Chapter 15

Well fed now, with his ankle all but healed, Tim snowshoed down the mountainside to the Tate, and upstream to the highway bridge. It took most of two days, but he had learned to build shelters quickly. With meat and a fire, and wrapped in a half cured bearskin, it did not take much to make Tim comfortable enough to sleep at night.

When Tim reached the road, it was still choked with snow, so he walked the last few miles into the village. It was afternoon of the fourteenth day of his absence when he headed down his own street looking like something out of another age. He wore ragged jeans and an enormous, shaggy bear skin, and moved confidently on snowshoes, dragging a rough toboggan of saplings piled high with greasy, frozen bear meat.

His father’s rig was sitting in the front yard. A feeling of guilt for the trouble he had caused took the edge off his homecoming, but only for a moment. He left his toboggan in the yard and stepped up onto the porch. He knocked.

His mother looked smaller, older, and more precious when she opened the door. She stood for a moment, frozen by the shock of his reappearance. Then she gathered Tim into his arms. Over her shoulder, he saw his father coming into the living room. The smile that split his father’s face was worth the whole ordeal Tim had gone through. In three strides his father crossed the floor and caught them both up in his embrace, and Tim was truly home at last. finis