After the Snow by S. D. Crockett Read Free Book Online Page A

awake at this bad time of day. He’s practically dancing for joy.
    Tell me dog, what am I gonna do?
    But my good dog just close his eyes and sleep.
    The mad dog gonna kill me I know.
    He got me thinking about those two starving kids again. He’s standing there barking cos he don’t want to leave them all cold and starving with no mum or dad or nothing. Mad dog live like he permanently in summertime with plenty of food, and he won’t stop barking and tugging on my sleeve with his telling. He just won’t stop. He say, Remember the leveret .
    Once I come back to a snare I set and found a leveret under the hare. It was young but it got its eyes open and everything. Just sitting there helpless with its ears pinned back all soft and silky and a bit pink. Sitting there and its mother all strangled in the noose. Just a bit of blood dropping out her nose onto the snow. That’s what that little girl with her red lips remind me of. The blood on the snow and the young hare lying all scared and flat when I go to pick it up.
    I never lay my snares so early again after that.
    Course I put the leveret up in my place on the Farngod but it been too small so it die anyway. I didn’t keep that tiny skull on a stick. I just bury it up there. I didn’t tell no one. I been sorry about it—I really am.
    Maybe the mad dog aint been a mad dog at all. Maybe it been that mother hare. I got to go back for the kids see, cos if I don’t then the hare and the mad dog gonna come back to me night after night til it been too late and I’m gonna go mad if it do that.
    Reckon I just get those two kids and take them down to the power lines soon as the weather clears. Leave them on the road. A government truck gonna come by cos they keep the roads pretty clear underneath the pylons, even this time of year. Then I reckon the government truck gonna take the kids to the city—that’s where I reckon they come from—cos they’re only kids after all, aint done nothing wrong. And it aint far off my way.
     
     
    First light come up. My dad aint gonna be too pleased knowing I left the tent and the firebox and all the stuff up in the wincone
but I aint hauling my sled up and down the mountain heavy like a boulder. I reckon I’m gonna need to take the sled cos those kids aint ready for a long walk in the snow. No way. It been a dangerous tactic I know cos you never know when the weather gonna come down. But really I aint got no choice. And Dad, you aint here now.
    I put some oatcakes in my pocket. Got my tinder and strike too.
    Outside the wind look manageable but I got to tread careful over that deep snow, even in snowshoes. Back down the mountain, back down into the pass, back to that house stinking of death and the thin girl with the red lips. And I got to be quick so I can drag those hopeless kids back up to my camp in the wincone before night come again or I’m gonna be as starved and frozen as they been. Another thing I got to be careful of is losing my way cos snow’s like a blanket that make everything look the same.
    You see what I mean about the mad dog trying to kill me.
    But my feet just fall down the ridge in the deep snow and it aint too hard to see. The wind stop bluffing around my ears when I get down off the hill. It really tire you out when the wind don’t know what it’s doing, cos one minute it gonna take your hood off and the next it lie so still there aint gonna be a ripple on water.
    All across the hills the snow fold down into the crags and glens. The gray sky touch the hilltops so you can’t see where the hills stop and the sky starts. But that gray sky take the sting out of the cold which is one good thing.
    I struggle and heave and make my way back down into the pass best I can. I got a feeling pretty tired and washed out. Aint
really been too warm or full in my stomach these last few days. And something jittering about inside me. I aint used to being Number One; that’s the truth.
    The peaks of the Rhinogs just grow out of