Tucket's Travels

by Gary Paulsen

“—there's a chance we can run on some meat. All meat needs water and they'll be coming to the strcambed to drink. And all our feet hurt because we're barefoot.” Francis looked down at his feet. The moccasins had long since worn off from walking—they were good for only a few miles in sand and rocks. Yes, his feet hurt too, but they would soon toughen up and get calluscd.

  He started off without speaking and for once Lottie was silent. She followed, dragging Billy by the hand, and the three of them shuffled through the mud and sand and water of the quickly drying stream.

  They walked along the stream the rest of the day, and though they saw plenty of tracks—deer and rabbit and coyote and some raccoon—they made too much noise for the game to hold position for a shot.

  Francis thought of going ahead to hunt, but he hated the idea of leaving the children alone so soon after their brush with the Conianchcros. He had despaired of getting any food. But just before dark. when he walked around a curve in the stream, there was a young spike buck standing angled away with its head down, drinking water.

  Francis raised and fired without thinking, so fast Lottie yelled and dropped to the ground. She thought somebody was shooting at them.

  For a second he thought he'd missed. The deer made an amazing leap to the side, clearing the edge of the streambed and landing above them, a good eight feet up and fifteen over.

  But Francis was sure he'd held true and that the ball had gone into the back of the ribs and out the front, through the heart. When he climbed up the side of the stream the buck was lying there on its side, dead.

  Francis paused, thanking fate and the spirits and the deer—his stomach growling all the while—and then handed the knife from his possibles kit to Lot-tic. “Start gutting it and we'll skin it. “We'll stay here a day or two and make some moccasins with the green hide. I'm going to look around and make sure we're alone.”

  At one time Lottie would have objected to getting stuck with the work, but she was too hungry. Billy looked like he was going to start chewing on one of the deer's feet any second. It was not a time to be squeamish.

  Francis reloaded, put a cap on the nipple and studied the surrounding country. He had two worries. One, that somebody might have heard the shot. The Lancaster had a small bore—.40 caliber— and made a fcarsomcly high, sharp crack when it went off. Still, the sound probably wouldn't carry more than a mile or two—he had fired in the confines of the strcambed—but he wanted to make sure that it was a safe mile or two.

  The second worry was about a fire. They could cat the meat raw—Francis had done so on occasion and he was sure Lottie and Billy would be able to stomach it—but he longed for a full, hot meal. He also needed to melt sonic grease off the deer to replenish his supply for shooting and cleaning and to work into their feet and moccasin leather. He needed a day down, and the children needed at least a day of rest, maybe more. He had to be able to make a fire and not have it attract any attention.

  The country had changed dramatically as they'd moved up the strcambed. It had gone from flat desert -prairie to a rolling terrain with outcroppings of rock. Francis climbed one of these outcroppings and sat on the top.

  It was about three hours from dark, and the late light cast long shadows from the hills and rocks. He sat quietly and let Ms mind go blank, let his eyes study. There, a bird wheeling—a hawk—and there, a deer, a mile and more away. To the right, half a mile on, a family grouping of antelope, three of them, and over there, another hawk diving on something, maybe a mouse, and four crows wheeling in a warm draft of air, climbing and tumbling. Two jackrabbits running from one coyote, a half mile to the left. All normal things, all seen and dismissed.

  Francis was looking for the other thing, the thing that didn't match the surrounding country. A bit of sharp line, a movement, a curve that didn't follow nature. He swivclcd and studied for a full half hour and did not see or hear anything out of place. He gave it another half hour, not moving except to turn carefully, cradling the rifle across his arms. But there was truly nothing out of the ordinary to see or hear or smell or feel.

  At last he was satisfied. He stood slowly, his legs stiff, and moved down the hill and back to where Lottie and Hilly were working.

  The deer was gutted and the rear partially skinned. It looked like Billy had more blood on him than was in the deer. He looked like a wild animal. Lottie, who had been doing the real work, had only a spot of blood on her cheeks and some on her hands. But she smiled through a cloud of flies—it was hard to believe how many there could be in such a short time in an otherwise empty prairie—and motioned to a stack of wood.

  “I had Billy bring in wood. I wasn't sure you'd want a fire but if you did it would be hard to find in the dark and we might fetch a snake were we to grope around without light. I ‘collect the time one of my neighbors, I think it was that one named Nancy, she fetched a snake in the woodpile when she was reaching for some firewood in the dark and that was the last time she brought in wood after dark.”

  Francis waited. Nothing more came. I know I'm going to be sorry for this, he thought, I know I shouldn't do this, I know it's just the worst thing in the whole world to do. “What happened to the snake?”

  “She had it by the tail and she took it and whopped it against the side of a chopping block and killed it and then she said, to the snake she said, ‘If you want to act like wood you can by jingo be wood’ and she put it in the stove—it was stiff as a poker because she whopped it kind of hard—and burned it for heat.” A deep breath. “Of course that was before she up and took with the ha'nts and could tell about things before they come to be. I remember the time …”

  Francis let her go. He was used to the talk; as a matter of fact, he was getting fond of it, and recognized that it was not because she liked to Calk so much as because she saw things. Saw everything there was to see and was very, very smart. She missed nothing. And when there was something to be done—gutting a deer, gathering wood, which he hadn't told her to do but she'd taken care of just on the off chance that he would want a fire—she jumped in and did it.

  She finished the story about Nancy while she skinned the deer. Billy helped, and Francis took over when the carcass had to be flopped to get the skin free.

  “Get some sharp sticks to cook on,” he said. “Green so they won't burn.”

  When the skin was completely off the carcass he draped it over a bush and cut some meat into strips, meat from the back haunches and the tenderloin down the back. These he laid on top of the ribs to keep them out of the dirt. Then he set about making a fire.

  He had no flint or striker, but he did have the rifle and powder. He cut slivers of wood from the dry underside of a wet log and found some dead grass already dry in the hot sun after the rain. He arranged the shredded grass and slivers of wood in a small hollow and sprinkled a bit of powder into a tiny pocket beneath the grass, leaving a thin trail coming back on top of a small flat rock. At the end of the powder trail he put a percussion cap, picked up another stone and struck the cap. It went off with a sharp snapping sound; it lit the powder, whose trail acted as a short fuse that set off the bit beneath the grass. Within three seconds he had a small fire going.

  “More wood,” he called, and Lottie handed him small pieces until they had a healthy blaze.

  “Now the meat …” He took a strip of venison, put it on one of the green sticks and held it over the flames, so close that the bottom edge started to burn.

  Lottie and Billy did the same and when the meat was hot—well before it was fully cooked—Billy could stand it no longer and ate his piece. He immediately started cooking another, by which time Francis and Lottie had eaten theirs and started on more. They sat that way into the night, eating and cooking, grease in their hair and faces, until a large part of the deer was gone and they were so full they couldn't move.

  Francis blinked—a bit of smoke in his eyes—and he was so bone tired that the blink was enough. His belly was full and the fire was warm on his face and Ms eyes didn't really open af
ter the blink. He rolled onto his side, still facing the fire, saw the children do the same and was instantly, profoundly asleep.

  He slept hard until the sun came creeping into the streambed and warmed his face.

  His eyes opened then and he saw the two children lying asleep on the other side of the fire pit. He rose and stood—every muscle in his body seemed to ache—and stretched. Amazing, what a difference a full belly and a drink of water could make.

  He picked up his rifle and moved off a bit. climbed the side of the arroyo and swept the horizon. The sleep had been wrong. In this country, to not keep an open eye but just drop off by the fire was insane, but he had been so tired he couldn't have stayed awake if he'd been lying in broken glass.

  Nothing. A clear blue morning sky. Not even a line of clouds. No dust, no horsemen, nothing. It was as if, Francis thought, they were completely alone on the planet.

  “We ate most of the deer,” Lottie said in back of him, startling him. “Should we get the fire going again and cook the rest?”

  “Small,” Francis said. “A small dry fire—no smoke. We don't want to attract company. Use dry wood and keep it litde. There were some hot coals still there to get it going.”

  “I know. You don't have to be telling me everything, Francis. I know some things. I know lots of things. There was a man, he came through one time back on the farm and had a list of questions to see could a person know things, and I answered most of them. Although some of the questions were dumb. One was about horses and fish and dogs …”

  Francis let her ramble and make a fire while he set to work on the hide. Billy was still asleep. They had skinned the deer close so there wasn't any flesh or fat adhering to the hide to scrape off and he stretched the skin to dry in the sun. It would shrink, he knew, but he cut strips from the edge to use for thongs and lacing. He stretched the skin to keep it flat while it dried.

  “How” long until wc can make moccasins?” Lottie asked.

  “It should dry enough today if it doesn't cloud up and rain. Wc can rig something up tomorrow. They'll be made of raw hide but they'll help a bit.”

  “Good. My poor feet.”

  Lottie held one off the ground, standing on one foot and tipping the other sole up behind her. Francis could sec it was torn and blistered. His were the same and he looked down at Billy, still asleep, and saw that the boy's were the worst of all.

  Well, Francis thought, it's a good place to rest. We still have some meat. He marveled that they could have eaten most of the deer, but he'd seen Indians do the same and, after all, they had not eaten properly for days. There's water, he thought, and wood, and we're alone. “We'll stay here two days. Fish me out the deer guts.”

  “What?” Lottie said.

  “The tube guts from the deer. The intestines. Pull them out of the gut pile.”

  “Is this some kind of joke, Francis? Because if it is …

  “Never mind. I'll do it myself.” Francis went to the pile of guts where they'd left them. A cloud of flics came up but he took a stick and fished out the intestines. He had seen Indian women clean them out and hang them to dry with a rock for weight so they would become like string for sewing. But they were too far gone and torn apart when he tried to stretch a piece of them. He threw them back. The stomach, lungs, heart and liver were all still there and he knew it was a waste not to eat them. Indians would have eaten them first and saved the meat for later. He'd seen them, and Grimes too, eat buffalo guts and liver raw out of an animal almost before it was dead. But he couldn't bring himself to do it, though it was always wrong to waste part of a kill.

  The next day Francis found that making moccasins was more difficult than he'd thought. He had repaired them himself when they had worn out but he'd never made a pair from scratch.

  The hide had been stretched and dried for only one day in the hot afternoon sun. Unfortunately the hair was still on it. Francis used his knife to cut the hair shorter but they didn't have the week it took to throw the hide in a creek to let the hair “slip” out of the skin. For that matter, Francis thought, looking at the strcambed, which had further dried up since the rain, we don't have a creek cither.

  He made the children stand on the hide's skin side and scratched outlines of their feet. He added half an inch around the sides and cut the sole pieces. He did the same for himself, then set all the pieces on the ground, side by side, and looked at them.

  “Well,” he said. “Well …”

  “They need walls,” Billy said. “They ain't going to work without they have walls.”

  “You mean sides,” Lottie said, “and he knows that. Don't you, Francis? You know how to do that, don't you?”

  Francis nodded. “Sure.”

  Of course he didn't, but if he admitted it to Lot-tic he'd never get another word in. He studied the hide again, wishing he'd spent more time watching the women work and make things when he was a Pawnee captive.

  Billy was right. The soles needed walls. Francis cut long strips of hide about two inches wide, cut narrow laces from the remaining hide and, after boring holes with his knife, laced the strips around the soles so they stood upright. Then he cut toe pieces and laced them to the tops of the walls until he had some version of moccasins.

  “They look alive,” Billy said. “Like they'll cat our feet.”

  Francis smiled. They did look odd. He hadn't gotten all the hair off, and even the laces were fuzzy. The end result was comical: hair-covered, flurry, odd ends sticking out all over the place …

  “They'll break in soon,” Francis said. “Let's get walking. I don't like staying here.” He couldn't shake the feeling that the Comanchcros had ridden past them—well to the south but past them just the same—and would come back for them somehow.

  “When Francis was finished, they'd been in camp just over two days. In that time the three of them had eaten most of the good meat off the deer, except for some strips they'd dried in the sun. Francis gave the strips to Lottie and Billy to carry, shuffled his feet deep into the grccn-hidc moccasins and set off.

  “Which way are we going?” Lottie held back. “Do we have a plan?”

  “Northwest. It's the only way to go.” In truth they had no choice. Somewhere to the west of them lay a great desert. He had heard people talk of it, and if he took the children there they would certainly The of thirst. East of them lay a whole area ravaged by the war between Mexico and the United States, an area where bandits ruled the land. And south of them … well, that was the way to the Comanchcros and he had no illusions about their fate if they went that way.

  If they went far enough north they would meet up with the Oregon Trail and maybe get on with a wagon train and head west and he could find his family and … and … and …

  It was always there, the dream, the hope. But the truth was he could barely remember them. He stopped walking as the thought struck him: he felt close to these two children, felt that Lottie and Billy were more of a family to him than the one he'd lost when he was taken prisoner.

  Lottie and Billy had been trudging with their heads down and ran into Francis.

  “Why have we stopped?” Lottie pulled at her moccasins, which were loose and slapped on her feet. “What are you thinking about?”

  Francis looked at them and smiled. “Families,” he said. “I was thinking about families.”

  Then he settled his possibles bag, held his loaded rifle loosely and easily in his right hand, the hammer ready on half cock, and started northwest in the easy shuffle he'd learned from the Indians.

  It was the only way to go.

  Francis walked well ahead. He did this pardy because the other two had shorter legs and were carrying the dried meat and leftover hide, and partly because he could not stop worrying. Some fears were about the Comancheros, but he worried more about water. They were walking up the strcambed and had found puddles here and there, but they were drying up fast, and he did not like the prospect of making a dry camp or of going more than one day without water.

&nb
sp; Every now and then he would leave the streambed and move tip along the higher banks, or go well off to the side and stand on a hill, careful not to kick up dust for anybody to sec.

  But there was nothing but a wide, half-desert prairie that seemed to stretch endlessly. He would stand, the rifle cradled in his arm, his eyes moving slowly. Waiting, he studied, and he found birds and rabbits and deer. But nothing human.

  Toward evening he roamed wide, moving out carefully half a mile on each side of the streambed, looking for tracks or some sign of movement. Nothing.

  He came back into the streambed and walked another hundred yards, looking for just the right place, and at length he found a ledge slightly above the bed with an overhang to catch the light and heat from a fire. In front there was a small pool of water, left either by the rain or, more likely, by a seeping spring. He tasted it. Ah! It was sweet.

  “Gather wood,” he told the children when they came up. “And dry grass for kindling and for beds. I'm going to look for fresh meat.”

  “Francis,” Lottie began, “we know how to make camp. You don't need to tell us.” He nodded and moved off.

  Francis checked the cap on the nipple of his rifle, pushed it down tightly with his thumb and moved up the bed of the stream. He had seen many tracks of deer and smaller sjame. It was time to hunt, even though they had enough skimpy meat to keep them going for two more days and Francis could go days more without eating. He also hated to stop this close to where they'd left the Comanchcros. But he had to hunt now in case they came into a country with no game. Cover was thinning and he had to think of three mouths and three stomachs instead of just his own. Lottie and Billy couldn't cope with hunger as well as he could.

  It would be wrong to say he hunted. He walked up the streambed, passed two does and an older buck, waited until he saw a young buck, aimed and fired. The deer dropped. It was strange, almost like the deer had never been hunted with a gun. They moved off, away from him, but slowly and only for a few yards, and then they stood and looked at him.