Annie Oakley's Arc

Chapter 17 of 25

The next afternoon Temperance had color in her face again. She ate half a biscuit and kept it down. Her husband Booth came in from splitting wood and looked at her plate and nodded once, pleased. He was tall and dark-haired and moved quiet for a big man. He knelt by the twins on the rug and let Muffin climb his knee. "Go walk," Booth said. "Both of you. I've got the boys." Temperance looked at Annie. "A short one." "A short one," Annie agreed. They took the path behind the A-frame cabin. The cockapoo trotted ahead, nose down. Temperance walked slow but steady, one hand brushing the ferns as she passed. She pointed at a patch of moss with a strange yellow edge and said, "Something drank the iron out of that." Annie didn't understand, but she liked the way Temperance said it, plain and sure. They had gone maybe a quarter mile when the cockapoo stopped and barked once, sharp. Then they heard it. A thin bleating cry, high and tired, from the brush past the deadfall. "Something small," Temperance said. They pushed through the ferns. A moose calf lay curled against a log. His back leg was scraped raw and swollen. Flies had found him. When he saw them he tried to stand and his leg folded under him. He cried again. Annie knelt slow. The calf didn't run. He couldn't. "Where's his mama," Annie whispered. Temperance was already looking at the ground. She walked a wide circle, eyes down, then stopped. "Here." Annie came around the log. The cow moose lay on her side in the leaves, stiff, eyes open, a dark wound behind her shoulder. She had been dead a day, maybe two. The calf had stayed with her the whole time. Annie's throat closed. She thought of Misty on the daybed. She thought of her own mother's cough back home. "He can't stay here," Annie said. "No." "He'll die." "Yes." Temperance took off her shawl and folded it. She wrapped the calf's bad leg careful, the way a person wraps something they mean to keep. The calf shivered but let her. "Can you carry him?" Annie asked. "Between us." They lifted him. He was heavier than he looked and lighter than he should have been. His head fell against Annie's shoulder. She felt his breath on her neck, quick and warm. They walked him back slow. Booth met them on the porch and did not ask questions. He built a pen from split rails against the side of the cabin before sundown. Temperance mixed warm water and a little honey in a bowl. The calf drank. "He needs a home," Annie said. "He has one," Temperance said. "Until he's strong. Then we'll see." Annie sat by the pen while the calf slept. The kindness would outlast her. That was the whole point.