Bonesetter (14 page)

Over the next few days Tando's swelling began to go down and Pell found it necessary to begin tightening rather than loosening the straps.
As Tando felt better he went with Pell on several occasions to hunt.
He felt that, though he could not really hunt himself or contribute to the hunt, he might repay Pell’s miraculous restoration of his arm somewhat by giving him some pointers on hunting.

Pell was somewhat surprised at this for, after all, Tando’s broken arm had been Pell’s fault to begin with.
Pell didn’t feel that reducing the break
nearly
repaid his debt. However, Tan
do apparently felt that it did
—
actually a good part of Tando’s generosity resulted from simple reverence towards anyone who could do wh
at Pell had done with his wrist
.
In any case, Pell certainly couldn’t afford to refuse any charity.
After watching some of Pell’s wild throws, he shook his head and expressed amazement that Pell had killed a rabbit and a squirrel in the past few days.
Pell feared that Tando would openly express doubt that Pell actually had killed the rabbit and squirrel, but Tando apparently accepted that Pell had just had unusually lucky throws.
However, Tando did strongly urge Pell to practice his throwing and actually sat with him while he did so
,
giving him some pointers.
He also spent time critiquing Pell’s stealth.

After a few more days, Tando and Donte discussed returning to the Aldans.
Donte still felt that she should stay with Pell but with his trapping success, he felt newly confident that he would do okay for himself during the summer.
“What I need is for you
, and Tando
if you can get him to help, to convince the tribe to take me back in.
I’ll live through the summer, but I need to be back with the tribe by winter.”

When they actually set out, Tando tried to give Pell a flint spear point.
Pell stared at the offering with great desire but realized that the chances of his successfully hunting with a spear were small.
“Tando, rather than the spear point, what I really need is your friendship.
I beg your forgiveness for my part in breaking your arm.
If you wish to repay me, and I do not feel that I deserve to be repaid, I would be most grateful for your help in getting the Aldans to accept me back.
I don’t think I can survive the winter alone.”

Tando appeared greatly uneasy.
“Uh, Pell, I don’t think I can get Roley to take you back.
At least not while Pont and Denit speak against you.”

Pell’s spirits sank as he realized the truth of Tando’s words.
He almost took the spear point but then reconsidered, again considering that he wasn’t going to be hunting with a spear.
The charpoint spears would do for defense.
“Just speak in my favor if an opportunity comes.”

The afternoon that they left Pell, the she wolf reappeared.
Pell had walked with Tando and Donte out of Cold Spring Ravine and seen them on their way, waving as they disappeared around the bend.
As Pell walked
sadly
back to his
lonely
camp the wolf appeared out of the bush and, as if she’d never been gone, once again trotted alongside him, tongue lolling.
Her limp was gone and she seemed none the worse for the wear, healthy though thin.
Pell checked some of his snares on the way back to his “cave” and found a fat porcupine in one of them.
He carefully skinned it and gave a portion of the carcass to the wolf.
He considered whether he was mad to share his kill with a wild animal.
He knew that the Aldans would think so, but his spirits had lifted
tremendously
at the reappearance of his friend.
A wolf, but a friend nonetheless.
A friend who had reappeared in the midst of Pell’s desolation upon being “deserted” by Donte and Tando.

The next day Pell excitedly set about perfecting the art of trapping.
The noose type snares were much easier to make and could be placed on almost any animal path.
They didn’t require a narrow tunnel like the ones with the barbed sticks—any narrow area on a path followed by little animals would work.
He set nooses up in many locations, from big ones on animal trails a little smaller than those that he walked himself, to smaller snares where animals passed through brambles, to very small ones on limbs where he saw squirrels running.
The bottom part of the noose he suspended at what he felt would be chest height for the size animal he expected on that path and the rest of the noose
he propped
above.
By sitting patiently and watching he saw a couple in action as animals ran down the path, obviously expecting to simply push the chest high “twig” aside and thoroughly ensnaring themselves by fighting the noose once it came snug about their necks.
Sometimes a larger animal broke the nooses.
From some of the stubs left behind, he deduced that ensnared animals sometimes chewed through the cord themselves—or perhaps some carnivore chewed through it to carry off Pell’s prize.
Nonetheless, Pell found himself with more meat than he could eat and a large stack of furs.

Having decided that he liked the flavor of the smoked meat, Pell began a system for smoking whatever he didn’t eat immediately.
Donte and Tando had never seemed to notice the strips of meat, which had remained suspended in the back of the “cave” during their entire stay.
Pell tasted some of it and at first he considered it useless, as it was very tough and difficult to chew.
But it was still edible many
many
days after the kill!!
Because of his fear of starvation, he hadn’t discarded it despite the difficulty in eating it.
Then one day, having mixed it up with other smoked meat, he accidentally took a small bundle of the heavily smoked meat with him on the trail.
He had traveled quite a distance that day and, being hungry with nothing else along, began gnawing on a piece.
To his amazement, he found that after chewing the leathery meat for a while, it moistened up and became quite enjoyable.
Thus with
all
the meat he was bringing in now he smoked some lightly and some for
several
days, until it was hard and tough.
He soon found that when he smoked it too lightly it didn’t
actually
keep.
After a while he became adept at telling by feel when it was smoked enough to store well.

Pell became especially ecstatic with a new discovery.
He had made another stew with meat, vegetables and a little too much salt.
Of course he ate it anyway, but unable to eat it all he smoked the remaining meat. To his delight, he really liked the salty taste of the tough leathery material this batch produced.
He took to soaking all of his meat in salty water before smoking it.

Needing less time to hunt, Pell se
t about fixing up his shelter. His i
mprovements
at first
focused on trying to stop the wind from blowing through so briskly.
At first, he tried dragging up some brush and piling it just outside his mud “drip lips.”
Though it slowed the wind some, it didn’t really help much.
He needed a tighter fit so he started leaning poles up against his “drip lip” across most of the opening leaving only a small door. When some of the poles were unsteady, he stuck them in place with more mud at the bottom.
When that worked, he put mud at the tops of the poles as well.
There weren’t many straight poles
available
so there were significant gaps between them. He wedged smaller sticks into those holes. Then he began using mud to stick some of the poles together and to hold the little sticks in place.
That worked so well that he began using mud to hold grass in even smaller holes.
Eventually he wound up with an entire wall slathered in mud and grass that he had carried up from the stream in a large leather pouch.
It got a lot of sun in the mornings and soon the sun had baked it to a hard finish.
Now he had a real “cave.”
Unfortunately, it trapped too much smoke in its well-enclosed space. At first, he moved his fire near the entrance as the Aldans had placed theirs.
But then it didn’t smoke his meat well
because
the smoke didn’t “pool”
on the little shelf
anywhere before escaping the cave.
He considered this for a while, finally breaking open a place in the wall at the top of the left end where the smoke could escape.
Smoke still pooled in the upper back recess to smoke his meat.
In addition, the hole improved the air circulation and also brought in some light.
This was nice as the wall he had added to close in the cave had made it dark
like a real cave
.
The only opening big enough to get in and out of was the “door” at the right end of his little area of the overhang.

Pell still kept his meat in the back of the cave but after it was smoked enough, he wrapped it in leather to keep it from smoking even more.
This didn’t seal it as tight as he wanted and slowly even the lightly smoked meat dried out to become leathery like the heavily smoked
jerky
.
To keep the meat from drying out he began washing out intestines and stuffing
bits of the
smoked
meat into them. This worked even better when he also stuffed in bits of fat, which kept the meat moister.
He tied them off at the length of his fingers.
He wrapped these “fingers,” as he called his sausages, and his heavily smoked meat into some of his skins and covered entire packages of meat with dirt in the back of the cave.
Tasting them occasionally over the next few weeks convinced him they were keeping well and that burying them kept them from becoming too heavily smoked. He was especially delighted with the fatty “fingers” which, to him were among the finest delicacies he had ever eaten.
He also felt fairly confident that his packages would not be raided in his absence by animals as the burial kept the meat smell to a minimum and the smoky smell, if not the small banked fire he always left going,
he thought would
deter scavengers.

The animals he had snared provided him with tendons and skins to make thongs for more snares and he soon had a regular production scheme going.
In the morning he would eat and set out to check his snares from the night before, picking up the snares and whatever bounty they had provided.
Because he never seemed to do well with a snare left twice in the same location, he would move on to set out snares in new locations.
As he walked his
trap lines
, he was constantly on the lookout for plants with edible roots and leaves.
By midmorning he would be back in camp to skin his catch, then cut the meat into strips and begin soaking it in a pouch of salty water.
The meat taken out of the pouch went to the back of the cave to smoke.
Intestines were washed out and put in the salty water too.
Skins he scraped, then rubbed with salty dirt and brains as he had seen the women do, though he wished he had watched more closely as his skins came out tough and stiff.
Then he would eat, stuff some fingers, work on his shelter, repair or prepare snaring nooses and eventually set out in the late afternoon to recheck his
trap line
again.

The wolf made his rounds of the
trap lines
with him.
Pell was thrilled to have a friend along and took to having long conversations with her, now that he didn’t need to be silent on his “hunt.”
As opposed to when he had been really trying to hunt and the wolf had been quite helpful, she was of little use while running his
trap line
.
He began calling her “Ginja” and eventually stopped calling her “Gimpy” at all.
However, remembering the big cat that had treed him, he
felt safer with her around. D
espite
her
nickname, Pell didn’t
truly
feel that she was useless.
He kept her away from the traps, as he feared that her scent would warn their quarry and was pleasantly surprised to find that she quickly learned to stay back until he had emptied a snare.
Especially, she stayed away when he was setting a new snare.

Weeks passed and Pell resigned himself to the fact that Tando and Donte were not going to talk Roley into letting him back into the Aldans.
This brought on a lonely depression, especially as he
thought about the oncoming
winter and his certain death.

As time passed and
his store of smoked meat accumulated,
however,
he began to contemplate the possibility that he might be able to survive a winter
by himself
!
With some surprise he realized that he already had as much meat stored as would have been his share of what the Aldans usually stored in their big hunts right around the first freeze of winter.
And, he had months to go before winter came!
Of course, he wasn’t sure that his smoked meat would last all the way through the winter, but the tough meat that had been heavily smoked seemed to have kept so far without any change at all!