Mercedes Morgan's Arc

Chapter 11 of 21

By first light the column was still climbing, but the bundle under Mercedes's arm had gone thin. She measured what was left with her fingers and counted paces in her head. The hay would run out before the summit, and long before the frozen forests where she meant to bring the herd. She dropped a smaller handful and watched the bull pause, sniff, take it, and walk on. Behind him the line held, thirty-four head nose to tail. If the trail broke, the elk would spread into the slopes and she would lose them one draw at a time. She needed more hay, and the only hay she knew of was back down the mountain, in the sheltered stall of the trapper's cabin she had wintered in. She could not go back. Going back meant days, and the thaw was already loosening the snow under her boots. She looked at what she had. The bundle in her hand. The horses on the sled path behind her, the roan strong, the lame one steady. The cub asleep in the furs. She stopped the column at a wind-scoured shelf and let the bull finish the handful at his feet. Then she went to the sled and cut the feed sack open all the way. She shook out the seed dust at the bottom, the chaff, the broken stems she had swept in from the cabin floor weeks ago. She mixed it with green stalks from the bundle and rubbed the whole mess between her palms until the sweet smell came up strong. She halved what she had. Half she tied back into a tight bunch for the last climb to the pass. Half she crumbled fine, a pinch at a time, and laid at wider spacing, forty paces instead of twenty. She cut spruce tips from a low branch and worked them into the pinches so the smell carried further than the hay alone. The bull lifted his head when she stepped back onto the trail. She dropped the first pinch and walked. He followed. The cows followed him. The line held on the thinner scent, slower now, noses working harder, but moving. By noon she brought the column over the summit and onto the west fork. The last tight bunch she saved for the drop into the trees, where the herd would smell home on the wind and she would not have to lead them by hand anymore. The pass was behind her. The hay would reach. But the roan was favoring a hoof, the lame horse was blowing hard on every step, and the cub had begun to whimper for food she did not have.