Chapter 39:
Logan got up out of his bed and wandered to the cabin door, looking out at the moon, hanging round and full over the far fence of the pasture. He'd woken from another dream of her. Her blue eyes had been laughing back at him as she rode Thunder bareback across the prairie toward the creek. Her happy laughter had floated back on the breeze to him. "Race you, Papa!" Dark Star had done his best as Logan urged him after the other horse, but Jubilee and Thunder kept running, farther and farther away, and Logan had tried to call to her to stop, to wait for him, but she had disappeared into the distant horizon, and he had finally reined Dark Star up, staring lost and alone in the middle of a vast dry prairie. He'd dismounted, and suddenly Dark Star had reared and gone racing off after Jubilee, and in moments Logan couldn't see him anymore.
He'd woken, sweating and shaking, his face wet with tears. Jubilee had gone almost a year ago, and a few months afterward, a large wildcat had gotten into the horse pens. Dark Star had twisted his leg in a gopher hole, and was injured, and the cat had killed him. Logan had taken Storm and gone hunting, and the cat was now a skin rug in front of his fire, but it hadn't eased the pain of his loss. In the space of three months, his daughter and his favorite horse had gone.
"Oh, God," he whispered now, tears stinging his eyes. He sat on the doorsill, staring outside at the full moon. "Oh, God, why did I let her go? I need her, I want her here so badly!" He wondered what she was doing now. Had she and the Cajun gotten married yet? Maybe she was pregnant now with her first child, walking around with her belly hugely swollen, paraded around by Remy, grinning hugely at the thought of having a son or daughter. Logan's heart contracted. "Oh, God, please give her back," he whispered, staring with tear-blurred eyes at the dusty ground in front of the step.
A sudden soft sound by his elbow startled him, and he rubbed his eyes and looked. It was Snow. The wolf pushed his head under Logan's arm, lowering his chin so Logan could scratch his ears. Logan reached down and scratched absently, briefly distracted from his musings by the wolf's behavior.
When Jubilee had left, Snow had howled in the barn for days. Every time Logan took him off the rope, Snow would head straight for the gate and pause as if waiting for her to walk through it. She never had. Then he'd taken to disappearing for weeks at a time, and Logan had at first thought that, with Jubilee gone, the wolf had gone back to his wild kin. Not so. The wolf would appear on the step every two weeks or so, to be fed, and then would promptly disappear again. Logan figured the wolf was looking for Jubilee. In vain he tried to tell the wolf that she wasn't coming back.
Six months after Jubilee left, the wolf stopped disappearing. Instead he followed Logan everywhere, exactly the way he'd followed Jubilee around. At night he'd stretch out beside the front gate and sleep there, his ears twitching at every sound.
Until a month ago.
A month ago the wolf had been settling in for the night when he suddenly sat bolt upright, his ears twitching, alert, his tail wagging frantically. He'd stayed that way the entire night. In the morning he'd trotted up t his food bowl and licked his breakfast clean, then begged for more, and more, until Logan thought the wolf would burst, and then went about his daily business as calmly as if nothing were wrong. And now he slept on the wildcat skin rug on the floor beside Logan's bed. Sometimes, when Logan had a bad dream, he'd wake up to see a pair of vivid blue wolf eyes looking at him calmly, almost as if the wolf were trying to calm him down. It was, Logan thought as he scratched behind the other ear, as if the damn wolf knew something he didn't.
Had Snow been able to talk, he would have told Logan his guess was correct. He wouldn't have been able to explain it, but he felt that she was coming back. His mistress was coming back.
He had felt her sadness the last time he had seen her, felt her sorrow when she tied him in the den humans made for the horses. He had felt her presence growing fainter and fainter as she rode somewhere away from the human den which she lived in with the male she called 'Papa'. Snow had gone looking for her after that, always ranging toward the east, and then later toward the northeast, which his instinct told him was where she was. He hadn't gone far though, just as far as he could. The pull was there; he knew she was out there, and he knew he could find her. But something had kept him from going.
When wolfkind migrated, they took all the members of their pack with them. Sometimes though, the pack would send an advance scout, a group of two or three wolves (usually with one female), to prepare a new den for the pups and mother wolves that would follow. Perhaps his mistress had gone on such an excursion, to prepare a new den for her human male and for Snow? Because Snow couldn't see her leaving the human male. The male had accepted her into his den and obeyed her commands, so she was part of the human male's pack. And later, he had accepted Snow into the pack, too. And since the human male hadn't chased her out of the pack, that meant she would return. And so Snow had hung around. Packs also only migrated when there was a danger around that the pack couldn't fight off; hadn't his mistress's encounter with the bad male who took off her human fur and left her bleeding been ample reason for moving? Snow had killed the bad male, but maybe there were more of them that he couldn't kill. He knew the human male who loved his mistress didn't like the other bad males who all had the same blue human fur and carried fire sticks all the time. And lately there had been more and more of them around, and Snow knew they made the human male uneasy.
And then, a month ago, Snow had felt that tugging lessen. His mistress was moving again. He'd been anxious, but then he felt her moving from the northeast to the east, and now he was certain she was coming back. She had found a den, then, and she was coming back to get them. He was satisfied, and started eating heavily. When the pack was on the move, they ate lightly. Eating well before a move would keep sufficient reserves of energy in their bodies to last them however long the trip might be. He wished the human male could understand wolf talk like his mistress could; he would have told him that the mistress was coming back, and he had only to wait. But the male had never been as good at understanding Snow as his mistress was. He understood the basic barks like 'out', 'food', 'danger', and 'follow me', but when it came to understanding a touch, a whine, a tail movement, raised and lowered fur, the human male was hopeless. All Snow could do was lie beside him and show him that there was nothing to worry about, and maybe the human male would calm down.
Logan ruffled the wolf's fur as he stared into the blue eyes, so much like Jubilee's. I want her back," he suddenly cried, burying his face in the wolf's neck fur. "Oh, God, I miss her, I want her back! Give my little girl back to me!"
The wolf whined and licked Logan's face reassuringly.
Logan got out of bed slowly, drained and spent. After one of these nights, his body felt like lead, and it was hard getting up to go about the daily chores. He eyed the basket of eggs. No, he wasn't hungry. He didn't want to eat. Again, as they had done a thousand times since she'd gone, his eyes drifted to the abandoned bread box he'd made her, the butter churn he'd bought, the empty bed in the opposite corner of the room. He hadn't had the heart to get rid of any of the things she'd touched and handled on a daily basis. It was as if, by preserving these things for her, he could preserve her memory, fool himself into thinking she would be coming back.
He missed her. Missed her bread, missed her butter, missed her happy chatter around the house, missed her talking to him at night when he was trying to sleep, something he had grumped and grumbled about but now missed ferociously; he missed her reading books aloud to him in the evenings when he was whittling by the fire and her chores were done. He missed her sniping at him about the careless way he tossed clothes over every available piece of furniture.
The horses missed her too. Thunder had finally begun allowing Logan to ride him, but it was a grudging concession. The mares had been used to her bringing them their feed and water, missed her voice as she talked to them in the corral, missed the long rides across the prairie she'd take them for. Her garden lay neglected in the corner of the cabin's yard; Logan hadn't been able to get the ground to produce the long orange carrots and fat potatoes it used to produce for her. It was as if the ground missed her too.
He went to the well and drew a bucket of water, taking it to the pigpen and dumping it into the trough. He did the same to the cow pen, giving the cow and bull water. Without Jubilee around to make butter, the second cow was wasted, and Logan had sold her to a man in town who had needed another cow. He stared into the chicken yard. To feed both of them, he'd hatched out extra hens, and when she had gone, the extra eggs had not been used,. The hens had sat on them until they hatched. His chicken yard was now crowded with chickens, and the two roosters were fighting constantly. Ordinarily he'd have killed the extra and given them to Running Wolf and Red Doe, but the camp of Indians had moved away, too far away for visits anymore. He hadn't seen them in months now.
The number of soldiers at the fort had multiplied, which was why the Indians had moved. Now a day seldom passed that Logan didn't see a patrol of them riding out to the hills to shoot their own dinner; and the talk they brought of war with them made him distinctly uneasy. War was never a good thing. Logan didn't believe in fighting. If the southern states wanted to make their own country, then why not let them, and avoid all that unnecessary bloodshed? It didn't make sense.
He finished feeding and watering the horses, and went to cut a chunk of deer from the cured carcass in the cellar for Snow The wolf ate like he was starving, and Logan picked at some eggs and flapjacks as he watched the wolf eat.
He was getting up to put the tin plate in the pail of dirty dishes left from yesterday when he hard hoof beats pounding on the ground outside. It sounded like the horse was galloping. He frowned. Who could be running up here this urgently?
Snow heard the hoofbeats, and stiffened. His ears, tail, and head went up for just a second before he shot out of the cabin with a happy bark, racing to the fence. Logan followed the wolf out.
A horse had stopped just outside the gate. Logan had never seen a horse like this one. A mare the color of a starless midnight sky stood outside the gates, and a woman sat on her back. Her blue calico dress was the latest in fashion, and the large floppy hat that perched on top of the head obscured the rider's face but obviously kept the sun off. She dismounted in one smooth, fluid move, and opened the gate. As she went in, leading the black mare by the reins, Snow flung himself at the stranger and began wriggling and barking excitedly, like a puppy all over again. She laughed as he jumped up to lick her face, knocking her hat off in the process, and Logan froze when he heard that laugh and saw that face. She was older, her face now subtly prettier by the application of fancy woman's cosmetics, but it was her. It was his little girl.
"Jub…" his voice trailed off in a croak of shock and surprise. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Jubilee…"
She stood and faced him, her face suddenly uncertain. He looked older than she remembered, and for the first time she stopped to think just how old he was. His face had lines of sadness, lines of anguish, etched in it. But he was still her papa, her beloved Papa, here, and she was with him at last… "Papa," she whispered.
He didn't know who moved first, her or him, but suddenly they were in each other's arms, hugging frantically, and Logan's face was streaming with ears of joy. After all the loneliness, the sadness, the pain of longing, she was back where she belonged, with him, here in his arms, and his prayers to God had been answered. Her voice was sobbing into his ear, "Papa…Papa…Papa…oh, Papa, I love you, I'm here, I'm finally here with you and I forgive all the things you said, I understand, and oh, Papa, I love you…"
"I love ya too, darlin'," he sobbed into her hair. He was crying, and she knew it, but he didn't care. She was here, and she was alive, and God, he loved her so much!
