Mercedes Morgan's Arc

Chapter 5 of 21

By afternoon the trail bent up toward the pass. The horse leaned into the harness and blew hard through its nose. Mercedes walked at its head with a hand on the cheekstrap. The sled dragged behind, the cub curled in the hollow of the wolf hide. The slope steepened. The horse's bad shoulder locked with every third step, and the sled runners caught on a buried root. Mercedes felt the rope go tight against the horse's chest. If the animal went down on this grade, the sled would slide back and the cub with it. She stopped the horse and unhitched the tongue. She walked the sled forward by hand to a level shelf and set a stone behind the runner. Then she led the horse up alone, one slow step at a time, resting it between each. At the top of the rise she tied the lead to a pine and went back down for the sled. She pulled it up herself, boots skidding, the cub whining at each jolt. Her back burned. She reached the shelf and sat in the snow until her breath slowed. The horse stood with its head low. She ran a hand down the stiff shoulder and felt heat under the hide. It would not climb another slope today. She looked at the sky. The light was already thinning between the trees. She unrolled her grandmother's cloth of soft strips and dried leaves, warmed water in the tin, and packed the horse's shoulder with a hot compress bound tight. The horse shivered once and stood still. She checked the cub's wrap. The wound was clean. She left the horse tied and walked ahead to scout. A hundred paces on, the trail passed a low rock face. Snow had drifted over the mouth of a shallow cave, but the hollow inside was dry and out of the wind. Old ash sat in a ring near the back. She cleared the entrance and led the horse in first, then dragged the sled after. She built a small fire from the kindling in her pack. She fed the cub a strip of the hare and set a wire snare in the brush outside for morning. Down the slope, from the black between two trunks, a big blue roan Clydesdale watched her, its coat pale with frost, a broken rein trailing from its jaw. Mercedes did not move. The roan did not come closer, and it did not run. She thought of her own lame horse behind her in the cave, and of the pass still above, and of the tracks going older on the mountain. She spoke low and held out an empty hand. The roan lowered its head one inch. She had a chance now to climb the pass on a sound horse, if she could bring the lost one in.