Mercedes Morgan's Arc

Chapter 4 of 21

Mercedes stepped into the snow with the lamp low. The cub flinched but did not run. Its back leg was bent wrong at the hip, the fur matted dark where a claw or a hoof had opened it. She knelt an arm's length away and set the knife in the snow between them. The cub bared small teeth. She waited until the teeth went back. Then she slid one hand under its chest and lifted. It weighed less than her quiver. She carried it inside and shut the door. She cleared a corner near the hearth and laid the cub on a folded cloth. In her pack she still had the roll her grandmother had pressed on her before the journey, soft strips wound around dried yarrow and shepherd's purse. She warmed water in the tin cup. She washed the wound, packed it with crushed herbs, and wrapped the leg tight against the cub's belly so it could not twist. The cub shook under her hands and then went still. She fed it snowmelt from her finger. It licked, weakly, and slept. By morning the cub was breathing even, but it could not stand. The horse's shoulder was stiff. Mercedes could not ride north with a wounded cub in her arms and a lame horse under her, and she would not leave the cub in the cabin to starve while she pushed for the mountain. She walked the cabin twice before she saw the answer. Against the back wall, under a drift of old hides, lay a small sled with a slatted seat and iron rings at the tongue. A trapper's family piece, built to be pulled behind a horse with a child strapped in. The runners were sound. She dragged it into the light and worked the joints until they moved. She set a snare at the edge of the clearing while she rigged the harness. By midday the wire held a hare, still warm. She bled it, wrapped the meat, and saved a strip raw for the cub. She lined the sled with the wolf's hide, laid the cub in the hollow, and lashed a cross-strap over its shoulders so it could not roll. She led the horse out. It limped, but it pulled. The sled tracked clean behind. Mercedes stood in the trampled snow and looked north, where the trees thinned toward the pass. She had come to bring the herds home. Now she would go on with a wolf at her back and a horse that could not carry her, and the fresh tracks another day older on the mountain. She took the lead rope and started walking.