Outside the log cabin the trees groaned with the blowing wind while snow piled up against the log cabin’s walls.  The prairie schooner lay buried beneath the drifts.  Only the rib-like tops of the wooden bows showed it was there at all. 

Inside the cabin icy drafts of air blew between the cracks in the rafters causing the candle to flicker and shadows to dance on the walls.  As much as she hated the blowing snow, Agatha was happy when it piled up past the window.  The higher it rose, the less the cold air could penetrate the room.

“I miss my yellow ribbons,” Agatha said, her eyes fixed on the few bits of meat at the bottom of her watery broth.  “Do you remember how you used to braid them into my hair, mama?”

Luella didn’t respond.  She looked down at her bowl with glazed eyes.  The spoon rested in her hand but she had yet to taste the meal set before her.

Agatha’s father, Silas, was almost done with his bowl.  She watched him from the corner of her eyes as he methodically raised spoonful after spoonful to his lips and sucked in the salty broth.  Stir, lift, sip, repeat.  He ate like it was a duty rather than a pleasure.

The meat was cut so finely he was able to slurp it up without having to take the spoon into his mouth.  With it cut so small you could barely tell it was there at all.  They had discovered that trick when they ate their first rat.

“I tied the ribbons in Victoria’s hair when we crossed the plains,” Agatha muttered looking back and forth between the two adults.  She swallowed, unsure why she remembered these things now.  “They looked much better in her black hair than they did in my yellow.”

“Quiet, girl,” Luella said, though her cracking voice was even softer than Agatha’s.

“Let her speak,” he father said.  “She’s barely spoken in days.”

Had it really only been that long?  None of them had spoken much since Victoria died, but it had grown worse over the past few weeks.  At least it felt like weeks.  She had no way to tell time.  She couldn’t remember when she last saw the light of dawn, nor the darkening of the day.  The snow had drifted past the shutters, cutting out even the smallest sliver of sun.  Only the slowly shrinking tallow candles and the ever-diminishing pile of wood spoke of passing time.

Thank God there was still wood left though.  While game was scarce, and the grains and hard tack had dwindled to nothing, wood was easy to come by.  It laid stack up both inside and outside of the cabin walls, helping to drive away the worst of the bitter cold.

Agatha watched the steam of her father’s breath rise from his thin, warn face as he sank back into glum darkness.  He never smiled like he did when he built the cabin late last summer.  In those days Silas worked with a feverish excitement as he spaced out the sill logs.  “This here hollow makes a perfect place for a home,” he told the girls as they stood by to bring him water, tools, or whatever else he might need.  “The mountains will keep off the worst of the wind.  The pines will keep us cool in the summer and provide wood for the winter.” 

“But what about the crops, papa?” Victoria had asked. 

“Oh now, do you see all them trees and all them bushes?” he asked waving his arms wide to the luscious green all about him.  “Once I clear out them trees and break the land it will give us a mighty bounty.”

From summer through the autumn he expounded upon the beauty of the land and the wealth they could earn from it.  “Did you see them elk?  These mountains are filled with game!  And there’s trout in the pond and birds in the sky!  I tell you, we were lucky our axle broke when it did.”

When the last shingle was laid Agatha and Victoria danced around the cabin, laughing and giggling.  They pulled in their parents to join them and they all danced together, laughing and whooping for joy.

“Eat your supper, darling.”  Her father’s voice snapped Agatha out of her memories.  She raised another spoonful to her lips before she realized he wasn’t talking to her.

“I can’t,” Luella replied, her voice empty and cold.

“If you don’t, you’ll die.”

“And that would be so bad?”  Heat rose in her voice and she stared at Silas with hard, narrow eyes.  “I’m already damned.  We all are!”

“Silence, woman,” her father bellowed.  “I’ll not have such talk.”

Luella’s mouth opened and closed, words teetering on her lips.  At last she turned her head and watched the logs burn in the hearth.

“I miss Mrs. Baird,” Agatha said, her words coming though she didn’t will them to.  “She gave Victoria and me molasses chews every Sunday after church.”

“Don’t talk of my daughter,” Luella hissed, snapping her attention to Agatha, eyes wide with fury. 

Agatha turned to look at her meal and wiped a tear from her eye.  “My daughter.” Not “your sister.”  Whenever Luella said such things Agatha always felt the gap between what she was and what she wanted to be.  Luella may not have been her real mother, but she was the only mother she ever really knew.  Her own mother died barely a year after she was born, passing in childbirth along with her only full-blooded sibling. 

Her father married Luella less than a year later.  He left for Cincinnati to sell his wheat and returned with a raven-haired woman with a drawn face and a hawkish nose.  “This is your mother now, Agatha,” he had told her.  “You will obey her as you obey me.”

And so she had.  She called her mama, and did as she was told.  She helped in the kitchen and learned to stitch and cook and clean.  They had happy times together, when song filled the air and the scent of cinnamon cakes wafted into the fields.

But mama always called her “Agatha” while she called Victoria “daughter.”  She would tell Agatha to fetch “your father,” while she asked Victoria to fetch “papa.”  They were casual words, but they pained Agatha all the more for the unspoken resentment they harbored. 

That resentment had always been there, but it grew worse as the weather worsened and the food dwindled.  The snows had come earlier than expected hiding the trail and making it impassable.  Silas had planned to trade with the final wagon trains, but even as he realized that they wouldn’t show he swore confidence that he could hunt and fish through the winter.

The game became scarce too.  Little had wandered into Silas’s crosshairs Aside from one elk late in the fall and a couple of rabbits.  He managed to catch a few fish in the lake, but not enough.  “I’m a farmer, not a fisherman,” he had complained to Luella late one night when they thought the kids were asleep.  She cried and worried and argued and cajoled, but Silas refused to budge.  “We can’t cross the mountains while the snows are so deep.  Besides,” he assured her, “we have enough grains to see winter through.”

They began to ration their food.  While none of them were really starving then, neither did they remember what it was like to be full.  The gentle gnawing hunger was the first sensation Agatha had in the morning and the last at night.  And while they slept mice and rats gnawed away at the stored grains, eating much and befouling more.

That was when Agatha first noticed how mama favored Victoria with larger helpings and a few little extras.  As winter deepened the extras came more often, and much better disguised.   Some days Victoria would share the food.  Other days she wouldn’t.  The day of the accident was the former.

The sun was out that day, and warm on their skin.  The world was encased in a beautiful blanket of white.  The green of the trees could be seen beneath the snowy branches, and the blue sky made Agatha feel like winter might one day end.

The two of them had gone out after papa, who was trying his luck with some ice fishing.  They trudged through snow seeing how far they could walk before the icy crust broke beneath their feet and dropped them two feet or more into the fluffy powder underneath. 

“Would you like some,” Victoria asked holding out half of a piece of hardtack.  “Mama wanted us to share.”

“Thank you,” Agatha replied knowing how her sister lied but taking the biscuit anyway.  She put it in her mouth and rubbed her tongue vigorously upon it.  It would take time to dissolve, but her stomach groaned with anticipation.

By then most of the food was already gone, but Agatha had yet to learn what real hunger was.  The meager meals she complained about then would have been a banquet compared to the weeks to come.

While Agatha sucked on the ever-softening bread the girls rolled huge blocks of snow and stacked them into snowmen.  They fell on their backs and made angels.  Finally the sisters tormented each other with snowballs, giggling as they strayed farther onto the ice.

“Don’t scare the fish,” Silas said as the girls ran by him, but that didn’t stop their frolicking. 

While Victoria hurried away Agatha packed another ball.  She hurled it, and watching its high arc she knew that this would be the one to knock her sister down.

Victoria watched it coming, her face lit with delight.  She dodged at the last moment, staggering to her side while the projectile passed her by.

Victoria turned to Agatha, her arms raised in triumph.  Then her face dropped in shock and surprise.  The sound of groaning ice met Agatha’s ears, then a sharp crack, and then Victoria disappeared.  Agatha must have screamed, for her throat was raw all the next day, but she remembered only flashing images.  Running in the snow.  Her father yelling to stay off the ice.  Him reaching so deeply into the water she feared he too would slip away.  Weeping for joy when he plucked the little form from the wet darkness.  The desperate sound of his whimpering as he raced toward the cabin.  The yellow ribbons entangled in her black hair. 

Mama’s shrill cries greeted Agatha when she caught up to them at the cabin. Papa fretted and paced while mama peeled away Victoria’s wet clothes with shaking fingers.  Thin animal moans slipped past mama’s lips with every exhale.

Agatha went to her sister’s side and touched her blue skin.  Could anything be so cold?

“Don’t touch her!” Mama hissed.  “Haven’t you done enough?”

Agatha pulled back, struck harder by the words than any slap.  She turned to look at her father, hoping to find love or hope in his eyes, but there was none to be had.  The twinkle of joy he always seemed to harbor was gone and would never return. 

Victoria was strong.  She didn’t die right away.  For nearly a week she clung to life while the weather worsened, the food dwindled, and the snow piled higher up the cabin walls. 

Agatha had been sleeping when Victoria passed.  Mama’s howl woke her, sucking the last tender morsel of hope from the icy cabin.  In the morning papa buried her in the snow.  The ground was too hard to dig.

The weather worsened after that.  The snows fell harder while the food slowly disappeared.  While her father had once just killed the varmints that stole their grains, now they ended up in the cooking pot. 

Hunger gnawed at Agatha’s belly until she could barely stand without feeling faint.  The thinner she got the colder she became, shivering by the fireplace even while huddling under her blanket.

She was too tired to care the morning her father left with his long knife and rifle.  He had gone hunting many times, but hadn’t returned with even a hare since before Victoria passed.  This time he wasn’t gone long, and though she heard no shot, he came back with meat.

“I found an elk,” he said.  His voice was cold and distant.  “It must have been killed by wolves, but they left us some meat.”  There was not much of it, but just the sight of those few frozen morsels set Agatha’s mouth to water. 

Silas cooked while Luella lay upon her bed and cried. 

“She’s crying for joy,” Silas told his daughter, but she knew better.  Wolves wouldn’t leave any trace of elk. 

When the cooking was done they all ate.  Almost instantly Agatha felt warmer and full of energy.  Her head stopped hurting and her stomach groaned in appreciation.

“Eat, woman,” Silas bellowed breaking Agatha out of her dark memories. 

Luella stared vacantly down at the cold broth and little chunks of meat.  Even though Silas brought home a little more elk meat each day Luella had eaten nothing since that first broth. 

Seeing the tear in her eye, Silas softened.  “It will be March soon.  Only a little longer and the snows will melt.  You must hold on.”

“Hold on?” Luella asked softly.  “Hold on?” she asked again, her voice rising in discontent.  “Hold on!”  She slammed down one fist, spilling broth onto the rickety table.  “I’ve been holding on, Silas!  I was holding on when you took me from the city to that scrap of land you called a farm!  I held on when the bank took even that!”

“Watch your mouth,” Silas growled coldly.

“I held on when you took us to Missouri,” Luella shouted over his threats.  “I held on when we pushed on to Oregon.”

The tears were falling in a torrent down her face, but her lips were contorted in rage.  “I held on as you jettisoned all the things you said were too heavy to haul.  My mama’s looking glass.  The secretary.  All my fine clothes.  Gone!  Thrown out on the range like so much rubbish!”

“We have the land, darling.”

“The land!  Fie to you and your land!  What will you grow?  We’ve eaten the seed.  Shall we subsist on pine and wildflowers.  You can’t hunt!  You can’t fish!  You couldn’t even protect my daughter!”

The slap came hard and sudden.  Luella’s head snapped to the side and she fell to her knees before Agatha even saw her father rise.  “I told you to watch your mouth.”

Luella trembled on the floor, wiping away a trail of blood from her lip.  She looked at the red on her fingers and turned her glare up to her husband. 

“You think I don’t know how you feel?” Silas asked, his fists shaking above his wife’s prostrate form.  “You think I wanted Victoria to die?  You think I wanted to . . .” His voice faltered and the anger in his eyes faded as quickly as it had risen.  He sat back in his chair, his face drawn and aged in the flickering light.

“Aye.  I’ll watch what I say,” Luella said slowly rising from the floor.  “And I’ll hold on.  But I won’t eat what you set before me.”  Then reached out she pushed the bowl away, the broth slopping over the sides.  Wrapping her tattered blanket around herself, she turned and lay down on the straw mat. 

Agatha looked longingly at mama’s bowl then turned to her father.  His grim face looked back, his eyes dark and hard in the candlelight.  He nodded so she poured half of mama’s meal into his bowl then ate what was left.

As they shared the last of the food she thought about that day on the pond.  Victoria’s smile outshone the sun.  Her ready giggle.  Her long, black hair tied with yellow ribbons, dancing about her face.  Agatha’s heart ached with how much she missed her little sister.

When she finished her meal she missed her even more.