Day after drab winter day dripped by, slow as cold molasses. The generous firewood stack that had come with my home began to dwindle. One clear winter day, I took an ax, some rope, and Clove and headed for the forest behind the cemetery. I wanted to find dead wood, either standing or fallen. I’d cut the log to a manageable length, have Clove drag it home for me, and then chop it into firewood.

Clove and I followed my footpath to the spring and then broke a snowy trail into the woods beyond. Here I found giant cedars, towering and stout, their needled branches heavy with snow. Most of them were scarred veterans of a fire many years ago. Around and between those survivors, the younger forest was deciduous, birches and cottonwood and alder, and most of these no bigger around than a child’s embrace. Their bare limbs supported wandering walls of snow. Frozen drops of water hung from the tips of their branches. It was a beautiful snowy scene, yet ethereally foreign to a Plains-bred man like myself.

A dozen steps into the shelter of the trees, I began to feel uneasy. I stopped and stood very still, listening. A good soldier develops a sixth sense for when he is being watched. I listened, I looked carefully around, and I even flared my nostrils and took a deep breath of the air. Carrion eaters like bears have a distinctive stench. But my physical senses detected nothing that I should fear. Small birds flitted through the trees. Occasionally the weight of one would dislodge a pouf of snow that would fall in a crystalline shower of tiny flakes. Other than that, I detected nothing, not even a winter breeze moving in the upper branches.

Clove was waiting passively for me to decide what it was I wanted to do here. His calmness decided me; if his senses gave him no cause for alarm or interest, then mine were probably at fault. I tugged at his lead rope and we walked deeper into the forest.

All seemed peaceful. The snow was uneven around us, pocked with falls from overhead, crossed with rabbit trails or smoothly hummocked over the forest floor. Clove and I forged uphill, wading through snow that varied from knee- to thigh-deep. Other than birds overhead, I saw no creatures moving in the woods, but I could not shake the feeling that I was being watched. More than once I halted and looked back the way we had come. I wished I had a better weapon than the ancient gun that had been issued to me. I’d cleaned it, the rod waking clouds of rust from inside it, but I still had no confidence that it would either fire well or hit accurately.

I finally spotted a standing snag. It was uphill from us, and more massive than I’d sought, but I resolved I would have it down and drag at least half of it home with me. The tree was obviously dead. It looked as if a random lighting strike had blackened one side of it. Great scabs of bark had fallen away to reveal silvery-gray wood beneath. It was more than enough to replenish my firewood supply, and dry wood would burn well with little fouling of my chimney. I pushed aside my feelings of unease and labored up the hill toward it. Clove docilely followed me.

When I finally reached my dead tree, I paused to breathe, leaning against it. My heart hammered in my chest, and despite the chill of the day, sweat coursed down my back. I scooped up a handful of clean snow and ate it from my mittened hand to ease my thirst. But all the while, I kept scanning the woods around me for any sign of an intruder. I moved Clove well out of the way of my operation and took up a stance where I could fell the tree downhill of us.

The first blow brought down an icy shower of dry snow on me. It fell again on the second and third chops, and then the branches had lost their loads. I’d sharpened my ax that morning, and it bit deep into the dry wood. I tugged the blade loose, set my feet firmly, and swung again. The blade struck at an angle to the first cut. Tug, swing. The first chips flew out onto the trampled snow. I poised my axe for the next blow and clearly felt the presence of someone behind me. My peripheral vision caught motion, and I felt the air of his passage. I turned quickly. No one was there. I spun the other way. There was nothing, no bird on the wing, no random fall of snow load from a tree. Nothing. Clove stood, wearily patient, betraying no interest in anything. I’d imagined it.

Imagination or not, my heart still thudded in my chest. I took several calming breaths and took up my ax again. I put the energy from my fright into my swing, and the ax bit so deeply I had to wrench it loose. A half-dozen blows later, chips littered the snow and my own sweat warmed me. I labored on, trying to ignore my growing conviction that someone was watching me. “Trust your gut,” Sergeant Duril had always told me. It was getting harder and harder to ignore my instincts. A dozen ax swings later, I straightened up and spun around, my ax at the defensive. “I know you’re there!” I roared at the surrounding woods. “Show yourself!”

Clove lifted his head and gave a startled snort. I stood, chest heaving, staring wildly all around me. My blood was thundering in my ears. I saw absolutely nothing that could be considered threatening. My horse regarded me with mild concern. I glared at the tree. I was not even halfway through the trunk.

I set my teeth, steeled my mind, and put myself to chopping. I threw my not inconsiderable weight behind each blow. The sound of my ax rang defiantly through the woods. “I refuse to be afraid,” I said to myself, and then on my next blows, I began my grunting chant.

“I’m.”

“Not.”

“Running.”

“Away!”

The ax bit deep and the chips flew. On my next four strokes, I said the words louder, and soon I was shouting with every blow, putting all my strength into each strike of the blade. The tree shuddered. I struck again, and again, and then as it groaned, I jumped back out of range, for the trunk seemed to literally jump from the stump as if fell with an explosive crack that echoed through the frozen woods. It came down with a crash, falling through the frozen branches of the adjacent living trees, injuring them as it fell, shattering the stiff branches or leaving them to dangle brokenly. For a brief moment, the falling snag jammed against the trunk of a live tree, and then it fell with a resounding crash to the snowy forest floor. I stood blinking in the hanging mist of crystalline flakes that the falling snag had released. They stung my face like a cold rebuking slap from the forest.

I had underestimated the task I’d taken on. After the tree had fallen, I had to divest the trunk of all its branches. This included the ones that lay underneath the fallen snag. The early evening of winter was threatening me before I finally had a section of trunk cut that I thought Clove could manage. I put a rope on it and fastened it to Clove’s harness.

I had never been so glad to put a place behind me. I wanted to hurry, but dragging the log downhill through the snowy forest was not as simple as it had seemed it would be. I put a rope on it so I could guide it to keep it from running up on Clove or snagging on trees. I could not focus on the task. The sensation of being watched blazed up in my mind, and I kept glancing back over my shoulder at nearly every step. The sweat that soaked and then chilled me was as much from fear as exertion. I could just glimpse the open area beyond the outskirts of the forest’s edge by the spring as the bluish shadows of the trees on the snow were turning to black.

In Widevale, evening and night had always fallen slowly, with twilight a long process of losing the sun to the flat horizon. Here on the edge of the mountains, night came like the drawing of a curtain as rumpled hills swiftly devoured the pallid sun. I felt the darkness coming on, and suddenly I could no longer control my terror. I ran forward, floundering heavily through the deepening snow, startling Clove by seizing his headstall and tugging him along, urging him to haste.