Stands a Calder Man (Calder Saga 2)

It was a shame to leave that carcass for the wolves and coyotes to quarrel over. The age of the cow would make the meat tough and stringy, but it still seemed a waste of beef. He could cut himself off a quarter, except he had an ample supply of meat back at the line camp.

Webb knew where his mind was turning, but try as he might, he couldn’t stop from thinking of Lilli. Unless a homesteader had a calf of his own to butcher, beef wasn’t exactly a mainstay of his diet. Fresh meat came mostly from wild game. And here was a whole carcass of meat.

He turned his head, looking to the east. With the cattle all drifted toward the camp, there was nothing left for him to do but sit in the line shack and wait out the storm. His work was done and it didn’t look like the storm was going to break any time soon. There’d be a few hours to ride over to the Reisner homestead and take them the beef, maybe even time to get back before the weather got too bad.

After that, his decision was a foregone conclusion. He slipped the toe of his boot out of the stirrup and reached into the saddlebag for his hunting knife. It was a simple matter to slit the jugular vein to let the cow bleed. It took considerably more time to rig up a travois out of two saplings and lash the carcass onto it with his rope. The snow had stopped when Webb swung into the saddle and pointed the black gelding east.

During all her years in the city, cramped in a small, two-room tenement apartment with three other people, Lilli had never felt so cooped up as she did in the one-room shack. She was restless and irritable, rebelling against all the little tasks that would pass the time. The gray world outside seemed to press in and make the shack even smaller.

The breakfast dishes were still staring at her, a glaring reminder that she was neglecting her chores. Lilli glared back and continued flipping through the well-worn pages of a catalogue, but she wasn’t looking at the pages either. Finally she plopped the book on the table and stalked over to the cookstove to heat water for the dishes.

There were an endless variety of things that needed to be done. There was mending to do, bread to be baked, scraps of cloth to be sewn into a quilt, more coal to be brought in for the stove, not to mention the breakfast dishes to be washed and lunch not far off. But Lilli wasn’t in the mood to do any of them. She just didn’t understand how Stefan could idle away the time without showing any sign of boredom. She would never have believed his quietness could be so irritating, and sent a glaring look in his direction.

He was putting on his wraps, layering clothes to combat the cold outside. She supposed he was going out to check on the horses, but it seemed like desertion to her. It was bad enough trying to talk to her taciturn husband and keep a conversation going, but it was worse having no one to talk to at all.

“Where are you going?” she demanded, ready to take the kettle off the stove and accompany him to the horse shed, rather than stay in this four-walled prison alone.

“Hunting.” The one word was the only answer that he felt was required as he reached up to take the rifle from its rack above the door.

She should have guessed, Lilli realized. He’d mentioned they needed fresh meat this morning when he’d gone out to water the horses.

“I’ll come with you,” she said.

“It is too cold.” That was the end of it as far as Stefan was concerned. Once he made up his mind about something, he rarely budged. Lilli half-suspected that since Franz Kreuger didn’t allow his wife to go hunting with him, Stefan wouldn’t permit it, either. Stefan seemed to be acquiring more and more of their neighbor’s characteristics.

When he came over to kiss her good-bye, she coolly offered him her cheek. She felt the whiskery brush of his beard and the brief warmth of his mouth against her skin, then he was straightening. The affectionate caress meant nothing, its very blandness taking meaning from the gesture.

“I vill be back for supper.” He turned and walked to the door.

She didn’t offer to send any food along with him or even wish him success in his hunting. As she heard the pull of the latchstring, Lilli suddenly examined her heartless attitude.

The cause went deeper than mere resentment at being deprived of company and left in this small place alone. This inner dissatisfaction had been growing for some time. She could trace it all the way back to that first meeting with Webb Calder.

Plagued by this guilt that always came with any thought of Webb Calder, Lilli hurried to the door that had swung shut. A flurry of snowflakes

swirled in when she opened it, letting in another bitter blast of frigid air. Stefan was tramping through the snow several yards from the house, the rifle on his shoulder.

“Stefan!” She hunched her shoulders together, shivering in the opening. When he turned, she felt the old affection and friendship for him flowing through her again. She realized she was being ungrateful and unappreciative of his kindness and goodness toward her. “It looks like it could storm. Don’t go too far!” she called after him in concern.

He lifted a hand, acknowledging he’d heard, then turned and began traipsing across the snow, a dark, hunched figure in a gray-white world. Lilli closed the door and hurried over to the stove to warm herself. She looked about their home. When he returned, she vowed to have everything done and a hot supper waiting for him. The kettle was simmering to heat the snow-water in the basin. She poured it in. Working was always the quickest way to get warm, she remembered her mother saying that.

The clouds were flattening themselves close to the barren snowscape, making land indiscernible from sky. The dark plot in the gray picture grew steadily larger as Webb approached it. The smoke rising from the chimney pipe blended into sky. He could smell it in the air, but he couldn’t distinguish its wispy trail from the gray-spun clouds.

The snow-covered wagon sat next to the bleached poles of the corral. The wind shelter for the draft team had been closed to create a shed where they could seek protection from inclement weather. At the moment, Webb could see the two mares nosing at the straw scattered in clumps next to the shed, offering them browse. There was a glimmer of light showing from inside the shanty, mostly blocked by the covering over the window.

The black gelding stopped of its own accord near the door, as if sensing this was their destination. Webb’s legs were numb and stiff with the cold. They felt like two dead sticks when he tried to dismount, and didn’t seem inclined to support him when he did step down. He stamped them to bring back the feeling, with jarring results as pain shot through his body.

“Hello in the house!” he hailed the shack’s occupants, notifying them of his presence.

Despite the scarf around his mouth and nose, his face felt numb and his lips were unwilling to form the words. The air was so cold that it hurt to breathe. Much longer out in this cold and he’d turn into an icicle. He moved stiffly to the rear of his horse to unlash the carcass. His call had met with no response from inside the cabin. Webb paused to call again.

“Hey! Anybody home?” He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted.

The door was opened a narrow crack. He recognized Lilli despite the heavy blanketlike shawl wrapped around her. He stood there for a long second, breathing hard from the cold and the effort of breathing at all. She said nothing in greeting.

“Tell your husband to come outside and give me a hand with this.” Webb finally spoke to break the silence, and bent down to continue his awkward attempt to untie the nearly rigid corpse of the cow. Snow crunched under the footsteps of someone approaching him. He glanced up to see Lilli coming toward him.

“What’s that?” The shawl was up around her face, muffling her voice.