Martin aimed the bow through a gap in the branches. The wolf's fierce growls turned to a yowl of agony that went on and on. The howls from the rest of the pack stopped abruptly.
Quick feared and hated wolves: after sims, they were the most dangerous creatures in the woods. A bear or a spearfang, of course, was more than a match for a wolf, but pack of wolves would run even a spearfang off its prey.
Had the trapper been able to stand, he would have gone to windbreak to fire his rifle and pistol at the beasts.
The sims proved able to deal with things on their own.
Martin dashed to another hole in the windbreak. He shot . A wounded wolf ki-yied in pain. That was enough more males rushing up to grab the rest of the bows and arrows. In minutes, several more wolves had been hit, the rest of the pack was in full retreat. The male sims with clubs and spears went outside the windbreak to finish off the animals they had wounded.
Roast wolf tasted much better than Quick had thought it would. Afew days later, the weather turned clear and unseasonly warm. The trapper, with the aid of Sol and of the crutches he had fashioned weeks before, stood up for the first time since the sims had brought him into the clearing.
The effort of even a couple of steps required left him weak. His left leg was, from lack of use, almost as feeble as the right.
The feeling walking brought was intoxicating. He leaned over and kissed Sol the lips. He had never done that before. The motion almost made him fall. Sol steadied him. They both laughed he kissed her again.
This time they did slide to the ground carefully, still laughing, and ended up coupling.
Afterward Sol got up to gather wood, leaving Quick to himself; she took pleasure in the act, but knew nothing like lazing in the afterglow. A smile still on his lips, Quick watched her retreating form.
There, he thought, goes a hell of a woman. Hearing word in his own mind brought him up short. It had be I while since he took a real look at how he felt about Sol . That her body pleased him had been a surprise, but l no longer. Now he noticed her hairiness, her feet, hardly more than had she been black or had very blue eyes He was used to her, as one person grows used to another. What did surprise him was how much he liked her. He knew that had grown from her caring for him, but there was more to it now. Her happiness mattered to him why else had he given her his boots, and worried so much whether Martin would take them away. And if he desired her, and at the same time wanted to gladden her in other ways, He startled himself by speaking out loud. "If that's not love, I don't know what the devil is. The summer before, using that word in connection I a sim would have seemed as ridiculous as thinking a female sim as a woman. He shrugged, not so disturbed as he expected to be. Living as part of the band had this perspective.
Sims weren't human, he thought, but they were people. He nodded slowly, pleased with the distinction. The sim had been living in these woods for who knew how many years. For the first time, Quick felt guilty over the people who were supplanting wild sims all across the continent.
Even tame sims depended on their masters' whim’s for security. The trapper had trouble finding that right, be the same time did not know what else could have happened.
more the sims hunted with bows, the deadlier of the males brought in such an unending stream of food that the clearing constantly smelled of cooking meat. The whole band began to lose the gauntness that went with most of them, though, was fat, to Quick, a fat wild sim contradiction in terms. So he thought, at any rate, he noticed Sol's belly beginning to protrude. Yet she d no extra flesh on her limbs or in her face. The trapper scratched his head and kept on trying to get about on his crutches.
His right leg was never going to be the same. There was famous knot of bone where the leg had been broken ad not healed straight, which made it a little shorter its mate. Quick stumped patiently back and forth, as much weight on it as he could. Day by day it bore but he knew he had made his last trapping run. He would need a stick for the rest of his life.
He was exercising, his mind, he would have sworn, Where far away, when the reason Sol was putting on Fat dawned on him. He sat down heavily. No matter often his body had joined with hers, he had never thought issue might spring from it. In hindsight, that was stupid. In hindsight, of course, a lot of things were stupid.
He stayed on his haunches, lost in his own thoughts.
When Sol came back from a foraging trip, she gave him a bachful look. Not wash she asked.
No. Henry Quick pointed at her. Baby in you?
She glanced down at herself. The bulge was obvious, so obvious that Quick again kicked himself for not figuring what it meant before.
She signed, Baby in me.
She did not say anything about him being the father, but since that first time she had rarely coupled with anyone but him. After a moment, he realized he had never seen any sim in the band use the sign for father.
They viewed mating for its own sake, not for the sake of children, and had never made the connection between the two.
He wondered what to do, and wished he were callous enough for her pregnancy to make no difference to him. He had intended to head back toward the Commonwealths soon as the snow melted. Now . . . it would not be so easy You want me stay here? he signed.
Where go? Sol asked.
To men like me.
Sol frowned. One of him was strange enough; visual ing many of his kind took more imagination than she h At last she signed, winter not gone.
"Only too right it's not," Quick said aloud. Even or mild day like this one, the breeze made his teeth chatter. first he thought Sol had changed the subject, but arte moment he realized such subtlety was beyond her. Sh simply pointed out that, whatever he decided to do wasn't going to do it tomorrow, or the day after either.
He thought about what staying with the sims and the going back to the Commonwealths would be like. He ca for Sol as he had for no woman on the other side of Rockies, and she was carrying his child. That counted something, but he was not sure in which direction it swt the balance.
Son of a sim was a bad enough thing to call a man, but father of a sim . .
. ? Still, he could be like a god if he chose to stay. There was so much the sims did know. He laughed at himself. Like a god, was it? A god who huddled naked, cold, and stinking in fir branches, who ate whatever was alive (or had been lately) and was glad to get it, who could not even use his own speech but had to content himself with a clumsy, limited makeshifts Anyone who bought godhood on those terms deserved to think he had it.
That the trapper lived hardly better than the sims while in the field did not enter into the equation. He deliberatly chose those hardships to escape from his fellow men for time, and to earn the money to live high when he got back to civilization. Until now, he had never imagined staying west of the mountains. Without Sol, he would have had no doubts.
Without Sol, he would have been dead months before, and would not be in this quandary.
Male sims were not normally quiet and reflective. Sol had accepted that Henry Quick sometimes was, but had also come to know him well enough to tell when his thoughts troubled him. you good? She asked.
Even after trading signs with him for so long, she could not come closer than that to probing his feelings. He spread his palms, a gesture that meant neither yes nor no. She rummaged about, offered him some half-frozen roots she had found.
Eat, she signed, as if food could cure mental as well as physical distress.
He sighed and ate. Sol made another gesture. He acted on that one, afterward, no matter how sated his body was, his mind did not rest.
could it be love, he wondered, when he could not express the idea to Sol? But what else was it? He had no idea, not even for himself. He turned to Sol. You want me he asked.