Eye of the Wolf

by Theodore V. Olsen

  For a moment he hung across the rounded shelf, his legs hanging over. Falling rubble showered his body. Then he was slipping off, his consciousness ebbing away on an excruciating rush of pain and shock. And a tide of final blackness as he fell…

  Sensation returned in a hot slow trickling. He was face down, he was sure of that ahead of anything. His skull throbbed terribly and his throat felt like a raw kiln. Then awareness poured back in a blinding flood and he groaned.

  Will-Joe had fallen partly across the body of his horse. It had broken his fall somewhat. That, and the fact that he had not landed on any of the flinty strewings that pocked the gorge bottom. His forehead rested on hot soft earth and he raised his head and groaned again. He flattened his bound hands against the ground and pushed his torso up. A cloud of flies rose, buzzing angrily. There was more pain, but his mind steeled against it. Moving his left leg caused a wrench of agony that made him grow still again.

  A fuddled ribbon of memory told him that he had hit that leg in falling. He moved the other leg carefully. It was all right, he was battered raw from head to foot, but he could move everything except that leg. Broken? He would have to see.

  He put all his strength into the effort of turning his body over. He set his teeth and heaved, and rolled sideways off the carcass of his horse. The slight jar as he lit on his back shot an eruption of agony from his leg through his body and beat in red ripples against his brain. His eyes blurred. He fought the waves of rising darkness and held his teeth clenched till the worst of it subsided. Then he raised himself on his elbows and looked.

  Broken. Yes. He could see the slight angle made by shattered bone through his pantsleg. The break was halfway between knee and ankle, but he could not tell anything more.

  He turned his head till he could see the bodies of Caspar Bloodgood and his horse. They were to the rear of him, only a few yards away. A great brown stain matted Bloodgood's gray hair and dyed the rock under his head. His legs were pinned by his horse and an occasional convulsive shudder ran through the animal; it was alive.

  Will-Joe lifted his face. They had been on a deep slant of the trail, but still over forty feet above the gorge floor. It wasn't quite a straight drop, as his lacerated body testified. His clothes were shredded, clotted with dried blood, and his body felt like one vast bruise. The knob he had hit with his leg, he realized, may have saved his life. Projecting about fifteen feet below the rim, it had stopped his fall completely at that point. The sharp fragments littering the bottom had proved as fatal to his horse and Bloodgood as the slanting fall itself.

  He blinked at the sky. How long had he been here? It was still full daylight, but he could not see the sun. It had been early morning when they had gone over the rim and the sun had not been high; shadow had still filled the gorge. It must be late in the day now, the sun having arced completely overhead and out of sight, for the sand was warm, yet the gorge was shadow-filled again.

  His attention came back to his leg. He felt a rush of fear for it that, for the moment, eclipsed every other concern. Again he steeled himself and braved the anguish of tortured flesh to flop over on his belly. Digging in his elbows, he pulled himself along by straining, jerking inches till he reached Bloodgood's corpse. He pulled the mountain man's big bone-handled knife from its sheath and reversed it between his hands so the blade's razor edge rested on the ropes. Using only his fingers, he sawed it back and forth till the strands parted. Turning on his back once more, he eased himself up by agonized degrees to a sitting position. With the knife he tore the seam of his pantsleg apart from the knee down.

  The lower leg was like a rubbery sausage, swollen to almost twice its normal width. It was discolored a purplish-black hue and the flesh was a mangle of red jelly where it had hit the rock. He kneaded it around the break, fighting the pain that made him want to jerk his fingers back. There it was… a sharp ridge of broken bone, but not a clean break.

  He thought of only one thing then. Not of escape from this deep trap of a chasm, not of his burning thirst or even of the sweetness of life itself. But only that if his leg healed thus, he would be a cripple for the rest of his days.

  He had to set it. But how? He felt weak and sick, his stomach churning. He doubted he could summon the strength to do it with his hands. Even if he could, he would probably pass out before the job was done.

  Will-Joe looked around. His eyes settled on two large rocks that lay almost together, a space of two inches between them at their closest point. That might do it. But he had to get everything ready.

  He looked around again. The nearest clump of brush was at the base of the wall some twenty feet away. That would have to do. With Bloodgood's knife he hacked away a piece of Bloodgood's hunting coat and sliced the buckskin into thin strips. He stuffed these inside his shirt and shoved the knife into his sheath and looked at the brush clump again.

  Grinding his jaws, Will-Joe set his elbows in and began to inch his way toward it. Cutting the tough leather had been a struggle; it had taken a good deal out of him. The pain was slugging like a rising-falling knife at the base of his skull, and suddenly the contents of his belly rushed into his throat. He stopped and retched. Retched again. And moved on, his body soaked with sweat.

  He rested a minute after reaching the brush. He hacked off two tall wands as thick as his thumb and cut each one into three equal-length pieces. He tucked these into his belt and then began a grueling crawl toward the rocks. It took him five minutes to reach them.

  He maneuvered himself into position on his back and carefully lowered the ankle of his broken leg between the rocks, turning his foot so the instep and heel were firmly wedged. He lay flat and reached back and caught hold of another sizable rock and arched his body almost clear of the ground. He pulled suddenly.

  Pain blazed. This time it was too much, and he passed out completely.

  He was unconscious for a minute or less. When he came to, he lay quietly, sweating, flexing his fingers. He had to straighten that leg, no matter what it took.

  He rested another minute, pulling his mind and body together for a supreme effort. Then he set himself once more and heaved.

  Something cracked. He screamed with the blinding pain. The darkness burst like a black star in his head.

  When he came to again, he blinked at the pooling gold of twilight. Dusk already flitted like a gray moth in the shadowed recesses of the gorge. Fever sizzled at the back of his brain. Soon it would engulf him in a tossing, twitching helplessness.

  He dredged up the shreds of raveled will that remained to him, sat up slowly and levered his leg free of the rocks. His fingers probed the swollen flesh. Yes… the bone was in place. But he had to work fast, while there was still light enough and before the fever took him fully.

  Noosing a strip of buckskin loosely around the leg, he set the six sticks in place beneath it and pulled the noose tight, cinching them down. He reinforced the makeshift splints with the remaining leather strips, tying each as tight as he could stand it.

  When he was through, Will-Joe was almost too spent to move any more. But he did. He floundered his pain-wracked way back to Bloodgood's body. The jughead horse was quivering all over, raising its head in a last convulsive thrust. Its eyes seemed to question him.

  My brother, his eyes said back, I was not thinking; I am sorry. It was as if a fellow creature had spoken and he spoke back: it was that natural.

  He opened the large parfleche bag slung from Bloodgood's belt. His pistol and knife were inside. He cocked the pistol, jammed it behind the jughead's ear and pulled the trigger.

  Thunderclap echoes slammed between the walls and died.

  His throat flamed with a torturing thirst. He fumbled for Bloodgood's canteen. A large canteen almost full; the mountain man had filled it from the spring at Will-Joe's camp. With failing fingers he uncapped it and drank. He had hardly taken a swallow before the fever rolled like a redhot wheel across his senses. He set the canteen carefully aside and sank onto his back, giving himself utter
ly to the onset of delirium…

  Three days passed. The fever came and went like a bony ghoul, feeding on his body with each siege, leaving him a little weaker than before. Between visitations he forced himself to sluggish action, harnessing his weakening will and body to do what must be done to nurse and nourish the chemistry of life. Crawling on his belly a few inches at a time, he harvested edible roots and leaves from the scanty vegetation that grew within a short perimeter; he gathered every stray fragment of brush he could find. The smallest effort was a Herculean endeavor, and what would take a whole man only casual seconds to accomplish cost him eternities of grueling strain.

  The immediate area was dry as a bone. Will-Joe conserved the water in the canteen with a miserly will. Bloodgood's parfleche contained a small quantity of jerky and a small loaf of pemmican. His jaws were too weak to masticate the jerky, but the tender parts of plants and the dried roasted fine-pounded meat of the pemmican went down easily. A sip of water to moisten his throat tissues, then a forced convulsive swallowing, enabled him to ingest tiny mouthfuls. One at a time, spaced well apart so that they would stay down.

  He could not prevent his body water from sweating out during periods of fever-thrashing delirium, and so the water level in the canteen dropped at an alarming rate. The sun blistering all day into the gorge, caroming off its rocky walls and floor with a glaring fury, made the place like an oven. All he could do was stay in the meager shade of one wall or the other.

  The effect of the intense heat became more unbearable with each passing day, and he could do nothing about it. Except to expend precious strength moving himself and a few necessities farther down the gorge. He had none to spare for the task of piling dirt and rocks over the bloating bodies of two horses and a man…

  His leg was festering. It got worse daily. The inner flesh had been savagely macerated by torn bone: it swelled constantly outward against the sticks and buckskin lashings which had to be loosened and rebound each day to accommodate the fierce pressure. The pain of shattered bone was eclipsed by the pain of corruption; fear of a crooked leg was supplanted by the realization that he might lose the leg altogether. Assuming he could escape the cul-de-sac in time to find someone to take it off. But amputation, so far as he was concerned, was out of the question.

  For the moment, so was escape. The sides of the gorge were unscalable, on this end at least, for they had fallen within sight of its south terminus which he could see boxed off cleanly. Its northward cut bent out of sight about fifty yards beyond his present position. In this remote area there was little likelihood of his being found, unless by Ulring or his cohorts from Spurlock… if they were still on the hunt. And that was a possibility he meant to discourage at all costs.

  So that when Will-Joe made the decision in which lay any hope of saving his leg and his life, he waited till after dark on the third day to build a small fire. Darkness would hide telltale smoke. The wood he had gathered during lucid intervals made a pitifully small heap. He lighted it with a match from an oilcloth-wrapped packet he had found among Bloodgood's effects, then undid some of the bindings on his leg, stretched it out before him and slowly turned the blade of Bloodgood's knife in the flames.

  He plunged the blade into the black bloated flesh, twisting savagely, his blood raging with a pain that went beyond pain. Pulling the knife free, he kneaded the flesh with his fists, continuing till a gush of blood and pus subsided. He sank back, spent and trembling, and left the wound open to drain…

  By morning his fever had cooled. He felt somewhat stronger, almost clearheaded. The wound was draining nicely and the swelling had gone down. He rested through part of the morning, keeping the wound washed and clean, switching away hordes of flies, and finding enough energy to peg an occasional stone at the gaunt-necked carrion birds that spiraled down to light on the rimrock. They had come before: more of them each day, and they were getting bolder.

  Will-Joe lay back and stared through slitted eyes at their ominous black forms. Filth of the sky, I am not for you. The epithet had no force; he knew they were nature's sanitation corps. But he was not for them. Not yet.

  The stench from what had attracted them had grown so bad that now his head was clearer, he could no longer bear it. The little distance he had managed to maneuver himself down the gorge made little difference in the overpowering putridity. Neither did his dim horror of letting the buzzards have their way.

  He felt strong enough to attempt moving on, to investigate possibilities farther down. He had exhausted the edible shrubs and all but a few ounces of rancid water. Water. Food. These were his paramount needs. And finding a way out of the gorge…

  He had a faded bandanna that was fairly clean. He knotted it around the wound, ate the last mouthful of pemmican and took a small swallow of water. Bloodgood's parfleche, containing the two knives, his pistol, cartridges and a few likely odds and ends, he secured to his belt at the back, along with the canteen, his blanket and his lariat. He tied a thong to the stock of Bloodgood's Winchester and looped that around his neck.

  Then he began to crawl down the gorge, using hands and elbows and his good leg. It took him an hour to reach the bend. All the while he was aware of the flappings and gabblings of the buzzards. At the bend, he rested a moment and looked back.

  They had mounded in a squirming black shroud on the gorge bottom. He crawled on…

  The gorge ran another hundred yards beyond the bend. It took him all afternoon to reach its end. This tip boxed off too, but less precipitously. And it slanted a bit more inward.

  Will-Joe was not sure he could scale it under the double handicap of a broken leg and his weakened condition, even with the aid of his lariat, but it was his only chance. Days of being on the run and living off scanty forage had already worn him gaunt. He was a little stronger now, strong enough to chew up some of the jerky and force it down, but it hardly filled his belly, and he had to stretch out what little he had.

  A few more days and he would be too weak to make the attempt. If he escaped from the gorge, he could find water. Berries and insects and edible bark too—anything that would keep him alive till his leg was healed.

  He rested from his crawl and chewed the jerky and scanned the face of the short cliff that terminated the gorge. It was full of irregularities that would support a man's weight, and it looked solid enough.

  A sharp rock projected from the wall about twenty feet up. If he could flip a noose over that, maybe he could pull himself up to a narrow ledge below it. He tried, sitting up and making a half-dozen casts, but each one fell short. He was in too awkward a position to make more than the clumsiest of throws.

  Will-Joe looked around. A stunted aspen with a forked trunk grew out of the rubble close to the wall. He crawled over to it and used Bloodgood's knife to hack through its knotty base. When it came down, he trimmed off the limbs and whacked off the branching arcs of trunk above the fork. Measuring with his eye, he cut off a piece of his rope and tied one end around the ankle of his broken leg. He passed the other end over his right shoulder and tied it under his left arm.

  Then, with the aid of the wall and the forked pole, he maneuvered slowly upright. The rope held his foot several inches above the ground. With the pole crotched securely in his left armpit, he was able to stand. He took a small tentative step. Yes, and even walk a little. He did not like the wrenching pressure of the rope's pull on the broken bone, but if the splints held fast, he could take it for brief periods.

  He had ample leverage now, but casting the rope was still awkward. He could use only one arm while the other braced the crutch, and he could not shift his body to the throw. After eight casts, he succeeded in tossing his noose over the projection.

  Will-Joe began to climb. His arms felt weak as water. It was a matter of pulling himself upward a few inches at a time, then resting his weight on the foot of his good leg, hooking it into any available crevice or wedging it against sliverlike projections. The slight burden of his rifle, blanket, canteen and the crutch whic
h he also thonged to his neck did not give him much trouble. Sweat soaked the remnants of his clothing; he was dimly surprised to know he had that much liquid left in him.

  It was getting dark by the time Will-Joe reached the ledge. And he had twenty more feet to go. The ledge was so narrow he had to hug the wall—no room to make another cast. All he could do was reach as high as possible, slip the noose over a short spur of rock, pull himself up and repeat the procedure till he achieved the rim.

  He toiled upward, gaining a few feet each hour. Full darkness brought the high country chill and he no longer felt his tired fingers; they were too numb. He forced them to their work, groping out holds for the rope and his foot. His brain screamed with fatigue. He had to rest longer at each stop, yet he dared not rest too long: hugging against cold rock deadened his body, and should his grips relax even a moment, he would fall.

  The time came when his groping hand as high as it reached could find nothing but a smooth bulging expanse of rock. No projections, nothing to lend support to hand or rope. He was marooned… at least so far as he could tell.

  How far was he below the rim? It was too dark to be sure of anything. Maybe moonrise would show him a way… if he could cling to his shallow holds till then.

  Will-Joe lay against the cliffside and shivered, fighting to hold onto a shred of consciousness. The tortured strain of his body was relaxing into numbness—what he feared most.

  The last drop of resolution had almost squeezed from him when the wash of moonsilver topped the high ridge and shed enough light to skyline the rimrock. He was close to it, he saw. But not close enough. It was two feet above the length of his arm. A stub of rock elbowed out below it, but still a foot higher than he could reach.

  If he could get his noose over that.

  He could hardly hold the rope. On the third try he dropped the loop over the stub and jerked it tight. It was the work of many minutes to pull himself as high as the stub. But now the rim curved inward and he could haul himself bodily, inch by inch, up and over it.