In Calamity's Wake by Natalee Caple Read Free Book Online Page B

the deer. She was young and healthy-looking. I searched for a rock about the size of a finch’s body. I looked the deer over carefully and then I cut the skin around her neck and pulled it down until I could put the rock under the skin and tie it off tightly, making a kind of a hitch. Then I cut off her lower legs, holding them against the tree and using the hatchet. I sliced the skin up her legs to her underside and made sure she was cut all the way to the neck. Then I tied more rope around the hitch I had made in her skin and I went back to get my horse. It took a long bloody time to pull her skin off, but once the skin started it came off clean with a loud rip and lay like a discarded garment beneath her. I butchered the meat into small pieces and filled two bags with it. I draped the skin over my saddle.
    When I was done there was still plenty left for Mr. Bear and Missus Wolf and all their coyote, fox and raven neighbours. I packed the bundles on the back of my horse with my other gear and we went looking for a smokehouse.
    A S I RODE into Lethbridge all the clean rich ladies riding shotgun in their husbands’ Packards and Oldsmobiles down the wide roads stared at me asthough I were a Hallowe’en apparition. They were like owls their heads rotated so. The sound of those cars. It felt so strange to look down on them. Blood seeping through the bags had stained my horse’s sides and I had had no chance to wash after the butchering. I was covered in shades of blood. It amused me to take out my rifle and ride with it held across my saddle as if I were a gunfighter entering a frontier town.
    I found the trading post in the centre of town; it was a little wooden house with a tall brick false front in that top-hat style that suggests a second floor. I left my horse staring after me. The high sound of a little bell tripping gave away my entry. A woman was sorting accounts behind the counter. Around her were piss-pots and fry pans and top hats and saddles and canteens and jars of buttons and piles of socks and spools of belts, spotting scopes and stuffed parrots and bicycle parts and every sort of thing. A thick stack of dollar bills lay in a drawer before her that she shut quickly. She frowned at my appearance and I held up the deerskin.
    If you are a bandit woman you have come to the wrong place. If you want to sell me that skin it has to be tanned. And if those are bags of meat and you are here to sell them then they have to be cured, dried or smoked. Which, by your meagre look, I am guessingthey are not. You can’t just kill a beast and sling it around my place!
    I meant no offence. Can you lend me the wood and screens to build a smokehouse and I’ll smoke some meat for you? Or just tell me where to find one and I’ll give you the skin for free, I offered.
    She shook her head and turned her back on me. Her backside was half as broad as the counter. The walls were hidden behind racks of coats. An open armoire revealed a selection of wedding dresses and mourning suits. She pretended to be counting blankets, waiting for me to leave. The stack of blankets was neatly folded but she stroked and patted them as if soothing wrinkles from fine linen.
    I can make do with a crate and a hammer and some old screen, I said. I’ll give you half the meat.
    She squared her shoulders, put her hands on her hips and turned back to me. She clucked her tongue and reached over her head to finger a vast swath of beaded necklaces, red, turquoise, white, yellow and pearl, hanging from a hook in a low beam She assessed me and sighed.
    Maybe I could help you if you were to buy something. I have some fresh imported Hutterite chicken. You look like you could use some meat.
    What makes it Hutterite chicken? I asked.
    She shrugged. Conversion, I suppose, and then betrayal. Have you got any salt? she asked.
    I don’t.
    She pursed her lips and squinted at the weak sunlight. I’ll give you a bag of salt if you’ll help