Frederik, arriving in town for the first time since Christmas, looked forward to seeing Maureen. He hoped her aunt would invite him to have dinner with them in their small, rented house. She had the last time, and she'd even thawed enough to make Frederik feel welcome.

First, however he had to sell the bundle of pelts he'd brought with him.

At the hide and fur exchange he watched a purchasing clerk count over $112.50 for furs from a dozen ermines, eight marten, three mink, two bobcats, and two beavers. A winter's worth of catching and skinning animals and then fleshing, stretching, and drying their pelts.

The earnings were a disappointment, although he'd probably done well considering the late start he'd gotten on the trapping season. Snow had blocked Patch out of the high country before Frederik could finish hauling supplies to his line huts, and that meant that by January he was using precious time to snowshoe down to valley cabins where he could trade pelts for as much food as he could carry.

And it hadn't helped that a few weeks ago, back in February, a wolverine had run his line, chewing up a half dozen animals before Frederik got to them. Still, to come out with just $112.50! And he'd have to use some of that to pay the people who'd boarded Patch for five months.

As he walked along residential streets on his way to Maureen's, he calculated his needs and how much he might make hiring out as a ranch hand come spring He'd be glad to take that kind of work as long as he could get on someplace close. He'd live in a bunkhouse, be fed with the other hands, and put away every penny he made. And if he could get on with a logging outfit next winter and save those wages, then, maybe...

ALTHOUGH THE weather was freezing, Maureen came running out to meet him. He knew, even before he saw her expression, that something was wrong Behind her her aunt's house had a FOR LET sign on the door AND the windows were bare of curtains.

"What's going on?" Frederik asked.

"She's leaving," Maureen said. "Because of Augie. He's in jail, and..." Maureen broke off. "I'm sorry," she said, straightening her body into proud, straight lines. "This isn't the way to explain things."

"Let's get your coat," Frederik said. "We can go down to the park and talk."

Not until they were settled on a bench brushed clear of snow did he say, "Now. Start with Augie. He got picked up?"

"Just after New Year" Maureen answered. And now he's been tried and found guilty of manslaughter I guess the jury thought that even if his killing Pa was an accident, it happened because he was aiming the gun at you."

Frederik nodded. That was in the statements he and Maureen had given the sheriff's deputy.

"The newspaper reported the trial," Maureen said, "and that's -why my aunt's moving to Seattle, where her daughter lives. She says she can't ever again hold her head up here."

A leaden feeling spread through Frederik. Are you going with her?"

"No. I'm not invited. My aunt says she's sorry but she's had enough of the O'Leary family, with my pa driving off her sister and now Augie a criminal. She said she won't take bad blood to her daughter's."

Maureen looked away. Anyway," she said, "I wouldn't leave here."

"Do you know what you'll do?" Frederik asked. In his mind, the question sounded like the echo that it was. He'd asked the same thing back in September.

Maureen answered, "I'll have to find work. Rent a room someplace."

What kind of work? Frederik wondered. There were few enough jobs for women, and Maureen, sixteen years old, with no high school diploma....And if her own aunt didn't want an O'Leary around, maybe others wouldn't, either.

THREE DAYS LATER, he and Maureen stood in an unheated church and were married by a priest. All through the hurried service, the cleric looked at them with angry pity, seeming provoked that he had no better choices to offer.

Then, with Maureen behind Frederik on Patch and with her horse laden with food supplies, they rode across the bridge over Rattlesnake Creek and then north past the boarded-up house that no longer belonged to Uncle Joe.

They went by the abandoned O'Leary place on the creek. The door hung open, and snow lay in mounds inside.

They passed trails into the high country where Frederik had wintered, but a trapline dugout wasn't a place for a bride.

They went to the only place they could think o£ to the shack below the O'Leary mine. As far as they knew, no one had laid claim to the land along the gulch bottom and certainly no one else would want that old shack.

When they pulled up in front, the depressing place was already in deep shadow. Frederik kicked through a snowdrift, pushed the door open, and stepped back. The inside stank of animals: mice and probably something bigger maybe whatever had knocked the stovepipe loose and scattered soot. The few household goods had been chewed to tags of litter and rodent droppings were everywhere.

Frederik quickly closed the door before Maureen could see.

"You know," he said, "a ways back I noticed a spruce with a clear space under it the size of a room. I wonder if Mrs. Bottner would like to spend her wedding night camping out?"

Tomorrow would be time enough to face what they'd come to.