He knew all the wolf calls. Some men said there were five, some, six. Sam could identify only five. There was the high-keyed rasping whine the parents made when warning or commanding their pups; the hunting call, a loud deep-throated howl in two or more keys, followed by sharp barking; the shrill eager yelping when in pursuit of prey; the announcement that the prey had been brought down, a deep growl exploding up the victorious throat; and the mating cry in midwinter, which was the chilling howlin the frozen white nights.
As far as Sam could figure it out, the Almighty had made the world only for the brave and the strong, both male and female; and though Bill Williams said a woman’s breast was a hard rock on which he could find no trail, and though some of the mountain men agreed with him, Sam thought the female of both man and beast had her special virtues. He liked best of all the way some of them would fight to the death for their children—and what female, he wondered, had ever fought more magnificently than the mother on the Musselshell? Not all mothers would fight, or even most of them. The buffalo cow, the big strong lubber, would beller her head off and bug her eyes out, or make short charges at the wolves determined to bring her baby down. She would fall behind with her calf and then have to make the choice of leaving it or going with the herd. She always went with the herd. So did the elk mother, and so, Sam had heard, did the caribou mother. It was only a few of the flesh-eating mothers that really fought for their young.
The bitch wolf would fight till she died. Or the Wolverine, the bobcat, the badger, the weasel, the bear, the cougar, and many more. These were all natural fighters. But the most remarkable courage, for Sam, was shown by some of the feathered mothers, who actually had nothing to fight with. He had seen a grouse mother fly into the face of a wolf and try to strike it down with her wings; and in the next moment he had seen that mother torn into pieces, while her downy little ones scattered to the undergrowth. He had seen the avocet spread her wings, open her absurdly long bill, and rush on her long spindly legs at the enemy, only to die as suddenly as the grouse mother. He had seen a horned lark with a leg and a wing broken rush from her nest at an enemy, half walking and rolling and fluttering on the good leg and the good wing. What the poor crippled creature, little more than a handful of feathers and song, had thought she could do against a coyote Sam could not imagine; or why the Creator had put such courage in creatures that had nothing to fight with. God had built into the osprey hawk knowledge of how to carry a fish in flight, so there would be the least possible wind resistance; into the shrike mother the knowledge of how to spread her wings in hot weather, to protect the babies in her nest; and into the red-tailed hawk the sense of how to execute, in mid-air, a deft maneuver when the falcon came down to strike—the redtail suddenly turned over on its back and presented its talons. But he had not built into the meadow lark, one of his superlative musicians, the sense not to build its nest on the ground, where every coyote, bobcat, weasel, and wolverine could easily find it.
Reading nature, for Sam, was like reading the Bible; in both, the will of the Creator was plain. Or so anyway it had seemed to him since coming west; his experiences had run the gamut from the tenderest to the most savage emotions. One day he had looked down from a ledge on three baby redtails in a nest with a dead squirreclass="underline" one baby hawk, no larger than his brothers but more aggressive, was so determined to have all the squirrel that when the other two strove for a part of it he struck them fiercely with talons and beak, and then, seizing one by the tail, upended him and pushed him over the rim of the nest and down. One morning he had lain in daylight dusk in a kind of tent he had made and watched the marvelous flight of two swallows flashing back and forth just above him, as they looked over his interior to see if it was suitable for a nest; and another time he had observed the amazing mating dance of the sage cock. The birds had returned to their strutting grounds, to which they came year after year; and while the plainly dressed hens looked for insects and seemed not to care at all for wooing, the handsome males showed themselves off in dance steps. A cock would take six or eight quick steps and half turn, his wings drooping, his spiked tail spread to its fullest width, his proud head high and back, his chest pulled full of arrogance. He looked as if he were showing off the pure snowy whiteness of the feathers around his neck. As he danced, repeating his steps and half turn, feathers parted and small bare areas of his body became visible, looking like gray leather; and his air sacs, for all the world like two eggs nesting in white down, alternately filled and collapsed. As the air sacs collapsed he uttered a kind of gobbling or plopping sound and raised his wings, holding them high an instant and letting them fall. This part of his act he usually repeated three times, and then danced again. His gutturals were in a series of three and at the end of the third the cock voiced a high flutelike sound that carried to the farthest hen in the area. When thirty or forty cocks were dancing and strutting the mountain men thought it one of the doggonedest spectacles they had ever seen. But whether it was the loon treading with both feet and wing tips at high speed across the waters and uttering his insane yell, or the hummingbird poised on wings that moved too fast for the human eye, while with her long bill she thrust deep into the throat of her baby and pumped food into its stomach, or meadow lark or purple finch or bluebird or wood thrush pouring upon the golden air their liquid notes, or the water ouzel diving twenty feet to stroll along the bottom of a pool, or the snipe’s tail feathers making fantastic music at dusk, or the harsh symphony from the music boxes of a hundred frogs and toads, it was all for Sam a part of a divine plan and he loved it all. What made him most unhappy were the hours he had to give to sleep, in a life that was short at best. He thought that possibly the Creator had given sleep to His creatures so that they would awaken with the eyes of morning and a fresh discovery of the world.
Sam was thinking these thoughts as he rode down the Musselshell and came close to Kate’s shack. He was in a more sentimental mood than was usual for him—deep gone in mush and molasses, Bill might have said if he could have looked into Sam’s soul; for Sam was thinking of the bones in the cairn and his arms were filled with flowers. His first sight of the woman was halfway up the hill with a pail of water; he sat and watched her around her plants and flowers, and his thoughts went out to all the wild mothers he knew.
"Hello, Kate," he said after riding up to her yard. He had hoped that her name would make her look at him but she gave no heed at all. She looked thinner, she looked older. There was a lot of white in her hair now and deep seams all over her face. He thought she was not yet forty but she looked eighty. Instead of moccasins—he and other men had brought her a dozen pairs—she still wore her tattered old shoes, bound to her feet with leather strings. Her garments were cotton rags covered with patches. But her sage looked nice and her flowers looked eager and strong.
He wondered if she would ride his packhorse and go with him down the river to meet a steamboat, but he knew she would not. When her pail was empty she went back down the hill and the moment she was out of sight Sam looked into the cabin. Nothing had changed. The bed was still just inside the door, and over by the north wall were a few things including a pile of skins. He saw no rifle or axe or knife. She seemed not to know that there were enemies in the world, perhaps because she had sunk so deep into loneliness and sorrow, or had entered so fully into heaven. The time would come, he supposed, when she would forget to eat, or to wrap herself against the cold.