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dampness onto his skin. The bow was not as well made as those of the ancient
people. He knew this, but he knew also that the spirit in the wood of this bow
would compensate for the way he had hurried the making of it. The arrow in his
lap had been fitted with the stone tip from the beach village where his people
no longer were permitted to live. The ancient times and the present were tied
together.
Clouds hid the stars. He felt the nearness of rain. The cold wind made his
flesh tremble.
He knew he should feel the chill of that wind, but his body possessed no
sensation except the loss of Hoquat.
Hoquat had run off. Where?
Katsuk's mind slipped into the spirit chase of which his ancestors had spoken.
He would search out Hoquat's spirit. That would lead him to the boy.
Katsuk stared into the darkness. There was a small fire somewhere and he could
not tell if he saw it with the inward vision or outwardly. Flames from the
fire cast ruddy light on raw earth and a tangle of roots. There was a figure
at the edge of the firelight. It was a small figure. Now, Katsuk knew he was
having the spirit vision.
Where was that fire?
Katsuk prayed for his spirit to guide him, but nothing spoke to him from Soul
Catcher's world. It was another test then.
A small animal ran across Katsuk's outstretched legs, fled into the darkness.
He felt the tree behind him growing, its bark searching upward. The damp earth
and the cold wind moved all through him and he knew he would have to fight a
spirit battle before he could reclaim Hoquat.
'Alkuntam, help me,' he prayed. 'This is Katsuk. Help me send my message. Lead
me to the innocent one.'
An owl called in the night and he sensed its tongue bringing rain. It would
rain soon. He was being called to an ordeal within an ordeal.
Slowly, Katsuk got to his feet. He felt his body as a remote thing. He told
himself: I will begin walking. I will find Hoquat in the light of day.
From an interview with Harriet Gladding Morgenstern in the San Francisco
Examiner.
My grandson is a very brave lad. He was never afraid of the dark or any such
nonsense as that, even as a small child. He was always thoughtful of his
elders. We taught him to be respectful and considerate of those around him, no
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matter who they were. I'm sure these are the qualities which will bring him
through his present trial.
Shortly before nightfall, David found a sheltered place where a tree had been
uprooted by a storm. The tree had fallen almost parallel to a small stream and
its roots formed an overhang whose lip had been taken over by moss and grass.
David crouched in the shelter for a moment, wondering if he dared build a
fire. Katsuk had made a fire bow and showed the captive how to use it as a
diversion, but David wondered if smoke and fire might lead Katsuk here.
It was late, though. And there was a cold wind. He decided to risk it.
Bark had been ripped from the tree by its fall. David found long lengths of
bark and leaned them in an overlapping row against his shelter to make a heat
pocket. He collected a pitch deposit from beneath a rotten log as Katsuk had
taught him. A dead cedar lay along the slope above him. David slipped on wet
salal and bruised his forehead getting to the
cedar, but found, as he had hoped, that the tree's fall had splintered it,
leaving long dry sections underneath which could be torn off by hand. He
assembled a store of the dry cedar under the roots, brought in dead limbs and
more small pieces of bark, then went in search of a short green limb for a
fire bow. It would have to be short to fit a shoestring.
'Preparation, patience, persistence,' Katsuk had told him in explaining this
way to make fire.
David had wanted to give up in his first attempt with Katsuk's fire bow, but
the man had laughed at 'hoquat impatience.' Goaded by that laughter, David had
persisted, running the bow back and forth across its driver stick until
friction made a spark in the dry grass tinder.
Now he knew the careful way of it.
With a slab of cedar notched by pounding with a stone, with a shoestring bow
to drive the tinder stick, with pitch and cedar splinters ready at hand, he
persisted until he had a coal, then gently blew the coal into flame which he
fed with pitch and cedar. When it was going well, he thought: Katsuk should
see me now.
The thought frightened him, and he peered out of his shelter at the forest. It
would be dark soon. He wondered if he would be safer from Katsuk in the night.
The man had strange powers. Hunger gripped his stomach. He looked down at the
stream. There would be trout in that stream. He had seen Katsuk build a weir.
But the night would be cold and he knew he would get wet trying to trap a
trout. He decided to forego the trout. Tomorrow ... tomorrow there might be
hikers or the people he knew must be searching for him. They would have food.
It was a long night.
Twice, David went out to replenish his firewood, dragging back dead limbs,
bark. It was raining lightly the second time and the wood sizzled when he put
it on the fire. His shelter turned the rain and most of the wind, though, and
it was warm by contrast with the night outside.
Several times he dozed, sitting up with his back against the earth which had
been exposed by the upheaval of roots. Once, he dreamed.
In the dream, he was running away, but there was a long brown string trailing
behind him. It was tied around his forehead the way Katsuk wore the braided
cedar around his head. David sensed the string trailing him wherever he ran.
The string went up the mountain to Katsuk and the man up there spoke along its
length. Katsuk was calling for help. 'Hoquat, help me. Help me. Hoquat, I need
you. Help me.'
David awoke to find dawn breaking and his fire almost out. He covered the
coals with dirt to extinguish them and prevent telltale smoke. An attack of
shivering overcame him when he went out into the misting dawn.
I'll keep following the stream down, he decided. There have to be people
downstream.
As he thought this, he stared upstream, searching for any sign of pursuit.
Where was
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Katsuk now? That had been a crazy dream about string. Was Katsuk really in
trouble up there? He could have fallen in the night or broken a leg or
something, Crazy Indian.
Still shivering, David set off down the watercourse.
Sheriff Mike Pallatt:
Sure, some of these Indians can do strange things. Make your hair stand on
end, some of them. I tell myself that if you live close to something like this
wilderness you get a feeling for it that others don't have. I guess that's it.
Maybe.
* * *
In late afternoon David worked his way through a stand of big-leaf maples in a
creek bottom. His little stream had become a torrent more than ten feet
across. A thick carpet of moss covered the ground beneath the maples. David
thought how soft a bed the moss would make. He had found a few berries to eat
and he drank water frequently, but hunger was a persistent ache now. It had
moved from his stomach to a tight band around his head. David wondered if the
ache in his head could be real. Was it really that brown string he had dreamed
about? Was Katsuk up there somewhere holding the other end of that string? He
was tired and the moss invited, but when he pressed his hand into it, water
ran up between his fingers.
He noted then that his feet were soaking wet.
The wind had turned to the southwest. That meant rain. Patches of blue showed
in the sky, but gunmetal clouds were scudding toward the peaks behind him.
He paused beside a beaver-downed cottonwood, studied his surroundings: trees,
trees, trees ... the river, a black pier of rocks buffeted by gray current ...
a squirrel running on a log. Was Katsuk out in that forest nearby, silently
watching? It was a thing he might do. He could be there. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]