Stunned, she turned and waved to Vera and Tobias, who stood on the front porch seeing them off.
“Bring us back a yummy roast!” Vera called and blew tiny kisses with her fingertips.
As the cabin disappeared through the blurring trees, another layer of belonging slid over Nicole’s shoulders. Now she did really want to have a successful hunt because she could give Tobias and Vera part of the meat as a thank you for last night, for this morning, and for Vera working to save her mate. It wouldn’t be just a trinket or useless gift either. It would be something that would aid in their survival. Now she understood why Elyse ran cattle, and why everyone around the homestead helped maintain the herd, even Elyse’s brother, Josiah. Out here, the best thing you could do for loved ones was keep them fed, keep them from hard times, and keep them healthy.
Buck—er, Dad—had done that for the people he cared about.
Nicole hugged Link’s waist tighter and rested her cheek against his back as the wind whipped the untucked end of her green scarf around her.
It was incredible getting to know her father in this way. She’d come to Alaska so scared that she would eventually go back to Kansas disappointed and have no better idea about where she came from or about the man who had been there when she was a baby. But instead, she got tiny, daily glimpses of him from the people around here and from Link.
Forty-five minutes of snowy driving later, and Link stopped the snow machine and pointed to a towering tree with a charred split in the middle from lightning. “This is the beginning of Buck’s trap-line.”
“It is?”
“This is Fire Tree, the very beginning of the line. I’m going to take you along it so you can see what Buck did for work. You’ll see where he spent his days and the woods he loved. He sold and traded fur during the winter, and that’s how he took care of Clotilda, and when you were a baby, it’s how he took care of you and your mom.”
“Link,” she said on a breath. “I was just thinking about him.” It was as if he’d been reading her mind, and now he was giving her another present—another piece of her dad.
“Trap lines are passed down from generation to generation. This one has been in your family for a hundred years. Clotilda maintains it now.”
“She’s a trapper, too?”#p#分页标题#e#
“No, she is a fisher. She uses traditional Yupik methods to bring in protein, but she told me she is maintaining it for you in case you want to claim the line someday. If she let it go to ruin now, someone else would take over the territory, or you would have to re-cut the trail.”
“She’s doing that for me?”
Link nodded and took off slowly, pointing out each place Clotilda trapped and each set of animal prints that crossed their path. He told her what they were and how to identify mature animals and scat.
And when the line was through, he sped off to continue their journey to caribou territory, closer to the mountains.
At the base of those mountains, they stopped and unpacked a thick-shelled tent from the sled behind the snow machine, then built it near a grove of trees that kept the harsh west wind off them. Link gathered wood for a fire and cooked ham and beans that Vera had sent with them. And when they’d warmed and filled their bellies, they cleared everything out of the sled, checked their rifles, and headed off. If they were lucky enough, the caribou would still be in the valleys, digging in the snow and eating any of the dry grasses they could find. The mountains looked snowy and the clouds above them gray, so if they were going to have a successful hunt here, the animals had to be in the right place at the right time.
Link turned his head this way and that, his nostrils flaring slightly as he scented the shifting wind. Nicole was nervous and shaky, but that was nothing compared to the feeling that washed over her when Link pulled the snow machine to a stop and put his finger over his lips.
He cut the engine and leaned near to her ear. “They’re close. I want you to wait here and be ready with your rifle, and mine as a back up.”
“Wait, where will you be?”
Link pulled off his sunglasses to expose his white, blazing eyes. “I’ll be bringing them to you.”
“Whoa, I’m taking the shot? Link, I’ve never taken big game. What if I miss?” Pressure slammed down on her shoulders, and her hands began to shake worse. She would definitely miss now.
“Then you miss, and we hope they stick around long enough to try again in the morning. Remember what we talked about. Three breaths, hold still, take a shot like we practiced on the target, and only if the animal is still and you have a clean angle on it. Go for the biggest with no yearlings on them. Pick a solo animal.”