[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the bear's throat had been clearly visible, and this time his aim was good,
but the bear kept coming.
Wheeling, he grabbed a limb and hoisted himself up. The bear lunged against
the tree, his long claws raking Joe Mack's leg, ripping his pants and pulling
the moccasin from his foot.
Joe Mack climbed higher and then looked down. The bear was clawing at the
tree, breaking the lower dead branches in a fury to reach him. Joe Mack
notched another arrow, and as the bear started to climb, he shot the arrow
down the wide red maw into the bear's throat.
Its shoulders were already covered with blood from the previous wound, but it
clawed after him, shaking the tree until Joe Mack was hanging on desperately.
Choking, the bear tried to climb. Joe Mack prepared another arrow but lost it
when he had to grab wildly at the tree to keep from being shaken loose.
He clung to the tree, getting a good grip on a higher branch and pulling
himself up.
The bear's efforts seemed to weaken. It dropped back on its haunches and then
reared again as Joe Mack moved.
Then it fell back, struggled to rise, and finally lay still. Joe Mack waited,
watching. At last, very carefully, he crawled down the tree. He poked at the
bear with the end of his bow. There was no reaction.
First he retrieved the dropped arrow and then the one buried in the bear's
side. Arrows were hard to come by and would be needed. Then he looked
carefully around.
The land about was bleak and harsh. A small stream raced among the rocks
nearby, a little ice along its fringes. The pines were ragged and storm torn,
growing sometimes from the naked rock.
From under straggling birches he gathered dry sticks and built a small fire,
concealed by the trees around. Then he went to work on the carcass of the
bear.
It was a long, tiresome job, and his strength was not what it had been. He
peeled back the hide and began gathering the fat, taking the best cuts of
meat. Over the fire he roasted some, eating it as he worked.
What he would have given for a good cup of coffee!
A cold sun was disappearing behind an icy ridge. The wind crept down the
canyon and prowled among the trees, finding leaves to rustle and branches to
rattle in the cold. Joe Mack worked on into the night, warming his cold hands
by the fire, building a rack on which to dry meat and smoke it. Clearing a
flat place he staked out the great hide and began to scrape it clean of fat
Page 51
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
and fragments of meat.
Out in the night, a wolf howled. From somewhere further off, another replied.
They smelled the bear's fresh blood, and they would be coming. He stood his
bow and his arrows close at hand. Firelight flickered on the pines and the
stark, bare branches of the birch. He warmed his cold fingers. Would he ever
be warm again?
He built his fire up, and when it had burned down he moved the ashes and lay
down upon the warm earth. Then he slept a little, awakening in an icy dawn.
The water of the creek was so cold it made his teeth ache, but he drank and
drank again.
The wolves were not gone. He glimpsed them from time to time, swift gray
shadows among the trees, waiting for what they knew would be theirs. "I will
leave some," he said.
Later, standing beside the bear's skull, he rested a hand upon it. "I beg
your pardon, Bear. It was with no anger that I killed you. I needed your meat.
I needed the fat from your ribs."
He roasted more meat and ate it, and ate great pieces of the fat. This he
would need to survive.
At last he began gathering what he could carry of the meat, packing away what
he had smoked and dried. He worked on the hide and finally gathered it up to
carry along. It would be heavy, but now he could be warm, warm.
On the third day he went away, leaving the bear's head in a fork on the tree,
and the carcass for the wolves. He walked away between the raw-backed ridges
that gnawed the gray sky, away from the ragged pines where his bear skull
rested, and downstream toward a warmer land.
Two days later, gaining in strength, he found a landmark a gash upon a
tree, a thin gash only, with a smaller above it and he hesitated. He was
close then, close to the people of whom Yakov had spoken. Beside a stream he
sat to wash the wounds left by the bear's claws. They seemed to be healing
nicely. In a still pool he saw himself in the water. His hair was ragged and
wild, and his clothes were soiled from travel. The day was warm, so he took
time to wash and dry his shirt, to brush out his hair and shake his sheepskin
vest clear of the leaves and twigs it had picked up in passing through the
woods. As was the case with most Indians, he had little facial hair, so
shaving was rarely a problem. The few hairs growing on his chin he could pull
out if they bothered him.
He washed his face and hands, then checked his gear. Yet he did not move on.
Should he, or should he not try to find the people of whom Yakov had spoken?
He knew no one here, could trust no one. Whenever such a group got together
there was always one who was an informer or who would sell out for a privilege
or some benefit to himself or herself. Yet he needed shelter, and they would
have shelter. Obviously they were surviving the cold, and with them he might
have a better chance.
He had lost count of the days since escaping from the prison.
There was no more time. He must find a place in which to last out the winter,
and certainly in this vast land, with its miles of forest and tundra, with its
bleak mountains and rocky gorges, there had to be a place.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]