Chapter IV: Part ONE: Chapter One (4)

Reuben knew he was not mad. Within the passion was a coldness to match her own; shrewdness; wicked planning with all the treachery of a wolf and the bravery. No time now to think of courage or fear. Endless time to know the unbearable need for an act of love.

Reuben sank to his heels on this open ground, the lean-to at his back, fires not great to the left and the right of him, between him and the wolves only an expanse of flame-lit snow. He dropped the green ash spear in that white so that the sharp end was covered. His hand curling midway on the shaft owned a separate life, refusing to suffer from the harsh coldness. Gradually he allowed his head to droop, lift feebly and droop again, while his upturned eyes, perhaps not plain to the enemy, maintained alertness. Seeing all. Clever as Ben's.

The beasts were cruelly wise, Jesse Plum used to say. Out of thickets and moon-shadows they watched men's ways, as dogs did. Unlike dogs they watched only for signs of weakness, and this from no motives but hunger and savagery--except, said Jesse, those wolves which were not wolves.

He must be not reckless but wise and cold as they. He must be ready also to recognize the need for retreat. Supposing they all four came together, then he must jump to life quickly, scare them with noise and bustling and renewal of the fires. But supposing, when this interminable ordeal of crouching, waiting and feigning weakness came to an end, supposing it ever did--supposing his feet had not grown numb and frozen to betray him--supposing the old gray bitch should advance alone, while Ben lay sleeping and the Great Bear slanted toward the North Star----

She was coming.

He would not believe it for a while. Slowly he explained to himself that one of them must have crept out into the open a long time ago, as some trick of the firelight deceived him into calling it another shadow. Then he knew this was not so. She was coming to him. With all his heart he accepted it.

He lowered his head once more, and in that moment witnessed the brief belly-to-earth advance, the freezing down to watch him again across a much smaller distance. This could only be the one he hated, no other. She was coming to him. The others remained a shifting of eyes beyond the clear ground--afraid of him, mere offal, mere dogs as she was not--or else they were holding back because they knew her reasons and his own.

He knew that if he were to jump to his feet and dodge back behind the fire, she would not rush, not yet. No gambler, she would slide away and wait for the certainty, wait till dawn or beyond dawn or beyond the next dawn. He could not do it. It might be wiser, safer; might almost be a duty to Ben that he should retreat to comparative safety, now, while he had time. His body would not do it. His body would only wait like a bowstring, clutching the spear, controlling that deceitful droop of his head until the approaching moment when one of them--a half-starved alien beast or a boy who must remember the doorway of a reddened room where he clung sickly to a bedpost and did nothing--one of them would die quickly.

Was she only a wolf? Some wolves, Jesse said----

Was it possible--he was up on his feet in the surging act of madness--was it possible she could hate and love him in the same way?

He could not understand.

His mind must have flown away, missing the interval, the second of decision. But she was here. She was down. It was over.

She had screamed once, he thought, like a human thing; his ears held something of the strangled cry. More of the moment returned, her flaring mouth receiving the point in mid-air, her own driven weight spitting her upon it. It could not have happened.

It had happened, and she was down, and it was over, and he could remember his own backward staggering at the impact while all of him tightened down on that center of existence where his hands grasped the green ash spear. There followed some wave of elastic power in his legs, and all the force was then flowing the other way until it was over.

Simple butchery remained. He must follow with the spear her agonized writhing, hating no longer. No danger. Her failing paws threshed and tore at the shaft of the death she had swallowed. Her blood fumed out around it from a pierced lung.

It was all over.

* * * * *

"Thursday night we came away--remember? That was the night you fell sick, and was burning and tossing all day Friday. Saturday you was better, but once or twice you didn't know me. It was the Friday night when the wolves came."

"Are they still about? Nay, they can't be on so fair a morning. I feel washed clean, Ru. Weak, but--oh, I could do anything."

"Weaker than you know. It'll pass. I saw the wolves last on Saturday. They scented something, I think, and drifted away."

"It's all so still under the sun, and warm--what? I thought this was Saturday."

"This is Monday, Ben. Yesterday was the Sabbath. I hadn't thought of that till now, when you began asking me about the time. It was yesterday your fever broke for good. These three days have been a hundred years. I've had much time to think, when there was nothing else I could do--mind the fire, gather more wood, then either think or go mad, but I've not gone mad. I have not prayed, Ben, since before dawn on the Friday morning."

"I don't know what I should say about that. Father said, just before he died--did you hear?--said that God is far away."

"And Mother's last prayer was not answered. She prayed, 'Deliver us from evil.' And mine have never been answered."

"But we can't know that."

"I can't say that I know anything, anything at all, except that I'm here with you, and the air has turned warm, and the Bay Path road must be somewhere a mile or so over yonder, and tomorrow we shall try for Roxbury."

"And that thou hast killed a wolf.... Ru, if I didn't see that carcass under my nose----"

"I never lied to you. Oh--tales for your fancy now and then."

"I know that. What did you do with the hide?"

"Flung it out to the cannibals. The entrails too, and the head. They were delighted."

"Puh! What's this part I'm eating now and enjoying so?"

"Have you swallowed it, Mr. Cory?"

"I have, and you needn't try to make me puke."

"A puppy. She was carrying young--six. I had one whole, when you was still in the fever."

"Ow-ooh!"

"Oh, ay, your ears'll turn furry any day now. I say, Ben, when we're dirty-rich and famous, let's keep a few wolves on hand--you know, so to have roasted pups for guests of distinction."

"Now you sound like yourself."

"Do I?... Ben, I--something happened that night, Friday night."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know whether I can tell it.... When I dragged the carcass to the fire I was crying like a fool, I don't know why. Sat there crying with her bloody head on my knees, some-way I couldn't make it seem she was only a piece of meat. Later I could, later it didn't matter. And then--well...."

"What is it, Ru?"

"I found my britches were wet. Nay, not what you think, and not her blood neither, though that's dried all over 'em and I declare we both smell like the Devil's own. Remember you told me how some time soon, whenever it happened, I'd be spending the seed?"

"Oh--of course."

"Ben, I didn't know it when it happened. It must have been the moment when I was killing her. I didn't know it could happen that way."

"I didn't neither."

"Is something wrong with me?"

"No, no."

"You see, I already knew how it feels. I did confess to you about that--long ago, remember? That was the time when you told me, about the change, and the seed."

"Yes. Well, they say it's a sin to bring it on, but I think it must be venial, Ru, for Jesse said once that every man's vessels are alway in need of it. The dreams don't help. Nothing's wrong with you."

"But why didn't I know it when it happened?"

"Oh, the excitement--why, you must have been white-hot, to stand up to a wolf with nothing but a little stick. I didn't know it could happen that way, but I think it's not so strange."

"Jesse Plum.... Why did Father never speak of those things?"

"I don't know, Ru."

"Did he to you?"

"No, he never.... Look: I remember I spent once, merely from lifting a big rock. And--oh, tree-climbing, things like that. So you see--anyway there's nothing wrong with you, brother, nothing."

"Do you have those dreams much, Ben?"

"Not too often. You?"

"Oh, they...."

"You will. You'll be dreaming about girls, and----"

"I ... You'll be strong enough to go on tomorrow, Ben. One thing: we needn't fret now about anyone following from Springfield. That snow will have covered everything. I hope they found the turkey blood before it began a-falling. We can go slowly, rest as soon as we come to another fair shelter. This morning might be the start of another thaw, even an early spring--only look at the tears of that spruce, how they fall in the sun! We'll find more food some-way, now that you're well. There must be towns between here and Roxbury, where we could work for a few meals, a few nights' rest."

"Why, sure, we'll make it.... What happened to your jacket?"

"My--oh, the wolf."

"But the wolf did not reach you, brother."

"I dragged her."

"And so got your jacket torn and muddy on the inside? But I found it wrapped around my legs yesterday when I woke with a clear head, and you slipped it away, but I knew. Last night when it turned a little colder you put it around me again, thinking I was asleep, and I was silent, wishing to speak but too stupid."

"No need. You'd have done the same. Don't speak of it now."

"Very well. But----"

"Thou owest me nothing. I've been forced to think of these things--so many hours, Ben, when I--nay, but how could there be any owing or standing beholden between thee and me?"

"I think I owe thee everything."

"No! Pray understand, Ben. It's not a thing to be measured--why, it's not a thing at all, but--oh, like a region one travels through, an area of light."

"Love, a region?"

"What else? Can you own it or give it or take it? It came to me, Ben, that we only dwell in it, as in the sun, or this morning air."