Читать книгу Empty Hands - Stringer Arthur - Страница 11

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Grimshaw, after a hurried appraisal of the territory close about him, decided that the best place for his night-shelter would be against an overhanging rock-wall a few hundred paces lower down the river. Here the sand-slope was both harder and higher than at the spot where he had first landed and the concave back-wall offered a ponderable shelter against wind and a complete one against landward approach. Twenty paces away lay an abundance of small and large stone, for which he had already figured out a future use, and down a fissure in the rock-wall flashed and sang a rivulet of clearest spring water. Below him, on the near-by gravel-bar of the river itself, lay a long tangle of driftwood, higher than his head. And he decided, after looking over this matted hillock of spruce and pine and tamarack and birch logs, worn smooth by their descent down those miles of rock-lined rapids, to build his first shelter, not of stone, but of wood.

So without further loss of time he fell to work, dragging from that lavish store the poles and timbers best suited to his purpose. These he carried up across the river-slope to the back-wall that shut in his little amphitheater of sand. Then selecting smaller birch-poles that would serve as stakes, he drove a double row of uprights into the sand about five feet apart. Between these uprights he piled his longer and heavier logs, one on top of the other, strengthening his structure with shorter cross-pieces, on which he piled a close-fitting layer of roofing logs. Then, circling lower down the river, he made trip after trip to the higher ground, carrying back pine and spruce boughs, which he piled closely along his timbered roof to make it tighter. Then, venturing still farther into the uplands, he gathered moss and dried grass and carried it back to his shelter. But, not altogether satisfied with this, he made his way back to the muskeg along which bulrushes grew and there gathered armful after armful of the ripened cat-tails. After bringing these, together with still more spruce boughs, back to his shelter, he went to his pile of driftwood and selected two knotted tamarack poles, which he placed lengthwise along their constricted sleeping quarters, decently dividing the enclosure into two narrow berths. Each of these he carefully bedded with a layer of spruce branches, feathering the needled twigs so that the coarse ends lay next to the sand. Over these again he spread the dry grass and moss. And he was busy piling the silky floss stripped from the bulrush catkins, piling it knee-deep along the narrow berths, when he became conscious that he was no longer alone.

He peered out from his low-roofed cabin to see a brown-armed figure in a willow tunic watching him intently, with a look of wonder on her face. And that look of wonder deepened as he called her to his side and explained how she could nest in the core of that feathery mass of down without fear of the night's chill reaching her.

"But I want flat boughs for top-blankets," he pointed out, "and a few short timbers to place across the entrance. Then we'll be secure, except for the roof. That I'll have to thatch or cover with bark before the rains come."

But before his task of finding short timber for his shelter-end was over Grimshaw was disturbed by the discovery that he had to sit down and rest. His growing weakness, he realized, was due more to the lack of food than to mere fatigue. And food in some form or another, he also realized, must be promptly obtained.

So, after thinking the matter over, he concluded that his readiest source of supply, all things considered, would be the river. Rallying what was left of his energy, he made his way down to the water's edge, where he mounted a boulder and carefully studied the contours of the winding and twisting shore-line.

When he clambered down from that boulder an odd change had crept over him. He became man the hunter, desperately in search of food. He slunk quietly along the broken river-bank, crouching low, studying each shallow and bay and cove for some sign of life in its depths.

When he came to a backwater pool little more than waist-deep at the center, widening out into a sandy shallow toward the shore and connected with the river by a shallower throat not more than twelve feet wide, he felt he had come to the likeliest spot for his purpose. As he stood intently studying it he could see flies hanging over its shadowed surface, and even as he looked a sudden flurry of flying minnows foretold him some larger fish were feeding there. But he drew back from the pool, making his way cautiously down-stream until he came to a water-logged tree-trunk below the limpid surface. He pried this free from the accumulated sands about it and found that by supporting it a little he could float it into deeper water. So, moving with the utmost caution, he dragged the heavy timber toward the pool-mouth. He knew that any fish within that pool, when alarmed, would promptly seek deeper water, and his intention was to shut off that shallow throat before his purpose would be disclosed. His log, he found when he had warped and rolled it into place, fell a foot short at either end. So he completed his dam by quietly piling river-stones along these shallow water-gaps and along the base of the log itself, to anchor it more securely in position.

Then, arming himself with a spruce-bough, he waded into the pool, sweeping the bottom as he went. His object was to drive any fish imprisoned there into the shallows, where it could be stunned or killed. And he was rewarded, in the end, by catching sight of a dodging dorsal-fin or two. He even caught the flash of silver bellies as he worked his prisoners into ever narrowing quarters. One of the larger darting shadows escaped between his very knees, though another, a small perch, he kicked frantically ashore with his bare foot. But his eye, all the while, was on a heavier-bodied form that fought and floundered through the muddied water. On this, when his chance came, Grimshaw flung himself bodily, disregarding its poisonous spines as he pinned and held it against the sandy bottom.

When he had three fingers hooked through its gills and could hold it up he found it to be a muskalonge of at least five pounds in weight. And he knew that food had been given to them. It was not the best food in the world, perhaps, but it was sufficient.

His first impulse was to shout the good news aloud and bring Claire to his side. But on second thoughts he decided to clean and dress their meal before confronting her with it. Searching along the river-side gravel-beds, he found the bleached rib-bone of a deer, which he sharpened and pointed on a piece of sandstone. With this he was able to scale and gut the two fish, which he tore into small sections and carefully washed at the water's edge. Then, carrying his bone-knife and his precious food with him, he climbed the river-bank and found a white birch from which he could peel a large enough piece of bark to serve as a platter. With still another plaque of birchbark, artfully folded and held together with thorns, he fashioned a rogan for a drinking-cup. Then with his laden platter and his rogan filled with water he staggered in triumph back to their elongated igloo of logs.

"Are you beginning to believe in me?" he demanded, oppressed by the impassivity of Claire's face, which now seemed bleached almost to a cheese-color under its tan.

She looked at the fragments of white meat for a long time. Then she turned away.

"I don't think I'm worth it!" she asserted in her quietly dispirited monotone.

He put the bark-platter down on the sand between them. He resented that dashing of his momentary enthusiasm. His first impulse was to retort: "Supposing we keep alive to find out!" But a glance at her face, with the shadows of fatigue under her brooding eyes, reminded him of what she had passed through that day.

"I want you to eat," he said. He said it very quietly, but there was a note of authority in his voice which was not to be mistaken.

Her gaze swung slowly back to his. She did not speak, but something fell away from her, in that brief clash of wills. An alteration, small but subtle, took place between them. The man, who was stronger, rose slightly in some ghostly balance of life, and the woman, who was weaker, went down as he rose. It was, she remembered, the way of the wilderness, where all things were made over.

"We'll eat," he repeated as he placed the food more immediately before her.

She did not look up at him. Instead, she turned her face a trifle away, that he might not see the returning pucker of misery which quivered about her mouth.

So they squatted down on the sand, in the slanting sunlight, naked-limbed man and woman, and ate the raw flesh together.

When they could eat no more Grimshaw carefully tied what was left of the meat up in the square of birchbark and stowed it away in the upper corner of their shelter, for with the break of another day, he knew, they would be hungry again. Then he looked up at the sun, which was dropping ominously down toward the sky-line.

"We'll lose this warm air," he explained to her, "during the next half-hour. And that, of course, means bed-time for us."

"Bed-time?" she repeated, with a catch of the breath.

"Until we have fire," he told her. "Then it will be different."

She sat staring toward the black-fringed hills that shut them in. The opaqueness of her eyes disturbed him.

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

"No," she told him.

"Then shall I cover you, or can you do that as well yourself?"

He asked it as casually as he was able to, looking away from her and staring in through the narrow opening of their shelter. But she stood with her intent eyes fixed on his face.

"I can manage it," she said in an impersonal small voice which reminded him of a child's.

He turned away, still avoiding her eyes.

"I want to have a look over the lower reaches of the river," he told her. "From the lay of this land there ought to be a caribou-crossing somewhere in the neighborhood. And I want to find some iron pyrites, if possible, and open up the dam in my fish-pond again. It's just occurred to me another meal might wander into it before morning."

"Would you mind not being away too late after—after the light goes?" she asked with a humbled quietness which brought him up short. He turned back to her as she stood at the shelter-end, a strangely solitary figure in the slowly graying light. Their eyes met, directly and openly, for the second time. Yet on this occasion the woman's eyes were the more tranquil of the two.

"I'll be back well before night sets in," he told her.

But he had much to see and many paths to explore before the waning light reminded him of his promise. He inspected the lower river-valley and then climbed to the uplands where he examined rabbit-runs and the spoor of larger animals. He studied the timber-growth and the cropped branch-ends that told of moose. At a swale-side he saw the footmarks of a black bear. Then he busied himself in grubbing for a handful of cedar-roots and a supply of dry punk from the core of a rotting log. He also gathered together a handful of small bird-feathers which indicated where a shrike had recently dined. Then he turned homeward in the twilight, conscious again of his weariness and of the sharpening air against his uncovered shoulders.

Utter silence reigned over his narrow shelter as he crept into it. His wilderness mate, he knew, was already in the nest he had made for her. And it impressed him as odd, while blocking the opening with his shorter pieces of tree-boles, that he should already regard this strange habitation as home. He listened intently, after burrowing down under the dry moss and leaves and covering himself with what remained of the spruce-boughs, and heard the silence broken by the occasional sound of a fox-bark. And it seemed to him, as he lay there with the tides of weariness ebbing and flowing through his body, that he could vision and feel life in every degree in every corner of the world, yet with all his accumulations of that world's knowledge he had, at a stroke, been flung back into the barbaric beginning of things. Then, nesting deep in his bed, he felt a comforting warmth creep over quieting tides of fatigue. From beyond the two barrier tamaracks he could even hear the regular breathing of his companion, of the woman it was his destiny to sustain and guard and deliver back to her own. He knew by the sound that she was asleep. And he found a vague consolation in the thought that sleep was possible to her, just as he found a ghostly and wayward satisfaction in the thought, as he ebbed off into slumber, of her nearness to him.

He awakened, during the night, at the cry of some forest-animal within a biscuit's toss of his shelter. The anesthesia of exhaustion was slow in slipping away from him, but when he came into full consciousness of his surroundings he sat up in the midst of his mattressing moss and tree-boughs and listened for the breathing of the woman beside him.

He could hear nothing. So with a small tingle of alarm he reached over the two barricading hemlocks and thrust an interrogative hand through leaves and moss and catkin-down.

Then he withdrew his hand, as promptly as though his fingers had come into contact with living fire. For at the core of that rustling mass he had found sudden warmth, like the warmth of a ptarmigan's body under its plumage, the reassuring warmth of bare flesh.

"What is it?" she asked sharply out of the silence.

He knew then that she was wide awake. And the discovery, in some way, left him singularly discomfited.

"I wanted to make sure you were all right," he explained to her as casually as he was able.

She lay silent a moment.

"Was that a wolf that howled outside?" she finally asked.

"No," he assured her. "More likely a fox."

Still again she lay silent for a moment or two.

"But there are animals—"

She did not finish her question. Grimshaw, however, caught the drift of her thoughts.

"I know these northern woods better than you imagine. I've traveled them, night and day, hundreds of miles, without even a knife. And there's not an animal in them that will deliberately molest a human being. Do you believe me when I tell you that?"

"Yes, I believe you," she finally acknowledged. He heard her small sigh, in the darkness, followed by indeterminate nestling movements which persuaded him that she was again settling down to sleep. But when he listened for the sound of her breathing, the deeper breathing of slumber, he could hear nothing. And he himself lay there for a time, oddly wakeful, once more oppressed by the feeling that all life as he knew it had gone out like a lamp, that all life, with the coming of day, would begin again as it had begun at the birth of the world.