"I think so, Anna."
"But, James, he's laying in that cold spring water. Won't that keep him fresh?"
"The meat's got to be bled right away. I know that much because Karl told me. He says what you do in the first half hour after an animal is shot makes the difference between good meat and bad meat."
"Oh, James! Ish. Do we really have to get our hands in that thing?"
"I don't see how else we're gonna get him gutted. If we don't, Karl will just come home to another mess we've made."
That finally convinced Anna what must be done, must be done. "There are still some torches left in the corner. I'll get them."
"And bring some knives, too, and I'll go get Karl's oil-stone that he uses for sharpening his axe. I think we're gonna need it."
Anna turned back before she was at the doorway of the house and called to her brother, "Karl's gonna be so proud of you, James." She was proud herself in a way she'd never dreamed she could be of her baby brother.
"Of you too, Anna. I just know it."
For some inexplicable reason, Anna remembered she had forgotten to water her hop bines that day, and promised herself she'd do it first thing in the morning. Soon as that bear was gutted and she got a little sleep and they'd gone over to get one of the boys to help hoist that bear up and they'd taken care of digging the potatoes and the turnips and the rutabagas and ...
No, she thought, the hop bines will come first. First thing when I get up. Those hop bines will not fail!
Chapter Nineteen
Three days later Karl Lindstrom rode northward along the trail that was now showing evidence of autumn coming on. The first sumac glowed brilliantly in startling scarlet from the edges of the forest trail. The hazelnuts were brown and thick. Karl remembered he'd promised Anna he would show them to her. As soon as the cabin was finished, he would bring her back here and do just that. In the meantime, he pulled the team up and picked a stem of the nuts and put it in his pocket. Once again on his way, he passed through the place of the wide heartpine, which he knew would make thick planks for Anna's kitchen dresser. He must come back here and fell it and split it as soon as he had a free day, and begin making the piece of furniture, which, too, he had promised Anna.
A pheasant lifted itself, disturbed from its dust bath at the edge of the road as Karl's team came clopping. The bird flashed in brilliant bars of rust and black, and iridescent green head, as it scaled quickly up toward cover in a graceful swoop, scolding, "Can-a-a-a!"
I would shoot it and take it home for supper, Karl thought, but I do not have my gun. The pheasant can wait for James to bring it down.
No, Karl did not have his own rifle. He had a gun all right, but when it was shot for the first time, it would be shot by James. It was a Henry repeater that made Karl smile in anticipation. He had much to make up for with the lad. The gun would be a start. Karl thought about himself and the boy walking out in the amber autumn mornings, their guns slung on their arms, companionably silent as they stalked pheasants, brought them down and carried them home to Anna.
Then he would teach Anna how to stuff it with bread stuffing enhanced by their own wild hazelnuts. Karl supposed he would have to teach her to make bread all over again, now that she would be doing it in the cast-iron stove.
Karl smiled. He flicked the reins. But Belle and Bill each turned a blinder in his direction, as if asking him what the hurry was. They were already cutting a good pace toward home, and they were as anxious to be there as he was.
When the team turned into their own lane a short time later, Karl wanted to slow them instead of hurrying them. But now they obstinately refused to be slowed. Karl saw the familiar opening in the trees up ahead, then his skid trail, and at its base, the beautiful log house he and Anna and James had built together. Leaning beside it were neatly placed sacks of potatoes. Out on the grass by the garden were willow baskets with grapes drying in them, shriveling themselves into raisins. There was smoke coming from the chimney of the sod house.
But there was something missing. Karl scanned the clearing again and realized with a start that it was the springhouse! His springhouse was gone! There were two pails sitting where it had been before, and some rutabagas that looked half-washed. Some crocks were submerged in the sand, as usual. But the building itself had disappeared into thin air. There was a smell in the air that made Karl's nostrils twitch, but he couldn't figure out what it could be that smelled so much like bear. The horses seemed to smell it, too, for they threw their heads and flicked their manes until Karl had to say, "Eaaasy. We are home. You know home when you see it."
Neither Anna nor James was in sight as Karl drove the team up near the log house. There it stood--the house of his dreams. While he reined in his team before it, he wondered once more if he had shattered those dreams beyond repair or if he and the boy and Anna could patch them up. He forced a calm into his limbs as he tied the reins to the wooden brake handle, and spoke to Belle and Bill.
"You will have to wait a while till I get these things unloaded."
The horses told him in no uncertain terms they were impatient to get to their barn.
Coming around the rear of the wagon, Karl glanced toward the sod house. James stood just outside its door, his hands in his pockets, staring
483 at Karl. Karl stopped short and looked back at the boy. A sudden stinging burned the back of Karl's eyes, seeing how James just stood there, making no move to come forward or greet him in any way. Karl tried to speak, but his tongue felt like it was stuck to the roof of his mouth. Finally, he just raised his hand in a silent gesture of hello. His heart beat high in his throat as he waited for a return greeting from the boy. At last James removed a hand from his pocket and raised it silently, too.
"I could use a little help unloading this wagon, boy," Karl called.
Without a word, James came toward him, watching his feet scuff up puffs of dust on his way. At the rear of the wagon he stopped, looked up at Karl, silent as before.
Inanely, Karl managed to get out, "I got the wheat ground."
"Good," said James. But the note escaped him in a high contralto. "Good," he repeated, deeper this time.
"We will have plenty flour for winter." Karl remembered how he had once told the boy he was an extra mouth to feed.
"Good."
"Got those windows for the log house."
James nodded his head as if to say, yes, so I see.
"Everything all right here?" Karl's eyes flickered toward the cabin, then back to the boy's face.
"Ya." After a pause, he went on. "We thought you'd be back yesterday."
"It took a day to get the flour milled. They were busy at the mill and we had to wait our turn." Did they think I wouldn't come back, Karl wondered. Is that what they thought?
"Oh."
Tentatively they hovered, brawny man and gangly boy, hearts surging with remorse and love, neither of them yet having said what he wanted so desperately to say.
"Well, we'd best get it unloaded," Karl said.
"Ya."
Karl stepped to the wagon to remove the backboard, but when his hands were upon it he did not pull it loose. He stood instead braced that way, gripping the rough wood as if it were his security. He closed his eyes. The boy stood unmoving, near Karl's elbow.
"Boy, I ... I'm sorry," Karl croaked. Then he leaned his head back and looked up at the autumn sky. The sharp edges of the clouds were blurry.
"Me, too, Karl," James said. And for once in his life his voice came out strong and masculine.
"You got nothing to be sorry for, boy. It was all me. Me! Karl!"
"No, Karl. I shoulda got that gun like you said."
"The gun had nothing to do with it."
"Yes it did. It was the first lesson you taught me. Move for the gun like your life depends on it, cause it probably does."
"I was wrong that day. I was mad ... I had things on my mind about Anna and we weren't getting along, so I took it out on you."
"It don't matter, really."
"Ya. It matters, boy. It matters."
"Not to me, not any more. I learned a lesson that day. I figure I needed it."
"I learned a lesson, too," Karl said.
Karl looked up then, found the boy's wide green eyes filled to the brim and understood how his own father had felt when he waved to him for the last time.
"I missed you, boy. I missed you these last three days."
James blinked and a tear rolled down, unchecked, for his hands were still stuffed in his pockets. "We mi--we missed you, too."
Karl took the plunge, loosening his hold on the wagon and turning in one heart-filling motion to sweep the boy into his arms and hug him to his chest. James' arms came clinging to Karl. Karl took James by the sides of his hair, holding him back to look into his face, saying, "I'm sorry, boy. Your sister was right. You did everything right that I ever asked you to learn. A man couldn't ask for anything better than a boy like you."
James pitched roughly against Karl's chest, releasing all his pent-up anguish in a torrent of words that came muffled against Karl's shirt. "We didn't think you were coming back. We looked for you all day yesterday, and then night-time came, and you didn't have your rifle and we knew about the cougar."
Karl thought his heart would explode. "Olaf was with me, boy, you knew that." But he was rocking James, feeling the boy's heart beat against his own. "And he had his gun. Besides ... a man would be a fool not to come back to a place like this, with all this plenty."
"Oh, Karl, don't ever go away again. I was so scared. I ..." Standing there against the big man's chest, against the smell of him, that mixture of horses and tobacco and security, the words that ached in James' throat could be denied no longer. "I love you, Karl," he said, then backed away, his eyes cast earthward, and dried them sheepishly on his sleeve.
Karl pushed James' arm down and held him by the shoulders, forcing him to look square into his face as he said, "When you say to a man that you love him, there is no need to hide behind your sleeve. I love you, too, boy, and don't you ever forget it."
At last they both smiled. Then Karl swiped his own sleeve across his eyes and turned to the wagon again. "Now are you going to help me unload this wagon or do I need to get your sister to help me?"
"I'll help you, Karl."
"Can you lift a sack of flour?" Karl asked.
"Just watch me!"
They unloaded the flour and the windows, which were protectively couched between the sacks. Lifting a precious glass pane, Karl said, "I bought five of them. One for each side of the door and one for each of the other walls. A man should be able to look out and see his land all around him," he said, entering the log cabin.
Coming back outside, Karl said, "I see you picked potatoes while I was gone."
"Ya. Me and Anna."
"Where is she?" Karl inquired while his heart danced against his rib cage.
"She's getting some supper."
Now it was Karl's turn to say, "Oh." Then he jumped onto the wagonbed again and said, "Help me move these last couple sacks, boy. We will take them to the sod house for Anna."
James pulled a sack away, revealing a long wooden box. He could see the words, "New Haven Arms Company" stamped on the front of it. He pulled the second sack away, and the words "
Norwich
,
"A man does best with his own gun," Karl said simply.
"His own gun?" James repeated doubtfully.
"Do you not agree?"
"Su ... sure, Karl." James looked back down, wanting to touch the box, afraid to. He looked up again.
"I picked one with a stock of hand-shaped walnut that will fit your grip like your pants fit your seat. It is just right for a boy of your size."
"Really, Karl?" James asked disbelievingly, still not pulling the crate out. "Is it really for me?"
"I have taught you everything except how to be a hunter. It is time we got started. Winter is coming on."
James had the carton slipped free and in his arms. He leaped from the wagon and was running across the clearing, long legs bounding toward the sod house as he bellered, "Anna! Anna! Karl bought me a gun! Of my own, Anna, my own!"
Karl waited for her to appear in the doorway of the sod house, but she didn't. He shouldered a sack of flour and headed that way, for James had disappeared inside.
James was going crazy, talking far too loud, repeating that Karl had bought the gun to be his own. Anna was overjoyed for her brother.
"Oh, James, I told you, didn't I?" She had seen from the depths of the cabin how Karl and James had made their peace out there. It was not necessary for her to know what they had said. To see the two of them hugging that way in broad daylight had filled her heart to bursting.