Bonesetter (11 page)

As the cat began to rise up at the base of the tree, the wolf returned!
Again it took up station fifteen paces back, snarling and snapping.
The lion regarded it warily, looking up at Pell a moment longer.
Then, to Pell’s complete astonishment, the lion slowly turned and moved off into the woods.

Pell regarded this turn of events in bewilderment.
He realized that the wolf had saved his life twice.
First by giving warning of the lion
when he had been daydreaming
, and second by attacking its hindquarters when it attempted to climb after him.
He offered up a few prayers to the Spirit Wolf as he clung to the tree, still trembling.

After his nerves steadied and the shaking went away, he slowly climbed back down out of the tree, watching
tremulously
for any evidence
of a returning
lion.
When Pell picked up his pack he smelled the meat within it and realized that the smell had probably attracted the lion.
Amazingly enough, the animal hadn’t even gotten around to stealing the meat.
He realized this also was probably only because of the wolf’s chivvying.
Suddenly fear swept through Pell again—what if the coals in his firepot had gone out when he dropped the pack?
He unpacked the little pot with trembling hands and checked the embers inside.
To his relief, they seemed undisturbed, glowing readily when he blew on them.
He considered building a fire with the embers in order to start new coals, just in case these were about to go out.
However, it would be hours before a fire produced good coals again—he’d have to spend the night here.

L
oathe to
stay
t
here without
good shelter, especially after the experience he’d just been through
, he started walking again
.
Then h
e
began worrying
that he might not find any shelte
r in Cold Spring Ravine either. R
emembering its rough, rocky walls,
he
decided that his chances were much better there.

Pell continued on his way in a hyper alert state and this time, as he looked around, the sight of the wolf relieved him.
On impulse he got out his pig haunch, carved off a chunk and tossed it to the young wolf.
She bolted the meat down in a few ravenous gulps, then resumed her scouting position.

It was mid afternoon when they reached the ravine. Waters running down out of the mountain had cut the ragged cleft.
High
mountain streams disappeared into the plateau that lay above the ravine, to reappear as several springs at the beginning of the cleft.
Snow runoff from the mountain made up most of the water in the stream and
was the reason
it ran
so
icy cold year around.
Pell began to explore for a natural shelter.
After spending an hour searching, a large limestone overhang remained the best site he’d found.
The stream had under cut this area thousands of years ago and then diverted away as it cut deeper.
The overhang would block wind and rain and it would protect his back, but it left three sides exposed.
In addition he could tell that, when it rained, the water ran back under the overhang to drip into his proposed campsite.
There was a very small shelf in the back, with an overlying depression in the roof of the overhang that was higher than the rest.
The water wouldn’t wet that area, but it was barely big enough for him and his pack, any protective fire would be located right where he expected that the water would be dripping.

He placed his pack up on the little high shelf, quickly collected a little firewood, made shavings and got out his firepot.
To his immense relief he found that the coals
were still
glow
ing
.
He started a fire easily enough.
With the fire to protect his pack he took his leather and began making trips down to the stream to collect mud mixed with broken reeds.
He brought the mud back and, as he had seen the women do at the mouth of the Aldan’s cave where they had had a similar problem, he began forming a “drip lip” on the roof of his overhang.
He placed it far enough out to
provide
an area
where he could
store dry firewood and sleep down beside it.
Smoke from his fire had risen into the area of the little shelf and he could
tell
that it would be nearly impossible to sleep up there.
Just inside the area where water would fall from
his
“drip lip,” he made another ridge of mud on the floor to divert water running over the floor away from his new living area.
When he
finished, he still
had time
to collect a substantial pile of firewood before it became dark.

As he prepared his dinner he saw the wolf slinking closer and closer.
She was obviously spooked by the fire but nonetheless crept nearer until she was well under the overhang with him.
With some surprise, he found himself relieved rather than disturbed at the prospect of having a wolf in his shelter with
him. He shrugged,
she
had
saved him from the lion.
After a bit he threw the wolf another chunk of meat.
He considered this a bit.
It seemed a dull-witted thing to have done when he was certainly going to run out of food soon.
On the other hand, it seemed a wor
thy offering to the Spirit Wolf. A Spirit Wolf
to whom, after all, he had found himself praying earlier that day.
As he settled down for the night he considered a plan for the next day.
He must hunt, he decided.
The tribe only hunted when it needed meat, because, with no way to store it, getting too much in reserve simply meant a lot of spoiled meat.
They only hunted daily during the winter when hunting was poor and meat
froze and therefore
kept longer.
However, the way he threw, Pell
knew
that he would have to hunt all day, every day, to have any hope of surviving even
in
the summer.
Spirits alone knew how he
might
survive the winter.

True to his plan, he banked his fire to keep animals out of the cave and set out to hunt the next day.
He put his haunch of pig meat and the meager contents of his pack up on the smoky shelf in the back of the cave, thinking that the smoke should keep
scavengers
away.

True to expectation, his hunt was a failure.
The wolf followed him faithfully throughout the day.
Pell’s initial reaction was that the animal would spoil his hunt, but he soon realized that she was far quieter than he was.
In addition, she recognized game long before he did.
He found himself watching
for cues from
Gimpy, as he was calling the animal in his o
wn mind
.
In the early afternoon, they came upon a deer.
Pell quietly and slowly moved closer with his spear.
The wolf slunk along a few paces to Pell’s side.
They were moving upwind and the deer seemed unsuspecting, but then Pell stepped on a pebble that crunched.
The deer’s head came up with a start and it looked right at Pell.
He cast his spear but it whistled harmlessly over the deer’s head.
The wolf took off after the deer like a bolt of lightning but the deer bounded away unharmed.
Pell was sitting on a fallen tree trying to restore a decent point to his spear when Gimpy came back, tongue lolling, limping more than before.
He considered the possibility of killing and eating the wolf if the hunting went as badly as he feared.
He wasn’t sure he could bring himself to do it, but it seemed likely that he could if he got hungry enough.
He realized that the animal served as a kind of walking larder.

The remainder of the day passed without the two hunters drawing any closer to success than they had with the deer.
As they followed an animal trail back toward their campsite, Pell found himself thinking wistfully about the brush-choked ravine with its little tunnel.
Perhaps he should have stayed there.
He could have rebuilt his trap in the tunnel and perhaps more pigs would have become stuck within.
He despaired of his ability to stalk close enough to make a kill with his char
red
spear
point
s
. Why hadn’t he asked his mother to steal him some flint spearheads?
He thought back to his exploration of the ravine the previous afternoon.
There was a narrow point in Cold Springs Ravine.
Could he choke it with brush?
He shook his head at the sheer volum
e of material it would require. He didn’t even have
a decent hand ax!

As they neared the campsite, Pell nearly stepped on a rabbit that
had been frozen right there in plain sight. It
rocketed away and into the brush.
He and Wolf gave short pursuit, but to no avail as the rabbit had disappeared into dense brambles where they couldn’t follow.
Pell peered into the brambles. He mused that the little tunnel where the rabbit had disappeared into the brambles resembled, on a smaller scale, the tunnel where he and Wolf had captured their boar.

As they completed their journey back to their camp, Pell’s thoughts drifted repeatedly back to the little tunnel in the brambles.
His mind envisioned blocking the tunnel in the brambles at arms depth and then rigging a one way passage into the tunnel with sharpened twigs—a miniature version of
his
boar trap.
Then he thought of the rabbit he had caught with the noose.
He became more and more excited over the prospect of getting more meat it this fashion.
He resolved to try making both kinds of traps the next morning.

Back at the camp he steeled himself to eat spoiling meat.
He built up the banked fire first, then got the boar haunch down from its shelf in the back.
He came out coughing and hacking from all the smoke up in the shelf area.
To his dismay the meat was dark with exposure to all the smoke!
He wouldn’t even have spoiled meat to eat; the smoke had ruined it completely!

Chagrined, he stared at the blackened haunch.
His stomach rumbled with the anticipation of the first of many days of hunger.
Perhaps only the outer layers had been ruined?
He cut into it.
The outer layers had a hard crusty, almost cooked consistency.
The depths were spoiling but might still be edible.
He cut off a strip and sat down to eat.
As he expected the deep meat tasted badly, to his immense surprise the more superficial meat tasted much better, despite the taste of the smoke!
In fact as he chewed he realized with some surprise that he
liked
the flavor the smoke had
given
the meat.
Perhaps it wasn’t
actually
good meat, but the taste of the smoke at least covered the taste of
it where it was
rotting.

In any case if the meat on the surface tasted better where the smoke had gotten to it, he
realized he
could make more surface.
He cut the rest of the haunch up into strips and took it up to the smoky little shelf in the back of the overhang.
He
laid the strips
of meat
out over some sticks so that the smoke could get to all sides of it.

The next morning he ate more smoky meat and set out to build the traps he had been excitedly thinking about until late in the evening.
As he walked, he kept an eye out for edible vegetables, as he craved something besides meat.
He found some young onions sprouting and pulled them up.
The bulbs were quite small as yet but he ate much of the green part as well.
Soon his mouth tasted foul, but the onions were a welcome change from
the
all meat diet
he’d been eating
.
Besides, it was
commonly
known that people who
only
ate meat became sick. He picked more onion sprouts to take home for his evening meal.
Bushes of many typ
es were beginning to flower. H
e thought that some
of the flowering bushes
would have berries eventually, but that didn’t help much at present.
He pulled up a variety of other plants as he walked along, looking for ones with edible roots. He did find one that had a bulbous portion.
He wiped it clean and took a bite.
It was very tough but chewing it did release some sweet fluids. This made him think it might be edible.
He found a few more of the same type and chewed on them as well.
He wasn’t sure whether they were different tubers than the women gathered or whether it was simply too early in the season for them to have developed much storage in their roots.
Perhaps if they were boiled?
He collected some of the tubers to take back to his shelter as well.