Mercedes Morgan's Arc

Chapter 12 of 21

The west fork dropped through spruce, and the herd moved with it. Mercedes walked at the head, her last pinch of hay tucked in her sleeve. The cub's whimpering had grown sharper. She heard it every time the wind died. The bull elk stopped once and turned his head toward the sled. Two cows behind him lifted their noses. If the cub cried out at full voice, the line would break and scatter into the trees. She had nothing on the sled to feed it. She had scraped the last strip of dried meat two days ago. She stopped the column at a bend where the wind ran uphill and told the horses to hold. Then she pulled the bow from the sled and stepped off the trail. She worked downwind of the herd, moving slow through the crust. She found tracks near a stand of low brush, small prints, hind feet longer than the front. She crouched behind a fallen trunk and waited. The hare came out at the edge of the brush, big through the shoulders, white fur thick for the season. Mercedes drew and held. A poisoned tip on a hare would ruin the meat for the cub. She reached into the quiver, found the one clean shaft she had kept for small game, and nocked it instead. The hare sat up. She released. The arrow took it through the chest and pinned it to the snow. She crossed the ground fast, gutted it there, and wrapped the warm carcass in a scrap of hide. Back at the sled she cut a strip and pushed it into the cub's mouth. The cub swallowed, gulped, quieted. She cut another and set it on the fur beside it. The bull elk had not moved. The cows behind him were still watching the sled, but the noise had stopped, and after a long moment the bull turned his head downhill again and started walking. The line followed. Mercedes hung the rest of the hare from the sled rail where the cub could reach it and picked up her place at the head of the column. The herd moved. The cub was quiet. She had one hare's worth of time before the cub was hungry again, and the frozen forests were still days away. But the column was still thirty-four, and the trail still held.