Up the hill they’d just poured off into the molds and refilled the kettle with new sap and were awaiting the boil, standing outside listening to the ice going out. The night was still and Norman was pulling it in with small gasps, tasting for the turn of the wind to the south and the warm air to follow, not finding it but sure it would not be far off. The warm air would end the sugaring. They passed a dipper of cider. They both heard the sound at the same time and both said nothing but strained to clarify it from the percussions of tearing ice. They spoke at the same time.

“That’s a bell,” Connie said.

“Is that a fire?” Norman scanning the skyline ridges and blank depth of darkened valley beyond the farm. Saw nothing save for the faint light and rising steam and smoke from distant sugarhouses on the far ridge. Then again, both at once.

“That’s our bell, that’s our bell.” The tones now clear, sharp rising from the farm.

“Oh my Christ.” And Norman threw down the dipper and began to run, his boots sliding in the mud of the track, going then off the side into the snow, his arms pin wheeling for balance as he went. Connie stood a moment, watching; then the full implications of the bell came over her also. She started after him, then turned back, running to the sugarhouse to throw open the firepit door in the brick arch and, leaving it open, took up the old spade and ran in and out after shovel loads of snow, casting it on top of the freshened fire until she was satisfied the fire would die. She could hear Norman crying out for Leah. Connie blew out the lantern and left it there, running after her brother in the dark.

She fell twice going down and in the farmyard found her brother already with Tommy out, the harness thrown up over his back unbuckled and Norman trying to fasten harness at the same time he mounted the shafts of the high-wheeled cart into the fittings. She was breathless, panting, sore up her back and right arm with her clothes soaked through. She went forward and settled the hames to the collar and tightened them closed and stepped around her brother to lean and catch the bellyband and buckle that. He saw her as he tightened the trace chains and his voice choked. “She’s bleeding. I got her back up to lie down.” He pulled the looped lines free of the hame ball and stepped up into the cart, still speaking. “I’m going after Doctor. Go set with her.” He settled into the seat and gathered the lines and took up the whip from its socket and said, “Keep her quiet if you can. It’s not even a month early. She’ll be fine. I’ll get Hurdle up here and she’ll be fine. Get up, you bastard!” and laid the whip across Tommy’s back and they went out of the yard and down toward the lip of the bowl in the dark, the thick wheels sucking at the mud, the hooves pulling up smart with the slog, the cart lurching as it went through the mired ruts and pools that once were a road.