Winter has set in earlier than usual. On record, winters on the west side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains receive scant traces of snow, an inch or two at most. This year, it’s different. Already, there have been two significant snowfalls, and it’s only December. The man coaxes his horse over the wet ground, his cabin in sight. It spit snow last night, but by mid-morning, the icy slush turns a muddy brown. The sky is threatening, roiling balloons of dark grey. He’s glad to be back from Sutter’s with a month’s worth of supplies, not the least of which is a stash of snuff. He puts his goods down on the table, cuts a small piece from the long plug, and tamps tobacco deep into the bowl of his pipe. Lights a match off the heel of his boot. Inhales again. A thin wisp of smoke curls from the end of the pipe. He goes outside and sits on a stump in front of his cabin.
“C’mon up, Boy.” He scoops the dirty cat onto his lap. Shame the poor bugger lost his leg last year in one of the man’s own traps. He puffs on the pipe and strokes the cat’s head.
Old One cackles from the pine. “Do you never take a break?” the man yells. “Give a man a damned headache, all your screeching.”
“Barrrrh,” the raven replies.
The cat bounds out of his lap and chases a field mouse behind the cabin. The man picks up his project, a toy he’s whittling for one of Salina’s boys for Christmas. He shaves the sides of the sling handle until it’s smooth. It keeps his hands busy while his mind wanders.
He’s got a decision to make, and it weighs on his mind. He’s not used to thinking beyond the next day, better that way. Wake up, make a fire, brew coffee, hunt. There’s fox and rabbit and deer; geese and sage hen and grouse. Last year, a grizzly. His slim rifle makes a good companion, does its job, doesn’t require conversation or explanation. But he’d trade his rifle, his horse, his cabin, everything, if he could have Bet back. But that’s like spitting in the wind. It gets you nowhere.
This is as long as he’s spent in one place since he started west. And now he’s considering the offer. There’s a call to arms, he heard about it at Sutter’s. At war with the bloody Mexicans. For what? The Republic, they said. The Republic of California.
He shifts his weight. He’s fought before, at school and hand-to-hand with thieving trappers and against Paiutes. He’s killed three men, two Indian, and one not. He’s not a fighting man at heart, but he’ll do it again, without hesitation, if the stakes are high enough.
The man puts down his whittling, and goes inside. “C’mon, Boy. Got a treat for you.” He unpacks provisions: potatoes, onion, flour, rice, honey. He cuts a strip of dried venison and fries it with potatoes and onions in a worn cast iron skillet. A savory smell fills the cabin. He hums an old French tune, one that Bet taught him. He blows on the fat to cool it and lowers the pan for the cat. When he sits at the table, he imagines Bet. She’s clouded in his memory now, like a wraith. Had she been real? Or a figment? No, she had been very real, so real it hurts.
Maybe poets are right. Love is better lost than never experienced. He chews the last of the venison, swallows, takes a swig from his canteen. Or maybe it’s just too painful to think about at all. He dims the light, lies down, and stares at the ceiling. He lets his mind spool back to his childhood.
“Catch me if you can,” Henri had called. Henri and Jean-Claude (and Robert when his family lived in town) taunted him from a paced-off distance. His eyes were closed as he leaned up against a black spruce. “Trois . . . quatre . . . cinq” (at eight, he knew how to swear and count in French; the rest—the love words—he learned later from Bet). And then they were off, playing tag and climbing trees and throwing rocks in the Iowa River. Fighting with sticks, playing soldier, running races in bare feet.
There were never enough hours in a Wisconsin day for all the games, all the mishaps, all the daring someone to do something that resulted in mountains of laughter and a thousand skinned knees. Making forts. Building rafts. Swimming in summer, skating in winter. Tossing rocks. Jumping over logs. Skinning hares. Fishing for crappie or walleye or pike (they never caught a muskie, although Henri claimed he had). And the once, that time they taunted a mother moose grazing with her calf with stones no larger than a small boy’s fist, and then the grunt and the thundering and the chase through the Wisconsin woods that left them breathless, not knowing whether to shit their pants or laugh uproariously.
In the remembering of it, the man laughs. Yes, he had been happy then.