Bonesetter (23 page)

Tando flew into a rage and immediately set out to find Denit.
For his part Pell’s emotions surged from furious to fearful and back.
Denit, the pile of auroch’s scat, his life spared by Pell only yesterday, tries to rape Pell’s own mother today?!
On the other hand, the Aldans could certainly destroy
his
entire little
tribe of three if it wanted.
Roley would surely want to annihilate them if Tando brought serious harm to Denit.
Donte feared Roley’s wrath as well.
She pled with Tando’s back as he stalked away and then turned her efforts to convincing Pell to stop Tando.
She didn’t want to go after Tando herself.
She didn’t want to leave Ginja.

Pell watched Tando’s retreating back disappear out of sight and then, finally spurred to action by Donte’s pleading, set out after Tando. Rather than running in his hunter’s lope, Tando stalked along in a towering rage, so that Pell caught up with him readily.

“Tando, come on back.
Let’s get out of here before something even worse happens.”

“What, are you
still
afraid of that turd?”

“No, but I
am
afraid of what Roley and the whole tribe of Aldans will do to
all three of us
if you kill Denit!” Pell managed to make this statement without admitting, even to himself, that he actually feared Denit.

“I’m not going to
kill
Denit.
I’m just going to teach him a lesson,” Tando said through clenched teeth.
He did slow his pace a little though.

“Denit is afraid of the wolf.
Tando, he won’t bother us any more.”
Somehow, even as he spoke these words, Pell had a premonition that they were untrue.
Nonetheless, Tando slowed even further and after a little more cajoling, Pell turned him about and got him headed back to where Donte waited.

Already nearly packed for travel, they quickly finished loading up and set out.
Ginja trotted out of her usual hiding site in the bushes and soon was ranging cheerfully out in front of them as she usually did when Pell walked his snare lines.
Pell meditated on the bizarre conjunction
between
this
day with a brilliant blue sky and his own emotions, which raged in turmoil like a thunderstorm.
His thoughts bounced about:

-
from his own encounter with Denit,

-
to Donte’s;

-
from his confused but elated state around the medicine girl,

-
to his daily trepidation that they might not survive the winter;

-
from his newfound height,

-
to Denit’s implacable strength;

-
from his near death,

-
to his friend Ginja who ranged happily ahead.

As the day passed peacefully, the tension slowly drained out of the three of them.
Walking through mottled sunshine under the broken canopy of the forest amidst wispy swirls of breeze cheered them up.
A few idle comments built up slowly into animated chatter about their dealings at the market.
They excitedly discussed the items they had traded for and their desire to try them out.

Tando and Donte laughed at Pell when he described his trading venture with the old medicine hag. Tando immediately guessed the source of the distraction that had kept him from bargaining more successfully.
He ventured that he found the beautiful young woman somewhat distracting himself, though “not enough to completely lose
my
head.” He chuckled some more.

Donte felt a little shiver on finding out that her son was excited about a girl at all. She wondered how much longer it might be before he found a mate. Overall, the three were quite pleased with the value they had gotten for their smoked meat and salt, especially in view of the rush they had been in to trade and get away from River Fork.
They were sure they could have done better with more time to dicker and yet felt that they had achieved quite a high a rate of exchange.
Certainly as high as they could have hoped for under the circumstances. Unless other tribes rapidly discovered the secret of smoked meat,
this trip ba
de well for future trading trips.

They did more planning
for their future.
Further modifications of the cave were discussed as they walked, almost jauntily now
,
despite their burdens.
Furs needed to be sewn together to make winter leggings, hats and cloaks.
After trading away some smoked meat at River Fork, they needed to build back up their stock of smoked meat for winter.
Also, they needed to find more grains and roots to store for winter.
If Donte’s idea of drying fruit was successful in preserving it, it might help with some of the “meat only” sickness of late winter.
It would be a huge advantage if they could discover ways to preserve
all
of the different varieties
of foods
from summer’s bounty ‘til winter’s dearth.

As they approached the Cold Springs campsite, they looked about for new gatherables that had ripened since they left.
Not necessarily to gather now, as they were loaded from their trading, but to get on a return trip.
They found a small meadow with several patches of ripening grain.
They did stop to eat and collect some blueberries that had just begun to ripen.
They carefully noted the locations of the lowbush berries and grain so that they could make
a
return
visit.

Arriving back at the cave with bellies pleasantly full of sweet, tart, berries, they were pleased to see that the walls they had built to close off the cave were undisturbed.
The entire structure fairly reeked of smoke, which probably accounted for the lack of animal intrusion as much as the strength of the barrier.
They opened the smoke hole and the door then cleaned out the carnivore scat that they had scattered about.
Despite the cleaning it stank
so badly from the combination that they slept outside the first night.
Fortunately, nature provided a beautiful, cloudless summer night for it.

The next day they spent cleaning up their campsite, gathering fresh bedding grasses and weaving storage baskets in which to organize their new supplies.
Tando and Pell made an early morning run to set out fresh traplines and came back with some blackberries.
Donte excitedly showed them some of the fruit she had set out to dry before they left.
She had placed it on the cliffside rocks above the cave, in the sun but under a loosely woven basket to keep the birds from getting to it.
Berries had dried into small tough chewy objects that packed a lot of flavor.
Bigger fruits had still tended to rot except
where
she had sliced
them
thinly like the spirit meat.
Then
the slices
had frequently dried into leathery, but still edible, objects.
Though difficult to chew, they were tangy and flavorful!
Their excitement over the dried fruit was intense.
Of course,
doubt remained about whether the dried fruit would keep for months or not, but there was no doubt that they would now gather as much as they could, while the gathering was easy, and dry all that they couldn’t eat.

The next weeks passed in a blur, as it was the height of the best gathering
time
.
They almost completely stopped trapping, putting out a few snares to keep them in fresh meat, but not smoking any except when the snares were unusually productive.
They figured that they would be able to trap for a long time after the fruit stopped bearing.
They spent the greater part of their days searching out the ripening fruit and grain and trying to harvest it before the birds did.
In the evenings, they made loosely woven baskets and in the mornings set the fruit out to dry under
loose
baskets held down with rocks.
After talking about “dried fruit” for days, Pell remembered how deep baskets full of grain had rotted over the winter.
As he remembered it, the rot occurred in the middle and toward the bottom of the baskets.
When asked, Donte confirmed
t
his recollection.
Pell remembered that the rotten grain had seemed wet and, with their new discovery that drying preserved food, suggested that
wetness
might be the culprit in rotting. After discussing the idea with growing excitement, they began making shallow, slightly loose baskets to store their dried fruit and grain in, hoping that the foodstuffs would stay drier and therefore last longer.
 

They didn’t fill the baskets completely and then stacked them in such a way that there would be spaces for air circulation between the shallow baskets.
They couldn’t stack the shallow baskets very high and so were having difficulty storing the quantities of grain that they needed.
They spoke of further enlarging their cave but then Tando dragged a broken treetop back to the cave.
At first Pell and Donte couldn’t understand his idea but he simply demonstrated, using branches of the treetop that he had laid on its side, to hold a large basket.
 
This large basket formed a sort of shelf on which more baskets could then be stacked.
They opened their doorway somewhat larger and dragged the treetop inside.
They chivvied and prodded it into place against the back wall, far from the fire, and trimmed the smaller branches to leave large ones in good locations.
Then they stacked “basket shelves” up on it to great heights.
They also found that if they left roots on their tubers and tied the roots of a group of them together with a thong, they could hang them in bunches from some of the smaller branches.

Despite their improved storage, they were soon sleeping outside for lack of room, now that they were trying to get all they could get rather than just what
they could eat that day
.
They
didn’t understand
it
,
but in addition to their industriousness in gathering, their traps’ harvest of smaller animals had
decreased
the competition
for edible fruits and vegetables
in their area.
As the harvest season dropped off, they began enlarging their cave again.
Now they began searching for edible roots.
Again relating the rotten roots at the bottom of the stack in previous winters to moisture, they looked for ways to stack the roots so that air could circulate through.
More dead treetops were dragged in and fitted with large shallow baskets.

As they wove baskets in the evenings, they talked about their old friends in the Aldans, whom they missed, and their old enemies in the tribe, whom they were glad to be separated from.
They wondered bleakly what would happen to the tribe when Roley grew old and Denit tried to take over as leader.
Though sons often followed in their father’s footsteps, even in leadership roles, it was by no means an assured thing.
The consensus among the three of them was that Denit would simply assume that he should be the Aldans’ leader.
They felt that Roley would try to hand over the leadership to his son.
If, like Pell, Donte and Tando, many members of the tribe felt that Denit was a poor leader there could be a fight.
The tribe might split however, some going off to follow their own chosen leader or to join another tribe.
Two small tribes could have
have it rough
at
small
size they would be if the Aldans splintered.

Pell laughed, “Here we are thinking that a splinter off of the Aldans would be too small to make a go of it—we, the
‘
tribe of
three
!
’
”

The other two laughed as well.
Tando shook his head wonderingly.
“You’re right
Pell;
I’m not as worried about the three of us surviving this coming winter as I am of the Aldans, making it through, big as they are.
These new ideas of yours, Pell, ‘snaring’ and ‘smoking’, have changed our lives.
Even if illness strikes, we wouldn’t have to declare the sickly one ‘ginja’ for
quite
some time with all the food we have stored up!”

The next afternoon Tando strode back into camp with a following.
There was a young man who carried a child “pig-a-back” and a young woman following them.
Pell sat transfixed upon recognizing the young woman as the “medicine girl” who, with the old hag, had
bested him while
trad
ing
medicines with him back at the market area.
Pell stared at her from his seat where he had been making baskets.
S
he was obviously distraught. T
he “amused at the world” look had vanished from her countenance.
As she approached, her expression became appraising.
As before, Pell felt that
her gaze
penetrated to his very core.
He wondered what they were doing in the area.
It didn’t seem that Cold Springs Ravine was likely to be on their way from one place to another.
If it were, Pell thought he would have met them before in some other chance meetings between passing tribes.
Pell started to ask why they were there but the words seemed to stick in his throat.
Who was the young man?
Was he her mate?!
Was that their child?