William believed music was sinful so she knew it wasn’t anything she’d heard since she’d come to live with him.
Mattie plunged her hands into the cold water in the basin and scrubbed the blood away, trying to scrub the dream away with it. William seemed to be able to sense her dreams on her, like a scent that clung. He was already irritated. If she went outside with those strange images still in her eyes, he’d be even angrier.
A few moments later she was outside again, bundled in her coat and mittens and boots. William had his rifle in his hand.
“Show me,” he said.
Mattie indicated the deer path she’d followed earlier. William didn’t like Mattie to walk in front of him and she was careful not to do this. Her tracks were still visible in the snow, in any case. Only a few flurries had fallen since Mattie returned home.
There were crows gathered around the fox corpse, picking at the exposed meat. William shooed them away and they flew off, cawing loudly.
Mattie stood behind him and a little off to the side, so she could see his face. She hated being surprised by his moods. He might decide she was silly for mentioning the fox to him in the first place, and that would stack on top of his earlier mood to create a fury she could not escape.
Sometimes Mattie wondered why he married her, why he’d chosen her in the first place, especially when he always seemed to find fault. He could have picked a different girl, one with more of the qualities he seemed to desire—someone less curious, more biddable.
Mattie watched her husband closely as he scanned the area around the fox. His eyes widened when he saw the paw print. “Did you find any more of these?”
She pointed toward the scrub to their right. “There.”
William went to take a closer look, and it was only then that Mattie noticed the scrub was broken, like something very large had blundered through it. The bark on one of the trees had long, deep claw marks, as if the animal had scraped it as it went by. William ran his hand over the marks, a thoughtful expression on his face.
“If it’s a grizzly, it’s the biggest damned grizzly there ever was,” he said. “I wonder where it came from. Something that big would need a lot of game.”
Mattie remembered then just how sparse game had been over the last few weeks. Both she and William had attributed this to the early cold snap. But maybe it wasn’t the cold at all. Maybe it was this bear, this monster of a bear that was out in the woods eating up all the moose and deer that William wanted to kill and hang in their storehouse for the winter.
“I’d like to think it’s gone from the area,” he said. “The footprints seem to indicate its going down the mountain, anyway. Some lucky fellow is going to shoot it and end up with his name in the newspaper, not to mention the best trophy anyone has ever seen.”
Even if some man did shoot the bear, Mattie would never see his name. She was expressly forbidden from reading anything except the Bible. On the rare occasions that William went into town and returned with a paper he would always lock it in his trunk.
Mattie was not permitted to be in the bedroom when he opened the trunk, and he kept the key on a key ring that was on or near his person at all times. The keys to the cabin and the storehouse were also on this key ring, as well as two strange keys. Mattie didn’t know what these were for, and the one time she’d asked about the keys he’d given her two black eyes so she never asked again.
“Big bear like that would be a lot of meat, though,” he mused. “We could eat all winter on that bear.”
If you can kill it without getting killed yourself, Mattie thought.
William glanced at her, and not for the first time Mattie had the idea that he could hear what she was thinking.
“You don’t think I can kill it?” he said, and there was a glint of something in his ice-chip eyes, something that might have been humor on another man. “Well, you might be right this once, Mattie girl. I’m not going to get a bear that size with this.”
He indicated the rifle, which he mostly used for deer hunting.
“It might be gone anyway, like you said,” Mattie offered tentatively. “Gone down the mountain.”
He looked at her, then back at the claw marks. “I’d like to be sure. But if it’s still around I don’t want you wandering on your own. Stay with me.”
He pushed through the broken scrub, expecting Mattie to follow. She did, carefully lifting her skirts so they wouldn’t snag on the broken branches.
William strode ahead without pausing, and Mattie hurried to catch up.