Jake Irons lay rigid, as if strapped in his blankets. Was this some ghost out of his dreams? Some crazy shadow of the night? The figure couldn’t be real. It was cloud-stuff, whipped up by the snow—a snowman with coals for eyes. The heat of the fire would melt it and leave only a puddle of water with two dead coals swimming in it.
But the voice inside the snowman cried out, “Uncle Jim!” And again, “Uncle Jim! You here?”
“Git out!” Irons yelled. “Ain’t no Uncle Jim here.”
The sunken coals shone unafraid, and the snow-mittened hands that drew a hunting knife were unafraid. “I’d as lief die fighting as starving,” a boy’s high-pitched voice cried out.
Irons saw the blade of the knife threatening. He measured the distance to his rifle and the nearness of the knife. He got up, his lips curling in a make-believe welcome. “Come into my parlor,” he said with a grand gesture.
At the same instant the swinging door opened and a pair of long ears and curious eyes peered around at the newcomer.
“Brighty! It’s me—Homer! Homer Hobbs.” The boy’s voice caught in his throat. “Remember? You used to pack water for me!” He ran stumbling toward the burro and fell with his arms around Brighty’s neck.
Irons kicked at a log in disgust. “The sobbin’ fool!” He spat out the words. “Let ‘em hole up together. Tomorrow I’ll be rid of ’em both.”
TRAPPED BY THE SNOW
THE SNOW flowed on and on steadily all the night. By morning the three creatures were locked in a white prison. The ranch house was no longer a fort; it was a jail, and the jailer the snow.
Jake Irons paced in front of the window, hands clenched behind him. The windowpane was barred—barred and cross-barred by the snow. The tiny flakes were driving him mad. They were really nothing but froth. He could take a handful and crush them. He could shoot them with his rifle into splashes. Yet they laughed in his face like millions of guards, holding him, handcuffing him to a burro with eyes all-knowing, and to a greenhorn boy with frost-bitten feet.
He turned from the window and deliberately stomped on Brighty’s tail, as if he were responsible for the storm. With a howl of pain the burro scrambled to his feet, humping his hindquarters toward Irons.
The man broke into a laugh of scorn. “See that, kid? Your Bright Angel can’t kick no higher’n a cricket any more. His spirit’s broke. You’ll get that way too, boy, livin’ on nothin’ but air.” He squinted his eyes at Homer, trying to peer through his sweater to see if a silver star were pinned beneath. “Look-a-here, fellow,” he said in a wheedling voice, “what’s a young punk like you doin’ in the forest this time of year? Hmm?”
Homer was rubbing his feet, wincing at the pain. “I been offered a job as lumberjack,” he said, his voice low.
“Where at?”
“Across the canyon to Flagstaff.”
“Whyn’t you take it?”
“The blizzard caught me,” the boy answered, still rubbing his feet. “I couldn’t find the way. Been wanderin’ for days all over the mountain.” He swallowed hard. “I shoulda listened to Uncle Jim . . . I shoulda listened . . .”
“Quit your brayin’!” Irons exploded. “Not one, but two jackasses in this-here cell. Who’s this Uncle Jim?”
Homer looked up in surprise. “Why, everybody knows Uncle Jim. Even—”
Irons came a step toward the boy and shouted, “Answer me! Who’s Uncle Jim?”
“Uncle Jim,” Homer said earnestly, “is the lion killer sent here by the government.” In his mind he saw the gentle face, gray eyes smiling under the black hat. “He’s a mountain man and canyon man and he knows weather and lions and buffalo.”
“And burros too, I s’pose.”
“This one for sure. He saved Brighty’s life—two, three times.”
“Where’s he at?” Irons shot his question.
“He’s holed up for the winter, back in Fredonia. Oh, I shoulda listened . . .”
“Don’t begin that brayin’ again.”
“Last words he said was, ‘Wait till spring, Homer. Only Brighty could smell out the trail now.’”
Jake Irons curled his lip. “Brighty—Brighty—Brighty!” He snatched up the rifle. “If you don’t quit makin’ an angel outa him, I will!”
Homer sprang up, forgetting the pain in his feet. He pulled out his knife.
Irons laughed deep in his throat. “Can’t take a joke, can you, kid? One minute you’re a snivelin’ sissy and the next a wildcat. You make me sick. If I was to kill anyone, it’d be you. Burros only bray.”
He scratched his beard with a dirty hand. “Now you’re here, you can nurse yourself. Plenty of snow water to guzzle, and some apples as wrinkly as your gran’ma’s face. Me, I practically lives on no food at all, ’specially if it’s apples. They bloat my stummick.”
He threw a log on the fire and wrapped himself in his blanket, the rifle beside him. “Might as well sleep out the storm,” he mumbled to himself.
With Brighty tailing him, Homer limped to the door. Snow had sifted in over the threshold, and he swept it together with his hands and swallowed it. He went to the cupboard next and took an apple and ate it all, chewing up core and seeds, too.
As soon as it was gone, he felt mean and selfish. He went back for another, this time giving half to Brighty. He stood watching the burro eat, and felt good for the sharing.
Satisfied, Brighty buckled his knees and eased down on his side in front of the salthouse. He wriggled and squirmed, trying to get comfortable on the hard floor. The boy crossed the room and settled down back to back against the burro. He sighed, enjoying the warm animal smell. It was good and comforting, too, to be near Brighty again.
He let his eyes wander sleepily about the room and they lighted on the rifle. “Y’know,” he mused drowsily, “Uncle Jim had a fine rifle, like that one. Teddy Roosevelt gave it to him, personal. Only his had a big gold plate with writing on it.”
Irons’ nerves tightened. He sat up, scrutinizing Homer’s face in the firelight. Did the boy know? Had he known all along? Then a wave of relief washed over him as he saw that Homer was simply talking himself to sleep. He watched the blond head sink deeper into Brighty’s shaggy coat. He watched sleep come, and when the boy’s arm thumped heavily to the floor, Irons got up and dug into the mound of ashes at the edge of the fire. His hands found the tin can, slyly pried open the lid, and pulled out the back of the squirrel, warmed to taste. He looked at it a moment and then the gold teeth set to work tearing off bits of flesh. When the meat was ground and swallowed, he cracked the bones and sucked them, and at last he crunched and ate them, too.
“Homer!” he barked, wiping his beard. “Wake up and feed the fire!”
ALONE WITH THE NIGHT
SNOW! NEVER-ENDING snow! Wave on wave it sifted down, slantwise and spirally, dusting its fine white powder over the Kaibab Forest.
Morning came and night, and morning again—and still it fell. Stealthily the white mass crept up the sides of the house. It piled thickly against the window, filling the space between the bars, blocking out the light.
The three creatures were buried alive by the gray-white mass that wheeled out of the sky and made night of day. The cupboard now was completely bare, except for the useless bag of seeds.
Brighty alone had something to eat, but there was a hollowness inside him that the bitter bark could not fill. He drew away to himself. By day he took refuge in the darkness of the salthouse and there he stayed, dozing some, nibbling some on the logs, and licking the salt for comfort. But mostly he stood in a stupor, head down, tail tucked in.
Only at nightfall did he come out of his hermitage and join the others at the fireside. Then with dark eyes climbing the ladder to the hole in the ceiling, he brayed to the night. It was as if he saw a sky with moon and stars instead of black emptiness.
The first time Homer heard him, his voice fell to an awed whisper. “I’ve a ghostly feeling,” he said, “that Bright Angel’s sendin’ off some kind o’ mess
age.”
The dire sound and the regularity made Irons’ flesh creep, for each evening as the bray started up, he would take out his watch and check the time. And each evening it showed exactly five o’clock. Shaking his head, he would slide the key into the face of the watch and slowly wind while Brighty’s cry faded away.
“Who you figger broomtail’d call to?” Irons asked one night as he returned the watch to his pocket.
Homer’s eyes grew big. “Could be the living,” he said. “Or could be the dead.”
“Like, f’rinstance . . . ?”
“Like an old prospector he used to know, or maybe Uncle Jimmy Owen.”
Quick hatred leaped into Irons’ eyes. His fist swung out and struck Homer a blow that sent him sprawling across the floor boards.
The boy was too stunned to move. He watched in terror as Irons came slowly toward him, sharp canine teeth biting down on his words. “Don’t mention neither of them two again! Never!”
There was a deathlike silence as Brighty slow-footed his way to the salthouse and the two men were alone with the night. Alone in the forest with the snow tightening around them, and no sound but Brighty gnawing on the wood, stripping it, grinding it, and then silence again, and the watch . . . ticking, ticking, ticking.
The two occupants had divided the room as sharply as if barbed wire reached across the middle of it. The half nearer the fire belonged to Irons, the half nearer the salthouse to Homer.
Now Homer huddled far into his corner, nursing his chin and his burning feet by turns. He tried to sleep, but his ear refused to shut out the relentless ping of the seconds.
Suddenly he leaped up and ran into the salthouse, coming out with the roll of wire and a piece of old canvas.
A cold glint came into Irons’ eyes. “What you doing? Figuring on escaping? Alone? Eh, kid?”
Homer turned a brave face to the man. “No! No! I’ll make you a pair, too.”
“Pair o’ what? Wings?”
“Snowshoes.”
Irons’ hollow laugh shattered the quiet. He sat cross-legged in his blanket to watch, his narrowed eyes on Homer’s fingers.
The boy talked nervously as he shaped the wire into frames. “I’ll make ’em beaver-tail style. No, they’d be too hard to handle in deep snow. I’ll make ’em like a bear’s paw.”
When four frames were roughly shaped, he began tearing the canvas into strips for the webbing, but the effort exhausted him, and he fell back on his blankets, too tired to go on. By now Irons had fallen asleep sitting up, chin resting on his chest and unkempt hair hiding his eyes. Homer was relieved to be free of their fixed gaze. He tried to sleep, too, one hand tucked inside his shirt for warmth, the other on the hilt of his hunting knife.
Brighty slipped up, unheard, and nosed him. Homer reached out to stroke the shaggy neck, and so, comforting each other, they both dropped off to sleep.
Mist wrapped itself about the house, and there was a heavy and ominous silence within. Terror shot through Irons’ dreams. “Got to get out of this coffin,” he mumbled. “Window’s blocked. Door’s blocked. Soon the window upstairs. No food left. Starving . . . starving. Listen, the watch! It knows more than it tells. Break it! Break it! Break it!”
Homer, worn out with fatigue, slept on while the frantic voice kept talking to itself.
“Starving! Starving! Got to get out of here. Listen, it’s a time clock! Tick . . . tick . . . tick. It knows the hour of death. Closer, closer. The clock’s going off . . . Break it!”
Irons woke to his own voice. Drenched in sweat, he threw off his blanket and picked up a chip of wood, lighting it for a torch. He saw that the boy still slept, lying against Brighty. His eyes studied the burro as if he had never seen him before, weighing the ounces of meat on the ribs, counting the mouthfuls.
He used the chip as a poker to stir the fire, then with sneaking feet crept across the room, his trigger finger working. The thump of a loose floor board woke Homer.
“Don’t move, kid.” Irons’ voice was coldly quiet. “Else I’ll have me two carcasses to stew.”
A slow, sickening horror came into the boy’s face as he caught the meaning of the words.
The cold voice went on, “Name of Bright Angel’s going to fit now. Not much meat. Tough and stringy, but I’m . . .”
He brought the gun to his shoulder and pointed at the wide space between Brighty’s eyes. Then a small sound arrested him. Without his willing it, the hand that held the rifle froze.
STRANGE THANKSGIVING
THE SOUND came as suddenly as lightning—a tumbling, onrushing sound. It wasn’t the wind growling in the chimney. What was it?
Homer and Jake stared at each other, their eyes asking questions. Some mountain lion scraping her claws against the upstairs window? Some white bat of a snow spirit beating its wings?
Homer was out of his blanket, facing into the muzzle of the rifle, but all senses, save his hearing, were numbed. He was struggling to bring in the strange sound. Brighty’s ears too worked, swiveled, listened.
There! It came again, sweeping in closer. And all at once it exploded in a fury of noise—glass cracking, crashing, splintering to pieces. Then an eerie silence, followed by footfalls thudding across the upstairs floor.
Irons wheeled around, aiming his rifle at the ladder. He waited fearful, waited for something to happen.
It came quietly, like a raindrop from a tree long after the rain has ceased. Down from the hole in the ceiling, down the ladder steps, came a frail, wraithlike figure. It was feathered with snow, and the head and shoulders were quilted with it. Midway of the steps it stopped, and the eyes threw off glints like blue ice under the white shag of brows. Now the voice of the snow specter shattered the quiet. “Point that rifle down!” it commanded.
Irons obeyed, hands shaking, mouth suddenly gone dry.
The man facing him was little, almost puny, and his voice mild. Yet there was something in the eyes, a terrible courage and power which gave him command. The eyes were wide now, trying to believe what they saw. Unmoving, the little man stood there, halfway of the steps, erect under an enormous pack, and looked down on them all.
No one made a move or a sound. Not a welcome shouted, nor a bray. Not so much as a throat cleared.
In all that silence Brighty tiptoed soundlessly toward the steps, ears swinging free, eyes gazing up in recognition. He felt out the first step, the second, and on up until he could reach with his nose and touch the mittened hand.
“Bright Angel!” the man whispered.
Eyes held each other an instant. Then Brighty began an excited wheezing. The bray was a long time coming, but when at last it burst free in a trembling “Eeee-aw! Eeee-aw!” it flooded the room.
Now Homer was like a boy not wanting to be outdone. “Uncle Jim!” he cried out. “Oh, Uncle Jim! I knew you’d come!” His voice cracked. “I shoulda listened to you!”
Uncle Jim was carefully backing Brighty down the steps. “Shush, Homer,” he soothed. “I’m the one’s to fault. If I’d had a lick o’ sense, I’d hog-tied ye till spring.”
Irons, still holding the rifle, looked on in a trance. He watched the slight figure drop his pack on the floor and stamp the snow from his feet.
“Me and Homer’s pappy used to drive buffalo,” Uncle Jim explained, studying the rifle and the face above it. “Be a lot o’ answerin’ to do if I hadn’t found his boy.”
Irons’ eyes wavered under the steady scrutiny.
“Got to frettin’ about Homer, I did,” the old man went on. He pulled off his sealskin cap and slapped it against the fireplace. “I figgered the boy’d never make it. Likely I wouldn’t neither if I hadn’t knowed every inch o’ this-here forest. Now, stranger,” he said, taking a step toward Irons, “you know my name; I’ll have to ask yers.”
“Jake Irons.” The words were out before the man could stop them.
Uncle Jim looked down at the moccasins and up again at the sinister face as he pelted his questions hard and fast.
/> “Where you from?”
“The canyon.”
“How come ye got Brighty here?”
“He wanted to come.”
“Humph!” Uncle Jim snorted his disbelief. “Where be ye headin’?”
“To Utah, to sell my beaver skins.”
“Funny about that,” the quiet voice went on. “Most trappers hugs the canyon in wintertime, and then sells their pelts come spring.”
“I do it different.” Irons bit his lip and hatred rose in his face. “See?”
The air tightened, was suddenly fraught with suspense, but the little man was still master. “Where’d ye get it?”
“Get what?”
“I’ll ask ye just oncet more.” He pointed to the rifle. “Where’d ye get it?”
“What’s that to you?”
“Talk fast, Jake Irons,” Uncle Jim said, pulling out his six-shooter. “Homer’ll tell ye I kin drive nails with this li’l ole notched piece.”
Irons’ eyelids slitted as he stepped back a pace, groping for an answer. “A trapper I knew. Yeah, a trapper; he give it to me.”
“Hand it over,” Uncle Jim said very quietly.
Irons was a man hypnotized. His breath came hard and fast. He tried to stare back at the fearless eyes, but his own refused to focus. They faltered, then fell on the six-shooter being returned to its holster and the gnarled old hands reaching out for the rifle, and suddenly taking it!
“Hm . . . mm.” Uncle Jim was a long time looking at the scarred place where the gold plate had been. He decided at last not to reveal his discovery. “Reckon I made a bad blunder,” he said, glancing sidelong at Homer. “Thought it belonged to a friend, but his was summat different.”
Relief spread over Irons’ face as Uncle Jim laid the rifle on the cupboard. Brighty heaved a sigh as if he too had come through a tense moment.
• • •
“You fellers mayn’t know it,” Uncle Jim changed the subject, “but this here’s Thanksgiving and we’re goin’ to have us a feast. But first off, Homer, you trot upstairs and tack somethin’ over that winder I broke. And fetch down my snowshoes so they kin thaw out. Irons, you stoke up that fire and put a lot o’ snow water to boil.”