The Hinterlands by Robert Morgan Page A

got to the spring and dipped up the bucket of water, still going more by feel than sight. When I stood up they was thisawfullest scream on the ridge above. It was a squall that rose like a woman screaming in childbirth. I stood there froze to my tracks and shivering.
    Was it somebody playing a trick on me, or a ghost hollering, or a painter? We’d heard wolves all summer and fall.
    Something dropped to the ground up there, something heavy as a bear, or a big dog. I turned to run back to the cabin and this pain shot through me. It was the second pain, and worser than the first. It surprised me as I stumbled along. I thought they was steps behind me, but I didn’t stop to listen. Every step I imagined a claw sinking into my leg or back. It was not possible to run with the bucket, but I kind of limped and hopped along.
    The door of the cabin was not completely closed and I seen the warm light inside. It seemed to take hours to get there.
    When I got in I slammed the door and leaned against it without putting the bucket down. I pushed hard and listened, but they was no sound except my heart thumping and the boiling water on the fire. Beans is supposed to be simmered not boiled, and I’d let them get too hot. But I listened a moment to see if anything was outside. Then I put down the bucket and bolted the door.
    I took a rag and set the pot of beans off the hook onto the hearth to simmer. Then I dropped on the bench to rest. What a fix I’m in, I thought to myself.
    Children, in the awfullest times you realize you ain’t got no choice but to go on. There I was, with your Grandpa gone off for the night somewheres, and a baby coming, and a beast prowling outside. I didn’t hardly know a thing about babies, except the stuff that everybody knows. I’d heard a painter is attracted to a mother’s milk, can smell an infant miles away. That didn’t comfort me none.
    I didn’t know hardly what to do next. My only light was fromthe fireplace. Sometimes your Grandpa and me used grease sluts, a rag in a bowl of lard, to light the cabin in summer. And we still had a few candles brung from the settlement for special times. I guessed this was about as special an occasion as I’d ever see.
    The candles was in a bag Realus had throwed up on the rafters. I started to climb up there on the bench when the next pain hit me like lightning followed by thunder. I dropped back down to let the pain pass. When the hurting eased I seen the fire was dying down, and throwed on a couple more sticks.
    That was the first time I noticed they wasn’t enough sticks to last if you kept a big fire all night. Realus had brought in the usual amount of wood for the evening and the morning. But he hadn’t thought I’d be up all night. They wasn’t enough wood to last much past midnight if I kept a big blaze going.
    Just then they was a squall outside the cabin. It was louder than the one I heard above the spring. It was close as the shed, maybe closer to the garden patch. They wasn’t no window in the cabin to look out. I got up and tried to see through a crack above the bed, but your Grandpa had filled all the cracks with mud and grass. My eyes was ruined by the fire for seeing out. They was an opening at the eave, opposite the chimney, but I wasn’t going to climb there. I got the candles down and lit one.
    Something clawed on the side of the cabin and dropped like a sack of meal on the roof. The cabin creaked with the weight. That painter is big as a bear, I thought. The door was bolted with the piece of hickory your Grandpa had whittled to slide in the slot. It didn’t look like nothing could bust the door down. But just to make sure I shoved the bench over against the door. If the thing tried to break down the door I’d sit on the bench.
    The big cat walked around on the roof and the whole cabin was shaking. The building shuddered like wind was hitting it. Realushad made the cabin strong out