Mercedes Morgan's Arc

Chapter 3 of 21

Mercedes barred the stall door and knelt beside the split plank. The wood had cracked clean through where the wolf had thrown its shoulder. Wind pushed at the timber walls and the gate rattled in its frame. The horse stood with its wounded shoulder toward the lamp, breathing hard. If the gate gave in the night, the horse would bolt into the pines and she would be walking north through the drifts with a bow and half a quiver. She had to fix the plank before the lamp burned out. She searched the cabin by lamplight. Behind a fallen shelf she found a short stack of cut planks, edges square, grain still sound. A trapper had left them for a repair he never came back to make. She dragged two out and measured them against the broken slat. They were longer than she needed. She had no saw. She braced one against the frame, set her boot on the end, and cracked it to length. The second she snapped the same way. Her hands were steadier now that they had work. She had no nails she trusted. She pulled apart a bundle of firewood by the hearth and took the cord that had held the logs. She lashed the new planks across the broken slat, three wraps at each end, pulled tight with her weight against the frame. She tested the gate with her shoulder. It held. She tested it again, harder. It held. Then she heard it. A thin, high sound outside the wall, not the wind. She lifted the lamp and eased the cabin door open a hand's width. In the trampled snow near where she had dragged the carcass, something small moved. A cub, black-furred, no bigger than a hare, dragging itself toward the dead wolf. It saw the light and froze. Its eyes caught the lamp and held. It did not run. It could not. One back leg dragged behind it in the snow. Mercedes stood in the doorway with the lamp in one hand and her knife in the other. The gate was fixed. The horse was safe until morning. She had come north to bring the elk back, and every hour she stayed here was an hour the fresh tracks aged and cooled on the mountain. The wolf's mother was dead by her arrow. The cub would freeze by dawn, or something bigger would come for the carcass and take the cub with it. She lowered the knife. She did not step outside. She did not close the door. She stood in the gap and watched the cub watch her, and she understood that whatever she chose next, she would carry north with her.