"The one thing, the only thing, that matters is our love for each other. We never argued once over that, Kari. We knew it was there, from the beginning. I knew the moment I saw you in those red shorts on that log at the fair that you were my lady. Lots of modern couples have separate careers, have to live apart. It's not ideal, but we could make it work, because there's no other way. I can't live without you in my life, so it's as simple as that."
He drew a great, shuddering breath. "So, Karena Carlson, will you marry me, as soon as we can arrange it? Be my wife, have my children, love me when I'm old? Let me be the best stepfather I can be for your son?"
The fireplace cast a rosy glow over them, flickering yellow and orange, hissing and sending sparks flying against the guard she'd placed carefully in front. Karena looked into his dark eyes, at all the love and tenderness and humor, the goodness that was Logan Baxter, and she hated what she had to say.
She took a deep breath and blurted it out anyway.
"I love you, Logan. You're the only man I've ever really loved. I want to marry you, I will marry you—" she drew in a quick gulp of air, and the rest of it came out on a nervous gulp, "—if you'll just wait for me. I can't get married till I prove something important to myself."
He became very still, and gently he detached himself from her and sat up, reaching for his glasses on the floor nearby. She sat up, too, and found her panties, her bra, tugging them on and hastily adding her jeans and sweater, fortifying herself against—what?
"What do you have to prove, Kari? I know we have problems to work out, but I also know none of them are more important than the love we share. We'll solve them together."
He gathered his clothing into an untidy heap and started putting it on, beginning with his socks, and she wondered where to start telling him what she'd learned about herself, trying to figure out where there was a suitable beginning.
She drew a shaky breath. "What you said about me hiding? Well, it's true, Logan. Whenever I come up against a situation that's hard for me, I run away, and now I want to change that."
He was standing, shoving his legs into his pants, and she couldn't tell what he was thinking. She went on anyway.
"I think I'm a lot like Pop. Both of us are shy, we have trouble relating to other people, so we just go away and hide rather than get in there and try harder. When I was growing up, Pop saw Gabe making my mother laugh, teaching me logging sports, and I know now he wanted to join in, to be part of it, but he didn't know how, any more than I knew how to talk to your sister, or those faculty women. So Pop fought with his friend and drove him away, and he tried to do the same thing with anyone I cared about, because he was scared, just like I was and still am."
She'd never been more afraid in her life, because she'd never had more to lose than she did right now. But she didn't stop trying to explain to him.
"Logan, I know now that running away and hiding doesn't work, but it was my defense for so long, it's hard to change. I'm trying to, but I'm not at all sure I can do it. Danny said Mort had to be one way or the other, wild or tame. It's the same with me. I've got to learn how, just like Mort. And if we get married right away, I know I won't try as hard."
In a breathless rush, she explained about the job in Brainerd, the house she'd rented. "And I'm going to go to school, to take my instructor's course, so I'll be able to teach log scaling," she finished.
He sat down again beside her, and tentatively, she reached a hand out and laid it on his jean covered leg.
"I need to do those things for myself, Logan. What kind of wife would I be to you, running away at parties, tongue tied and awkward with your friends, spending my time in the bush while you worked in the city? And there's Danny. You made me see that I was restricting his life as well as my own. I need to change those things if I can, before they cause us more problems. I need time, Logan," she said as firmly as she could. Inside she was racked with uncertainty. He was sitting cross legged on the rug, staring thoughtfully into the fire.
"How much time?" He recognized the rationale in what she was telling him, but he couldn't hide his disappointment. He wanted to feel she was his, once and for always.
She got to her feet and walked to the window, peering out at the Minnesota winter just beginning to get its teeth into the land. More snow would inevitably fall; the long winter months were only beginning.
The roads from Brainerd to St. Paul would be icy and dangerous to drive. Weeks might come and go when she couldn't see him at all.
She knew there was at least one woman at the college who'd love to keep him warm on cold winter nights.
What was she doing, risking happiness with this wonderful man so that she could struggle with a new job, new people, in a new community? In the northern winter?
You're growing up, Karena. Growing, like Danny, like Mort.
Even Logan. He'd told her of the change in himself, the new desire to teach. Each person had to grow in their own way, in their own time. But darn, it was hard.
"June?" she suggested, staring out at the snow. "How does June sound, Logan?" Seven months, an eternity to wait. He'd say, make up your mind, now or never, a man can't spend his life waiting.
His voice, only slightly grumpy, came from directly behind her, and his arms encircled her. "Damn far off, that's how it sounds. But if that's what you want, that's what you'll get. A June wedding." She turned into his arms, tilting her chin up for his kiss.
"Brainerd isn't that far from St. Paul, that's one of the reasons I'm moving there," she murmured.
"There's a movie theater in Brainerd, I'll bet they have double features Danny will love on Saturday afternoons," he mumbled, kissing her throat. "Mort's just going to have to learn about sex someplace else," he said with a touch of sadistic complacency.
"Again?" Her voice trembled because of what he was doing. Her jeans slid down, his hands were roaming.
"But, but Logan, aren't you hungry? All those sandwiches drying out--" her voice turned to a throaty whisper, and then a moan as her panties followed her jeans.
"They're well wrapped. They'll keep just fine. We've got all day." He scooped her up, setting her down gently on the rug. He had his own jeans off before he remembered to throw another log on the dying fire.
They were married June first, at ten in the morning, in the picnic area in Itasca State Park, with a wedding lunch to follow at the Gardoms' farm, and the sun shone.
"We are gathered here this morning..."
The groom had argued for a 6:00 a.m. start, but no one listened. With Betsy, Abigail and Lizzie in charge, he wisely decided not to push it, although he was getting cheated out of several valuable hours of married life. These people had dragged him out of bed before for far less reason.
"In the sight of God and this assembly..."
At Christmastime Logan's family, which seemed to encompass half the population of Minnesota when they all got together, had welcomed Karena and Danny into their noisy midst and gathered Gabe and Otis in as well. They were all here today. Also at Christmas, Karena had attended three parties with Logan in St. Paul. She hadn't run out on one, and many of those people were here today as well.
"To unite this man and this woman..."
The bride wore a blue silk shirtwaist dress with a few water splotches on it. One of her attendants—Lizzie—fell headfirst into the stream moments before the ceremony. The boys had dared her to wade across the Mississippi, and her new shoes had tiny heels that slipped on the rocks. Danny gallantly hauled her out, surefooted and no longer limping at all, getting the pant cuffs of his first three piece suit wet and muddy.
The determined young physiotherapist in Brainerd had nagged, cajoled and bullied him through boring sets of exercises all winter, and now his left ankle worked just as well as his right. It had to. He was center on Brainerd's junior basketball team, and he needed that ankle badly.
"In the bonds of holy matrimony..."
At least once a day for the past seven months, Karena had decided she absolutely couldn't stand her new life one moment longer. She hadn't sold the cabin; she could always go back.
Logan had insisted if she tried to sell, he would simply outbid any offer and buy it himself. Everybody needed a cave, if only for summer holidays, he said. Probably because she knew it was there, she'd stayed in Brainerd.
It had been so damned cold all the time. She'd grown used to central heating and instant hot water.
Betsy would phone, or Max would drive Abigail all the way from Bemidji for a visit.
"Do you, Logan Alexander Baxter, take this woman..."
Logan had managed to drive into Karena's lane every single Friday evening, vaulting up the icy steps carelessly, catching her up in his arms before he even took off his parka.
"I do," he stated firmly. Finally. Forever and ever.
"Do you, Karena Mary Carlson, take this man..."
"I do."
Totally. She'd never really like cities, but there were always parks.
She'd surprised herself by being a good teacher and an excellent student. She persevered, and maybe that was all that mattered.
That, and loving Logan.
"I now pronounce you husband and wife."
The honeymoon was unorthodox.
Danny came along for the first few days. Logan drove the three of them to a small hamlet called Merriweather, Michigan, and Danny entertained them with a monologue that started in Bemidji and lasted all three hundred and ten miles.
Logan rented two units in the only motel in town, and a helicopter flew them along the shores of Gogebic Lake early the next morning. The pilot, a naturalist from the reentry project, pointed out the areas the moose seemed to prefer, where grazing was plentiful among the marshy plateaus.
When they spotted two moose below in a meadow, he landed nearby.
"Two of our moose calves were killed by wolves last winter," he'd told them earlier. "We have no way of knowing for certain that Mort survived, although we think so. We watched him closely for the first two months, and we fed him only if we felt it was absolutely necessary. Moose are solitary animals, they seldom move in herds, but one old cow seemed to take Mort under her wing. He learned to graze, and he gradually started moving away when humans approached instead of running toward them. When we released him from the supervision area, he had all the skills he needed for survival. The rest is luck, and judging from Mort's background, he had plenty of that. But I doubt you'd ever find him. He'll have changed drastically."
The morning was warm, and all of them were sweating when they reached the top of a knoll that overlooked the meadow.
Danny raised the field glasses Logan handed him and studied the two moose intently.
They were both young, and it was difficult to tell if they were male or female, because neither had discernible horns.
"I've read that yearlings sometimes stay together, away from the old bulls. One of those could be Mort," he said excitedly.
Karena and Logan exchanged glances with the pilot. They knew it was next to impossible to find one yearling moose in this gigantic wilderness. They'd tried to talk Danny out of trying, but he'd been adamant.
"You promised we could go and just look. I don't want to get up close to him, it's better to leave him alone, but I need to see him if I can, see where he lives."
Danny cupped his hands around his mouth.
"Mort, is that you, Mort?" he shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Mort, Mort, Mort," the hills echoed.
The two moose threw huge heads into the air, startled, and disappeared at a gallop into the thicket of trees.
"I guess you're right, we'll never find him, and Grampa and Gabe are waiting back home to go on that fishing trip with me," Danny said. "But y'know, Mom, I'm glad we came. I have this strong feeling that crazy old Mort's alive and doing fine. Like in those stories you used to tell me, y'know, that always ended happily ever after."
Somehow Karena thought so, too.
Epilogue
The yearling bull moose was kneeling off to the side of the meadow, eagerly feeding on the young green grass. The Michigan winter had been harsh, and now his depleted body craved this fresh new growth. Angry scars on his chest and side were healing slowly, marks left by a wolf attack that had nearly ended his life several months before.
His big ears flicked this way and that, listening, and above his huge, nearsighted eyes there wasn't any sign yet of antlers. It would be autumn before his first velvet covered pedicles appeared, and four long years after that until the impressive crown of solid bone reached full growth, signaling his sexual maturity.
He'd learned a great deal in the past six months, most of it fighting for his life. He now knew the art of backtracking, of circling and coming up behind his enemies. He'd learned to stand motionless in thickets, almost uncannily invisible. He moved silently and swiftly when he scented danger, able to outrun it.
A strange sound brought him staggering to his feet, a sound foreign to the wilderness. He listened intently, his huge prehensile nostrils quivering, testing the warm June morning for danger.