The Canyon Jack Schaefer

by Les Weil

  In the morning, which was the third day, the sun fought through lingering mist. His clothing was damp. The tobacco in the pouch would not burn. In the ground near the rock he saw many split-hoofed tracks of buffalo and that was strange because the Maiyun had no weight and made no impress on the earth. He lay on the grasses on the rock and the sun conquered the mist and dried his clothing and the hunger was a torment twisting in his belly. When the sun was straight overhead the tobacco in the pouch still would not burn but the hunger was gone. It died away within him and he felt strangely light and giddy as if he climbed on some great height. He lay on the grasses on the rock. His body remained there but his mind floated free and he thought long thoughts about the dreams because he knew that what a man dreamed when he made the sacrifice of a starving must surely come to pass.

  The sun dropped toward the egg-shaped mountain and the air grew still and heavy with unseen warnings. The sun dropped behind the mountain and the stillness pressed down upon the hills. His mind came back into his body and he rose and built a small fire and that was difficult because he had trouble holding his mind there in his body to direct its movements. The tobacco was dry and burned well but when he drew the smoke into his lungs it scratched on his dry throat and brought a dizziness with it. He put the pipe beside him on the ground. He sat huddled over the fire and the stillness broke. Winds rushed from many directions and mingled and cried in the upper air. Lightnings leaped out of the dark and fireballs danced in the distance. He leaned closer over the fire and waited for the rain but no rain fell. There were only the leaping lightning s and the crying winds. A wolf howled, deep-toned, near, and there was no answer. He listened and the winds were a voice shouting. "Follow," the voice said. "Follow." He rose to his feet and stood swaying. The lightnings leaped and he saw it, a wolf, low-bellied to the ground, running into the dark, and a fireball clung to its tail. Unthinking, he stooped to gather his things, the knife and the fire­sticks and the bag of pemmican. Unthinking, with no question in his emptied mind, he followed as the wolf had led.

  The way was hard in the dark. Only when the lightnings leaped could he see the ground stretch before him. There was a weakness in his muscles and often he fell and as often he pushed up and his short legs stumbled on. And always the fireball showed the path, disappearing from sight and appearing again farther ahead. It was leading him up along the stream. It led him on and he came against a wall of rock that climbed in jagged tiers high into the darkness. He did not know which way to turn but the fireball appeared across the stream and to the left and he obeyed. He splashed through the shallow running water and followed. The ground was smoother now under bunched sod, gently graded upward, and he moved more easily. The winds died some and the lightnings ceased. His head was no weight on his shoulders but his feet were heavy. He stumbled on and came out on a wide plateau and stopped. The winds had died away to whisperings and the darkness was thick around. He saw a glimmering in the grasses far ahead and to the right and he went toward it. The glimmering faded and he stumbled forward searching with his eyes into the dark distance to see it and his left foot reaching met only air and he pitched downward. Instinctively his body twisted and his arms caught at the rock edge. His fingers gripped and held. He dangled into a deeper darkness and his mind whirled in dizzying circles and his legs thrashed as he sought to swing them up and crawl back over the edge. But the weakness of the starving was upon him. He dangled into the deeper darkness and his body grew limp. Slowly his fingers slipped, then more rapidly, and he fell downward and his left hip struck an outcropping ledge fifteen feet below and with the shock unconsciousness took him and his body somersaulted outward and fell in silent rush and struck into the topmost branches of a thick-bunched pine. The falling weight broke the first branches and smashed down through those below, forcing a way but slowing, and the thick carpet of old needles on the ground softened the sound of final striking. . . .

  A MAN goes forth into the moonlight out on the open plain. He steps in the brief striding from the small known and familiar into a vast wideness. Distance opens and moves outward around him. There are no roads and their destinations. There is only the land, limitless and alive, the land that stretches beyond reach of the mind toward the ever-receding horizon.

  He bends his knees and sits cross-legged in the thick grasses. The rim of the world rises around him. The level of his eyes has dropped only a few feet yet he in infinitely closer to the heart of earth. He is part of a great quietness that lives and breathes about him and in the quietness he can hear winds whispering among the grass stems. The ancient magic of man's beginnings is there. . . .

  Winds whispering through grasses are the voices of spirits that dwell in the earth to a mind that knows such spirits exist. The unseen presence of the spirit of a friend can bridge long miles and be with a man who has faith in that friend and the power of such friendship. A rushing of winds, a leaping of lightnings, a glimpse of an animal in a flash between darknesses, such are signs to a man who has prepared himself for signs and merged himself into the natural forces that surround him. . . .

  Those are the things that led Little Bear to his canyon.

  He is there. He is a broken heap of flesh and bone on a thick carpet of old needles under a pine tree on the floor of a small canyon deep in the hills that are not hills but mountains along the southern tier of the high border country. He is a flicker of human life in a small rock-walled wilderness that is his alone.

  Rain fell. The chill drops gathering on the pine branches and falling brought consciousness back to the tortured flesh. He stirred and pain was a wave sweeping through him and he was unconscious again. The rain ceased. Dawn spread over the plateau and filtered into the canyon and the sun rose. Slowly awareness crept through him. He lay sprawled on his back. His clothing was rent and ripped. Clotted blood clung to his body in many places. His right leg was doubled under him. It was broken a little above the ankle. Pain swelled and receded and swelled in his chest with each hard-drawn breath.

  He stared upward at the pine branches for a long time. The sun was almost straight overhead when he moved. An agony streaked through his whole body but life was movement and he moved. He pushed up a little and looked around. He did not know what had happened. He did not know that he was Little Bear, foster son of Strong Left Hand, who had come into the hills for the sacrifice of a starving. He was a simple elemental creature searching for the essentials of survival. His eyes found the bag of pemmican where it had fallen when he pitched downward over the cliff edge. It was not far from him. He dragged himself to it on his belly. Stretched on the ground he tried to eat. His mouth was dry and he could not swallow.

  He sat up. He looked around again. He could see farther from this new height. He saw the stream two hundred feet away. He rolled onto his belly again. He gripped the pursed top of the bag in his teeth and pulled at the ground ahead with his hands and pushed at the ground behind with his left foot. He crawled, wormlike, to the stream. Flat on the bank, head down, he gulped at the water. It was the same. He could not swallow. He held water in his mouth and lifted his head and some trickled down his throat and the dry muscles in his mouth soaked in the moisture and he could swallow a little at a time. He lowered his head and drank and the inrush of water became too great and he retched violently and jerked back from the stream edge. He put a hand into the bag of pemmican and tried to eat again. His jaws ached and chewing was very hard. But the roasted dried meat, pounded fine, needed no chewing. He crammed it into his mouth and convulsive constrictions of his throat forced it down. He reached for more and in the reaching a blackness dropped on him and unconsciousness took him again. . . .

  There was water in his stomach. There was a little food. The chemistry of life worked in him. ...

  Daylight dwindled in the canyon. Darkness grew and held it. The late moon rose silently out of the hills above and silvered the plateau. It climbed and its pale light slid down the far canyon wall and moved slowly across the canyon floor. The soft radianc
e touched the limp figure outstretched by the stream and crept over it. The figure stirred and its eyes opened. Unconsciousness had passed into sleeping and the sleeping at last into awakening. The eyes looked up at the traveling moon.

  He knew who he was. He was Little Bear, foster son of Strong Left Hand, and he was lying on the ground and a stream talked gently close by his head. The falling had been a real falling. He was hurt in many places. His right leg was broken.

  He did not know where he was. But the moon above was the same moon that had called him out on the plain by the village to listen to the Maiyun talking. It had not changed.

  His muscles were very stiff. To move was to summon the pain. But he was a man again and he could grind his teeth together and fight the pain. He drank from the stream in slow swallows. He ate of the pemmican left in the pouch but not much because the bag was small and already almost empty. He dragged along the ground to a big stone on the stream bank and pulled himself up against it on his left leg. He looked around. Everywhere, on all sides, he saw at last rock wall rising, some of it near, some of it farther away, some of it silvered in the moonlight, some of it dark in shadow, but all of it rock and rising sheer. That was strange and yet not strange. The soft radiance had moved on across the canyon floor as the moon swung overhead. It was close to the near rock wall now. It called to him and pointed for him. It gleamed dully on iron on the edge of the shadow pool of the broken-branched pine. He dropped flat to the ground and dragged himself there and reached and held the knife and the holding was good. He hunted over the ground and found one of the fire­sticks, the pointed one of hard greasewood. He could not find the other. He began to gather small branches and pieces of old wood, pushing them ahead of him on the ground into a pile. He crawled, wormlike, on the ground and the pile grew. The pain in his moving muscles had subsided into an aching that could be endured but the pain in his right leg was a mounting torment. He fought it and gathered wood. He fought it and was defeated and rolled over gasping on the ground and shuddered and was still. .,.

  The sun arched upward over the rim hills and began to slide its rays down the canyon wall. Little Bear, foster son of Strong Left Hand, kneeled on the ground by his pile of wood. His weight was on his left knee. His right knee touched the ground lightly, doing no more than helping him keep his balance. He revolved his greasewood stick rapidly between the palms of his hands and the point spun in the hole in the flattened piece of softer cottonwood he had shaped with the knife. A tiny wisp of smoke came from the dry brown powder of pounded pine needles close about the hole. He revolved the pointed stick faster and the tiny wisp of smoke grew bigger. He dropped the pointed stick and leaned low to blow gently on the powder. It glowed red. Gently he placed small twigs over it and blew again. He guarded the tiny flickering with his hands and blew upon it. He nursed it into a small fire and fed it larger twigs. It burned bravely and he began to feed it from his pile of wood.

  The column of smoke rose straight upward. It floated on up and above the canyon. It wavered above the plateau level when day-winds wandered across and straightened again when the air was still. It was a slender plumed signal rising into the sky.

  He lay on the ground and waited. When he lay still the pain in his right leg numbed and did not strike at him with each beat of his heart. The fire burned down and he fed it again. He was sparing with his wood.

  All morning and into the afternoon he lay on the ground and waited and no one came. He drank from the stream and ate two mouthfuls of pemmican. He found shoots of the wild licorice near the stream and cut these and ate them. The slender column of smoke rose into the sky. He lay on the ground and waited. All afternoon and into the evening he waited. The smoke faded and dimmed into the darkness and disappeared. He lay still and waited and no one came. ...

  There was no one to come.

  No one of his own village knew that he had gone into the high hills for his starving. His lips had been sealed in silence lest bad omens follow him. No one knew that he had not done as other young men did when they made sacrifice. They went out on a rise of the rolling plain at most half a day from the village and always within sight of the smoke from its campfires. No one knew that Little Bear had gone farther because his need was greater, had gone into the high hills and deep into those hills where the Maiyun would be stronger and the dreams more powerful. And no old man of experience had gone with him to choose a proper place for him and come back for him at the end of the appointed time. There had gone with him only the spirit of an old one, a great one, Standing All Night, whose ancient bones and the fragments of flesh still clinging to them were far to the eastward tended in the last coughing illness by a sorrowing great-granddaughter.

  There was no one to come. No hunting party of any tribe was following buffalo even through the lower edging hills. They were all out in the open plain following the big main herds that were moving in the late spring wandering. Not until fall would parties enter the hills again, to cut lodgeposts and gather stones to be shaped into arrowheads. And they would not penetrate very far.

  In the soft radiance of the old moon waning toward extinction and rebirth, Little Bear worked on his swelling right leg. He took hold of the twisted flesh and the pain was so intense that he knew he must have everything ready before he did more. He found and trimmed five short pieces of branch from what remained of his pile of wood, each about the thickness of his middle fingers. He cut away what was left of his leggings on his right leg and took part of the worn leather and sliced it into thin strips. He put a small piece of the leather into his mouth and clamped his teeth into it. He took hold of his right leg with his hands, one hand below the break and the other hand above the break in the bone. It was a clean break but the ends of the bone were pushed past each other. He wrenched apart with his hands and ground his teeth into the leather piece in his mouth and wrenched apart with his hands. He heard the bone ends grind on each other and his mind screamed wordless sounds at the pain and the bone ends were together and the leg was straight from ankle to knee. Quickly, hurrying before the darkness should take him, he bound the five sticks along the leg with the strips of leather and pulled the knots tight. The pain was sweeping in waves through his mind and each was higher than the last and one rose overwhelming and he fell back on the ground and was still. ...

  All morning Little Bear, foster son of Strong Left Hand, fed his new fire and hoped. But he did not wait. He held a stout stick in his hands and stood on his left leg and hopped about. When he found what he wanted, he dropped to the ground and brought forth the knife. He cut many shoots of the wild licorice. He dug roots of the pomme blanche, that resembles the white potato. These were young yet and small and very hard but there was sustenance in them. He found a few bushes of the wild gooseberry with small green berries on them. He had these things in a little heap by the stream and the scrapings remained in the pemmican bag and he could do no more.

  He could do no more because the swelling in his right leg was growing and pressed outward against the sticks and leather bindings and the pain was beyond pain and an agony that crowded his mind. The inner flesh, torn by the bone ends, festered beneath the skin and swelled it outward with evil fluids. He forgot to feed the fire and it burned down and out. He fell on the ground. He rolled and clutched at the grass bunches. He lay on his back and stared up at the sky and drifted in and out of awareness and the hours passed over him. . . .

  Dark shadows claimed the canyon. Winds of evening wandered over the plateau and sighed softly in the upper air. Little Bear lay still and the pain in his leg throbbed in the rhythm of his heart beating and a fever burned in his blood. Off in the hills a wolf howled, deep-toned, mournful and lingering, and there was no answer. He listened and there was no sound. Again the wolf howled, deep-toned, and the howling moaned along the edges of the winds and dwindled into the outer distances. He listened and there was nothing. There was only the soft sighing of the winds in the empty sky.

  Darkness filled the canyon. Little Bear lay sti
ll and the pain drove his mind to beat in blunting bitterness on the bones of his skull. It struck him as a club strikes and forced him back and back toward a deeper darkness.

  Winds of night wandered over the plateau. They did not drop below the rock walls but they sent exploring streamers through cracks along the rim and these chuckled with a hollow sounding one to another. And the Maiyun of the canyon rocks floated like mist out of their hiding places and searched for him. They came searching and they took the form of rabbits and they found him. They leaped and they laughed at him. They mocked him with a strange haunting laughter that was more terrible than any other sound. Their long ears stood straight up and their laughter jangled in the night air. "Look at this one," they said. "He fights a festering within him and is afraid." Their ears stretched upward like columns of smoke rising and they laughed at him. "The festering is not in his leg alone," they said. "There is a fear that festers in his spirit."

  The pain throbbed and the Maiyun laughed and far back in his being where the life-center clung an anger grew and rushed forward and filled him. A great shout sprang in his mind and fought outward to his lips. "The laughter of my brave father is in my mouth! I spit it at you!" And the Maiyun leaped and faded into mist and he was sitting up on the ground and the knife was in his hand, the knife that had known the hand of Standing All Night, the knife that had pierced his ears and was not alien to his flesh. He raised his arm and leaned and drove the blade into the swollen flesh of his right leg. An agony raced like a shriek upward through him and he wrenched with the knife to widen the cut and pulled it forth and the evil fluids, thick and foul-smelling, gushed from the open wound. He dragged himself along the ground to the stream edge. He lay flat close along it. He thrust his right leg into the water and the chill running current closed over it. ...