For her part, Thea steadied during those weeks. She became a dynamo in the kitchen, in charge by then of the suppers as well as the baking. Her favorite job was of course feeding the dogs, those two chances each day to stretch her legs and breathe fresh air. Cold as it was. The dogs greeted her and the pails of food and the three of them formed a sort of congregation of lonesome souls.
In the two weeks since the Ovcharkas had arrived there had been no wolf song. Groups of men visited the dogs each night after supper, offering busted ax handles in lieu of rawhide, bringing in their pockets crusts of bread and hunks of meat to reward the dogs. The jacks, after paying the dogs, would stand against the paddock fence smoking their pipes or cigars, offering woodsmen's philosophies on the nature of such beasts, on the likeliest source of their lineage. One of the men went so far as to offer the great bears of the Yukon as the most likely origin of the breed. None of the others gathered that evening— though preternaturally inclined to ribbing and chiding— would even dispute the possibility. If that winter would not relent, if the men suffered their frozen flesh and injured limbs, if they were reminded daily of the perils of their labor, they were at least more calm in their few hours of leisure each evening, and certainly more comfortable in their slumber.
On the first morning of the third week more snow came. After breakfast Thea hauled her buckets to the horse barn. She dropped the first before the bitch, hammered her water free of ice with a hatchet, then followed the fence line around the paddock to the kennel of the dog. She had named the dog Lodden for his long strands of wiry black hair, and each morning now she would call his name as she crossed the paddock. As she approached his kennel, calling him, she saw that a wide swath of snow trailed away from his roost. She saw also the frozen earth cratered around the spot his stake should have been, saw his leather collar and the length of chain tangled atop the packed snow. She hollered his name into the wilderness, dropped the pail at the opening of his kennel, and hurried back toward the mess.
She was almost jogging as she headed on to the camp office. As she entered, a young man she recognized from the chow line peered over his glasses and onto an open ledger. He looked, no doubt surprised to see her. Before he could greet her she said, "Lodden, Lodden. Hund! Hund! " He came from behind the counter and went straight to the door. He opened it, a whirl of snow came in at his boots. "The dog?" he said. "The new dog? What?" He stepped back in, closed the door. While he donned his coat and hat he asked again, "Did something happen to the dogs? Is that what you're saying?"
He flew out the door and was gone in the snow before he reached the paddock fence.
Within an hour what few men remained in camp were scattering into the passel of white pine. The bull cook, the brothers Meltmen, the clerk, they all set out into the wilderness, calling for the dog. By the time the jacks returned from their parcels, word of the missing dog had already spread. Whispers above the evening's stew ranged over the possibilities.
One of the men said, "That weren't a godly beast. Likely he's in the Devil's Maw, making fast with Beelzebub."
When the searchers returned with lanterns aglow and no word on the hound, the rest of the camp retired with a new set of misgivings.
But sunup found the dog back in camp, blood staining his muzzle and the snow outside his kennel. Only the hide and bones of a caribou fawn remained. The same scene played at the bitch's stake, for the dog must have rent the fawn and left the hindquarters for his sister. The Ovcharkas found a new and holier place in the minds of the men. Lodden was left to his duties without the hindrance of stake or chain. For the rest of the cold spell he roamed the camp's perimeter with a beautiful arrogance.
For three weeks during February the temperature still had not climbed above zero, two feet of snow had fallen, the horses had grown coats like bears, but still the camp trundled on. Hosea visited camp often. His leather satchel over his shoulder. He set up a makeshift examining room in the wanigan. Several men had frostbitten fingers or toes or both amputated. Others had black scabs of dead flesh removed from their upper cheeks. Two men had even died by way of the cold; the first of hypothermia, the other of a heart failure way up the northern parcel. Their deaths inspired more dread than sadness, as most of the men knew the calendar well enough to note how much more winter was in the offing.
There were nights during that interminable stretch when the woods above Gunflint on up to Canada were the coldest place on earth. One such dawn broke minus fifty-two degrees. So it was properly strange when Thea woke on the last morning of February to the sound of dripping water. She kicked her eiderdown away and lit a candle in the kitchen. She stoked the scullery fire. Before commencing her morning chores she poked her head out the mess-hall door. For the first time since the ides of January she could smell the horseshit under the snow. During the night a fog had risen, fey and reeking.