“I’m makin’ the crik for a bar’l of water,” he said. “Then I’m through, I guess.”
Molly nodded and smiled, and the man’s look of doubt passed.
“Good. Food’s mostly ready, and father’s just coming round the bluff. I’ll take that milk right in.”
She took the pail from the man and passed back into the house. And Lightning hurried off to the barn to hook up a team to the water sled.
It was still daylight when the farmer’s team drew up at the cordwood stack. The pile of winter fuel was stored against the log walls of the corral, which was nearly three parts surrounded by a dense bluff of spruce. The intervening barns and sheds cut it off from all view of the house, where Molly was busy with the evening meal.
George Marton climbed down from his seat on the load, and stood beating warmth into his mitted hands. He stood thus for a moment, his gaze upon the tuckered flanks of his steaming team. He was a stocky creature of a year or two over forty, with a keen, dark face that was partly enveloped in a close-cut, pointed black beard that matched his hair and eyes.
After a moment he brushed away the icicles accumulated about his mouth and passed around his team. He examined their fetlocks for abrasures. He knew the damage that was possible on the snow-trail from the sharp calks with which the beasts were “roughed.” He was very careful of his team.
Satisfied with their well-being, he started to unhook the horses. The sled load would remain where it was for the night, but the team must be well and carefully tended. The tugs released, he passed on to the creatures’ heads to lead them to the barn. But he halted half-way, and a curious, startled rigidity seemed to grip his body. He stood there quite unmoving and obviously listening, an alert figure of tense-strung energy in the thick bulk of his heavy clothing.
It was a sound. It was an unusual sound that broke sharply from within the adjacent bluff. It came with the snapping of breaking brush. Then, in a moment, it ceased with the lumping sound of a falling body.