by Will Hobbs
Now Cloyd could hear voices behind him. Apparently they didn’t know how close he was, or they wouldn’t be making any noise. With the muffling effect of this snow, they might be only a minute or two behind him.
Cloyd knew he was looking at an avalanche chute, and he knew that he would try to cross it. There wasn’t time to sit down and think. He only knew that he wasn’t going to let Rusty catch him.
He held his breath and started out, the bears close on his heels and constantly looking back.
“Don’t look down,” he was telling himself. He’d caught a glimpse of the dizzying lengths of the chute below, like an endless ski run.
He was almost across. He’d almost made it across when he heard the shouts behind him. With a glance over his shoulder he saw the bright colors of their clothes; that was all. Rusty’s gravelly voice was shouting, “Get off of there, Cloyd!”
All Cloyd knew was that he had only twenty yards to go to reach safety. Those men weren’t likely to take the chance he had and follow him.
Maybe it was the shouts that set it off, or simply his weight on that particular spot that hair-triggered the snow.
He heard an ominous cracking sound spreading like a chain reaction through the snowpack, and then suddenly he was falling, tumbling and sliding and falling, and he was moving fast, hurtling down the mountain inside the weight of the snow. For a moment he wondered about the bears at his heels and realized that they must be inside the slide too.
The snowshoes had been ripped away immediately, but he was all encumbered by his heavy pack. He felt it dragging him down and killing him. Strangely, a few seconds later he felt weightless. The sensation didn’t last long. Abruptly, his body took a terrible pounding on a big bump that crushed the air out of his lungs. At least he was free of the pack—it had been torn off his back. All the time he was hurtling down, down.
He’d thought about avalanches. He’d thought about what they must look like, those monumental waves of snow racing down chutes like the ones in Snowslide Canyon around the mine. In his Living in the Southwest class, his teacher had taken them up onto Coal Bank Pass and taught them about avalanche safety and how to build snow caves.
But he wasn’t remembering all these things. Only a trace of what he had learned came to him now, and he didn’t know where it was coming from. Swim, was all he remembered. Swim toward the surface.
He was swimming, breaststroking as best he could. Swimming toward what he thought was the light. It was hard to tell which way was up and which was down.
The avalanche was slowing. He realized he was going to stop sliding, and then he remembered at the last moment to bring his hands in front of his face to make an air pocket.
Then all was still. He knew he hadn’t ended up on the surface. It felt like he was encased in concrete. He was breathing, he knew that, and he was spitting out the snow that had been imbedded in his mouth. He was buried alive.
So this was the way he would die, he realized. Before long, he would suffocate. He had only a tiny air pocket. How long? Five, ten minutes?
Time was going by, too much time. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. He was beginning to suffocate.
Cloyd never thought of the men far above him beginning to work their way down the edge of the slide. They never came to mind. Only three people came to mind: his grandmother, his sister, and Walter Landis. And the bears came to mind; he’d let them down too.
In case they were nearby, dying somewhere close enough to hear, he would try to talk to them. To let them know he cared about them. He couldn’t really talk, Talking would use too much air, and he didn’t have the strength. But he could hum. He could make a sound like humming.
Cloyd heard nothing but his own humming until he heard the bears. Their claws were scratching on the hard-packed slide ice above. “Brownie!” he grunted. “Cocoa!”
At last he could see them through ice and snow and claws. He was lying face up, and he could see the faces of his bears come for him, and he could see the sky.
The three men never saw what happened. They were more than a thousand feet above and back in the trees. They didn’t see two grizzly cubs swim their way out of the snowslide as it came to rest. They didn’t see the cubs walking back and forth over the slide, with their noses down low and their ears up straight. The men didn’t see them stop suddenly and cock their ears this way and that. The men didn’t see the bear cubs begin to dig furiously at a certain spot. They didn’t find out that Cloyd’s grave had been only two feet deep.
And the three men didn’t see Cloyd rise from the compacted snow. They didn’t see him collect the one snowshoe that was sticking out of the slide. They didn’t see him disappear with the cubs into the trees on the far side of the slide as he heard the second and larger avalanche from the peak itself come rumbling down the chute. When the men came to the bottom of the slidepath twenty minutes later, all trace of Cloyd and the cubs had been erased.
The dump zone was a hundred yards across and twice as long. The men walked it, looking for signs of the Ute boy or the cubs. They found none. For several hours they probed with branches, then gave Cloyd up for dead. In the spring, they said, it would be safe to return to this place and reclaim the body.
Cloyd could manage to shuffle along on one snowshoe if he put almost no weight on the other foot. Often the unsupported leg would sink into the fresh snow and pull him down. He was bruised and freezing, but he was alive. He kept up a stream of talk with the bears, marveling and raving over what they had done.
All Cloyd could think of was Sixto’s tent on Middle Ute Creek, the matches and all the supplies in that tent, the big food bag hanging in the tree. Sixto’s canvas wall tent wasn’t so far away. He could keep shuffling along. He could make it to Middle Ute Creek.
These bears at his side—it was true, they truly were his relatives. They felt it just as much as he felt it.
And they were still alive, still free.
He’d lost the backpack and a snowshoe, and his wool cap that he’d been able to pull down over his ears. He had only the hood on his rain shell for a hat now. But he knew enough to be thankful for what he still had: the one snowshoe, the many layers of clothes he’d been wearing, the snowboots. If one of the boots had been torn off in the slide … And he’d lost neither of his wool gloves, though they were stiff and frozen.
The medicine bundle hanging from his neck had survived. He no longer had the bearstone, but he still had the tooth and the claw and the Ute arrowhead. He still had his pocketknife, and Sixto’s sling was still belted around his waist.
That was all.
It was a strange feeling, knowing that for all the world he was dead now. Walter would hear that he was dead, his grandmother and his sister would hear that he was dead. Yet his heart was pounding in his chest, strong with the will to live.
As it was getting dark, Cloyd kicked out a well in the snow down to ground level, and then he cut enough spruce branches to make a bed six inches thick. The worst cold always seemed to come right up through the ground. His shelter had no roof, but the snow walls cut the wind. There was nothing to do but lie down and pull the bears close against him. He maneuvered his arms back through the sleeves of his thermal underwear, his flannel shirt, his sweatshirt, his pile jacket, and his rain shell. He had to keep his hands close against his body, or his fingers would freeze.
The bears huddled close. Exhausted, he fell asleep with one bear against his belly and chest, and the other wrapped around his head.
* * *
Cloyd came off the mountain at the place where East and Middle Ute Creeks flowed together, and he turned up the middle branch. The cubs were gnawing the willows along the stream, finding the bark to their liking. Cloyd carried the one snowshoe under his arm as he followed the line of trees along the edge of the meadow. There was little snow under the trees, and only a foot and a half had fallen on the meadow. Not nearly so much had fallen down on the Ute Creeks as above on the slopes of the Pyramid.
Sixto’s tent would be waiting for him only a few miles up the meadow. His spirits were soaring. The bears were finding the white world to their liking. They were striking the snow with their forepaws, rolling in it, biting it, chasing their shadows. As Cloyd walked the edge of the trees, Brownie and Cocoa stayed out in the meadow, clawing here and there through the snow for grass and roots.
At first glance Cloyd couldn’t tell what was wrong. But magpies meant mischief, and he could hear magpies squawking up there around the campsite. Usually they congregated around a carcass. Cloyd was squinting into the bright sunlight bouncing off the snow, and he could see just enough to know something was wrong with the tent. He started to run. The tent was all out of shape, barely standing. The storm?
Once Cloyd saw the gashes in the canvas, he stopped running. As he walked up on the scene, his eyes took in the devastation. Everything was ripped and strewn and destroyed. The canned goods had been set up along a log and then exploded with shots from a high-powered rifle. Brownie and Cocoa were lapping at the remains of their contents. “No!” he shouted, and lunged at them, striking one and bowling the other over. “Get out of there!” he raged. “Leave this garbage alone! You have to be wild! You get around garbage, there’ll be people there! Some of them will be afraid of you! They’ll kill you!”
The cubs kept away and watched, all abashed and intimidated, as he picked up the shredded remains of a can of stew. The cubs had never seen him all mad like this. Good, he thought.
Cloyd snatched up an empty feed sack and began picking up the mess. When he was done he tossed the sack into the branches of a tree, and then he turned to the mutilated tent. Only one pole was holding it up. Even the guy lines to the pegs had been cut. All around the campsite there were pieces of destruction, some showing and others hidden under the snow.
He went around picking things up, turning the objects over in his hands, mourning for everything that had been lost. He was sorry for himself, but he felt even worse for Sixto. The old sheepherder had left him his whole camp, all his valuable possessions. What would he ever say to Sixto, how would he make up for it?
Who would do this? Why? Why would anyone do this? Then his eye fell on something these people had brought and left here—a big; empty whiskey bottle. Now he could see what had happened. Whoever it was, they’d gotten drunk and done all this for no reason at all, only to amuse themselves with their own meanness.
The sheepherder stove had been broken into pieces, the chimney had been flattened, the food bag had been cut down out of the tree and all its contents slashed and scattered. The flashlight Sixto had retrieved from the entrance of the mine had been smashed. Inside the tent, Cloyd found the pots and pans crushed, the blankets tossed around. Where was the box of big kitchen matches? Seven matches, soaked under the snow that had fallen in through the wide gashes in the canvas, were all he could find.
Seven matches.
He wanted to get away from this place, to lead the cubs away as quickly as he could. But first he had to collect everything that might be useful: the matches, a skillet, one dented cooking pot, a big spoon, the remains of the bag of flour, a little lard, a can of peaches and one of apricots that the marksmen had missed, the beans the magpies hadn’t already carried away, all the parachute cord and rope he could salvage, pieces of canvas, the two blankets that hadn’t been damaged at all, and the small folding army shovel the vandals had also overlooked. With a strip from one of the blankets, he could make a headband to save his ears from the cold. He bundled all this salvage into the largest piece of canvas, and he slung it over his shoulder and walked off.
The snow on the meadows was melting. Not fast, but it was melting. The sun was out, and his wool gloves were drying. He was angry, and he was hurt, but he felt himself lifting with determination. He wasn’t going to let this drive him out of the mountains.
Cloyd made his camp where he had camped with the old man, at the second site along East Ute Creek. He made a low-ceilinged lean-to of cut branches for a shelter. He retrieved the bearskin from the tree where he had cached it, and used it for a third blanket at night. Storms could blow through the Window high above and around the Pyramid. He resolved to carry through what he had started. Now he wanted to see the cubs safely into winter.
The problem was denning. The grizzly woman and the game warden who had cared about bears had agreed that denning was the problem. The cubs might not dig a den from instinct. If they did, they might only scratch out an approximation of one, which wouldn’t take them through the winter. They would freeze to death in a den that wasn’t good enough.
Maybe how to dig the den was something they would have learned from their mother.
He could dig the den for them. He had the folding camp shovel. But he knew they wouldn’t den for a while yet. If he could find any food to add to the meager supplies he’d brought from the ruins of Sixto’s camp, he could stay with them awhile. There were snowshoe hares around; he’d seen one or two, almost completely turned white. Every day he practiced long hours with the sling, with smooth round rocks he fished out of the creek.
Cloyd was putting off using the seven matches. The sun had dried them out and they looked serviceable, but he had to save them. He ate the can of apricots first, and then, after a few days, the can of peaches. He savored each bite, and he drank the juice slowly. Hunger was gnawing at him, but it was a pain he could tolerate if he kept his mind off it. He was good at doing without things; that was something that went way back with him.
There was another idea in the back of his mind. He realized this idea had been planted when he’d first found the arrowhead. All the deer and all the elk hadn’t dropped to lower elevations when the snowstorm had come. There was a big bull elk he was seeing every day on the meadow, digging up the grass. If he could make an arrow for his arrowhead, and a bow for the arrow, and if he could sneak up extremely close …
It took three of his matches to start a fire. He was hungry, and he cooked up a few gordas. He had half a dozen arrows ready that he’d fashioned from dead willow. He hardened the points of five in the fire. It might be possible to take small game without an arrowhead.
It was easy to come by the feathers. With bits of his gordas he lured the gray jays in close, then baited the spot under the deadfall trap he’d constructed. A tug on a piece of cord, and the log would sometimes drop on the bird. Brownie and Cocoa watched his technique with admiration. The cubs could eat as many jays as he could provide.
His bow, when he was done with it, looked barely sturdy enough. It might work if he was lucky. Parachute cord would have to do for a bowstring. With thread he’d taken from the seams in the canvas, he tied the feathers to the arrow shaft and hafted the arrowhead to the arrow.
The days of mid-October Cloyd spent hunting, mostly for that solitary bull elk that was still too stubborn to abandon the high country. Cloyd stalked it in the twilight, in the cold, gray hours on either side of the ever-shortening days. Despite his gloves and snowboots, his fingers and toes always ached with cold. During the day he would lie shivering in wait beside the elk trails, waiting for his prey to walk by at close range.
He’d heard stories of animals that would offer themselves to the hunter, simply show themselves up close and allow the hunter to take their lives as a gift. The big bull elk knew Cloyd was hunting him, but this elk hadn’t grown so old by being generous. Cloyd could remember times when deer had walked right into his and Walter’s camp on this very meadow. One morning while they were eating breakfast, three spike bucks had walked into camp, big-eyed, curious, to within fifteen feet of them as Cloyd and Walter stood there sipping cocoa and just watching.
But those curious young deer were gone. There was only this one enormous, cautious elk with antlers three feet high and just as wide.
When he wasn’t hunting the elk, Cloyd was practicing with the sling. There was a scree slope that came down to the meadow on the other side of the creek, and there was a big marmot who taunted him from those rocks. He’d let m
any a stone fly at that whistle pig, and he’d come within a whisker several times.
The days were coming so clear, bright, and blue, one after the next, that it was an afterthought when he realized he needed to make another snowshoe. Winter could come back at any time. He knew he wasn’t thinking well. He should have made the snowshoe even before the bow and arrow.
For two days he worked on the showshoe, until he knew it was strong enough. He fashioned the frame from green willow branches, and he wove canvas strips and smaller branches to make the webbing. Canvas strips served for the binding to hold his boot.
All the time he was keeping track of the days, marking them on a stick with his knife. The day of the slide had been the eleventh of October. Ten days had passed since then. The days were growing ominously short, and his hunger was hurting him all the time. He used two more matches to start a fire to make his last pot of beans, his last gordas.
It had to be time, he thought, for making the den. The beans and gordas gave him the strength he needed. He took the cubs and ranged the mountainside up above the meadow, up in the spruce trees. Between the meadow and the barren heights above the tree line, a dense forest of spruce swathed the steep slopes at the foot of the Continental Divide. It was the kind of site Sixto had described, a north-facing slope that would lie in the shadows all winter, out of the path of the sun. All winter long the Divide’s towering ridge, which included the Window, would block the sun. In the shadows, the snows would accumulate deep and undisturbed to shelter the den over the entire span of deep winter.
At last Cloyd found a place he liked, a steep bank under a massive spruce, whose roots would hold the ceiling and keep it from collapsing.
The ground was frozen and made for hard digging at first. It was slow work with the tiny shovel. But it was a good tool and sturdy. He could use it as a shovel or adjust the blade at right angles and use it as a pick.
The cubs showed little interest until the morning of the second day, when he broke through into unfrozen dirt. They began digging beside him. He kept the entrance small, only big enough for him to crawl through.