Chapter Five
The storm came earlier than anyone had expected, which was another way of saying it came before anyone was ready to admit winter had arrived.
Snow had fallen before in Yeti. Ella had seen it dust the roofs, gather in the seams of the woodpile, and cling to spruce trees as if someone had sifted flour over the whole town.
That snow had been pretty in a cold, inconvenient sort of way.
It had made the paths brighter and the mud less certain. This snow was different.
Ella woke before dawn because the cabin was too quiet. Not peaceful. The sort of quiet that meant the world outside had changed without permission.
She lay still a moment, listening to David breathe from the pallet near the stove. The fire had burned low. The roof groaned once above them. Somewhere beyond the door, wind dragged itself along the cabin wall and then struck the corner hard enough to make the latch tremble.
Ella sat up carefully. The window was a gray square with no shape beyond it. Usually, she could see the leaning spruce nearest the path, the end of the woodpile, and where the trail bent toward town. Now there was only white pressed against the glass.
She counted before she meant to. One sack of flour under the shelf, less than half full.
Beans enough for ten suppers if stretched with potatoes.
Four potatoes, one onion, coffee enough for David for perhaps twelve days if he did not drink extra at the mill.
Wood beside the stove for morning only. More outside, buried now, unless David had stacked the top row beneath the eaves as he sometimes did when the weather smelled wrong.
David stirred when she crossed the room. “Is it morning?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Yes.” Ella lifted the curtain with two fingers, then let it fall. “But the road is gone.”
That woke him fully. He rose, pulled on his boots, and went to the door. When he opened it, snow pushed inward at once, powdering the threshold and his trouser legs. Beyond him, the world was white and moving. David shut the door against the wind. “That’s a hard one.”
Ella looked toward the shelf where the ledger sat wrapped in cloth.
It was not only hard. It was early. Too early for the stores to have been fully moved.
Too early for every household to know what it lacked.
Too early for the people who had meant to make one more trip to Katie’s mercantile before winter truly began.
She knew who had meant to make that trip.
The thought came so quickly that for a moment she did not trust it. She crossed the room, opened the cloth, and found the page she needed. Her finger moved down the columns. Belle. Lula. Sally. Peabody. Myrtle. Maggie. Josie. Agnes. Ella.
Peabody.
She had a pile of goods ready to take to them, and it was her plan to do it that morning, but...things had changed. The snow would make it difficult to reach the Peabodys’ cabin.
“Peabody,” Ella said.
David turned from the door. “What about them?”
“They do not have enough food.” She looked at the page, though she did not need it any longer. “Not for a storm. Not if the path stays buried.”
David’s face changed in that small way she had come to know meant he was taking her words seriously before deciding anything else. He reached for his coat. “I’ll go to the mill. The men will be gathering there.”
Ella folded the ledger closed. “I am coming.”
His hand stopped on the peg. “Ella.”
She disliked the way her name sounded when it carried worry. She stood straighter, though standing straight did not make her feel taller. “I know the stores. I know what was left at Maggie’s. I know the safest route to the Peabodys’ cabin.”
“The men can break trail.”
“They can break the wrong trail.” The words came out sharper than she intended, but she did not take them back.
“The creek bank drifts high near the bridge. If they follow the road, they will lose time. The sled track runs between the spruces behind Maggie’s house.
It stays firm because the trees catch the snow. ”
David looked at her for a long moment. The wind pressed against the cabin again. The latch shivered.
At last, he took down her coat before his own. “Then we had best go quickly.”
By the time they reached the mill, if the word reaching could be used for the slow battle through snow, several men had gathered near the open doors.
Sebastian was there, his hat crusted white and his usual good humor buried somewhere beneath a scowl of concentration.
Mr. Johnson stood beside him with a shovel in hand.
Two other lumbermen were arguing over whether the main path should be cleared first.
“The road is where roads go,” one of the men said.
Ella stood just inside the door, snow melting on her sleeves, and felt every pair of eyes find her. She had expected it. Expecting did not help.
David did not speak for her. That startled her more than it should have. He stood at her shoulder, steady and silent, leaving the space open because the knowledge was hers.
Ella opened her mouth. No sound came at first. Sebastian’s gaze flicked from her to David, and then, to his credit, he closed his own mouth before filling the silence.
“The Peabodys need food,” Ella said. “Today.”
Mr. Johnson frowned. “Peabody was in day before yesterday.”
“For fabric. Not flour. Not beans.” Ella wished she had brought the ledger, though the page sat complete in her mind. “Mrs. Peabody was to collect beans after Sunday. She did not.”
The men looked at one another. It was not disbelief exactly. It was the hesitation of people as they rearranged a problem around a new center.
“We go by the main path,” one man said. “It’s wider.”
“No.” Ella’s heart struck once, hard. The word seemed too large after it left her, but it was the right word. “Not the main path.”
The room went still enough that she could hear snow sliding from the mill roof in a soft rush.
She made herself continue. “The bridge will drift. The low place before it fills from both sides. Behind Maggie’s house, the old sled track runs higher.
It bends twice, then meets the creek above the narrow crossing.
There are spare provisions stored in Maggie’s shed.
Flour. Beans. Dried apples. Salt. They were set aside because the shelf inside was full. ”
“You remember all that?” Mr. Johnson asked.
Ella looked down at her gloves. “Yes.”
Sebastian clapped his hands together once. “Then we go the way Mrs. Sanders says.”
No one argued after that. Perhaps because Sebastian had made it sound simple. Perhaps because David had not moved from beside her. Perhaps because the storm outside had made pride seem smaller than hunger.
They took two sleds, four shovels, rope, and every sack Ella named from Maggie’s shed. Maggie appeared at the door with her shawl over her hair and did not ask why Ella knew exactly which corner held the beans. She only handed over another cloth-wrapped bundle.
“Dried meat,” Maggie said. “If you’re right, they’ll need it.”
Ella tucked it between flour and beans where it would not slide loose. “They will.”
The journey began badly and became worse.
The first stretch behind Maggie’s house was sheltered, just as Ella had said, but sheltered did not mean easy.
Snow came past her knees in places and higher where the wind had curled it into soft ridges.
The men took turns breaking the trail. David went first until Sebastian pulled him back with a muttered remark about saving some strength for the rest of the town.
Ella followed behind the sleds, watching the trees, the slope of the ground, and the places where white lay too smooth.
Smooth snow could mean untouched ground. It could also mean a hollow.
“Left,” she called when Mr. Johnson angled too far right.
The word disappeared into the wind.
She swallowed, cupped her hands around her mouth, and tried again. “Left!”
This time he heard. He turned, and three steps later his shovel struck the buried edge of a stump. Had the sled followed where he meant to go, it would have tipped hard enough to spill half the load down the slope.
Mr. Johnson looked back at her. Snow clung to his beard. “Good eye.”
Ella did not answer. Her face felt hot despite the cold.
They reached the creek crossing near midday, though the sun was only a pale thought behind the clouds. The narrow place was half covered, the ice showing in dark strips where the wind had scoured it clean. One of the men stepped forward.
“Wait,” Ella said.
He did not hear or did not think she meant him. His boot came down at the edge where snow had bridged over running water.
“Stop!”
The force of her own voice startled her. It startled the man too. He froze. David was beside him in two strides, catching his arm and pulling him back as the snow crust broke away beneath his heel. Dark water flashed below before the pieces vanished under the current.
No one spoke for several seconds.
Ella could hear her pulse in her ears. She had shouted. Not spoken. Not answered. Shouted. Her throat felt raw with it, as if the word had scraped its way out.
David turned to her. There was no alarm in his face now, though there had been a moment before. Only something quiet and bright that made her look away.
“Where?” Sebastian asked, all cheer gone from his voice.
Ella pointed to the left, where two spruce roots made a dark arch under the snow. “There. The bank is stone beneath. One at a time. Rope first.”
This time, no one questioned her.
They crossed slowly, the sleds pulled by rope and guided by men who moved with their knees bent and their hands ready. Ella waited until the last sack was over before stepping onto the stone herself. David held out his hand, but he did not reach for her unless she chose to take it.
She chose to take it.
The Peabody cabin appeared near midafternoon, though appeared was not the right word. It emerged. First the chimney, then the slant of the roof, then the front wall half buried in drift. No smoke rose from the chimney. That frightened Ella more than she expected.
David and Sebastian dug the door clear while Mr. Johnson went to the window and called inside. A child answered, thin and high. Then Mrs. Peabody’s voice came, strained with relief.
When the door finally opened inward, cold air and stale smoke drifted out together.
Mrs. Peabody stood wrapped in a blanket with the baby against her shoulder and two children pressed behind her skirts.
They had one heel of bread left, no beans, and hardly enough dry wood inside to bring the fire back properly.
The men moved at once. Wood came in. Snow was knocked from boots. A fire was coaxed from coals so faint Ella would have called them ash if she had not looked closely. The sacks were carried inside and set where she told them, away from the damp wall and not too near the stove.
Mrs. Peabody sank onto a chair with the baby and began to cry without sound.
Ella did not know what to say to tears. She knew what to do with flour. She measured some into a bowl, added water, salt, and a careful portion of dried meat, then set beans to soak for later though later felt too far away for the children watching her hands.
“Small cakes first,” she said to Mrs. Peabody. “They cook quickly. Soup after.”
Mrs. Peabody nodded, wiping her face with the corner of the blanket. “How did you know?”
Ella kept her eyes on the dough. “You were to collect beans after Sunday.”
“I forgot.”
“I did not,” Ella said.
It sounded proud after she said it. She had not meant it that way. But Mrs. Peabody only reached for her hand with fingers chilled and rough.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Ella’s throat tightened. “The cakes will burn.”
They did not. She turned them in time.
By the time the rescuers prepared to leave, the Peabody cabin had smoke rising properly from the chimney, soup beginning to scent the room, and enough supplies stacked against the inner wall to carry them through several days.
Mrs. Peabody stood at the door with one child pressed to each side and the baby asleep against her shoulder.
“Mrs. Sanders,” Mrs. Peabody said as they stepped back into the snow.
Ella turned because that was her name now, though it still surprised her sometimes.
Mrs. Peabody shifted the baby from one arm to the other. “I’m glad you came.”
The words were plain. No flourish. No laughter. That made them heavier.
Sebastian nodded. “Next time the town argues over a road, we ask Ella first.”
A few of the men murmured agreement. Ella looked down quickly, but she could not keep from feeling the words. It wasn’t a burden. Not exactly. Respect, perhaps. She wasn’t certain how respect was supposed to feel, but it did not sting the way being stared at usually did.
The walk home was slower. The storm had not ended, but it had softened. Snow still fell, yet it came down straighter now, less like an attack and more like weather. David walked beside Ella rather than ahead, matching his stride to hers though the path was broken and he could have gone faster.
For a long while, he said nothing. Ella was grateful for that. Her legs ached. Her throat ached too, though she had not spoken so much as other people did in an ordinary morning. Speaking when it mattered seemed to use more of a person than speaking merely to fill silence.
At the creek crossing, David offered his hand again. She took it again. This time, she did not let go as quickly once they were on the other side.
“You were brave today,” he said.
Ella watched her boots sink and lift from the snow. Brave was a word for loud people, she thought. For Lula with a rifle. For Sebastian laughing in danger’s face. For men who crossed frozen creeks without hesitating because they had never been taught hesitation was sometimes wisdom.
“I was frightened,” she said.
“I know.” David’s hand tightened slightly around hers, then eased. “That is why I said brave.”
She did not answer.