WANDERLUST
P. Garrett Weiler
Copyright 2012 by P. Garrett Weiler
Vern Harmon’s pipe had been carved from blood-red soapstone by a Missouri River Mandan. To Beth it was a menacing totem. When spring squabbled with winter on the Cumberland Plateau she’d wait for the siren winds. It was then that her husband would take the pipe from its beaded case. He’d just sit quietly and study the pipe, his eyes distant and vacant.
Her restless sleep had been disturbed last night when he’d slipped from the Skinners Creek cabin. Loons called mournfully, and soon the wind had brought her the wild odor of his hoarded kinnickinnick tobacco. She’d stared up into the darkness as the winds whispered darkly that they’d come for him yet again, and that this time they’d not be denied.
In the morning, Beth stepped from the cabin and strode towards the creek for water. A tall, full-bodied woman, the bend of her leg and spring of knee revealed a step accustomed to the faint paths of rough valley and rocky slope. She was a hill woman. She might stumble on Mt. Pleasant’s boardwalk, yet she could unerringly follow the trails of her mountain home, or step along briskly with Vern on a hunt in the Kentucky hills. Large hazel eyes softened a determined line of mouth.
The crippled old hound that had followed Vern home from Mt. Pleasant watched her passage with a flicker of watery eyes. It snuffled at an early fly near its nose then went back to sleep. Black and white speckled chickens cackled and flapped down from saplings where dark-green spring buds swelled. Freshness rich with a moist scent of verdant newness had settled along the creek. Young ducks quarreled in the deep eddy downstream where fat trout would laze in slow green depths through summer. Tethered in tall grass along the creek, two bays perked their ears forward and nickered hopefully at her.
The bright morning should have brought happiness and contentment, but instead she felt threatened. The wind came with a fitful rush. It tugged at her hair, taunting and mocking.
She knelt at the creek and plunged the bucket into its iciness, then rose, lifting the heavy pail easily. A figure stood in the path.
“Cain McToon!” she gasped. “You surely gave me a start.”
He’d simply materialized, as though swept up from some secret place by the wind and dropped over the valley to float silently down like a brown and withered autumn leaf. The wind, its task completed, swirled happily around him.
For a long moment he just stood there, silent and grey-bearded. He leaned casually on a long rifle propped butt down. Smoky eyes studied her from beneath flaring eyebrows. A chill fluttered up her spine. Then he turned without a word and walked off towards the cabin.
Vern stood in the doorway. A broad smile of welcome for the old trapper creased the lines of his weathered face. He reached to take the bucket from Beth and stood aside to let McToon enter.
“Well I’ll be dogged, Cain. For sure you’re a sight. Spring must be close to stir you out of hibernation.”
McToon nimbly dodged a playful kick aimed at his rump. “Ain’t so sure about that, Harmon. This chile felt right poorly crossin’ your freezin’ creek just now. Or else I just ain’t thawed out from them beaver ponds we used to wade.”
The deep voice was edged with a muted raspiness that put an edge on Beth’s nerves. She managed a smile, though, and pushed back errant strands of hair while setting a steaming mug of coffee in front of him. “This’ll take the chill off,” she said. “You’ll stay to breakfast won’t you?”
He looked up at her, a cold light in his eyes. She felt it seek out and find the hidden worry and resentment his presence brought. A thin smile touched the corners of his mouth. “Obliged,” he said.
Beth busied herself at the big stone fireplace, determined not to let the old man make what had already begun as a bad day even worse. Bacon sizzled and spat next to a half-dozen sputtering eggs in a smoke-blackened skillet.
“Now, ain’t this here prime fixin’s?” Vern asked McToon and leaned back in his chair. “This here’s the way to live, Cain. . .roof over your head, dry floor for your feet of a mornin’, good woman fussin’ over a hot meal. Better’n wet snow down your back, the coffee made from week-old leavin’s and punier than some pilgrim’s shootin’ eye. Pemmican froze so hard a body can’t even chop it with a hatchet. . .moccasins half gone, and what’s left wet clean through and lookin’ to be a sorry supper that night.”
McToon slurped his coffee and looked around the rough-hewn room with scant regard. “Well now, reckon what you say’s right enough, least for some.”
“Know it for certain,” Vern said. “Took me ten years out there before I saw the best of havin’ a wife and a settled home.”
McToon’s eyes steadied on Vern. “Well, this chile’s had his fill of your civ’lization. I come close to starvin’ this winter for some true meat.” His eyes narrowed. “I’m up for headin’ back.”
Beth cracked a sudden stillness with another egg, then carefully picked white bits of shell from the skillet. Outside, the wind exulted.
Vern slowly lowered his coffee mug. “For the mountains? You’re headin’ back to the mountains?”
“New mountains, hoss,” McToon answered. “I run into ole Bob Grant over to Lexington the other day. You recollect Bob don’t you. . .spent a season with him and some others up on the Siskidee? Well, he tole me about these here mountains down south of our ole stompin’ grounds. . .over in southwest of Santa Fe, says Bob. Good trappin’, says he, up on some river called the Gilly or Heely or some such with a Mex name.”
Neither of them noticed her quietly set plates on the table. Careful not to make a sound that would intrude on these moments filled with peril, she took her place. She fought an urge to look at Vern, afraid to see again the distant look that in the past glazed his eyes when he thought she wasn’t looking.
“New country. . ,” he whispered to himself, then seemed to shake the thought away. A hollow laugh rumbled in his chest. He cast a furtive look at her and reached over to lift a hand from her lap. He squeezed it in his rough paw. “Them days is gone and done for good, Cain. . . gone and done I say. You and me saw the beaver go, even from way up in the back country. Buffalo’s goin’ now, and who’d a thought that would ever be? People movin’ out there by the wagon load, like they owned it all. Injuns
pullin’ out, or just givin’ up all together, except for a few of the old fighters, the Bad Hearts.
“Always some feller around to say it ain’t so. Your new country will be the same too, Cain, someday after it’s been tamed. We both saw it all comin’ three seasons ago when we come back here to the States. The old days is gone, hoss. . .or quick dyin’ out.”
McToon snorted. His tone sharpened. “They can’t ruin the whole country, Harmon. . .not the whole blasted and total-for-all country.” He slapped the scrubbed table. A fork clattered to the floor. After a quiet moment, McToon said, “I’ll be needin’ the Hawkens worked over.” He nodded at the rifle he’d leaned in a corner. “Take care of it for me?”
“You betcha, pard. Gunsmith I was in the mountains, and can still turn a bore with the best of ‘em.”
After eating, they went out. She heard the whoosh-sah-whoosh of the bellows heating Vern’s forge. Hammer rang on steel and a file rasped. What was McToon saying, now that he had Vern alone?
She felt so helpless and alone now. For the first time in her life she was pitted against a rival that had dug itself into another soul.
As the sun touched shadowed hills westward she heated water in a porcelain basin and sat it outside along with a slab of lye soap. Soon she’d hear him washing for supper. His voice would be pleasant and deep in tuneless humming, then sputtering as he rinsed his face. Then he’d step into the cabi
n and look around with pride.
He’d built it himself while they lived in a lean to. It had been good to lie down at night on fragrant cedar boughs with the wet, rich smell of clean earth all around. It was even better after the cabin was finished. Often, when she first awoke on some cold morning, she’d sift slowing through memories of their life together, sampling the best and most cherished. Then, with a squeal and a rush, she’d hurl herself at his broad back as he bent to the morning fire and bite through his man-smell of sun and linseed and old work sweat, dust and leather, exulting with his laughter at the new day to be share.
Steps at the door interrupted her reveries. She turned to greet him with a smile. It froze in place when she saw McToon. Vern followed him in.
“I twisted Cain’s arm to stay the night,” he said and sniffed the air. “What’s for supper, darlin’?”
She forced a smile. “Ain’t much, but you’re welcome of course, Cain.”
McToon glanced at her and a subtle expression flickered across his face, a vague blend of scorn and satisfaction. Anger, sudden and hot, spoke words in her ear that she must not speak.
McToon scraped a chair up to the table. “I hear tell them ‘Paches out where I’m headin’ is some true whoopin’ hoss Injuns,” he said. “A man would need a good pardner to watch