The next snowfall could easily bring another foot of snow. The sky had not cleared, but the clouds hung higher and all of the animals seemed to be in a desperate last minute frenzy of activity. Douglas squirrels dashed about harvesting the last of the pine cones, and the birds had left. The wind across the snow fields cut deeply.

All day he heard the clatter of bucks in battle. Where yesterday his own deer had seemed to be the only one on the mountain, today he had seen several in the distance and had seen the tracks and rut signs of others.

There was real storm brewing. He could see it in the sky, in the behavior of the animals, and could feel it in the cruel wind. It was as if nature had given her warning and was now drawing her forces together for a real horror.

He was worried about his feet, as well. They hadn’t been dry in two days. And he was worried about his ability to travel. Already he was having a rough time in the snow because of his crutch.

Life had been simpler when he was too hunger dazed to worry. The thought made him smile.

During the afternoon, he spotted a number of muleys feeding in the open. They bolted before he got anywhere near a stalk. The ground was crisscrossed with tracks, but the cripple’s tracks had disappeared.

It was growing dark when he found a trio of cedars set in a rough triangle. Working as quickly as he could, he cut numerous saplings and braced them horizontally among the lower branches.  He swept the ground free of snow, laid down boughs for a bed, and used more for a roof.

He built a fire and dried his feet as best he could. He roasted the last of the porcupine meat. It was frozen, but Tim had had the foresight to spear it with a roasting stick while it was still fresh. All afternoon he had carried it like a meat popsicle.

Night fell as he continued to work, building brush walls and dragging up firewood. The wind increased and the temperature dropped until he could no longer work away from the fire.

It was a rough shelter at best. One wall was open and another was only partially completed, but these faced away from the wind. The fire fought a losing battle with the dropping temperature. No amount of fuel would keep this shelter warm, and Tim sat huddled miserably into the smallest ball his body would form.

* * *

The black bear was hungry and enraged. His wounds had not healed; the pellet below his eye remained swollen and infected.

He paused to strip the inner bark from a pine, but it did little for him. Then he smelled rotting flesh. Such carrion had nearly led him to his death, so he approached the carcass with exceptional caution but there was no trace of man. He still instinctively trusted his nose, even though it was nearly useless.

He fed well on a deer which some hunter had wounded and lost.

* * *

Near midnight, Tim had to make a foray for more wood. The snow had fallen steadily all night, first with wind, and later in an insistent, heavy downpouring. In the darkness beyond the fire, Tim could not see the snow as it whitened his body. He hunted for wood by feel, running his bare arms through the drifts to find down wood. more tomorrow

It was meat. More than meat, this was life itself. For the first time, Tim fully understood the mystery in taking life so that his own life could go on. He understood now why his father had only hunted once a year to put deer meat in the freezer for winter. And he understood why his Miwuk ancestors had had reverence for the animals they killed.

“Porcupine,” he said, “I don’t know the right words. I don’t know what my ancestors would have said. But thank you. Thank you for being here, now, so I can eat and live.”

Chapter 11

Tim had not gone far on his morning hunt, so he returned to his shelter to cook the porcupine. The meat was greasy and strong. He roasted small pieces over a new fire and took his time eating. He drowsed by the fire, then woke to eat again.

Tim’s grandfather had told him tales that he had heard from his own grandfather. Tim’s grandfather’s grandfather had heard the same tales from his grandfather – stories and legends from the old days before the Miwuks had taken up the white man’s ways.

Tim’s grandfather’s grandfather was the son of a white man and a Miwuk woman. From his mother he had inherited a squat, stocky Miwuk body, but he was hairy like his white father. To the Miwuks, who had little body hair, he had looked like a black bear, so they called him Usue’mate.

When Usue’mate was a young man, he saw how his people were losing their old ways. He went into the mountains and fasted for three days, looking for a spirit animal to tell him in what he should do for them. At the end of the third day, when he had all but given up, a great deer had come to him and had spoken one word to him in the Miwuk language. Then the spirit deer had run away into the forest, and Usue’mate had run after him. Usue’mate chased the spirit deer, never stopping to rest or eat. At the end of the fifth day of his quest, he overtook the deer and forced him to speak. What the spirit deer had said was sacred to Usue’mate, and he had never repeated it, but he had changed his name to Uwu’ya in honor of his spirit animal.

Now Tim had gone to the mountains. He had fasted there, although not by choice. And he seemed to have his own spirit deer, which could not die at his hands. He wished he could talk to his grandfather about it. Or better, his grandfather’s grandfather.

The meat strengthened him quickly. He did not dare eat too much of it at once. When he had had all his stomach would tolerate, he bundled the rest and kicked out his fire.

Crisscrossing the area, Tim picked up his deer’s tracks about noon. Long before that he had seen bruised, antler rubbed trees. Twice he had crossed the tracks of another deer, but he had not followed them up. He thought his best chance was still with the cripple. 

He was less willing to admit the other feelings that bound him to it.

Rut was upon the muleys, and Tim had to consider that. He could no longer be sure how they might act. Now they might run, or they might attack.

Tim was thinking clearly again. Hunger had temporarily left him, but he was as cold as he had ever been and the storm showed no sign of breaking. Snow had begun to build up in the hollows. The next snowfall could easily bring another foot of snow. more next week

If he had hit the deer, would it have died? Or had the deer’s spirit put the branch in the way? Tim’s father would not have approved of such speculation, but his grandfather would have understood.

A chill was growing under the hemlock as the fire died. There was little energy left in him now. He slipped into a fitful sleep.

* * *

Two miles away the black bear caught a faint scent, but he could not identify it. Without his sense of smell, he was nearly helpless. It was days since he had had meat, and his instinct to hibernate as well as his hunger told him how badly he needed to eat. He stood up on his hind legs and peered uselessly into the blinding screen of snow, but a bear’s eyes are weak, and he saw nothing.

A great rage was building within him.

* * *

Tim woke, shivering uncontrollably. The fire was out. He scattered the ashes and found a live ember. Working carefully, he took tinder from the supply in his canteen and rekindled the fire. When he had it going, he didn’t wait to warm himself, but stacked the remainder of his wood so that it would fall into the fire as it burned. Then he fell back into a half-conscious state.

* * *

The fire was out again when he woke and day was beginning to lighten the world. The snow had stopped. He ate a mouthful of snow, then dug around the roots of his shelter tree, hoping to find a squirrel’s cache of pine nuts. He found a pitiful few.

He did not bother to rebuild the fire. If he stayed here now, he would never leave.

The deer’s tracks had been covered by the fresh snow, but it made no difference. He was too weak to stalk it anyway. The tracks of birds and small rodents dotted the snow here and there, but there were by not many of them.

Tim wandered in a daze, looking for anything to eat. Once he blundered into a pine and looked longingly at the cones hanging high above his head. For the life of him, he could not figure out how to get them down. Not for the life of him.

Later, he realized that he was following a set of tracks, but he didn’t know what had made them. He followed them to the base of a lodgepole pine and, looking up, he could see a creature sitting in the lower branches staring down at him.

Porcupine!

The  porcupine is one of the few creatures slow enough to be caught and clubbed. The have no speed, only their quills for protection.

Shaking with excitement and need, Tim strung his bow and nocked an arrow. Shooting overhead was a skill he had never practiced. His first arrow buried itself in the limb on which the porcupine sat.

The porcupine was startled into action. As Tim nocked another arrow, almost sobbing, the porcupine waddled to the main trunk and started up. Tim took careful aim and shot again. The arrow skewered the porcupine and buried itself in the tree trunk.

The creature hung suspended by the shaft that had struck it, nailed to the tree and completely out of Tim’s reach.

“No, no, no, no, no!” Tim cried as tears ran down his cheeks. Then, making slow and graceful turns, the porcupine slid down the shaft, propelled by its own weight, and fell to the ground. The arrow remained embedded in the tree.

Tim approached the fallen creature and fell to his knees before it. It lay on its back with its rodent like mouth half open. Its eyes were flat and dull in death.

It was meat. More than meat, this was life itself. more tomorrow

There was too long a stretch of open ground to be covered before Tim could get within spear throwing range. He strung his bow instead, and laid aside his crutch. His ankle might give way, but he had to take the chance. Moving laterally, he got directly behind the deer, then began to advance. His ankle sent a shock of pain through him each time it hit the ground. He carried the bow in shooting position, ready to draw and release the moment the muley became alarmed.

To his amazement, the deer did not become aware of him. He advanced slowly, footfalls silenced by the thin layer of snow, to within fifty feet of the animal. It still sat quietly, looking down the slope.

Tim paused. If he did not shoot soon, his chance would be lost. Drawing back his bow, he sighted on the deer’s side just behind the shoulders and released.

The arrow flashed, flying true. There was a thuck on impact and the mule deer erupted from the ground. For a fraction of a second it stared at Tim; then it was gone, bounding away in great leaps, using all four feet in its haste.

Tim stood holding his empty bow, frozen in superstitious terror. For a moment the deer’s eyes had seemed to hold an almost human intelligence. Was this a spirit deer after all – one that could not be killed?

The deer was gone. Only his tracks remained.

Tim staggered forward to where the deer had lain. His arrow was buried head deep in a thumb sized branch of whitethorn, and its shaft had shattered on impact. It was a chance in a thousand with such a large target and such a skimpy bush, but Tim’s arrow had been stopped short.

Tim’s scream of frustration rebounded from the mountainside.

Chapter 10

Tim squatted before his fire. In this exposed position at the edge of a small meadow, the constant wind had stunted the growth of a mountain hemlock, twisting it into a whorling shrub that backed against a granite outcropping. Tim had built a fire against the rock so that it reflected heat into the space beneath the hemlock. He had made that space more snug by interweaving branches from nearby shrubs and banking snow against the outer branches.

It was snowing again. The scattered flakes had given way to a steady fall of snow with the coming of night. They did not dance as they had the night before. Now there was no wind and they floated purposefully downward, filling the night with a curtain of white and steadily building up a layer on the trees and ground.

Tim paid little attention to his surroundings. He sat silently, caught up in the rumblings of his empty stomach and the throbbing of his ankle. Today had nearly defeated him. The long stalk in the cold and wind had been bad enough, but it was the waiting, not moving while he searched the brush with his eyes, that had left him chilled through and exhausted.

The fire was dying, but it seemed just too much trouble to put on more wood. Tim’s head dropped to his chest. He really should have saved that arrow, but instead he had taken the already shattered shaft and had broken it again and again, then ground it underfoot in his rage.

If he had hit the deer, would it have died? Or had the deer’s spirit put the branch in the way? more tomorrow

The muley’s trail switchbacked up the valley as he browsed. Tim remained under cover as he followed so he could not be seen from above. He knew that a mule deer will browse for an hour or so as the day begins, then lie down looking downslope. This gives the deer the advantage of rising winds moving up the canyons in the morning. Tim could do nothing to disguise his scent, but he could stay out of sight.

From time to time, Tim could see freshly nipped branches of serviceberry and manzanita. Then he came upon a peculiar sign. The deer had torn up a large patch of snow and it was visibly yellow from his urine. A nearby willow was bruised and its bark was torn loose near the ground.

The deer was going into rut despite his wound! Tim would never have believed it. Perhaps this would make him careless.  Certainly it would make him dangerous. A muley in rut with freshly sharpened antlers will not hesitate to attack

* * *

In another part of the mountains, the black bear was leaving the foothills. His nose had begun to heal, but his sense of smell was mostly gone. His eye where the buckshot had lodged was swelling and the infection was spreading. He could not hunt properly with only his weak eyes to guide him. He was hungry and angry, and he was heading for the section of the mountains where Tim was lost.

* * *

Eventually, Tim decided that he had followed the deer’s tracks far enough. By now, it should have gone to earth, so he worked his way up the side of the valley and continued upslope parallel to the muley’s trail. After half a mile he dropped down into the valley again to check and, sure enough, the tracks were gone.

If his reasoning was correct, the deer was below him now, so he began a slow downslope stalk into the wind. The trees grew closer together here, and that made it hard for him to see.

The clouds were a boiling sea of gray and charcoal hanging just above the treetops. It was nearing noon, but the day just grew colder. Tim leaned against the bole of a mountain hemlock to rest his aching ankle and consider his next move. As long as he stayed still and upright, he would probably remain unseen against the trees, but he would have to look carefully before he made each move.

He moved diagonally to the right and stopped again against the bole of a lodgepole pine. He stood there with only his eyes moving for a long time, looking particularly at a likely clump of bitter cherry. Then he moved again, going about twenty feet and stopping.

He worked his way along for two hours, moving briefly and standing long to search with his eyes. The cold was getting to him, but he tried to ignore it. Eventually, he came to an opening in the trees, almost a meadow, but with a scattering of Jeffrey pines and low bushes of manzanita and whitethorn – just the kind of resting spot his father had taught him to look for.

Tim settled back against a pine and slid down so that he was hidden by a light screen of gooseberry. He scanned the area. It took almost ten minutes before Tim’s eyes could separate the deer from its cover. The deer had chosen a spot commanding a view of his trail. If Tim had blundered along following his tracks, the deer would have been long gone. more tomorrow