Bonesetter (34 page)

They spoke of governance and after hearing more of how Agan’s tribe had worked out their differences; the Cold Springs band agreed that it seemed much fairer than what they were used to.
However, their form of democracy depended on everyone in the tribe knowing each other well, a situation they had not achieved as yet.

They spoke of each person’s particular skills.
Agan described Manute as a hunter with a second skill in leatherwork, Deltin as a woodworker with a second skill in hunting and Panute as a gatherer with a second skill for cooking.
She and Gia were medicine women who also gathered; though, due to her arthritic joints, Agan was no longer of much use in gathering.
Falin was too young to have shown a skill as yet.

Tando described himself as a hunter with a second skill of flintworking, Donte as a gatherer,
basket weaver
and cook, and Pell as a bonesetter and a toolmaker.
Tando grinned a moment then said, “And, if you do join with us, I guarantee that you’ll be astonished by
some
of the tools he makes!”
Pell wondered a moment what “tools” he spoke of, then realized that he probably was referring to the snares.

Agan thought for a moment, then said, “We will need other skills,
a
mak
er
of clay pots, a fire maker, a real flint worker—I’m sorry Tando but I have seen some of the flint you have worked yourself, they are serviceable tools, but we will need better.
We need more good hunters, and gatherers, though I can tell from the
quantities
of grain and tubers that you have here that Donte gathers more than most women can.”
Pell thought for a moment of interrupting to tell her that he and Tando also knew how to gather, and that their efforts had contributed to the volume of the Cold Springs’ stores.
Then he thought better of it, Tando may not want them to know this as yet either.

Agan went on, “We have too many ‘healers’.
We may be able to trade our healing services to other tribes someday, but that won’t happen until other tribes learn of our skills.
Even joined, our tribe will still be too small, though certainly better than if we remain separate.

They talked on and on.
Much later than their usual sleep time Agan finally said, “Well we have learned much of one another.
Nonetheless, we have much more to learn during the following days while we wait until Panute is well enough to travel.
We need not decide whether we should join our tribes until she is healthy.
Let us
all
think on the wisdom of this joining for the next days.”

The next day dawned crisp and clear with leaves
falling off trees,
blowing and swirling, sure signs of winter’s approach.
They talked more during breakfast.
Manute asked about their hunting techniques and Pell remembered the conversation that Manute and Gia had had during their previous stay when Falin had been hurt.
At first, Tando described typical hunting techniques such as they had used when they lived with Roley.
Manute continued to probe, asking about the smaller animals they brought in so frequently.
Animals that obviously had not been speared
..
.

The conversation stopped briefly while Tando gazed at him, brow furrowed.
After a moment he said, “You suspect that we have another means of hunting.
That is true.
It is a very important secret for us, and one that we believe
will
get us through the winter with plenty of meat.
We
will
share our secret with you
if
our tribes join.
Perhaps you feel that we should share our secret freely, even if we don’t join, for it is true that our ability to hunt would not be diminished by the sharing of our secret with you.
But, as much as you need to learn our new hunting methods
and
our technique for preserving meat, so do
we
need more strong hunters to protect ourselves from raiding by larger tribes.”

Pell felt guilty.
They
should
simply share their secrets with their friends.
However, he definitely felt the same need that Tando felt, the need to have more strong men at his side in any confrontation with the Aldans.
The inner guilt he felt didn’t overrule his self-interest.

After eating, Manute began preparing the skin of the deer from the previous day’s kill.
Pell watched these preparations with great interest, while he and Tando cut the meat into strips for smoking.
As he scraped away at the skin, Manute cheerfully described each of the many steps required to make the skin into supple leather.
Pell pulled Tando aside and suggested that they teach Agan’s group how to smoke meat.
He felt it would be a gesture of good faith toward the joining of the tribes.
As before, Tando opposed sharing their most powerful secrets.
Pell, however, pointed out that it was going to be hard to hide the technique, unless they wanted to try to set up a completely new smoking site.
Otherwise, they would be smoking meat in the cave right there in front of their guests who would surely learn the important principles.

Tando agreed, but made a big show of how, in their gratitude for Manute’s lessons on working leather, they were going to teach their guests from Aganstribe the secret of preserving meat.
They brought in some lumps of the dirty rock salt and put them in a skin full of water.
After enough had dissolved to make the water taste quite salty, they soaked the strips of deer meat in it.
Next, they stretched the fillets over the branches of a dead bush in the high recess at the back of the cave where all of their smoking was done.

During a pause in the meat-smoking lesson, Manute cracked open the deer’s skull and scooped out the brains.
He rubbed the brains into the deerskin, continuing to demonstrate more of the steps in the leather working process.
As they came to trust one another more, they went into more and more detail on the techniques, eventually holding back none of their little secrets.
Deltin finished making a new spear shaft to replace the one damaged in killing the deer the day before.
Then, while the others worked on their projects, he lashed together a frame of small straight, wooden shafts.
Pell studied the frame in puzzlement, then finally asked what the frame was for.
To his surprise, Deltin told him that it was for smoking their meat strips.
Pell immediately saw how this regular frame would be more effective and efficient than the random arrangement of branches in the dead bush they had been using.

Pell and Gia worked together to change poultices on Panute’s hand. At first he
had been
surprised
when
she didn’t just do it herself. On the third day after the amputation, Pell had been about to leave to check their snares. Gia
had
said, “Before you go, shouldn’t we change Panute’ bandage?
”

Pell had turned slowly in surprise. Gia had looked at him with concern. “Uh, I thought you were the expert with bandages and poultices?”

Gia had stared, “But I don’t know anything about a finger removal! You have to help me.”

Rather than reminder Gia that he didn’t know anything about amputation wounds himself,
Pell had untied the soft leather of the bandage and tugged off the old poultice. There had been a puffy area on the back of the hand and Pell had touched it with a finger. When he did
,
pus ran out of the wound.

Gia’s eyes had widened, “See! I wouldn’t have known to do that and the evil humors would have remained in
her
hand!”

Too embarrassed to say he had had no idea that touching it would squeeze pus out, Pell had shrugged and massaged it to squeeze out a little more. When Gia put the new poultice in place she held it with one hand, then put Pell’s hand on top of hers and her other hand on top of his. She mumbled a short chant while Pell stared at their hands. Her hands were so warm!
Entranced, Pell had felt goosebumps going up his arm.

This
had
became their routine
,
Pell taking off the dressing
and massaging
Panyte’s
hand, Gia putting on the new and their sitting with their hands entertwined for a few moment
s
while Gia chanted. It
had been
the highlight of Pell’s day
s
.

Days passed and stretched into weeks.
Panute’s sickness faded and her leg began to hurt less.
The wound where her fingers had been cut off turned bright red and became fragile, bleeding easily when it was disturbed.
This worried Pell, but with time the wound slowly contracted, becoming smaller and smaller.

Panute
began using her remaining two fingers and thumb and soon became remarkably facile with them, weaving light baskets and sewing leather into winter clothing.
Saying that she preferred to stay busy, as long as someone brought her materials with which to work, she made what she could.
The swelling in her leg slowly went down and Pell took out the fur padding a little at a time, gradually snugging up the straps around the splints.
The leg appeared to be straight, though it was a little shorter than the other leg.
It also continued to be turned outward a little at the foot.
This twisted, shortened state worried Pell a great deal, but Panute was becoming more and more ecstatic
,
because as time passed her leg hurt so much less.
Rather than being concerned about the remaining deformity, she enthused regularly about how much straighter it was than Rasad’s.
Rasad, a man from her old tribe, had broken his leg and had simply lain unsplinted in his bedding until eventually it had healed.
Healed, yes, but twisted and bowed, it rendered him a cripple for the rest of his life.
He apparently had been reduced to performing menial tasks about the cave and staying home to defend their stores from animals while the tribe foraged.
Pell thought such a life seemed sad but much better than how such a person would have fared in the Aldans—lucky if he weren’t cast out while the leg was healing—
certainly
cast out when his twisted leg rendered him a cripple.

Panute began to sit up more and more, resting her back against a large bole of wood the men rolled in for her.
One day Pell came in and, to his surprise, found her perched on top of the bole, feet resting on the ground.
Pell had rarely seen anyone sit anywhere other than on the ground, but she began to sit up there most of the day, saying that her leg was more comfortable upright than laid out on the ground.
Not long after that she began to hop from place to place about the cave—
and hopping
outside to urinate and move her bowels.
She
had
hated going in the clay pot that they had made for her and having to have someone else carry it away.

Tando and Pell continued to check the trap lines by themselves so that the others wouldn’t learn the snaring secret unless they joined the tribe.
They also went on group hunts with Manute and Deltin, occasionally making another kill but the occasional large bounty from those hunts couldn’t match the steady stream of small game provided by the snares.
The profusion of small game was dropping off as the weather steadily grew
cooler
but remained high enough that they were still smoking extra meat more often than they took any out of storage.

Panute asked Pell when she could begin walking on her leg; already she was resting its own weight on the ground without pain.
Pell took off her splints and felt the bones. The leg was nothing like the floppy bag of bones he had felt at first.
Though swollen, the bones seemed immobile to him.
As he had for Falin, he recommended that she put as much weight on her leg as she could without pain.
She immediately began carrying some weight on each step, though her gait remained
mostly
a hop.

In the evenings they sat around the fire and told stories. Agan had a
talent for storytelling
. Many of her stories were of true experiences from her long life but some were stories she had heard from travelers
.

Gia told stories as well and Pell hung on her every word. Her stories, she said, were “pretend.” They featured young lovers, meeting for the first time and being swept away. These young lovers often met at trading places and, remembering that he had met Gia at the River Fork trading area his heart leapt when those types of stories were told.

At Tando’s urging, Agan at last agreed to another discussion of the subject of the joining of the tribes. In a good mood after a successful group hunt that had procured a small boar, they discussed it one evening ov
er a spicy boar and grain stew.
The group discussed it cheerfully, bantering back and forth.
It soon appeared that everyone was comfortable making up a combined tribe and contented with the rules of governance that Aganstribe had used.
However, there was disagreement about where they should live.
The Cold Springs site provided the best cave, good hunting (though Pell and Tando realized that their snares would probably work as well anywhere—perhaps better in a new location, much as they always worked better when moved to new sites in the Cold Springs area) and excellent water.
It was also ready to be lived in, whereas a lot of work would be necessary at the cave where Aganstribe wintered.
However, at the Aganstribe winter site, the neighbors were well known and friendly, while at Cold Springs, the Aldans or other raiders were a major concern.