sallie milton

As world weary as Sallie seemed, she sure did trample into the thick of the woods without so much as a glance backwards. It was perfectly foolish really, but Tabitha supposed if the roles were reversed, she would have done the same.

“Easy does it Milton. One wrong step can put you on a different path entirely.” She called out, eventually catching up and gazing at the brunette intensely. This was the deepest Tabitha had been in Northwood since returning,  and even the branches as dry and bare as they were seemed to be reaching out for her. Tabitha wrapped her arms around herself, watching her breath appear and dissipate quickly in front of her.

Finding the scarf felt too lucky. Any footprints, including their own as they wandered inward had already been swept away from the snow. Tabitha didn’t like being out here, not with suspicious Sallie Milton. Not when it was so eerily quiet their footsteps seemed to screamed alongside the strange otherworldly whispers and laughter only for her to hear, flittering through the dead crooked branches.

Then suddenly, there it was. The look, the accusation. Not said outright, but with enough roughness that Tabitha understood. “I didn’t do it.” She responded through clenched teeth before quickly striding forward in the direction the pink scarf had been laying. It led to a small, circular grove warmer and vibrant than any other spot of the wood thus far. Red toadstools making up two separate rings, patches of clovers, and a few snowdrop flowers could be seen peeking out from a light dusting of snow.

“She’s here.” Tabitha pursed her lips, arms still crossed as she pondered and looked deeper into the environment laid out before them. “Just out of reach.” She suddenly shot her arm up to stop Sallie if she decided to rush forward, “Don’t do anything dumb.”

.

Reason was for rationale beings who felt things less deeply. As it was, the burn of poorly suppressed anger had Sallie shaking harder than the cold could.

“Course she’s here. You’d know wouldn’t you?”

She was whispering despite herself. Maybe it was the fear lodged in her throat. Maybe it the tension in the air, compounded by the unmistakeable sense that something or someone was close by. 

“The only dumb thing would be letting you stop me.” 

A crack a few steps ahead. A soft noise, almost a groan. The susurration of fabric. 

“Rosie!”

Another crack. Sallie trampled through a patch of clover to a dense cluster of trees, fists already balled, a rhyme for protection on her tongue. 

“Juniper and ivy, have you lost your mind?”

Just on the other side of the tree, Rosie, with her arms folded in a neat ‘x’ around the thick neck of a boy roughly her age who was tall as an oak and had a face red as the blood Sallie had been expecting to see, turned, irked. 

-

The murmurs had only increased the longer the poor dame dithered. He spread his arms wide, as if to say, am I right or am I right? and like an orchestra responding to the conductor, the refrain agreed. 

Wind whistled in counterpoint back, carrying snatches of chatter in harmony, and each nod was a flare of warm regard, better than a shot of any drink on offer. 

(That there was a prickle of something’s attention far off he resolutely ignored, yeah? Something about the boundaries of the clearing kept it out and at bay.)

He could be generous. “Aw, now, don’t be like that. It’s whatever you can offer, yeah? We’re here to celebrate the close of the celestial year after all, ain’t we?”

“Hear, hear!” someone cried out from the back. 

“Get a move on, will ya?” came another grumble, “The tang yuen will be all gone by the time we get in.”

The chatter died back down into murmurs at the placating gestures of his hand. Nerts, he could really get used to that. 

Still, the dame was his co-star in this small-town midnight feature film, and it’d be unprofessional to ignore her in favor of the audience. “Money’s the easiest thing, but hey. It’s been a rough year on us all.”

Another commiserating murmur, overlapping and cresting before receding like waves on a shore. The symphony changed key from condemnation and judgment to sympathy at the tilt of his head, the twitch of his expression. 

(Somewhere out beyond the protective ring of cedar was something far less kind and far more focused.)

He looked around, then leaned forward, voice lowered and expression soft. “I’ll take information in kind, yeah? And cover your ticket cost in exchange. What d’you say to that?”

It was the basics of magic that even he knew: every woe and weal had to be traced back to its source, and here? His unwelcome new companion traced right back to the Wolgemuths… and the little lady in front of him. 

There were cautions that accompanied magic, taught to the Valley’s children at the same time they learned to spell their names and tie their shoes. They varied, as general as a reminder that curses were not to be handed out lightly and as ominous as knowing to walk in the middle of the road at night unless you wanted to invite shadowed company to join you. What mattered was that they stuck, and it was the echo of her father’s voice that sounded just now, making Sallie promise to never bargain with a creature without knowing its terms. 

You couldn’t make an open ended deal. You had to be as specific as possible. Knowing what you received for fulfilling your end of the agreement was just as important as what would happen if you failed to deliver. Be all the more skeptical if a deal seemed too good to be true; just because something shined didn’t make it gold.

Jimmie leaned forward, Sallie leaned back to take him in, her arms crossed so tightly her limbs nearly formed a sacred knot. Over, under, looped thrice before pulling the ends through to ward against ill intent. 

“I’d say...” she said slowly, “you tell me what you wanna know, and I’ll decide if I wanna answer.” 

“Does he?” Tabitha blinked, finding that Sallie was giving her long lost cousin a bit too much credit for being outgoing; but then…her gaze dropped over the woman with quick observance and she bit the inside of her cheek. “Well, I suppose compared to the rest of you lot, he is a real city slicker.”

The comment would either grate on Sallie’s nerves or drive her away even faster, but Tabitha didn’t mind either way.

Flight. It seemed very Milton, and Tabitha bowed her head slightly, acutely aware Sallie couldn’t even bare to speak her name in acknowledgement as she fumbled a form of goodbye. Except there was no swift exit. Not without little Rosie.

Tabitha frowned and sat up in her chair looking around at the clusters of onlookers to the event. Though all that had rather seemed to fall into the background. “You know the Northwoods are tricky.” She huffed, feeling the hairs prickle at the back of her neck. “Just because snow might cover a fairy ring doesn’t mean it’s out of commission.” Tabitha mused, finally standing and arching a brow at Sallie expectantly. “She probably just ran off for a peppermint stick. But…I know these woods. As much as they’ll let me.” She waved Sallie along, “Let’s look around.”

.

If they were in a fireside tale, this would be the defining moment that had a listener sidling up to a friend for reassurance. A worried sister, a kindly offer, and the protagonist unwittingly slinking into the deep, dark woods with the spider in disguise, heading straight for its web. 

“I don’t think–” Sallie started, then faltered as she caught a flash of pink the same color as Rosie’s scarf. Her thumbnail dug into the cuticle of index finger, mouth half-open to jump back into speech while she desperately skimmed the crowd a second time. 

They were wasting time. 

It was looking back to Tabitha, trying to see past her veneer of normality that settled things. It was impossible to gauge her true intent when she was so comfortably wearing another person’s skin, and the thought of a fairy doing the same with Rosie was enough to send Sallie stumbling in the direction she last spotted her sister. 

There was a narrow set of footprints winding away from the circle and down the forest path; Sallie wasted no time adding her own, charging forward without a glance to see if Tabitha was following. It felt less like following a wolf into its den if Sallie was the one leading. 

The trees grew denser the further they tread. Skeletal birch trunks stretched heavenward, the knots in the bark blinking back like eyes. Sallie swallowed. I know these woods, Tabitha had said, all but confirming outright what Sallie had suspected– she knew them because she had been borne from them. 

Crunch went snow underfoot, quickening as Sallie picked up the pace. Crunch, crunc, crun–

“This is hers.” 

Sallied had stopped abruptly, drawn to a halt by a knitted pink scarf hanging lazily from a low hanging branch at the crux of a fork on the footpath. She tore it free, running her hands over the knit as if she could feel Rosie’s residual warmth on the yarn. Hazel eyes lifted, accusing. “Where is she?” 

-

She stomped, she fluffed up like a peeved little bird, and boy, it was straight out of the script for some small-town story, weren’t it? Even the cues for him were lining up, bam-bam-bam: the understanding smile, the half-flinch back at the stomp paired with the exchange of glances with the person behind her, the irrepressible grin at the It’s funny, ‘cause it was, it really was. 

A one-woman show, Sallie-with-an-i-e, and stars help him, he almost applauded. 

Instead, his hand went to his heart, eyes wide. “Charging for a funeral? Sallie Milton, they don’t even do that up in the big city! The stars would weep and look away.”

There was a moment of awkward silence. He suspected there was some sort of symbol or response he was supposed to do skyward at this point, to actually ward off any celestial displeasure, but he couldn’t recall. Time to switch subjects.

“And maybe you’re right about the tickets before, but this year, boy, the festival this year is much bigger than before! Twice as many booths, and an additional type of dumpling.” Another commiserating look over her shoulder before settling back on that narrow-eyed face. “It only makes sense for everyone to chip in a bit, ain’t that right?”

A murmur of something from behind, pinpricks of glowing attention blossoming in his mind’s eye, fueling the performance.

“None of us here would show up to someone else’s dinner without bringing a dish or two, yeah? That’s just manners, and I know my mama raised me right.”

And now, the final flourish:

“So. Do you want a ticket, Sallie Milton?” 

.

Now, Sallie was the oldest of six and Jimmie the youngest of three, but it wasn’t the number of sibling that made the difference, it was the order.  

Where there was trouble, and boy was Jimmie trouble, Sallie could feel it in her bones, there was an older sister poised to rectify it. 

She was ready to say as much, to snap back that she didn’t want a ticket worthless as it was, but she sure did want to talk to Fanny, when a gust of wind blustered through. She grabbed for her cap, pressing it to her head and leaving her ears free to hear the whispers that carried.

Cheap, down to half a cent.

–family that hard up, they have bigger problems. 

Such a nice boy, but Sallie– 

–blasphemous, stars forgive her. 

Sallie flushed a startling red and bit down inside of her cheek. She chewed on the soft skin there, five seconds, then ten, waiting for a string of words to come together that were kinder than she felt. 

Finally, shoving her balled up fists into the oversized pockets of her coat (which felt worryingly empty) lest they start swinging elsewhere, she managed to ask, “How much are you charging?”

Now this one, this one was a Milton, disapproving lilt in the tone and all.

“Hey, if it ain’t Sallie-with-an-i-e! How’s it been? Haven’t seen you around and about since…”

(A sudden memory of hushed voices chanting several rooms away. Creeping, grasping shadows in the dark. A chill breath on the back of his neck.)

“…the funeral, yeah?” He quickly rearranged his face into something less cheery. “Old Harmut, may he be with the stars.”

(And always, always, the sense of something watching and waiting, just out of his peripheral vision.)

Grin back on, he cocked his head at the woman in his best, most welcoming mimicry of Auntie Sherry herself. “But you’ve got it in one, tickets. You know, those paper things with ADMIT ONE stamped on ‘em. The things you hand to someone to get into places, like shows or clubs.”

A quick, barely-there up and down of the dame, and it was probably unlikely this wet blanket had ever even heard of, let alone stepped foot inside of a club, yeah?

“Or events, like this here Winter Solstice Festival. Putting on one of these shindigs takes real work, see. I’ve been here hours before helping with the set-up. But don’t worry, all funds go back to the coven’s ci-vic work and all, so you’re really just contributing back to the town.”

Caught sight of the notebook and pen, and yeah, trust a Milton to show up at a festival with paperwork. Stars.

“So. Tickets: you got 'em or do you want any?”

.

“I know what a ticket is, Jimmie,” Sallie snapped, and damn it if being able to find the right words wouldn’t have come in handy just then, if only to smarten up her bark so it matched the bite in her voice. She might not be city-slick, but she wasn’t simple. 

The stomp of her boot didn’t help matters, painting a picture juvenility squaring off with a facsimile of congeniality. But Witch’s Butter, if he didn’t tangle her reins. The name itself, Jimmie, impossibly familiar even if a person would have preferred distance. 

Her eyes narrowed, two slits of suspicion. Jimmie and Mrs. Garcia had the same ears and that was where the resemblance stopped. Jimmie lacked her sincerity. 

“It’s funny,” Sallie said, but she wasn’t laughing, “I don’t remember the Winter Solstice ever being ticketed. Heck, I don’t remember anyone in Albion ever charging tickets for anything.” She tugged at the back of her flat cap, lifting the brim to get a clearer picture of Jimmie’s face. “Your Aunt and the rest of the coven did up Hartmut’s funeral for free.”

TASK 02 ❁ SALLIE’S HOME & ELEMENTS

PRIMARY: E a r t h 

She had no ulterior motives and didn’t play games.

They will pour their love into caring for animals or teaching children. They will also pour their love into their relationships. They want to make you feel comfortable, safe, and to know you are loved.

When Earth people don’t get love in return, they can question their entire existence, falling into co-dependent cycles that never seem to end. For Earth people, the past is comfortable and change can be excruciating. They hold onto the past with all their might.

SECONDARY: W o o d 

They are like the sudden expansive growth of spring after a long, slow winter, and like the power of tree roots that push through solid concrete. Woods lead with a determination and will that surpasses all limits. 

Once they make up their minds, there is little that can convince them that someone else’s opinion is right. Woods know they are right, which acts as fuel for their strong drive, but doesn’t always bode well for their personal relationships.

They are strong, sturdy, stable, fearless, logical, reasonable, bold, independent, and unapologetic. They are also very fair-minded, and nothing upsets them more than injustices. 

AT HOME: T h e  M i l t o n  F a r m

“Oh, but of course it isn’t.” Tabitha pouted in a show of understanding. If there was ever a martyr of the valley, Sallie Milton was the perfect candidate. She slinked further down in her seat, pulling her cardigan tighter around herself so that it hid the bottom of her face. Her green eyes watched chunks of wood crack and fly from the dry standing tree trunks as the men swung their axes with renewed vigor.

Everything else in the woods was eerily still, how was it possible?

“Competition isn’t exactly the same if you aren’t partaking…” Tabitha murmured, noticing the younger girls across the way.  She also spotted Rebecca walking around handing out a few toss away flags for the event, “Say, Sallie. I met your cousin Eddie coming into town. How come you never mentioned him? He seems perfectly normal. Well, almost too normal.” A side glance of weariness, “Looks like every family needs a black sheep of some kind.”

.

If it was at all possible for Sallie’s shoulders to rise higher around her ears, they managed it. Trouble was always able to find friends. Figured that Eddie and Tabitha were in step with each other. 

“Never saw a need to,” Sallie hedged. “He’s got a mouth on him that’s plenty of capable speaking for himself.”

She had become wound so tight it was only natural that she finally snapped. “Look, it’s been real–” Lovely talking to you would be a lie. She pivoted. “It’s nice of you to take the time, but I best be getting on.” 

She slapped a hand to her thigh and stood with a jerky nod across the circle. She couldn’t hide Rosie and make a polite exit, so she would just have to hope Rosie would be obliging in hurrying back home. “My sister and I were just–” 

Sallie faltered, frowning. There was an empty space between Greta and Polly. 

Hazel eyes flicked across the clearing, skimming faces in the crowd with Rosie’s nowhere to be found. 

-

His hands clenched into fists and stuffed into his pockets. He should have swallowed it all back, tried to be diplomatic, or even said nothing at all, but he was at his goddamn wit’s end.

“No, I haven’t,” he replied, sardonic. “Why would I up and drop everything to come out here if I thought I wasn’t wanted?”

Jaw clenched, Eddie grappled with having to convince this mouse of a girl that they were family when she had no interest in entertaining the idea. Finally, he let out a long sigh.

“I have a ‘gift’. How can I have a gift if I’m not from Albion?”

.

When Sallie was twelve, the Young’s horse kicked over a lantern. 

It would have been a small accident quickly stomped out by the creature startling, but it had been a dry October. The flame caught on a patch of grass, then the fence, and so on until half of the family’s wheat field was ablaze, turning the meadow the same blood orange and red as the oak trees. 

It felt the same in Sallie’s chest just then, as if her heart was kindling catching on the flame of Eddie’s condescension, questionable past and something else– something that was too quickly obscured by the bright, burgeoning fire of her rage to question closely. 

“Swindling doesn’t take magic,” she snapped, voice crackling with a quality she didn’t recognize, “just misplaced charm.” 

She had a journal entry in her hand, had intended to investigate its contents and the handwriting she didn’t recognize more closely, but it was forgotten in her white-knuckled grip.

“Cheating people isn’t a gift. Lying takes talent, but you don’t need to be blessed. It’s the opposite, I’d say. It’s a cursed thing you’re doing, even if you smile while doing it. I’ll be struck dead before–” 

Sallie's brush off shouldn't have surprised him. And in all honesty, it didn't. But that didn't stop a tiny spear of ice wedging right against his chest, picking at old wounds. He pressed his mouth into a line.

“You’ll freeze if you stay there. Don’t be foolish.”

He didn’t mean for it to come out quite like scolding a rebellious child, but keeping his voice even proved a challenge all its own right now. His body stood at odds with itself. The soft emotional center of his youth couldn’t bare to leave one of his friends in such a state, while his bitter adult brain argued why on earth should it be his fault wherever the girl decided to trip and fall? It’s not as if she would be jumping to help him if the roles were reversed. She had more than proven that.

For a moment, Maxwell stole a glance back at his father, who had the decency to look somewhat concerned. He sat a little straighter in the driver’s bench, trying to watch Sallie from around Maxwell’s back.

“Miss Milton?” he called out. “We’re on our way back to the farms. If you’re not feeling well, we can drop you home.”

At least they had the good fortune to come this way by buggy. If Sallie was injured indeed, they wouldn’t have to hobble her through the snow.

“Give me your hand,” Maxwell said with the small modicum of finality he could muster, offering out his own for her to grasp.

.

Sallie was many things, but she had never been foolish. 

(Strictly speaking, a cantankerous part of her corrected, she had allowed herself to be foolish once; she had paid for it, two times over. Max didn’t count toward that tally given he had managed to fool everyone.) 

“That’s good of you,” Sallie called to Clem, it was the neighborly thing to do after all, “but I’m feeling just fine, thank you!” 

There was a stubborn– not foolish –set to her jaw as she looked at Max’s proffered hand. He had a way of making himself small and approachable, folding in on himself so that even a field mouse would think itself fearsome by comparison. His mittened hand, warm and knitted in a homely pattern, only added to the general sense that was embedded in the soft slope of his back and worried line of his brow: trust me. 

A traitorous part of her, the part that knew what it was to win a small smile from Maxwell Fletcher or be on the receiving end of a carefully divulged innermost thought, wanted to. 

But Sallie had only been foolish once, and Pittsburgh might have been bigger than the Valley, but there still hadn’t been room for foolishness to settle a second time. She wasn’t about to pick up the habit now. 

“I was just getting up,” she insisted, her unaffected foot giving a pitiful twitch as if to signal the  intention. She grunted, trying to right her center of gravity and stand without putting weight on her bad ankle. She managed to get to her feet, wobbling with the effort of balancing on one foot all while appearing like she was standing on two. “See? You’re fussin’ for nothing. Now why don’t you just–”

What followed was a string of curses so foul that her mama been present, the woman would have been reaching for Sallie’s ear. A single determined– really, truly not foolish –step elicited such a stab of pain that she near toppled over. It was only the saving grace of grappling for Max’s sleeve that saved her. 

-

“Yeah, guess I am. Still peddling the truth.”

Maybe there’d been a doubt when Sallie had protested and insisted with such confidence that he was wrong, that there was no Johanna, except that… he knew there was a Johanna, his grandmother, and he wouldn’t have gotten a letter addressed to him from a Grand Uncle if his grandmother Johanna never existed.

“You’re never gonna let up putting the screws on me, huh? What’s it gonna take, Sal?”

He tempered his annoyance as best he could. If there was one thing he knew about liars (himself included), it was that getting easily riled was one of the first signs of guilt. Eddie let out a sigh, glancing at her faint reflection in the window before turning around entirely. Took a step or two closer, but toward the center of the room.

“What about the farm, then? Is it a bunch of baloney to keep me away? Your own ma said none of you could ‘find it.’”

.

“It’s not that we can’t find it,” Sallie snapped. “We just can’t– can’t get to it.” 

There it was again, that searing stab of annoyance, a jump in her temper tenfold. A person would’ve thought the longer Eddie hung around would have moderated things, but Sallie only grew more reactive. She tensed each time he got to talking about the farm, even if she vowed to be patient just this once. Sometimes it felt like she was acting outside of herself.

“We’ve all gone looking for it on our own, same as you.”

Her feet led her to the other side of the room, over to a large bookcase stacked with folios. She pulled one from a higher shelf out random, feeling restless, and flipped through. Birth certificates, minutes from family meetings, journal entries torn from their original binding. 

It was too bad her sister had discarded her directly next to Sallie Milton. Tabitha was hoping for a more  exciting greeting for Sallie in particular. Popping out from behind a tree and screaming Boo would have satiated her, as childish as it was. Now, she looked back at the dark-haired girl with a tired, somewhat placid expression.

Sallie always acted like her milk turned sour whenever Tabitha was around, or maybe her shoes were too tight?

“Right, right! So foolish I imagine you’d classify it as a sin?” Tabitha posed the question. She rubbed her hands together to warm them and watched as Peter was led away from the trunk of the tree and the next contestant approached. “Then what would entice you and yours to come all the way out here? With no one to root for…”

Tabitha trailed off, a purposeful pull at the corner of her mouth, “Oh I know.” She leaned in with more of a whisper, her gaze focused now on Johnnie Feigel as he wiped sweat from his brow, “To peruse the Sheik show.”

.

She didn’t believe much in sinning, not in a strict sense. The word was too small for what it was meant to mean. Right and wrong, good and bad, violation, immorality– they were all crammed into three little letters. Religion often told a good story, but it had its limitations. 

She wasn’t quite sure she’d call betting a sin, per say, more like a silly bit of foolish that no one with a cent to their name ought to be bothering with, but she wasn’t about philosophize, not with Tabitha. Be polite but nothing more was a modus operandi that served a person well. 

Except–

“Now, come on now,” Sallie said, with the same chastising tone she used in the school house whenever one of the little ones got a berry stuck up their nose, or Etta was being particularly ridiculous. Sure, Peter was just as handsome as he was three years ago, and Johnnie Feigel had a jaw sharp enough to serve as surrogate for his axe, but she wasn’t fourteen skirting the edge of a harvest dance. “This isn’t for me, I’m minding–” 

“You’re embarrassing me.”

“This contest is embarrassing.”

“I don’t understand, you were always enamored by these woods, and now you’re acting like they’re going to swallow you whole.” Rebecca hissed, and the older of the pair thought that perhaps her sister wasn’t too far off.

Tabitha scrunched her nose in irritation at the blonde, not having a good response. While all the other spectators watched the men ascend their assigned trees, Tabitha’s green eyes were fixated on the fairy ring not so far off in the distance. Her jaw clenching with nerves when a few younger children ran and played closer to the ring of rocks and wildflowers.

She stumbled when Rebecca pulled her along, farther from where she could quietly watch the ‘natural’ anomaly and blinked rapidly when her baby sister all but pushed her into an open seat. She greeted someone and then looked back to Tabitha sternly, “Just stay here.” Before wandering to a table set out with refreshments for the contestants.

She heard the gasps of shock behind the whispers and buzzing of the forest, but was only really pulled out of her daze when a mitten hand brushed against her. Tabitha turned to none other than Sallie Milton. “Hello, there.”  Her gaze moved lazily back to Peter wobbling on his plank, brows shooting upwards when it finally cracked and sent him to the ground.

“Poor old Pete. Rotten luck.” Tabitha sighed, watching a few others rush over to help him. She could have sworn she heard ‘was it her?’ on the wind matched with a sharp gaze or two. Her timing always seemed to be against her. “You didn’t bet on him…did you?” She asked Sallie bluntly.

.

Sallie’s hand retracted as if she put bare skin to ice. 

Tabitha Teivel was all human warmth though– in appearance at least. What lurked beneath rosy cheeks was a different question. 

Sallie crossed her arms, stuffing her mittened hands underneath her armpits. “’lo.” She allowed with a stiff nod. 

It wasn’t a neighborly response (but they weren’t, thank the stars, strictly neighbors), it wasn’t even kind of nice. Was it worse to trifle with someone touched by the fae or irk them through your own reservation? 

One thing was for sure: either approach brought on a whole lot of awkwardness. 

The natural moment to answer Tabitha’s question had come and gone, silence weighing heavy in the limited space between her and Sallie, who cleared her throat.

“No.” Too curt. “I mean, I’ve always been of the mind that betting’s for fools. Never does well to think so much of yourself that you go on believing you can cheat fate with a wager.”

Early Dec. 1923 || Lord of the Northwood Forest contest 

The fairy ring by the river || Northwood Forest

“He’s gonna fall.”

“Will not.”

“Will too.”

“Will not.” 

“Could do.” 

It was Rosie’s anguished groan that ended the argument, punctuated with a huffed “Contrarian.” She stalked across the circle of trees, inserting herself between Fannie O’Keefe and Elsie Peats, huddled on a log bench of their own. She sent a rude gesture back to Sallie, who only smiled. Contrarian was a fifty cent word; someone was doing their writing homework. 

A smatter of applause, a hoot and a holler went up. Sallie bit down on her chapped lower lip, eyes flicking back to the center of the ring where Peter Lawrence and Johnnie Feigel were neck and neck as they hacked their way up the stripped trunk of a white pine. Johnnie was taller and carried the advantage, but Sallie had nursed a soft spot for Peter back at the schoolhouse. He had a shock of red hair that was upstaged by the flex in his bicep and the kind of wide hands you could depend upon.