Riverfish pulled his own hand from his bearskin and the two men shook. “Come inside, the fire is warm and there’s plenty to smoke.”
“All right,” Trond said. He stepped to his saddlebag and removed the candies and hooch and then bent to hobble the horse.
Inside, a fire built on a plush bed of glowing embers warmed the conical room. The fire was circled not with rocks, as Trond was accustomed to, but with lengths of birch logs. Riverfish’s wife sat to the left of the buckskin entrance, her feet tucked beneath her, her hands busy with beadwork, her belly full with her tenth child. Four of her youngsters sat in the circle, the girls playing with dolls made of willow withes, the boys whittling sticks.
Riverfish unrolled a rush mat and suggested Trond sit. Before Joseph sat himself, he found his pipe and packed it with kinnikinnick and lit it with a twig pulled from the fire. He offered the pipe to Trond, who knew enough to take a puff. The pipestone lit up like a firefly.
Trond handed the pipe back to Riverfish, who took a smoke.
“The stem is from a hazel tree. We split it and hollow it and glue it together again.” He smiled broadly. “Our glue is from the backbone of the
Trond took another smoke, then offered Riverfish the bottle of whiskey. “I brought this for you. And this for the children.” Now he extended the candies.
The children stopped their play and giggled and came around the fire. Joseph gave them each a candy.
The walls of the wigwam were covered with birch bark. The poles were cedar. With the fire burning and the kinnikinnick wafting and the hooch now passing between them, Trond couldn’t even smell the pot of squash soup cooking in the kettle over the fire.
“I’ve come with an offer of work, Joseph. I need a favor and thought you were the man for the job.”
“Very good.”
“There’s a fellow up the shore, near Castle River, the name of Olli Odegaard.”
“Olli One Foot,” Riverfish said, and smiled his infectious smile. “I know Olli well.”
“He’s selling these dogs, calls them Ovcharkas.”
“I have seen them. Big dogs.”
“That’s what I understand. I want two of them. For the camp. To watch over the camp.”
Riverfish took a long smoke. “You need me to deliver these dogs?”
“I’ll pay you twenty dollars. I need them right away. I thought if not you, then your son. Where is the boy?”
“Samuel is working the line. Up the Wisakode-zibe.”
“The Wisakode…”
“Your Burnt Wood River. Samuel will go tomorrow to deliver the dogs.”
“Excellent. Thank you.”
“Now,” Riverfish said expansively, “you will stay and eat.”
“I will, thank you.”
Together they ate the squash soup. They ate dried berries and deer tallow, smoked trout with maple sugar. The children, when they were finished with their lunch, were each given another piece of candy. When all were fed, and Joseph’s wife content that Trond had had enough, they shared a final pipe. As Trond straddled his horse and put on his mitts, Riverfish sent his good wishes. The horse stepped without enthusiasm. An hour later Trond was back at the lumber camp on the Burnt Wood River.
Samuel Riverfish left the following morning before first light, his dogs hysterical in their traces, eager to run despite the sound of open water not a half mile over their lakeward shoulders. He packed lightly, only food for the dogs, a canvas tarpaulin to sleep under, snowshoes newly bent and twined from birch wood. Trond had offered him five extra dollars if he could deliver the Ovcharkas in three days. His only chance was to run the shore, something he’d never done before the first week in February, something nobody did before then.
He was dressed in fur: a beaver-skin hat, moose-hide coat, pants quilted together from equal parts marten and fox and lynx, mukluks and mittens sewn from a black bear’s hindquarters — a madman’s attire, but warm. He’d trapped or killed every inch of hide on his body. Just fourteen years old and built like a girl, with a face — as his father said — fresh as a baby’s ass, Samuel was already known for his temerity, a quality not to be confused with bravery. There were rumors among the townspeople that he had faced a bull moose with nothing but an eight-inch bowie knife between himself and five feet of spanning antlers. Though foolhardy, he was also trusted. For two years he’d been helping his father with the winter mail route, a job some said was the worst in America.
He reached the Chinook River before lunchtime. The ice along the shore was firm, even at the mouths of streams and rivers, but the farther south and west he went the closer attention he paid to its tempers. He had seen his father’s sled break through the ice not far from where he stood.
He would feed the dogs and test the ice at the mouth of the river. The vapor rising from the open water had disappeared, but now he could actually see the line demarcating the ice and water. He set the snow hook and parceled out the dogs’ chow. Two fist-sized chunks of venison each. They ate as though their last meal had been a month ago.
Samuel took stock as the dogs ate. There were veins in the ice at the mouth of the river, but still it felt firm beneath him. He walked a quarter mile past the river, checking for cracks or ridges or undulations of any sort, none of which he found. By the time he returned to the sled the dull sun was already dropping. The dogs had finished their venison and each had dug a sizable chunk of snow and ice to suffice as drink. The lead dog, a bi-eyed husky Samuel called Nord, had dug a hole eight inches deep and a foot wide. When Samuel stabbed at the ice with his bowie knife, he was able to sink the blade to the hilt without tapping water. A good sign. He would run easy for an hour.
The dogs finished their snow. Alert now and ready. Samuel stepped onto the runners and had a good grip on the handlebar when he took the snow hook up with his free hand. The dogs were gone with the absence of the tension.
There was not much wind. But what did blow came from the northeast, helping his cause even as it foretold more cold. He wondered about the dogs he was fetching. Erlandson had told him about the bear, had given him two lengths of chain in the event they would not run with the team. This thought was unfathomable to Samuel, dogs that would not run.
He fed the dogs again before sunset and passed the settlement at Misquah in a dusk smoking with cold. The lake was holding up, but he ran very near the shore. On the beaches when he passed rivers and creeks. He heard wolves howling on Bear or Gull island. The dogs answered back.
By the light of stars he passed Copper Bay, then Otter Bay. When the sun rose he rested the dogs and lit a fire at Big Rock Bay, sitting on the beach in the lee of the towering cliff. The dogs stopped on command and collapsed, curling into themselves. Danny set the snow hook and slept on top of the sled without the comfort of the tarpaulin. He woke two hours later and fed the dogs again.
In the light of day he saw how precarious the ice was, even in the bay, so he ran up the Big Rock River until he crossed the trail, where he turned south again toward Castle River. He was there by lunchtime.
The Ovcharkas were kept like thieves, each in its own cage of metal bars, a floor spread with hay. At first glance Samuel mistook them for slumbering bears. Four of the six advertised dogs remained, each one black as onyx and measurably circumspect as Samuel approached them. In less than five minutes he had decided which were best suited for the task at hand. By the time the Laplander limped up the path from his cabin, Riverfish had begun talking to the dogs like he would a sweetheart.
“I heard your team yelping. Glad you left them down on the river shore,” the one-legged man said. “Your father is good?”
Samuel extended his hand and said, “He sends his greetings.”
“You running the mail?”
Samuel reached inside his coat and withdrew the sealed envelope Trond Erlandson had sent with him. He handed it to the Laplander. “The foreman up at Burnt Wood River has sent me for two of the dogs.”
The Laplander took off his mitts and opened the envelope. “What for?”
“Wolves.”
