snowed for two days, and when finally there was a pause in its falling, Tom went outside and looked at the few sullen stars in the distant sky, and said they would go in the morning, and pray to get back before the weather changed its mind.
So they hitched Big Gray to the wagon in the first chilly light of dawn. She would have to go with him. He would need help loading and unloading the wagon if they were to have it done before dark, and the boys were needed here to see to the chores. They couldn’t do them, though, and keep an eye on the baby, and anyway, Rachel was only six months and still feeding, and so she must come with them to town, cold or no.
The roads were treacherous still with snow, and Big Gray was old, but as enormous as his name implied, a giant of a horse, and though his strength was clearly on the wane, he was strong enough still to pull the wagon through ruts and drifts with no great effort. Janet sat beside Tom, the baby Rachel bundled on her lap. If everything went well, they would get there and load their provisions and make it home before dark.
Things weren’t going well, though, they hadn’t since that late spring, and even in the wan daylight, the road was not a good one. Halfway into town, Tom missed a bad rut, and they broke a wheel. There was nothing for it but that he must repair it, and that took a considerable while, so that, by the time they reached town, and bought what they needed, and loaded it into the wagon, and started for home, the day was already quit, night falling, and with it, fresh snow.
The night got quickly darker, and the snow fell harder, whipped now by a merciless wind, and Big Gray, plodding through ever-deeper drifts, began to tire, you could see the slump in his shoulders, and the way his hooves sometimes lost their rhythm.
Rachel began to cry, and Janet opened her coat and her dress and nursed her, shielding her from the cold as best she could with the blanket. Even so, her breast felt icy, and she cut the feeding short. Rachel protested and then, once again wrapped in the warmth of the blanket, slept.
“We’ll have to take the short cut,” Tom said. It was the first he had spoken since they left town, and she knew that his silence was a worried one.
“In the dark?” she said, alarmed. “We’ll never get across the bridge.”
“We’ll never make it home the long way,” he said. “Don’t you trouble yourself over that bridge, I’ll get you both home safely, you have my promise on that.”
So he took the cut through the woods, and down the long hill, to the ravine over the creek, and the bridge that spanned it, no more than logs and planks, with a scant inch or two to spare on either side, and Gray didn’t like the crossing at the best of times, in summer, and in daylight. He balked, as they had known he would.
Tom got down from the wagon, and took the reins, and gentled the horse onto the planks. They were slippery, and the wagon slid sideways a little, and Janet caught her breath. It was twenty feet or more down to the creek, and that was nothing now but ice and rocks—but the wheels held.
They went slowly, Tom talking to Big Gray the whole way, his words no more than a murmur to Janet’s ears, and she began to think they would be all right, when something spooked the horse. Maybe a hoof slipped. She never did know what, but he jerked and reared back, and Tom swore aloud, and the wagon slid again. This time, the back right wheel went over the edge.
On the slick bridge, the old horse’s footing was precarious, and the drag of the wagon’s weight pulling him back and sideways threw him off-balance, and just like that, they went down, man and horse, went down hard.
Janet sat there in frozen silence for a long moment, clutching little Rachel to her bosom, and waiting to see if the wagon was going over, but it stayed where it was.
“Tom?” she said finally, in a small voice.
It seemed to take him a long time to answer, but finally he said, “It’s all right, love, I’ll get you down from there,” and a moment after that he loomed beside her in the darkness.
“But what will we do?” she asked, clambering down with his help.
“Gray’s broken a leg,” he said. “We’ll have to leave him, and walk home.”
“From here? But it’s three miles, most of. In this weather? We’ll freeze to death before we get there.”
“There’s nothing else for it now,” he said, and added, in a determined voice, “Never you fear, my love, I swore I’d see you both home and I will, and safely, and the boys can come back tomorrow with the sleds and bring things up to the house.”
Old Gray cried in his pain, and rolled his frightened eyes at her. She cast a tearful glance in his direction, but there was nothing they could do for him, and she set out with her husband, and her baby in her arms.
They had not gone far before he stopped and took off his long heavy coat, heavier than hers because he spent more time out of doors than she did, and put it about her shoulders.
“Tom, you’ll freeze to death,” she said.
“Oh, it will take more than this little bit of a chill to do me in,” he said, and would not take the coat back
It was hard going. The wind beat at them and spat snow in their faces. The cold was bitter, and she thought surely there had never been a night so black outside of hell. The snow had drifted waist high in places, so that they could not step out of it but must push their way through, and Janet was tired in no time. She stumbled, and would have fallen more than once were it not for his strong arm about her shoulders. Even through the coats, hers and his, the cold was bitter, and she could not imagine what he must be suffering.
“Just lift one foot, and put it down,” Tom said, “That’s how the journey’s done, my darling.”
Which she did. The hill up from the ravine was long and, in places, steep, and that took the breath out of you. It was little easier walking when the ground leveled off, but here the trees were thinner, and the wind got at you more fiercely.
“Almost home,” Tom said, and then, finally, they came out of the trees, and there was the clearing, and in the distance, the light of the cabin.
Here, though, she did fall, buried over her head in the smothering snow, and she thought she could go no further, and said, “I’m done for, Tom, take the baby and go.”
He would not hear of it. “I said I’d see you safely home,” he said. He got her somehow to her feet, and said, “We’ll run now, it’ll get the blood moving,” and run they did, staggering, reeling, her chest afire and her feet beyond feeling, and they got to the steps up to the door, and she fell again, and this time, she hadn’t the strength to rise.
The boys had been waiting anxiously for them, though, and they heard her and ran to the door, and Bill, the oldest, took the baby and rushed her to her crib, and Abe got Janet to the rocker in front of the fire.
She had no sooner dropped into the chair, though, than she cried aloud, “Oh, you wicked boys, you’ve left your father to freeze on the steps.”
The boys looked puzzled at one another, and went to the door and opened it. “There’s no one here, Ma,” Bill said after a moment.
She got up and came herself to look, standing in the mocking wind. There, where the snow was crushed down, was where she had lain on the steps a moment before, and in the distance, just before the trees, the dark stain where she had fallen and Tom
