by Les Weil
The snow was better packed now and he could move swiftly but he did not. He moved slowly, looking hard all around and ahead. When he came to the tracks he took an arrow from the quiver and notched it on the bowstring and followed the tracks. They led back and forth and always worked farther down the canyon.
He saw where the puma had scented the buffalo and slipped belly-low forward, leaving a mark like a great snake. He saw this mark lead twisting through thickset clumps of bushes that blocked vision ahead. He stopped. He tried to remember what old hunters had told of the ways of the puma. When it killed it did not eat in the open. It dragged its kill beneath overhanging rocks or a low-limbed tree. There were no such rocks near. But there was a bushy pine a long bow shot ahead and to the right. And there was good bush cover about forty feet from it.
He moved very slowly. He was careful not to let the snowshoes bump together and to press each down gently at first before putting his weight on it so that there would be no crunching of the snow. He circled to the right and after many long moments he was behind the cover bushes. He moved even more slowly. He parted the bushes with infinite care and eased his way between them. At last he could see through those remaining.
The puma was there.
It was crouched under the bushy pine feeding on the carcass of the growing calf that would grow no more. Its back was towards him, turned a bit to one side. He could see the black tail tip waving from side to side as it fed. He could see the white insides of the ears when it lifted its head to let the fresh meat juices trickle down its throat. All of it except the tail tip and the ears was a deep reddish brown. It was a big puma, very big.
Carefully he drew the arrow back until the flintstone point almost touched the bow. He aimed up along the side where the arrow could drive forward behind the ribs to the heart. He loosened his grip on the arrow and it sprang from the bow humming its low death song and it swerved in flight and struck, not in the side where it could drive forward to the heart, but in the flank where it sank into the big muscle there and hit bone.
The great cat leaped twisting in the air and in the leaping saw him and landed scrambling and was away in huge bounds scattering the snow and the second arrow that he had notched before the first hit sprang after it and went high and was buried in a drift beyond.
He was very sad. His arrows were poor arrows. They were not quite straight. They did not fly true. He was not a good arrow maker. Only a few men were and they made all the arrows for their villages and other men gave presents for them. Yet these were the only arrows he had. The puma had carried one of them away and he would have to hunt for another in the deep snow.
All the rest of the morning he followed the tracks of the puma and long into the afternoon. There were blood drippings with them for a time then these stopped. It moved like a shadow, slipping away before he was near or even knew he was near. He found the place where it had tried to draw the arrow out of its flank and had bitten the shaft through so that the shattered wood lay on the ground. Most of the day he followed the tracks and three times only he saw the puma. Once he was close enough to shoot another arrow and this went wide. He was afraid. The fear that had twitched his muscles in the early morning grew in him. Perhaps his arrows were good arrows after all. They would not fly true because the evil spirit in the puma was too powerful for them. It turned them aside. Then he became aware that the puma was not just running to get away from him and trying to hide and then running again when he unraveled the increasing maze of tracks and came near. He could not see it as it slipped from cover to cover but he could sense that it was watching him. It knew there was no way out of the canyon. It was watching him and moving as he moved. It did not go into the narrow upper end of the canyon. His scent was too strong there because his camp was there. It circled in the wide lower end and watched him and it was learning that he could not move as fast as it moved and that the medicine of his arrows was weak. He remembered that old hunters said a puma never attacked a grown man except when it was caught where there was no escape. But that did not help much. Everything old hunters said was not always the exact truth.
He stopped following the tracks. He could not get near the puma, not while it was watching him. Darkness would be coming soon. He would fight another way. He would not let the puma have the meat it had killed. He went back to the carcass of the calf. He tried to drag it. It slid on the snow but it was too heavy. He cut it in two pieces, slicing through just behind the ribs and parting the vertebrae. In two trips he dragged it to his storehouse. When he returned for the second piece there were new tracks in the snow. He did not see the puma but he knew it was watching and he dragged the meat as fast as he could. He pushed the two pieces into the rock-crevice storehouse and piled the stones in front again. He hunted through the snow to find more stones, as big stones as he could move. He piled very many and wedged them tightly together.
The buffalo were still among the upthrust rock by the upper-end rock wall. There was little for them to eat in that place but they did not venture down the canyon. He tramped back and forth across the canyon between them and the lower end. He made a path, at first with his snowshoes and then without them in just his moccasins. Perhaps his scent would keep the puma away. . . .
That was a long night. In his shelter he slept only in snatches, dozing and waking suddenly with a cold sweat on his face. Each time he waked he put more wood on the fire. There would be long stretches with no sound. No winds moved. Even the Maiyun remained deep in their rock homes. Then the silence would be shattered by a fearful sound. Five times in the night the puma screamed, a fearful sound that wailed and echoed through the canyon, sometimes like a woman in an agony, sometimes like an evil spirit tormenting helpless people. Each time he listened and his muscles twitched and the fear grew. ...
In the morning the sun was high before he crawled out of the shelter. Twice he started and held back and the third time he went out. The bow was always in his left hand now.
The buffalo were there among the upthrust rocks. They were moving a little out but not far. There were no four-toed tracks at the upper end of the canyon. He felt much better. Perhaps his medicine was strong too.
He started down the canyon, moving slowly, watching all around. He saw many new tracks overlaying the old. He saw where the puma had lapped away every sign of blood where the carcass of the calf had been. He saw where it had killed a rabbit. A few small tufts of fur were all that remained. It was very hungry. A small rock rabbit was not much food for a puma as big as that one. And the appetite of an animal that held an evil spirit was always very strong.
Suddenly he knew that it was watching him. He turned. It was there, beyond bow shot, watching him with eyes that burned in the sunlight. It did not like having its meat taken away. It did not like having his scent between it and the buffalo. It was not running from him. It knew he could not overtake it. Only when he shouted and started toward it did it move. It slipped away like a shadow, disappearing so swiftly that he was not certain where it had gone. It was out of sight but he knew it was watching him. He hurried back to the upper end of the canyon.
All day he stayed in the open there. Much of the time he stood on top of a big stone and looked down the canyon. Sometimes he saw the puma. It moved restlessly, covering the entire area, searching for food. It was lean and very hungry. It did not seem to care that he could see it.
The buffalo knew it was there. They searched for food too and pawed through the snow for the scanty grass. Often they stared down the canyon and snorted and trembled. But they did not snort or tremble when Little Bear came near. They seemed to know that they were safer with him between them and the puma.
Everything in the canyon knew it was there. Not a rabbit moved out of its burrow, not a rock squirrel, not a fieldmouse even under the snow. There were only the buffalo and Little Bear at the upper end of the canyon and the puma searching and prowling at the lower end and creeping ever closer in its wide ranging from rock wall to rock wall.
He sat crouched with the fire between him and the doorway. The flames were low and would not leap up. The smoke rose slowly as if it were reluctant to drift out the smoke hole into the outer darkness. There was no sound except the small whisperings of the fire yet his muscles twitched and an awareness grew in him and suddenly there was a rushing of sounds. The buffalo were snorting and whistling through their nostrils and they were running. They were ploughing through the snow along the rock wall down the canyon. The sounds faded and the silence returned yet the awareness was still strong within him. The puma was there. It had not followed the buffalo. It was outside and it was very near.
He listened. Drops of cold sweat dripped from his chin as he listened. He heard the sound of claws on rock. It was trying to rip the stones away from his storehouse. He shouted. He stirred the fire so that sparks flew upward. He thumped the ground and screamed and screeched wordless sounds. He seized a stick from the fire and thrust the burning end up through the smoke hole in the roof and jumped over the fire and as he jumped pushed his hand with the burning stick up through the hole and flung it so that it fell outside hissing in the snow.
He crouched on the ground inside with the bow in his hand and an arrow notched and listened. There was no sound. The immediate awareness died away within him. He put more wood on the fire and crouched by it and gradually his muscles ceased twitching. The canyon outside with a big bowl filled with a dark silence. He crouched by the fire and dark shadows filled his mind.
Then the bellowing began. It was deep and rumbling. It rose and fell and rose again. It stopped and it began again and it stopped again and began yet again. There was silence and then there was bellowing and once the great cat screamed, a high climbing scream that held a fearful fierceness and a fearful fury. And the hours passed, slow and dragging, and he crouched by the fire and the dark shadows whirled in his mind. ...
It was morning. Mists floated over the hills. The sun beat upon them and drove them away and shone upon the plateau. But in the canyon the mists still clung.
Little Bear woke from the half-sleep of a gripping weariness. The fire was a few last embers. The light through the smoke hole told him it was day. He stretched his cramped muscles and suddenly he jerked upright and to his feet. The bellowing was beginning again. It was a hoarse and strained bellowing far off at the lower end of the canyon. It stopped and he stood shivering with the fear.
He moved. That was very hard but he moved. He unfastened the skin-flap and crawled out and tied on the snowshoes. The knife was in its sheath on his right leg. The quiver was by his left side with three arrows in it and in his hands was the bow with the fourth arrow ready notched. He looked down the canyon but he could see only here and there in patches because of the trailing mists.
Carefully he went along his path and in among the upthrust rocks. Tracks were there, the four-toed tracks of the big puma. They led to the flat stone that belonged to the badger. The piece of meat was gone. They led around and along the base of the rock wall down the canyon the way the buffalo had run. He started along the wall following the tracks.
He moved slowly. The farther he went the slower became his movements. The fear had hold of him and gripped and pressed tight. He breathed in short gasps. He felt that his ribs were bound inward and that he would choke. At last he stopped. He could go no farther.
He stood still. He was unable to go forward and he was unable to go back. As he stood, the sun beat down upon the mists and the breezes came and moved them and he saw. Before him at the lower end of the canyon in the corner-pocket he saw the buffalo. They were crowded into the very corner. They were pressed close together and they stared outward with a fixed stare. Fifty feet in front of them the big puma crouched low in the snow. The black tip of the tail of the big puma waved gently from side to side as it watched them. And between them and the big puma stood the young bull. It breathed heavily and its head hung low with the horns pointing outward. The snow was packed hard where it had worn a broad path from closing-in rock wall to closing-in rock wall between them and the big puma. There was blood on the path and blood dripped from the big head of the young bull where claws had ripped downward. But the blood was not all its own. There was dark red drying on one horn.
Little Bear saw. He saw the puma turn its head to lick the gash along its side. He saw it rise and slide like a shadow to the right and the young bull swing to face it there. He saw it shift and slide to the left and the young bull swing again. He saw it leap forward and the young bull jump with feet braced and head lowered to meet it and he saw it dodge and dash to get around and scatter the other buffalo and the young bull spring with desperate speed to intercept it. Little Bear stood taller. The fear snapped from around him like an old rotted rope. The air of his canyon rushed into his lungs until he thought that his ribs would burst outward. His voice rose in a mighty shout, "Oh buffalo! Fight well! I am coming!"
His short legs swept the snowshoes in powerful arcs over the snow. He swooped forward swiftly and the notched arrow was drawn back until the flint-stone head almost touched the bow. But the great cat heard him and leaped around snarling and was away in huge bounds.
He stopped where it had crouched low to the ground. He looked at the young bull and saw the big gashes that dripped blood. Yet the young bull pawed on its path and snorted at him. "Come forward," it seemed to say. "I will fight you too." He looked at it and his heart was big within him. "Oh buffalo," he said. "You have shamed me."
He swung about and followed the new tracks away. He moved swiftly over the snow. A mighty strength filled his muscles. He saw the blood drippings of the puma along the way and he was glad. The bounds were not as long between as they had been before. The puma was weakened. It had a stone arrowhead deep in the muscle of one flank. It had a long rip in the flesh of one side.
He saw the tracks leading on ahead. They led to a thickset pine. They did not lead away from the pine. The wounds were making the puma foolish. It was in the tree. It would be within reach of his arrows.
Carefully he moved close to the pine. The branches were very thick. He was almost under them before he could see the puma. It was nearly twenty feet up lying flat along a branch. It snarled and spat at him. He pulled the notched arrow back and released it and the low humming sounded. As he shot, the puma leaped out from the branch. It wanted to leap far out and over his head and away but the branch was springy under its weight and its muscles were stiffened from the wounds. It fell short. It came crashing through the ends of the branches above him. He saw it coming. He saw the gaping jaws and the long stretching unsheathed claws. He dropped the bow and his left hand reached grasping for the neck beneath the jaws and his right hand took the knife, the iron-bladed knife with an edge keener and harder than any stone. He fell backward with the weight of the puma upon him and the long claws tearing at him and he drove the knife deep into its body behind the shoulder. He held the foaming jaws from him with his left hand and wrenched with the knife and plunged it deeper. He struggled to roll and break free from the tearing claws. He let go the handle of the knife and with both hands heaved against the body of the puma and flung it away and was free. He staggered to his feet and the puma lay writhing on the ground. Its claws ripped into the snow and the grasses beneath. Its movements slowed and it became limp. Its eyes filmed over. It twitched and was still.
He stood swaying and gasping for breath. His clothing was slashed and torn. Blood streamed down his chest and down his thighs. He stooped and took handfuls of snow and rubbed these over the gashes. The stinging was sh
arp but the blood-flow slowed. And the stinging was good. It told him what it was that he had done.
He pulled the knife from the body of the puma and cleaned it. He unstrung the bow and looped the bowstring around the front paws of the puma and began to drag the carcass up the canyon. He left it near the doorway of his shelter where he would work upon it. He went inside and took a piece of dried meat from the supply there. He went among the upthrust rocks where the summer raspberry bushes grew. He laid the meat on the flat stone. "Oh badger," he said to the rocks. "The evil one that took your meat is dead."
He looked down his canyon. His buffalo were there. They were out of the corner-pocket. They were pawing through the snow to the dried clumps of the good grasses that grew all through the lower portion of his canyon. The wounds of the young bull would heal quickly. It would live to be the father of many calves. They would be good calves with the brave heart and the strong muscles of the father. They would make good meat. Their strength would become his strength.
The sun was bright on the near rock wall and on the snow. It had conquered the mists. The four-toed tracks would soon disappear. The sun would melt them away and other snow would cover where they had been and in the spring the grasses would grow green as if they had not been there at all. He spoke to the rocks all around. "Oh badger. It is a good cage. ..."