They found where the tracks moved on, and leaning forward in the saddle, Melody started following them.
“Where are you going?”
“To see if we can come up on it. We’ll probably never have another chance to see one.”
“Hey! Wait now! They’re dangerous!”
She looked at him as if to say, “So?”
“Suppose you do? And suppose he doesn’t like it?”
“Then he’d have to run fast enough to catch us.”
“He just might do that.”
“Damn it, Macurdy! Who’s the one that climbed the tree to chase the jaguar out?”
“I didn’t have any choice.”
“Well then, who went into the fallen timber and buffaloed Slaney? And who went into the Kormehri camp and fronted down a whole damned company?”
“I had to do those things, honey. I didn’t have any choice!”
“Macurdy, you can be so exasperating!”
“Besides, you’re pregnant. If something happens to you . . .”
She swore at him, and turning her horse, trotted across the bottomland and up onto the terrace, Macurdy trotting Hog a bit behind. He knew what would happen next, and he was right; when she got onto the firmer high ground, she kicked her horse to a gallop. The last he saw of her, she’d crossed a field of corn stubble and cleared the rail fence on the other side. He shook his head, wondering if she’d ever get over her reckless streak. After the baby comes, he told himself. If she didn’t jiggle and jar it to death first. He wasn’t going to bring that up though. Not again.
To his relief, there was no predation. The great boar passed through the neighborhood leaving no damage behind.
They had snow cover two weeks before the solstice, which everyone said was early. And when, a month later, it had deepened instead of melting, they said it was the hardest winter they’d ever seen. Finally, in mid-One-Month, a thaw arrived, with an all-night rain that took the snow out at one shot.
Meanwhile Melody had begun to swell, and not long afterward could feel the fetus move inside her. In bed, she’d place Macurdy’s hand where he could feel it, and he decided he loved her more than ever. She was more affectionate than ever, too, given to kissing him without warning—or without cause, so far as he could see.
One night after they’d made careful love, she lay gentle fingers on his cheek. “Liiset calls you Curtis,” she said. “Is that what Varia called you?”
“Um-hmm.”
“Would you like me to call you that?”
“If you’d like. I like whatever you call me.” He chuckled. “Except when you’re mad at me. Some of those names I don’t like too well.”
“Curtis,” she said thoughtfully. “Curtis. I like it.” She kissed him. “Curtis, I love you. I love you very much.”
And when they got up in the morning, she still called him Curtis. She stopped running her horse, too, settling for a walking gait, or an easy trot. She’s settling down, he told himself. At last.
In the beginning of Two-Month, with the ground bare, the big freeze struck. The fireplaces, never adequate in cold weather, seemed almost useless now. More blankets were piled on the beds, enough that they had to wake up to turn over. Ice froze in the pail in the kitchen, and despite the fireplace, burst the ceramic pitcher on the washstand in their bedroom. Macurdy let Blue Wing perch on the mantle in the living room, though the bird suffered from claustrophobia indoors. Then, blowing on his fingers from time to time, the squire of Macurdy Manor sat down and drew plans for a brick stove, with flues to be built in the walls between the living room and the rooms adjacent, intending to build it the next summer.
The big freeze lasted for four days, cold enough that when he went outside, even at midday, the hairs in his nostrils stiffened. Something which, back home in Washington County, was taken to mean the temperature was below zero.
This time the cold broke without a storm; on the fifth day it simply warmed up. Not up to freezing—not that warm—but the bright sun felt good on his face, and the cows were let out for the exercise. The sparrows and crows were out too, those that hadn’t died. And Blue Wing. After five days with only brief hours outside, he flew high and wide. “The river is frozen,” he announced when he returned, and said that was something rare for the Green. The ground was certainly frozen—as hard as the new concrete pavement on Main Street back in Salem.