MARY KNOX’S CHRISTMAS
"Christmas finds Adam far from home.
He takes shelter with a family who needs his help, and learns that the spirit
of Christmas can manifest in different and sometimes mysterious ways."
Mary
Knox’s Christmas
By
Jenny
Guttridge
Mary Knox stood on the porch of the cabin and
watched the rider approach. He was still much too far away for her to tell
anything about him, but her sharp, silver-grey eyes told her that he was a big
man and that he rode a big, black horse.
The rider had just emerged from the dark line
of trees that marked the boundary of the family farm and the furthest edge of
Mary’s world. He was making his way slowly along the road that ran between the
fields where, last summer, turnips had grown. In the last several months Mary
had come to loath turnips. Now, in the middle of winter, the fields were all
white, several feet deep in an unbroken blanket of snow. The whole world was
white apart from the trees, which were black, and the sky, which was a distant,
silvery blue. It would snow again tonight, or perhaps tomorrow, so Mary’s
mother had said. Mary was prepared to believe it. Mary believed ‘most
everything that her mother said.
"Mary!" Mary’s mother’s voice came
from inside. "Don’t you stay out there and catch yourself a chill."
"No, Mama." Mary said
automatically. She stood on her tiptoes and hung from the rail where her Papa
tied up his horse and looked for the stranger again. He was a lot closer now,
but she still couldn’t see his face. He wore a black hat pulled down low over
his eyes and a thick, furry poncho made out of dark, brown, beaver pelts that
covered him up from just under his ears all the way down to his knees. The
black horse walked as if he was weary; his head hung down, and he simply pushed
the drifted snow out of his way with his forelegs instead of lifting his feet
up above it. In addition to the man and his saddlebags and the long barrelled gun that he carried, there were a whole lot of
bags and packages hung ‘round the saddle. Mary felt sorry for him. Mary was
fond of horses.
"Mary, come inside at once! And close
that door behind you before you get your death of cold!" Mary’s Mother’s
voice held an edge that Mary knew had to be obeyed, otherwise there would be
whopping to come with the sole of Papa’s slipper.
"Yes, Mama." Mary said with a sigh, but still she lingered at the
rail and watched as the big man got closer. She was in no doubt at all now that
he was a stranger. The family didn’t have many neighbours,
and Mary knew them all well.
Mary’s mother came out of the cabin just as
the stranger rode into the yard. Her face was all creased up and angry, and her
voice was sharp. "Mary Knox, don’t you ever do as you’re told?"
The stranger rode his horse across the
trampled snow and stopped just a yard or two from the porch. Mary could see the
breath smoking in front of his face and the sweat steaming up off the horse.
The man touched a gloved hand to his hat. "Afternoon, Ma’am." Mary
immediately liked the sound of his voice; it was rich and mellow and pitched
very low.
Mary’s mother looked up in surprise. With the
snow on the ground she hadn’t heard the black horse coming, and she had been
too concerned with Mary’s disobedience to notice the man until his shadow fell
across her. She recovered herself quickly. "’Afternoon,
Mister."
The stranger’s face was still hard to see. He
was partly silhouetted against the glare of the snow, but Mary thought she saw
the flash of white teeth. "My name’s Cartwright, Ma’am. I was wondering if
I might step down and rest awhile. My horse is kinda tired, and, I must
confess, so am I."
Mary’s mother hesitated. For a moment she
seemed flustered, almost confused, but then her natural, inbred hospitality
reasserted itself. She had retained a very firm grip
on Mary’s arm. Now she let go and straightened up. "Of course you can,
Mister Cartwright. Put your horse up in the barn and come into the house for
coffee. I’m Martha Knox and this is my daughter, Mary."
Mary, having wriggled free
of her mother’s grasp, stepped forward boldly. Mary’s mother had said just that morning that it was
only two days to go until Christmas, and Mary had only one thing on her mind.
"Mister, are you Santa Claus?"
The stranger laughed, and Mary, looking up at
him, was now sure of the teeth. "No, indeed, little Miss." He touched
the brim of his hat again. "I’m afraid that I’m not."
The stranger took his horse into the barn.
Mary would have gone with him, but her mother said he wouldn’t want to be bothered
by such a little girl and made her go into the house. He seemed to be gone a
very long time. Mary wondered what he was doing. Surely, it didn’t take nearly
so long to look after just one horse?
Mary’s mother bustled about. She put a fresh
pot of coffee on top of the stove and mixed up a new batch of biscuits – the
second she had made that day. Mary understood that. It was necessary to offer
hospitality to any of the neighbours that happened to
stop by and also to strangers. She noticed that her mother even found time to
tidy the wayward strands of her hair.
The cabin that was Mary’s home consisted of
just one room, and all the family’s living had to be done inside it. The whole
of one end was taken up by the big, black iron stove where Mary’s mother did
the cooking and heated the water for washing the clothes, and the scrub-topped
table where she prepared the food and where the family ate. At the other end
was the curtained-off alcove with the iron bedstead where Mary’s Papa lay. Papa
had lain there a long time now, ever since he’d hurt his leg so bad in a fall
at the end of last summer. Mary’s Papa was sleeping now; he seemed to sleep for
most of the time. The rest of the room was taken up by the pot-bellied stove
that belched out heat all winter and kept the cabin warm, an armchair and a
rocker, a little stool and a crib that was still Mary’s bed. The outhouse was
out at the back: a little shack that stood back behind the cabin. Mary hated
going there, especially in the winter and especially when it was dark.
Mary watched from the window until the
stranger came out of the barn. He had taken off his poncho and carried it over
his arm. He also carried his saddlebags and the long barrelled
rifle. It looked like he was intending to stay for the night. To Mary’s
disappointment, he still had the black hat pulled well down over his face.
He closed the barn door behind him and looked
all around as if taking in his surroundings. Mary didn’t think there was a
whole lot to look at: just the house and the barn and the sheds and
outbuildings that made up the farmstead, a broken fence that needed repair, the
snow covered fields and, beyond them, the trees and the mountains.
The stranger started across the yard. He
walked with a long, swinging gait that favoured one leg
just a little as if he had hurt himself once, long ago, and his body remembered
the pain even if his mind had forgotten. Mary wondered if Papa would walk like
that when his leg was finally better.
The stranger came into the house without
taking the trouble to knock. By the unwritten rules that they lived by, having
once been invited it wasn’t needful for him to be bidden again. Mary’s mother
smiled at him with a brightness that Mary realized wasn’t quite natural.
"Come on in, Mister Cartwright. Put your things down and make yourself
right at home."
"Ma’am." The stranger leaned his rifle up against the wall
alongside the door and draped his saddlebags over the back of the armchair. He
was a big man, and he filled up the room. Finally, he took off his hat, and
Mary Knox, aged four and a bit, fell head over heels in love.
The stranger was dressed in black clothes
from his head right down to his feet. His shirt was black and made of some
shiny stuff that Mary wanted to touch. His pants were black as well, of a
stout, twilled material, spotted with slush and mud and a whole lot of other,
unidentifiable stains that Mary knew for certain wouldn’t please her mother if
they appeared on Mary’s frock. His boots were black and very dirty. Mary
noticed that her mother didn’t yell the way she did when Papa trailed mud in
from the yard. And the stranger wore a gun in a holster tied down to his leg
and hung from a black leather belt.
It was his face that captured Mary’s eye and
her tiny, fast-beating heart. He had a nice face, not bearded like Papa’s, a
wide, straight mouth that smiled as it he meant it, a long, thin nose with the
faintest suggestion of a turned up tip and eyes the same colour
as the amber beads that Mama kept in her special jewel box and which Mary was
only allowed to look at when Mama was there.
He hung his hat on the barrel of the rifle.
"If it’s all right with you, Ma’am," he said to Mary’s mother,
"I’ve taken the liberty of feeding the stock in the barn and doing one or
two chores that looked like they needed doing."
Mary knew what he meant. Her mother disliked
the seemingly endless job of shovelling out the
stalls in the barn, and she didn’t do it nearly as often as she ought to.
Martha Knox had the grace to blush. "Why that’s real’
good of you, Mister Cartwright. I do declare there are a lot of things
around the place need doin’ since Tom got laid up
with his leg." She tilted her head towards the bed where Mary’s Papa was
tossing and turning and showing every sign that he was about to wake up. The
stranger took a good, long look in that direction, at the bed with it’s tangled
patchwork quilts, at the big, bearded man that lay in it and at the little
brown bottle that stood on the bedside table, the one that contained the stuff
that made Papa’s leg hurt less.
He accepted the cup he was offered.
"What happened to your husband, Ma’am?" he asked abruptly.
Martha turned away from the stove. Her face
was flushed, and she looked harassed. She wiped her hands on her apron.
"Tom took a tumble last fall. His horse rolled over on him, broke up his
leg real’ bad. I got it straightened and splinted, but it’s
gonna be spring before he walks on it again, an’ I
reckon he’s gonna limp some."
The stranger looked ‘round the homely room.
"And you’ve been up here alone all this time? You and
the child?"
He sipped his coffee and seemed to enjoy it.
Mary didn’t know how he could drink the horrid stuff. It was hot and black and
bitter, and it made her mouth pucker whenever she tasted it. She much preferred
milk.
Martha squared her shoulders defensively.
"We manage well enough. Our friends and neighbours
help us out whenever we need it. Someone calls by ‘most every week with meat
and some flour or potatoes – and I still have a cow in milk and lots of turnips
from last year’s crop." She shoved again at the disobedient strand of her
grey streaked hair. "Of course, we haven’t seen anyone for a while now,
what with the snow and all."
The stranger swilled coffee round in his
mouth while he thought about that, then swallowed it down. "If you’ll
allow me, Ma’am, I killed a deer a day or two back. I’ve still got a haunch and
part of the liver out in the barn with my gear. I’d be mighty glad if you’d
take it."
Mary’s mother’s face lost its angry frown,
and she looked pleased at the offer. "Well, that’s right kind of you, and
I thank you for it."
Mary knew how much her mother must hate
taking the food from the stranger. She was a proud woman, always willing to
give, but reluctant to take anything from anyone unless she really had to. But
it had been a long time since there had been meat on the table. They had been
living on crushed grain porridge and endless variations of turnip stew for more
than a week.
The stranger went out to the barn and
returned with a sizeable sack. Smiling, Mary’s mother unpacked several large
slabs of red meat from their waxed canvas wrappers. Before very long the rich
fragrance of meat stewing in gravy wafted through the room.
By now, it was growing dark outside.
Carefully, Martha lit the family’s two oil lamps, and the cabin filled up with
yellow light and inky black shadows. Mary’s father woke up with a grunt and
struggled up into a sitting position against his pillows. For Mary, it was the
signal to climb onto the big bed beside him. She was careful not to bounce.
Mary’s mother introduced the stranger to her
father, "Tom, this is Mister Cartwright."
"Adam Cartwright, Mister Knox." The
stranger held out his hand.
Mary thought that her father was just a
little slow to take it. "I haven’t seen you around these parts before,"
he said in a growl that made Mary’s hair stand on end. She looked from one to
the other. Even at her tender age she could sense the flare of tension between
them. Papa was often angry these days. Her mother had told her it was because
he had to stay in bed for so long. Mary didn’t altogether understand.
The stranger leaned back on his heels and
hooked his thumbs behind the big, silver buckle on his belt. His voice dropped
a note. "I’m just passing through."
Still suspicious, Mary’s father gazed at him with
a wary belligerence. "Where do you hail from, Cartwright?"
"
Mary’s father said, gruffly, "You’re a
long way from home."
Martha Knox was bustling about putting dishes
on the table. "And at Christmas time, too! Won’t
your family be missing you?"
The stranger turned to look at her.
"Most likely they will." He smiled a little, but Mary thought that
his face looked sad. "I was aiming to get there in time, but my packhorse
took a tumble and broke his leg. That slowed me down some and left me about a
hundred miles short."
Martha’s face filled up with sympathy. She
wiped work-worn hands on her apron. "But what will you do? There’s more
snow coming, and Christmas is the day after tomorrow."
The stranger’s smile widened. Mary liked his
face when he smiled. His sharp, white teeth showed in his mouth and little
hollows appeared in his cheeks that Mary could have poked her fingertip in.
"Don’t you worry about me, Ma’am. I’ll manage just fine."
"But you must stay here," Martha
said on impulse. She cast an anxious glance at Mary’s father who was scowling
darkly. "You can’t spend Christmas all alone in the woods."
"Martha!" Mary’s father said in a
tone that Mary knew well. It was high time to scramble down from the bed. Wide
eyed, Mary stuck her thumb in her mouth. Her Mama and Papa both looked angry,
and the stranger, a little confused.
He held up both his hands. "I don’t want
to cause any trouble."
Mary’s mother looked at her sharply. "Mary,
go make sure the chickens are locked in the hen-house afore it gets dark."
Mary knew that tone in her mother’s voice.
Argument was not on the agenda. Reluctantly, she put on her coat and went
outside. Not that there was any danger of the chickens being anywhere but
safely inside their warm and cosy fox-proofed shed,
she reflected as she trudged over the hard trodden snow of the yard. It was
getting dark now and turning much colder. Chickens might just be dumb balls of
feathers but even they weren’t stupid enough to stay outside all night. It was
just an excuse to get her out of the house while the grown-ups said words to
each other that they didn’t want Mary to hear. Sure enough, when she got there
the chickens were sitting up on the roosts in the hen-house right where they
were supposed to be. Mary closed up the shutter where the hens went in and out
and jiggled the latch on the door a few times to make sure that it was locked
tight. She sure didn’t want Mister Fox getting in there, or Mama would be all
sad and tearful in the morning, and Papa would be as mad as all-get-out.
As she was walked away from the hen house,
taking her time – she didn’t want to get back to the house before the shouting
had stopped – she saw some strange marks in the softer snow alongside the path.
Mary stooped down for a closer look. There were two of them, paw prints they
looked like, just like those left by a cat only much, much larger - so big that
Mary’s small hand would fit right inside. She wondered about that. The nearest
cat she knew about lived on farm several miles away, and while he was fat and
lazy, his paws were not nearly so big.
Mary went back to the house via the outhouse
so that she didn’t have to go there again in the dark. Mama and Papa had
finished their yelling and the strange man with the nice face was still there.
Mary was glad. He sat at the table with his long legs stretched out underneath.
Mary’s Papa was sitting propped up in bed drinking coffee and looking only a
little less angry than he had before. Her mother was flushed in the face, but
that might be just from the stove. Mary figured that her Mama had won the fight
– this time.
Inside the cabin it was warm and toasty after
the cold. Mary loved it in the evenings when the whole world contracted to these
four walls. She held her small hands out towards the stove and felt the heat on
her palms.
Mary’s mother called her, "Come and sit
at the table. It’s time for supper."
Mary sat on a chair with a cushion to lift
her high enough to see over the tabletop. Her mother said grace, and Mary
squeezed her eyes shut tight. It seemed to go on for a very long time. She
guessed that her mother was trying to impress the stranger. She peeked and
found him looking at her. He winked, and Mary giggled.
Mary’s mother served up stew for supper. It
was the hated turnips again. Mary pulled a face. There was meat in the mixture,
very tender, and the gravy was rich with fat and flavoured
with the herbs her Mama had dried last autumn. She wasn’t sure that she liked
it, but then she saw that the stranger dug in with relish, using a spoon. She
decided to give it a try. Soon, she had eaten everything in her bowl. To follow
were hot, buttered biscuits and soft, curd cheese. Martha served Mary’s father
in bed. Mary could hear the mutter of their voices across the room. They were
still arguing, but the stranger pretended they weren’t.
He sat back in his chair with yet another cup
of coffee. It was his third – Mary could count all the way up to five. She
thought he must like it a lot. He smiled with his eyes at Mary’s mother.
"I thank you, Ma’am. That was a real, fine meal."
Smiling herself,
Mary’s mother said, "And I thank you, Mister Cartwright."
Mary helped her mother with the dishes the
way she’d been taught. The stranger took his chair over and sat by the bed and
talked to Mary’s father. From the looks on their faces, they still didn’t like
each other too much, but their conversation was civil enough. They talked about
horses and cows and the state of the land and lots of other things that Mary
didn’t understand.
"Damn trouble is," Mary heard her
father say in his loud, rumbling voice, "I can’t get out o’ this Goddamned bed! Iffen I take
another fall, Martha ‘ll never be able ta get me up off the floor!"
Mary’s mother got out her workbasket and sat
in the rocker close by the stove. She hummed a tune as she rocked and darned a
hole in Mary’s other dress. Mary decided to stop being shy. She came out from
behind her mother’s skirts and walked over to the stranger, putting a hand on
his knee. "Mister, are you real’ sure you’re not Santa Claus?"
The stranger got out of his chair and
hunkered down beside her. "No, honey. Really, I’m
not. My name is Adam. You can call me that."
Mary gazed earnestly into his face. His lips
were parted, and he was smiling. She reached out and touched the dimples in his
cheeks. She could feel the roughness of a growing beard. Her small face
frowned. "But it’s almost Christmas, and Santa Claus comes at
Christmas."
The stranger – Adam – reached out for her and
lifted her up in his big, sun-browned hands. He sat down in the chair and
settled her into his lap. "How would it be if I were to tell you a
story?"
Her thumb in her mouth, Mary nodded. She
settled into the crook of his arm. Close up against him, she could feel the
steady beat of the heart in his chest and feel the heat of his body. Her grey
eyes grew huge and round and fixed themselves on his face.
"Well, now. Let me see." Adam
smiled down at her and began, "Coyote is the spirit god of the Shoshoni people. One day he was walking beside the river
when he came across an old woman filling up her water pots. Coyote said to the
woman ‘I want you to go on a journey across the desert. Carry your pots with
you, all of them filled up with water but one. That one pot, you mustn’t open
until you get among the trees and the grasslands on the other side of the
desert’ Because Coyote is a god, and the old woman was
afraid, she agreed to do as he asked."
Mary settled against Adam’s chest, snuggling
into his arms. Her eyelids were growing heavy. He dropped his voice a note,
"So, the old woman set off across the deserts carrying the water pots. All
of them but one were full, and they were very heavy.
But the water pot that held no water at all was by far the heaviest. Soon, the
old woman got thirsty. She stopped and opened one of the pots to drink. She
thought to herself that it could do no harm at all to peek into the empty pot,
just to see what was in there to make it weigh so much. She lifted the lid, but
there was nothing to be seen at all. The pot appeared to be empty. So she set
off again, over the burning desert. The empty pot got heavier and heavier.
Every time the old woman stopped to rest, she took a peek in the pot. Every
time, it was as empty as before. What the old woman didn’t know was that crafty
Coyote had hidden the spirits of the Shoshoni people
inside the empty pot. Every time she opened the lid, some of the spirits jumped
out. And that’s how the Shoshoni tribes came to be
spread all the way across the desert lands from the east, right into the west,
instead of living in the green country among the trees as their god had
intended."*
Mary heard the end of the story, but only
just. As Adam stopped speaking, her eyes drifted closed, and the little girl
was asleep.
*******
Martha
Knox lay aside her mending and got to her feet. She dusted the threads out of
her lap. "If she’s asleep, Mister Cartwright, you’d better bring her over
here to her bed."
Adam stood up carefully, the sleeping child cradled
close against his chest. Tom Knox watched him from the bed with a scowl on his
face. Adam didn’t care for the man or his manner, but the man was sick, and he
was prepared to make allowances. He carried the little girl across the room and
laid her down in the bed. Martha removed her daughter’s shoes.
Mary wriggled a bit at the touch of the cold
sheet, and her small face crumpled, then she sucked
hard on her thumb and settled back into sleep. Her mother didn’t undress her,
just covered her up with the quilt. Then she looked up at Adam. It might have
been the light, or the flow of emotion, but her face looked softer and younger.
"That really was very good of you. Where did you learn such an enchanting
story?"
"My pleasure, Ma’am," Adam said,
easily, "I spent some time living with the Shoshoni.
I learned a lot of their stories and legends. But why does Mary think I might
be Santa Claus?" He said it with a smile, but his curiosity was apparent.
Leaving the child sleeping, Martha led the
way back to the chairs by the stove. She sat down in the rocker. "I’m
afraid that’s the fault of the children in town. We were there last summer,
before Tom had his fall. Some of the older ones told her about Santa Claus, and
she’s never forgotten. With Christmas just a few days away she talks about
nothing else. You do know the story?"
Adam settled into the other chair. "I’ve
heard it: a fairy in a red dress that goes from village to village at Christmas
time leaving gifts for the children. It’s a Bavarian legend imported in to
Martha laughed. "Well, it’s certainly
spread as far as this part of the country."
"Damn Tomfoolery!" Tom Knox growled
from the bed. "Filling the child’s head up with stupid
ideas. The young fools ought to know better!"
Martha turned her head towards him. "Oh, Tom. It’s only a story for children. There’s no
real harm in it."
Tom snorted derision. "Just leads folks
to expect things they ain’t gonna
get." He floundered in the bed, trying to hitch himself higher against the
pillows. The effort left him breathless. "Martha, you gonna
sit up all night? You know as we can’t afford all that lamp oil."
Adam stood up. He knew his manners, and he
was the sort to be polite. "If you’ll excuse me, I’d just like to check on
my horse before I turn in."
Martha gave him a grateful smile. "I’ll
leave you some blankets here, by the fire."
Adam stepped out into a dark, moonless night.
It was bitterly cold, and it was snowing out of a cloudless sky: fine, drifting
flakes that wouldn’t come to much in a whole month of Sundays but were merely
the precursors of things to come. If he looked up at the sky directly above his
head, he could see stars. He sighed, and the breath puffed out of his mouth in
a cloud of white steam.
Tomorrow it would be Christmas Eve, and he
was still a very long way from home. Not that he was homesick at all. That sort
of thing was for children. He did pause to wonder what his family might be
doing and if they thought of him as they sat around the festive table. Work was
hard on the ranch in the winter; war with the snow was in constant progress:
steers had to fed on a regular basis and saved from
encroaching snowdrifts and rescued from freezing rivers, and there were always
roads and major pathways that had to be cleared. His family would be sure to
miss him when it came to doing the work. He imagined his brother’s indignation
at his prolonged absence – the protracted period when they had to do all the work
- and chuckled with pure amusement.
Still laughing quietly at his own, private
joke, he strolled across the yard. He took his time. He didn’t want to hurry
the folks in the house. With just the one room, they needed their privacy to
get themselves into bed.
The Knox’s were good people. Adam could tell
that just by looking at them and at the state of the farm. It was a little run
down to be sure, but that was only to be expected with the man laid up in bed
for so long. It was plain to see that the man was going mad with frustration,
chained to that bed, and his muscles would be wasting away. That was a problem
that Adam had been working on, and he already had something in mind. The woman,
with her fine fair hair now turning to silver, would have been pretty when she
was younger, but time and hard work were taking their toll. Second only,
perhaps, to mining and whaling, wresting a living from these hillside
farmsteads was one of the hardest jobs he could think of. As for the child,
with her soft, pale curls and her enormous, silver-grey eyes, she was an angel
straight out of heaven – a cherub who had mislaid her wings.
Inside the barn it was very dark, and Adam
couldn’t find a lantern. In the faint light from the door, he found his way by
touch and the use of his memory. He had fed and watered the animals earlier
while there was still enough light to see, and cleared the soiled straw out of
the stalls. His own black gelding snuffled his hand looking for treats, but
Adam didn’t have anything to give him. In the stall next door was Knox’s bay
saddle horse and across the way the two burly mules her
used to pull the plough and the wagon. At the end of the barn, in a roped-off
loose box, was the family’s brown-and-white cow. He could tell from the way
that the livestock shifted that all was well.
Outside in the snow again, he made a wide
circuit of the farm, calling in at the outhouse as he went by. It was out
behind the hay-barn, at the farthest end of the loop, that he scented something
strange. Lifting his face into the wind, he sniffed. There was no mistake. He
could definitely detect the odour of acidic musk in
the air. He searched around and soon located the cause: a smear of brown slime
in a shallow scrape in the snow. He looked a little further afield
and soon found other traces – several clear and fairly fresh paw prints.
Without any doubt, there was a cougar in the vicinity, and a big one at that.
Without his gun, Adam felt suddenly naked. He straightened up and looked around
him, but there was nothing untoward to be seen – only the bulk of the buildings
and the broken fence and the white fields half obscured by the fine sift of
still-falling snow. Without knowing he did it, he wiped the abruptly damp palms
of his hands on his butt and backed away. There was no telling where the cat
was, and he didn’t fancy being caught in the open.
When he let himself back in to the house,
just a single lamp had been left burning, turned down low. As promised, two
folded blankets lay on the seat of the armchair, warming in front of the stove.
The rest of the room was dark and quiet. The curtains were drawn closely around
the big bed, and the child was asleep in her cot. Making use of his well-practised trail skills, Adam shook out the blankets and
made himself up a bed. He used his fur poncho to soften the floor, and soon, he
was soundly asleep.
*******
Mary
woke up to popping and sizzling sounds and the smell of liver and bacon frying
in the skillet on the stove. The steam and the rich aroma filled the room, and
already, Mary’s mouth was watering in anticipation. She sat up and rubbed her
knuckles into her eyes. "Mama?"
Martha moved the skillet away from the heat
and went to help her daughter out of bed. Her face was all happy and smiling,
and there was a silver light in her eyes. "You slept well,
sweetheart," she said. "Hurry and wash up now; breakfast is almost
ready."
"Yes, Mama." Mary dutifully washed her face and her hands and then
went to kiss her father ‘good morning’. She had to climb up on the bedstead to
reach, and Papa’s bristly beard prickled her skin. Tom put his arm round her
and cuddled her close, then let her slip away as Martha brought him a fresh cup
of coffee, already his second of the day. Mary looked around the room.
"Mama, where’s Adam?"
Martha ruffled her curls lightly as she went
by. "Mister Cartwright’s just outside doing a few chores about the
place."
From the bed, Tom Knox made an angry growling
sound from somewhere deep down in his throat. Martha turned in mock annoyance
and planted her hands on her hips. "Now Tom," she scolded, "you
know he’s only helping out in exchange for a roof over his head and a little
home cooking."
Mary tugged at her mother’s skirts.
"Mama, will Santa Claus come today?"
Martha sighed and some of the shining went
out of her eyes. "I’ve told you before, there
isn’t really a Santa Claus."
Mary felt her lip tremble, just a little bit.
She fought back the prickling behind her eyelids. Only babies cried. Tears
would only embarrass her mother and make her Papa mad. "But the big boys
said…"
"I know what they said sweetheart,"
Martha lifted on to her chair at the table, "but they were just teasing
you."
Mary pouted. Grown-ups thought they knew
everything. Mary knew deep in her heart that there was a Santa Claus, but she also
knew with her instinctive, four-year old wisdom that Santa would never come
unless Mama believed in him too.
Her little face lightened as Adam came in
through the door. There was a fine dusting of snow on his shoulders and on the
crown of his hat. His sleeves were rolled up to expose long, lean, forearms.
She noticed that he was wearing his pistol in its holster on his hip. He was
carrying Martha’s milk-pail, half filled with milk, and he had his long gun
tucked under his arm. Martha Knox laughed with delight as she took the
milk-pail from him. "Mister Cartwright, I see you’ve become acquainted
with Belle!"
Chuckling a deep throaty laugh, Adam put down his rifle and
took off his hat. In the heat of the room the snow had already melted to leave
tiny silver beads of moisture on the black felt. "Well, I’ll tell you,
Mrs. Knox, it’s been a while since I last milked a cow, but I guess Belle and I
managed pretty well between us."
"I guess you did!" Martha served up
the liver and bacon for breakfast, together with hot, fresh-baked bread and
butter. The grown-ups drank more cups of black coffee, and Mary had two glasses
of milk still warm from Belle’s body.
When he had eaten, Adam went outside again
for a while; when he came back, he carried a long, stout stick with a well
padded cross piece fixed to one end. He took it over to Mary’s father.
"Now, Mister Knox, if you’re willing, I think there’s a way to get you out
of that bed."
Mary watched with wide-eyed amazement as Adam
lifted her father almost bodily into a sitting position and swivelled
him ‘round until he was perched on the bed with his legs, one of them heavily
encased in splints and bandages, dangling over the edge. At first Tom Knox
treated the whole idea with contempt and suspicion. "There ain’t no way I can walk on this leg."
Adam responded with patient firmness,
"I’ve seen men walk with broken legs before. I’ve even done it myself,
although I wouldn’t say it was a pleasant experience. Why don’t you give it a
try?
Now, Tom Knox tried anger, the good, old
fashioned stand-by, "Why don’t you mind your own Goddamn business,
Cartwright? You think you can come in here…"
Adam cut short the tirade before it descended
into outright insults. "Mister Knox. I’m trying to help you. If you can
get about, then you can, at least, see how your place is doing - and stop those
leg muscles wasting away."
Tom grumbled some more, but he was an
intelligent man. He saw the possibilities in what Adam was proposing and agreed
to give it a try. A big and powerful man who had worked long, hard hours the
whole of his life, Tom had a massive and well-developed upper body, but his
legs, from several months of disuse, had grown thin and weak. Once he had made
up his mind, however, he wasn’t about to give up easily. It took a lot of determination
on his part and no little help from Martha and Adam, but at last, he got up on
his feet and stood, balancing precariously while Martha tried to hold him up.
Adam showed him how to wedge the makeshift
crutch under his arm and to use it to take most of the weight of his
half-healed leg. At last, in his shirt and his long under-drawers, Tom was able
to hobble as far the stove and then to the table and back. Martha stood and
watched him. Pride and admiration shone out of her eyes. Tom finally settled into
the armchair. He grunted with discomfort and rubbed at the ache in his thigh.
It was going to take a long while and a lot of effort before he was finally
mobile again, but he had taken that first, long step. He looked up at his wife,
and, slowly, his face broke into a smile.
Adam scooped Mary up in his arms.
"Honey," he said," I reckon it’s time for you and I to take a walk outside. Why don’t you come and show me
where the woodpile is?" Mary, her face buried against his warm neck,
nodded. With one arm under her butt to hold her, he picked up his rifle with
his other hand. In the doorway, he looked back. "Mrs. Knox, can you tell
me if you’ve lost any stock lately?"
"Stock?" Mary Knox looked startled. "No. I’m sure we
haven’t. We don’t have a lot of livestock now, just the mules and the cow and
the chickens? Why do you ask?"
Adam sucked breath through his teeth. "I
wouldn’t want to worry you any, Ma’am, but last night I spotted some sign
outside that I’m pretty sure was a cat."
Mary peeked out from Adam’s collar and saw
that her mother’s face had grown pale. Her father was grim. "A
cat, Cartwright? Are you sure about that?"
Adam looked at him for a long, tense moment,
as if wondering whether his word was in question. Then he ducked his head.
"I’m sure."
Adam swung the axe with a steady rhythm
throughout the morning, and Mary, bundled up in her topcoat and mittens, sat on
top of the log pile and watched him. In between times when he paused for breath
and the air ‘round his face turned all frothy and white with the steam, he
asked her about her toys and her friends on the neighbouring
farms and the things that she liked to do. Then he told her about his life on a
ranch in a far away place called
Later that day, after she had taken her nap,
Mary went out to the barn with Adam and watched while he groomed the horses and
mules. Then he sat her up on his big, black horse and walked her around the
yard. She giggled and squeaked with delight. The snow had stopped falling and
it was slightly less cold, but the clouds were piling up over the horizon, and
the sky was a pinky-grey. The air smelled funny, sort of dusty, and Adam kept
looking around him and studying the tree line with a worried and far-away look
on his face. He never moved more than an arm’s length away from his rifle.
Mary was looking too – watching the road that
led into the trees. It was the only road that came to the farm, and when Santa
Clause called, that was the path he would have to use. She was convinced that
Santa was coming; she could already see him in her mind’s eye, all dressed in
red, just like the big boys had told her and riding a fine white horse. She was
still awaiting his knock on the door that night when her mother tucked her up
in her bed.
*******
It was
almost completely dark in the cabin when Mary woke up. Only the faintest
night-light spilled through the window. She sat up in bed and listened. It was
all very quiet. Her Mama and Papa were sleeping behind their curtain, and Adam
was wrapped up in his blankets on the floor, snoring softly. She could see the
dark curve of his cheek and the slow, steady rise of his chest.
Mary was certain that someone had called her
name, just as sure as she could be. It hadn’t been Mama or Papa, and it
certainly hadn’t been Adam – he was fast asleep. It must have been Santa Claus!
Mary just knew it! He had to be right outside in the yard! She couldn’t keep
him waiting. That wouldn’t be nice. She clambered out of the bed.
It might have been dark, but Mary had lived
in the cabin for the whole of her life. The faint, grey light was just enough
for her to find her way about. She found her shoes tucked under her cot, just
where Mama put them, and pushed her feet into them without bothering with
stockings. She put her coat on over her long, flannel night-gown and carefully
did up the buttons. By standing on tiptoe, she was just able to reach the latch
of the door.
Outside, it was snowing hard. The blizzard
Mama had talked about, the one that had been threatening for two or three days,
had arrived with a vengeance. All she could see from the edge of the porch were
great, fluffy bundles of snowflakes falling out of a coal-black sky. She
couldn’t see Santa, but she knew he was there, just out of sight in the
snowstorm. She was determined to find him, and she knew that she didn’t have
long. It was Christmas Eve night, and Santa had lots of farms and ranches to
visit. Mary pulled her coat tightly around her and set out into the night to
find him.
*******
Martha
Knox screamed in anguished desperation, "But where is she! Where has she gone!" Her face was bloodless-white and tear-stained;
her eyes were frantic, and she was teetering on the very edge of hysteria.
Tom did his best his best to hold on to her
flailing fists. Balancing unsteadily on his crutch and his one, good leg it
wasn’t an easy thing to do. "Martha! Stop it! Don’t be a fool! Cartwright
will find her. There’s no point in you rushing off in a snow-storm and getting
lost out there too!"
As if on cue, Adam came in through the door.
The snow had settled thickly across his shoulders and lay in his hair. He
already wore his gunbelt buckled about his hips; now
he pulled his poncho on over his head and reached for his hat. "I can see
which way she went," he said as he dressed. "There are traces of her
footprints still left in the snow, but it’s starting to drift, and I’ll have to
hurry." He brushed off the last of the melting snow and jammed his hat on
his head. He paused one more moment to look at the faces of the frantic
parents. "Try not to worry. I’ll bring her back." Taking his rifle
with him, he went out and closed the door tight behind him.
The snow had almost stopped falling, but the
cloudbanks still threatened. The first, fledgling, pink light of morning lit
the pregnant underbellies of the snow-clouds. A few odd snowflakes still
drifted downwards. A foot of fresh snow had fallen during the night, making the
white fields even whiter. It lay in a soft blanket all about, blurring the
outlines of the buildings and the fence-lines and obliterating all other signs
of human habitation. The white world was silent; all sound was deadened except
for the harsh rasp of his breathing. Adam cupped his hands to his mouth and
shouted, "Mary!"
He didn’t really expect the child to answer.
He had already checked the barn and the outhouse and all the other likely
places and satisfied himself that she wasn’t anywhere close at hand. Now, with
fierce determination, he set out to follow the faint and rapidly fading tracks
in the snow.
He had to hurry. Bitter cold, the wind was
rising, and it blew off the hill in gusts. It picked up the loose, new fallen
snow in flurries and swirled it around some, high in the air, before dropping
it down in a different place. It wouldn’t be long before all traces of the
child’s small footprints were wiped away.
The trail led Adam out of the yard in the
direction of the road. All that could be seen of it was the two stark lines of
fence posts in an unbroken field of snow. At first it seemed as if the child
had known where she was going and had, indeed, had some sense of purpose when
she went wandering off into the night. Then the footprints started to wander
about between the fences as if the little girl had lost her direction and
started to stagger as the dark and the cold had begun to strike home.
Crouching, Adam tried to follow the diminishing line with his eyes, but the
white of the snow and the grey morning light conspired together to deceive him.
All the time the wind was blowing, covering up the tracks.
It took all of Adam’s considerable skill as a
tracker to follow the trail half way to the trees. By then, all trace of the
footprints had been wiped away, but it was plain to see which was the child was
headed. Adam chaffed his hands together and wished he had thought to bring his
gloves. His breath formed great clouds of steam in front of his face, and the
cold made his eyes water. Behind him, over his shoulder, the sun was starting
to rise: huge and orange and slightly elongated, stretched across the horizon
and striped with grey and pink clouds. It lit the landscape to fire.
Adam tucked the rifle under his arms and
pulled the brim of his hat down over his face, shielding his eyes from the
glare. Following the line of the vanished footsteps, he headed into the woods.
The snow lay less thickly under the trees. In
places there was no more than a light, white dusting over the pine needle
litter; in others, smoothly contoured drifts piled against tree roots and obscured
the criss-crossing paths. Adam found clear traces of
rabbits and foxes, small rodents and all kinds of birds. Nowhere could he find
the tracks of a child.
"Mary! Mary!" His voice boomed
through the woods. There was no echo. His voice was absorbed by the trees and
the snow and the distance. Now he couldn’t see well for a different reason: the
light didn’t penetrate under the trees. The woods were gloomy and utterly
quiet. There was no drip of water or rustle of leaf to break the brooding
silence – not even the morning song of a bird. Even the air was still, and
very, very cold. He could feel the nip of frost on his cheeks, and his fingers
were starting to tingle. He began to doubt that he would find the child alive.
Stepping carefully, as silent as the trees
themselves, he moved through the cloud of his own steaming breath. It was
starting to snow all over again, stray snowflakes drifting down through the
gaps in the treetops. The woods grew denser and even darker and, if possible,
colder. Adam studied the ground. There was no sign that anything living had
passed this way since at least the day before.
Then something caught his attention – not a
sound or a movement or even a smell, but more a sensation of air faintly
shifting, an easing of pressure against his skin. The dark shadows in front of
him were empty, but he had the feeling they had just been vacated. A familiar
burning itch asserted itself right in the centre of his back. It was an almost
physic phenomenon he had come to trust down the years, a sort of seventh sense.
It told him that someone – or something – was watching him.
It was the print of a paw in the snow that
gave the watcher’s identity away. Crisp and clean, the print was brand new; a
big cat had passed that way only a minute or two before. Adam had almost
forgotten the cat. In his anxiety to find the child he had pushed the threat of
the cougar into the back of his mind. He tightened his grip on the rifle. Eyes
and ears alert he crept forward; now he was stalking, just as surely as he was
being stalked. His belly tightened with expectation and a certain measure of
fear. It was not unknown for a full-grown cat to turn and attack a man. Inside
the poncho, he was starting to sweat.
Pausing again, he listened. He heard the hiss
of his own breath as he sucked it in through his teeth and, beyond it, the
breathing of another, a rapid, heavy pant. He brought the rifle ‘round into the
ready position. He held his breath, concentrating intently. He had to be sure
of his target. Was it the cat out there in the bushes, or was it the lost
little girl? Then he heard it, a low, yowling growl.
Adam got off two, quick shots, firing as fast
as he could pump the chamber. The heavy rifle bucked and roared. The cat
screamed in fury and leapt away. Adam heard it go but he didn’t see it well
enough to shoot at it again: just a flash of tawny hide in the shadows and
swaying branches shedding snow. He knew that he’d missed. The sound of the
shots was lost in the trees. Adam sucked breath and levered another cartridge
into the breach. Now, he trod even more cautiously than before, all but feeling
his way. He was well aware that the cougar could creep round behind him.
The cat growled again. Adam thought that the
sound came from somewhere in front of him, but he wasn’t entirely certain. It
was further away now and probably moving off. He reminded himself firmly that
he wasn’t here to hunt cat. Looking around him, he realized that he was deep in
the forest. He didn’t see how a small child could possibly have wandered so far.
The best thing, he decided, was to turn back, to search his back-trail as he
went and then to strike off in another direction - to try another path. He
turned around to retrace his steps and came face to face with the cat.
It was a big animal, a fully-grown female
with a swollen, heavily pregnant belly. She was some nine feet long including
the tail, and she must have weighed two hundred pounds. She had glorious,
golden eyes and a brindled coat and huge, soft, spreading paws. She rolled back
her lips and snarled at him from twenty feet away. Adam’s mouth was abruptly
dry. He had been caught flat-footed with his weight on his heels and the rifle
held awkwardly across his body. The cat lowered herself into a crouch and spat
at him.
Adam found himself in a dilemma. He could
swing the rifle ‘round and fire in much the same time that it would take the
cat to leap the distance between them. In fact, he thought, he might even have
an edge. What worried him more was that he had just found out where Mary Knox was
hidden. She lay on the ground between them, still wrapped in her woollen coat. She was half curled in the fork of a tree
root; a small drift of snow had piled up against her. She was rather closer to
the cougar than she was to Adam, and he had no doubt at all that the cougar
knew she was there.
Adam let go a pent up breath, the warmed air
turning instantly to steam in front of his face. The cougar hissed,
her own breath smoking. The man and the beast eyed one another, each of them
waiting for the other to move. Very slowly, Adam lowered the rifle. He knew he
should kill the cat if he could. She, and the cubs
that she carried, if they decided to stay in these woods, would wreck havoc on
the local farming community come springtime, raiding the homesteads and slaughtering
young stock. His inbred and instinctive hatred of cougar-kind insisted he do it
- but she was such a magnificent beast! He brought the gun into a firing
position, aimed at her chest, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull the
trigger.
Adam knew a little about the species; he was
prepared to wager that this old she-cat, wise in the ways of her kind and well
aware of the perils posed by the proximity of man, was just passing through, heading for higher, uninhabited places where she could raise
her family in peace. On that early, Christmas morning, he was prepared to give
her her life.
It was as if the she-cat read his mind, or,
more probably, she sensed the easing of tension in his body, the change in his
intention. She gave him one more, savage hiss for good measure and waved her
tail slowly from side to side as if daring him to follow. Then she turned and
sprang away. In the blink of an eye she was gone. Adam released a steamy sigh
of relief.
Kneeling down on the cold, hard ground, he
reached out to touch the child’s cheek. Her skin was as cold as ice and her
face as white as the snow piled up against her. Her lips were blue.
"Mary," Adam called her name softly and then again, more loudly,
"Mary!" She didn’t respond. She looked as if she might be asleep.
Adam lifted her and gathered her into his
arms. He could detect no trace of warmth in her tiny body, but, just once, he
thought he felt the faintest whisper of breath. Opening the buttons of his
shirt all the way down to the waist, he drew the child against his chest and
pulled his warm poncho tightly around them both. Sharing his body heat as well
as he was able, he hurried back to the house.
*******
Mary
opened her eyes. She didn’t feel cold any more – in fact, she was tingly warm.
She felt as if she had slept for a very long time, and yet she was still
sleepy. Right in front of her was her mother’s face, leaning over her bed. Her
Mama’s lips were smiling and so were her eyes, although there were silvery
traces of tears staining her cheeks as if she had just been crying. Mary
reached out her arms. "Mama!"
Martha picked her arm and held her tightly
against her. "There then, sweetheart, you’re home again now. Everything’s
going to be all right."
Mary looked round the room. Her father looked
happy too, but he had a peculiar, pinched look on his bearded face. His eyes
glistened and sparkled as if they were wet. Further away, Adam was perched on
the edge of the table. His nice mouth was smiling as well. Then Mary caught
sight of the tree: a very small pine tree standing in the light from the
window. Every single branch was decorated with bits of wool and scraps of cloth
and twists of paper that had been torn from Mama’s mail-order catalogue. Mary
gazed at it in wonder for a long, silent moment. Then, "Mama,
did Santa Claus come?"
Martha blinked and held back fresh tears.
Still holding her daughter close, she sat herself down in the rocking chair.
"He came while you were asleep, darling. Look what he left you."
Martha gave Mary her gift. It was a
corn-dolly, carefully plaited from long stalks of straw with arms and legs and
a head. The dolly had bright yellow wool for her hair and a bonnet made from a
left over scrap from Mary’s best dress. Her frock had been sewn from the tail
of Papa’s worn out shirt, and she had an apron just like Mama’s. Her eyes were
Mama’s bright amber beads. Mary smiled and hugged her dolly. She was still
sleepy and her eyes drifted closed. "Mama," she said drowsily,
"Where’s the nice kitty gone?"
"Kitty, darling?" Martha frowned. "What do you mean?"
Mary snuggled closer. "The
big, warm, kitty that slept with me in the woods last night. She sure
had a big old purr, but her tongue was awful rough when she licked me."
Amazed, Martha looked up at Tom who shook his
head sternly. "She must have been dreaming. The cat would have killed her
if Adam hadn’t gotten there first."
But Adam was thinking: had the cat led him
through the woodlands, and had the cat deliberately turned him around? How
could the child have survived all night out in that bitter cold? Was it just
possible that the cougar, possessed of some odd maternal instinct, had lain
down beside her and kept her warm with her body? He wasn’t about to say a word;
the whole idea was preposterous. Ever the pragmatist, he didn’t really believe
in such things. But legend had it that
Martha lowered her head and whispered into
Mary’s hair, "In the spring, darling when you are five, you shall have a
kitten all of your own."
Drifting off to sleep, Mary just about heard
her and smiled. That was another promise she would remember. She might have
missed Santa Claus, but this was still the happiest Christmas she had ever had.
Potters Bar 2001.