FLAT NOSE EMORY YARNS A YARN
Chapter 4
With the days growing shorter and the nights longer, he used the extra hours of darkness to teach her how to manufacture clothing and footgear. He taught her the proper method of scraping and tanning the hides and rabbit skins that he had collected. She was a quick study, and in no time, there was a stack of cured and tanned hides piled in a corner of the almost finished cabin. Later in the quiet cabin-bound time of winter, she used the knowledge he had given her to make her first buckskin dress.
During the day when they had the time, he imparted all the wisdom he had learned about survival in the mountains. He taught her to shoot the Hawken, which threw her on her backside the first time she pulled the trigger. After a little practice, she could hit the target nine out of ten tries. Then he showed her how to set traps for the small edible animals and birds that rounded out their diet. An old Crow woman at her father’s trading post had already shown her the edible plants and roots that added a little variety to their menu. Then he taught her to read sign; to listen to the trees and the birds and the animals; to be alert to any strangeness she might feel in the air, in the sound of the forest, or even in herself.
But at long last, the cabin was completed. It was a large rectangular building that had been divided into two rooms. There was a window in what would become the bedroom, and a corner had been set aside for the natural functions of life. A window in the main room faced west with the door on the south side of the room. Opposite the window he had constructed a large fieldstone fireplace that would hold a five-foot long log. A fire would burn all night long. There wouldn’t be a great deal of creature comforts in the cabin, but it was large and roomy–for a mountain man’s cabin–and would see them snugly through the winter. They set about to furnish it. Vincent made a table with two chairs, a large bedframe, shelves, two benches that he set in front of the fireplace, a sturdy door, and window covers that could be raised to let in the sunlight. Catherine gathered dried grass and rushes to put in the bedframe then covered it with a buffalo hide. She curtained off the bedroom with a Hudson blanket. On the day that Vincent hung his guns–primed and ready–on the deer antlers over the fireplace, they moved into our cabin as Catherine put it. Vincent was immensely pleased and decided that the winter would have been decidedly lonely without her company.
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One day he returned from his trapline with all of his traps. There would be no more trapping this year. Willow Killer, the first real cold spell of fall had stripped the willows of their leaves: a sure sign that winter had arrived. It was time to stock wood for the long cold months ahead. Their food was already put away and water was no problem as they could always melt snow after the little crick froze over. He added more wood to the already huge woodpile until he was satisfied that they had enough to last until next spring. He downed two more deer, a bear, a moose, two elk, and several rabbits. As the weather had turned quite frigid, he hung them from the trees around the cabin and cleaned the hides, readying them for tanning. Catherine looked lost in his great heavy bear coat as she helped him with the scraping. He couldn’t keep from admiring her ability to make the best of the strange and different situation that she found herself in. He knew his cabin and clearing were a far cry from the ease and comfort of New York.
Two days later she awoke to a dark as black as a moonless night. It felt like morning but looked like the middle of the night. Pulling aside the hanging blanket, she stepped into the large combination room, noting Vincent rolled up in his buffalo hide stretched out in front of the fireplace. Quietly tiptoeing through the pale reddish glow emanating from the dying embers of the fire, she approached and opened the window cover only to be inundated by a cascade of cold, white snow. The opening was completely filled with new fallen snow. "Oh my," she sputtered, wiping the snow from her face. They were snowed in. She wondered how he would get outside to get their meat and care for the horses.
"What is it, Catherine?" Vincent mumbled sleepily.
"We’re snowed in." Gleefully, she grabbed a handful of snow and rolled it into a ball that went whizzing by his ear to splatter on the wood floor. Giggling at his surprised look, she quickly closed the window.
"Catherine?" he gaped at her. She was showing him that side of her that he loved to see. Her eyes were sparkling with mischief as she dipped her head and said, "I’m sorry; I just couldn’t resist." She laughed out loud, "You should have seen the look on your face."
"Well, just wait, winter isn’t over," he warned her and pulled on his leather pants. After rolling up his bed, he stoked the fire, and soon had a roaring fire that brightened the room. Catherine lit several whale oil lamps, and the cabin was even brighter still.
Now began a long stretch of enforced idleness. They kept as busy as possible, but there where periods were they just sat before the fire, talking about any and everything. She told him about her life back east: how easy it was compared to the way she was living now, of dances and fancy balls, of the overblown solicitude of her male friends treating her as if she was incapable of doing anything for herself, and of her trek to her father’s trading post after the death of her grandparents. As he listened to her, his estimation of her increased tenfold. She was far stronger than he had thought at first.
He regaled her with his life in the mountains: of how he had been found and raised by Jacob Wells, about how the mountaineers taught him all they knew; and especially about how the life of a mountain man forged the character of a man, made him aware of all that happened around him, how the smallest action of bird, animal, wind, or even water would make him aware of danger that was not apparent to greenhorns, made him strong and silent, needing all his senses to keep him alive in a world of ever present danger. It made her aware of how much time he spent in keeping her safe and alive, and her estimation of him grew in proportion to the awareness she had of that effort. She began to look upon him in a different light. He could just as easily have sent her on her way back to her father with no further thought of whether she lived or died, but she knew that was something that he could never in good conscience do. He was a man of deep caring and would help any who needed his aid without thought of compensation or reward.
They discovered that they had much in common: a love of reading and poetry that she secretly thought was strange for a mountain man, appreciation of friends and family, a love of nature, and a deep spirituality of the soul. Many a night was spent in reading to each other from the many books he had brought from his father’s library, and their discussions often turned lively and vigorous. One night he pulled out a pack of playing cards and a handmade cribbage board. He taught her to play cribbage, and she showed him how to play two-handed bridge. He even had a hand-carved chess set made from buffalo horn with which they played checkers and chess. But all this play was only done when they had finished curing the last hides he had brought home. She had given the deer hide shirt back to him and was wearing the deerskin shift that he had shown her how to make, but she wanted another one. He aided her with the design and showed her how to make a beautiful, soft deerskin dress of hide tanned in the Indian manner. The hide was a lovely off-white color. When she finished it, she modeled it for him, and he thought that no one could be lovelier than a radiant Catherine, proud of her accomplishments.