in bare headed from the mailbox, two bulky envelopes in her hand.

“Seed catalogues already. Didn't I tell you it smelled like spring today?” She paused by the drawing board where Kay sat sharpening pencils with a critical air. “You going to be busy working? I thought I'd go for a walk.”

“Fine.”

With Garry a walk meant a walk. Every once in so often she felt the need to get out alone in the open air and work off her accumulated energy in a long cross-country tramp.

The snow had almost gone—for the time being anyway. Only February, but there was a new blueness in the air, the ground felt elastic underfoot, and runnels of water trickled again in the roadside ditches. Willow shoots were already showing a trace of gold. In the pasture the Rowe cows, turned out for exercise, stood sniffing
the breeze, their coats rough and dingy after long weeks in the stable.

Garry set out briskly over the hill. She had planned to go as far as Flat Top, a walk she had taken once with Mary in the early fall. It was a good four and a half miles, past the sugar-maple grove and the old Sullivan house at the crossroads, then up a narrow back road through woods with only a few scattered houses here and there on the way. Snow still lay in patches in the hollows; where the ground had begun to thaw there were deep ruts of mud that made slow going, and it was almost sunset before she passed the last belt of trees and came out on the open wind-swept plateau that gave the hill its name. Time only for a few minutes rest and a hurried look at the view before her before she must turn back.

Three roads met on the top of the hill; it seemed to Garry that it was the right-hand fork she and Mary had taken last fall when they turned to come home. The leaves were still on the trees, then, and she remembered the blaze of red and yellow that had lined the path. Now everything looked different with ground and bushes bare; it was hard to recognize landmarks again, but it did seem, after she had been walking some ten minutes, that the road was a good deal steeper and narrower than she remembered. There were no houses on it, and she was sure they had passed a white-painted house not so very
far down. Anyway if it wasn't the same road it led more or less in the right direction; it would bring her out somewhere at the foot of the mountain, and she pushed on, quickening her pace a little, for dusk was coming on and with sunset the air had turned suddenly sharp and cold.

There was no mistake about it now; she had never been on this road before. It took a sudden zigzag twist, and as she peered down she could see the hillside drop away in a series of steep ledges.

“Well, here goes,” Garry thought. “Good thing I'm on foot and not in a car; no car could ever take that turn.”

As she stood, looking about, there was a stir and a crash in the bushes, something leaped out to dash past her. A deer, and a big one too; she caught the white bobbing flash of its tail as it sped down and round the bend. A moment later she heard the clatter of shod hoofs on the road below, and the sound of a girl's voice.

“Scared the horse and no wonder,” sprang to her mind as she ran hurriedly down, for there was no mistaking that sudden startled scraping of iron on stones. “What a place to bring a horse up anyway!”

Rounding the next corner she came upon them; a pretty bay with a white blaze on his forehead, pulling at the end of the reins as his rider, her feet braced in the
middle of the road, tried desperately to hold him back. The girl turned a frightened face as Garry ran down—and with reason: if the horse went over the edge of the road he would plunge straight down the ledges to the foot of the mountain.