Donte already had an inverted basket at the end of the bedding for the leg to be propped up on and one beside the bed for the arm to be placed on. “That is how Pell cared for Falin’s leg,” she said when Deltin asked about them.
As they got Panute settled in on the bed Deltin stared around in astonishment. Soon Manute showed up in the cave carrying Agan. They all began to exclaim over the way the cave had been walled in with the poles and mud daub wattle. “You could make it even bigger by walling in more of the overhanging area! What a great idea!
“The cave we had would have been warmer in winter if we had narrowed the opening like this.”
“Oh, and look, they just built a hole in the wall for the smoke to get out through. With the smoke hole they can have their fire at the back end of the ‘cave’.”
They returned to where Tando was working to set up more beds. “Where did you learn to fix up an overhang so that it becomes a cave like this?”
Tando inclined his head to where Pell was sitting with Panute, “Better ask Pell, he’s the ‘cave builder’.”
The group was astonished to learn that Pell had thought of walling in the overhang himself. “No one showed you how?”
“Well no. There wasn’t a good cave in Cold Springs Ravine, just this overhang. And the overhang dripped. I made a “drip lip” but the wind and rain still blew through and so I leaned a bunch of poles against the mud of the drip lip trying to stop the wind. After that mudding the gaps to block more wind just seemed natural.”
“You just thought this up?! “
“Did you ask the spirits for help and they showed you?”
Pell tried to explain, “No. I was just trying to fix one little problem after another...”
They shook their heads incredulously. Then they suggested that shallow storage baskets of grain and roots propped with space between them was wasteful of the space in the cave. “If you used deeper baskets they’d hold more in less space. We can teach you to weave much deeper baskets.”
“Well we used to keep ours in deep baskets too. But the grain in the bottom of the basket would go bad. And the roots on the bottom of deep baskets get crushed and go bad also. Then others sprout into the wet mess and they aren’t much good either. We think propping them up lets little winds blow through and keep the food dry. The grain and roots at the bottoms of these shallow baskets still go bad sometimes, but they seem to do better than in the old deep baskets.”
“What are these?” Gia was peering into a basket.
Donte leaned over, “Let me see. Oh, those are dried apples.”
“Dried apples? What good are they after they’re all dried out like that?”
“You can still eat them. Here taste one. They aren’t as good as fresh apples but they don’t seem to rot. We slice them thin and dry them in the sun. We’re hoping they’ll last most of the winter.”
Gia chewed thoughtfully on a slice. “It’s like your spirit meat, tough and chewy but still full of flavor.”
The group continued talking about the innovations in the cave while they were making a stew of the rabbit and squirrel Pell had been carrying when he met the others that morning. So much had happened that Pell could hardly believe it was the same day. The stew contained some of Donte’s older stored roots. The fresh, fat roots Donte had dug up earlier that day were placed in storage in their place. They were rotating their stores in an effort to keep them as fresh as possible during winter’s approach.
The visitors were amazed at the savory flavors of the stew. They had never been able to put so much salt in their stews, of course, not having a source like the Cold Springs tribe. That alone made it wonderful to people that spent much of their summer sweating away more salt than they could get in their diet. In addition, Donte had added some onions and some “bitter berries.” These she had discovered were too bitter to eat by themselves, but still added an interesting flavor to stews. When she described them to Agan, the old hag nodded knowingly and proclaimed that they were also good for wounds that weren’t healing. Then Agan asked for Gia’s bag of herbs and medicines. Taking out one of the packets she crushed some dried leaves in her hand and added them to the remaining stew. After stirring it in for a while, everyone had some more stew and remarked on the further enhancement of the flavor. Then Agan let them taste the herb itself, whereupon they were astounded by its sharp and unpleasant taste. She said there were several other herbs that added interesting flavors to stews, despite tasting bad by themselves. This led to a long discussion of how herbs that tasted bad could be good medicines. The breadth of Agan’s knowledge of herbs, medicines and cooking astounded Pell.
As they sat, their conversation drifted back to the flood that had killed the other members of Agan’s tribe. Tears were rolling down their cheeks as they reminisced but then Panute wakened, moaning and somewhat out of her head. This brought their attention back to the present and at Gia’s suggestion, they managed to get some stew into Panute. After taking a few sips she broke into a sweat, cast off all her covers, thrashed about a while, and then fell back into a disturbed sleep. During her thrashing about, she disturbed the poultice that Pell had wrapped to her hand and her hand began bleeding again. Gia prepared another poultice while Pell took off the old one. Then they wrapped on the fresh. Soon after that Panute was shivering again and Deltin covered her back up with furs. It wasn’t long before her tossing and turning had again cast them off and she began shivering anew.
Pell suggested that they take turns staying awake during the night to tend Panute and they worked out a rotation, changing each time that a piece of firewood as thick as an arm burned through. Pell sat with Panute the last watch before dawn, by which time she seemed fairly calm again. Pell looked about for Ginja and was saddened to realize that she wasn’t there. She hadn’t returned after running off into the forest the day before. She had been gone for several days at a time on occasions in the past, but none of those times had involved a large influx of people. He sat, worrying about her and realizing with some surprise that he had truly come to count on her companionship.
When the sun rose, Panute awakened as well, this time clear in the head, though she still looked drawn and weak. When Gia wakened, they changed the poultice again. Pell was dismayed that Panute’s hand remained swollen and, to himself, he thought with chagrin to that amputating her fingers had been for naught. He was wondering whether to try to hide the bad news from Panute, when Gia exclaimed, “Pell, look!” She was pointing to Panute’s arm up in the region of the elbow. Pell could not imagine why, Then Gia said, “The redness in her arm is less!”
Pell couldn’t remember to what point the redness had extended the day before, but if Gia said it had gone above the elbow then he felt elated that it no longer did. “Great!” Then he looked back at her hand and saw with dismay that more pus was leaking out.
Gia saw him staring at the pus. “Oh, and look, more of the evil humors are leaking out! I saw them coming out yesterday after you cut off her fingers. Krill, in our tribe, once became very sick with a wound gone foul. It had swelled and he seemed on the verge of dying, but then it burst open, letting out evil humors like those. He soon got better. In my talks with other healers many speak of people getting better when the evil humors leak out of their bodies.” She looked at Pell musingly, “But I have not heard of someone bold enough to think of cutting people open to let the humors out!”
Panute had been staring at the pus with revulsion, but she took heart from Gia’s words and smiled for the first time since Pell had met her the day before. A weak and tremulous smile, but Pell took tremendous heart from it.
Soon the rest of the group was up and they began eating leftover stew and grain. Gia ground some of the grain between two rocks making a paste with some fat and water, which she cooked on hot rocks pulled out of the fire. The little cakes were something new to Pell and he thought they were wonderful. The group sat about talking pleasantly for a bit but then, to Pell’s dismay, Manute proposed that the four me
n go hunting in hopes of getting bigger game than rabbit. Pell wanted to say that he had enough smoked rabbit to feed everyone without a hunt but didn’t want to reveal their hidden stores. He had no good reason not to hunt, except for his fear that the newcomers would find out how clumsy he was with a spear. To Pell’s consternation, Tando thought a hunt sounded like a great idea. Listening to him talk about past hunts, Pell realized that Tando really enjoyed the process of going out with other men on a hunt. Tando fetched a couple of the spears he had stored near the opening of the cave for fighting off attacks and gave them to Manute and Deltin as gifts. Then he got out a pair for Pell and himself. Pell protested weakly that he should stay with Panute but Agan grumpily said that watching Panute was one of the few tasks that an old woman with bad knees could do. A task she could do while the men hunted and Donte and Gia went out gathering. Soon the four men and Falin set out on their hunt. Falin carried a sharpened wood spear that Deltin had quickly cut to his size from one of the shafts Tando had had stored away.
To Pell’s immense relief, the hunt was not the disaster he envisioned. As Pell expected, Tando led them away from the area where their snares had been set the day before. Instead, they went into the mature forest that lay down river from the ravine. Scouting carefully beneath the canopy, they saw little in the way of game. They had a hard time closing on the little game that they did see, because the crunchy autumn leaves on the ground made it difficult to walk quietly. Eventually they saw some deer in a small meadow. The clear area of the meadow was walled in at the edges pretty solidly where sunshine had promoted growth of the underbrush. However, it had a narrow area on the upwind end where a big gap in the underbrush opened into the open lower layers of the forest. Tando spared Pell the embarrassment he had feared, by asking if he would work his way through the forest to the downwind end, then drive the deer toward the upwind opening. The other three men and the boy would hide near the deer’s obvious exit point from the meadow. Pell’s tensions eased. Most hunters would be hurt to be asked to drive rather than participating in the actual kill. Therefore, usually the youngest hunters would be the drivers. Falin was a little too young though. In any case, Pell was grateful that he would not be called upon to cast his spear in front of the others.
While the other four very slowly made their way into position at the upwind opening, Pell took his time, working far around the clearing. He knew that he wasn’t as quiet as other hunters but by staying wide of the clearing he managed to be perceived as a minimal threat by the deer. Pell’s scent spooked the deer before he stepped into the wide end of the clearing though. Then he began striding noisily uphill towards them. Looking frequently back at Pell, they moved up the clearing into the narrow opening. The deer focused on Pell and didn’t notice the other hunters. Then Tando leapt out from behind a tree where he had stood motionlessly in the shadow. He plunged his spear into the unlucky deer that had passed close to his tree. Unhurt by the cast spears of Deltin, Manute and Falin, the other deer bounded away, but the one Tando had struck only made it a few hundred yards. It probably would have led them on quite a chase but a large wolf suddenly brought it down. Pell’s heart leapt, Ginja was back!
Laughing, Tando restrained Deltin from charging the wolf with his spear to reclaim their kill. “Stop! Deltin stop, that’s Pell’s wolf,” he chuckled, grasping Deltin’s spear arm. Deltin looked on with amazement when the wolf lifted its head up from the neck of the deer it had just brought down. Not to snarl, but to nuzzle Pell’s hand.
Carrying the gutted deer suspended on a pole back to camp, their spirits rose as they bantered. The successful hunt seemed an extraordinary omen to the two men from the shattered tribe and Tando had obviously enjoyed hunting immensely. When Manute and Deltin took their turn carrying the deer Tando slowed his walk so that they pulled ahead of himself and Pell. “That was great fun, eh?”
Pell, though he had only been the hunt’s driver, nonetheless exulted in relief at having been spared the embarrassment he had so feared. “Yes! And a great omen for them too, I agree.”
“I think that you should invite them to join your tribe.”
Pell was startled. “My tribe? It doesn’t seem to me like we’re really a tribe, but if the three of us make a tribe, it should be your tribe. You’re the biggest, the strongest and the best hunter. Anyhow, why would they join us?”
“Why would they join us?! Think Pell! They’re homeless, hurt and they’ve lost any winter stores that their tribe had set aside. The question should be, ‘Why would you let them join us?’ You’re the one who has great quantities of food stored for the winter. You, more than anyone else in this land, have no fear of starving this winter. The only adversity that you face is the need for a few more hunters to help fight off attacks by other tribes. I know you don’t really need them to help us with hunting, but you know I still worry about how we’ll defend ourselves. That big snare you set up outside the cave amazes me—and it might help, but only if attackers place themselves right over it. Anyway, I think that you have more than enough smoked meat to feed all of us, and the six of them, through the winter. I believe that it would be worth sharing our stores for the extra hands at defense. Besides with a few more successful deer hunts smoked away, even the six of us wouldn’t be hungry.”
They walked in silence a little ways, and then Pell spoke, “I guess you’re right. We should invite them to join us but I just can’t think of myself as the leader of our tribe. If one of them disagreed with me, I could never enforce my decisions. Roley can tell anyone to do anything without an argument because he’s so strong. I don’t even think of the things that a leader should, like whether Agan’s tribe should, or would, join us. I know that you’re grateful for the fact that I set your wrist, but, ‘my tribe?’ no, that’s just not right!”
“You were here first. You saved my arm and therefore my life, so I owe you my allegiance. The spirits told you of the snares that have provided us with such a profusion of game and the smoking that preserves it for us. You’re the ‘Bonesetter’ after all. But, I could be the leader if you want. Even as the ‘leader,’ I’d do as you say.”
“Well, I suppose… that’d be OK. When will you ask them to join us?”
“Soon.”
They caught up with the others and took a turn carrying the deer. Tando asked the other two what they planned to do after Panute was better. The matter of fact way Tando assumed that Panute would, in fact, recover again astonished Pell. However, if the others thought his assumption surprising, they made no comment on it. As they tried to respond to Tando’s question, it became apparent that they had no real plans worked out as yet. They had both been assuming that they would return to the area of their previous cave, or to the area where they had traditionally wintered. Their winter location was a smaller, more closed in cave in a small valley off the big river. They said that, even in winter, some small game could usually be found in the little valley beside it. Although they did not say as much, it was obvious that the two were worried about how they would survive the coming winter after the loss of the stores of grain and roots that they had put by in the past summer.
In his mind’s eye Pell pictured Panute surviving her illness, only to die in the winter due to her weakened state. He realized that in a similar situation, Roley would already have declared Agan and Panute ginja. Knowing that the tribe could not possibly survive the winter while trying to support them, he would have cast them out immediately so that they would not diminish what few stores the tribe could still put by for winter. Roley certainly wouldn’t have spent time and energy traveling somewhere in an attempt to heal someone in Panute’s poor condition. Pell realized with dismay that he himself considered such a decision, the very same abhorrent decision that he despised Roley for making, to be better than risking the entire tribe’s lives in what was sure to be a difficult winter even for the healthy members. He wondered if Gia’s tribe did not cast people out, or whether they would declare the two sickly ones ginja, but only when the
spirit of death already looked the entire tribe in the face?
Tando looked over at the two of them as they walked alongside. “Who leads your tribe now?”
“Agan still leads us,” Manute said, seemingly surprised that it wasn’t obvious. “She has led our tribe for over twenty years. It is why we are known as ‘Aganstribe.’”
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