Mercedes Morgan's Arc

Chapter 6 of 21

The roan stood in the dark between the trunks. Mercedes stayed at the mouth of the cave with her hand out. Her lame horse breathed behind her. The cub whined once from the sled and went quiet. She needed the roan, but she had nothing on her belt to hold it. A broken rein would not tie a Clydesdale to a tree for the night. If she walked up and grabbed the trailing strap, the horse would spook and run, and she would be left on this slope with a lame mount and no way over the pass. She stepped back into the cave and knelt by her pack. Under the food tin she found the coil of hemp rope she had used to lash the sled tongue. It was long enough for a lead and thick enough to hold a big horse if she tied it right. She worked a bowline at one end for a loop that would not slip closed on the animal's neck. She cut a second length for a halter. Her fingers were stiff. She held them over the small fire until they moved again. She needed to keep the roan there while she worked. A cold horse with a broken rein would drift. She took the last strip of hare from the tin and stepped out slow. The roan had come up ten paces closer to the cave. She set the meat on a flat stone and backed away. Then she pulled a log from the bundle of firewood by the entrance and split kindling from it with her knife. She built a second small fire outside the mouth of the cave, low and smoky, to break the wind and mark the ground as a still place. The roan ate the meat. Mercedes moved one step at a time, talking low, the loop held behind her leg. When she was close enough she reached under the jaw and cut the broken rein away with her knife. The horse jerked its head but did not bolt. She slipped the rope loop over the neck and drew it snug against the shoulder, not the throat. She tied the halter piece around the nose and jaw. Then she led the roan to a stout pine at the cave mouth and made two half hitches at chest height, close to the trunk, so the horse could not walk a circle and tangle itself. She stood in the firelight and looked at the two horses. The lame one inside, warm. The sound one outside, tied. In the brush below, the wire snare she had set that morning held a big snowshoe hare stiff in the cold. She cut it down and carried it back. Tomorrow she would move the cub and the sled onto the roan and climb the pass. Tonight she had a mount that would not walk away.