"Who calls it a rabbit stick?" Signe said after a moment, nodding towards the tool he'd used to kill the hare.
"The Anishinabe," he said, his hands moving with skilled precision. "Which means 'the People,' surprise surprise- the particular bunch around where we lived are called Ojibwa, which means 'Puckered Up.' My grandmother's people; on Mom's side, that is. I used to go stay with Grannie Lauder and her relatives sometimes; she lived pretty close to our place."
"Oh," she said. "That's how you learned all this… woodcraft?"
She looked around at the savage wilderness and shivered a bit. "You really seem at home here. It's beautiful, but… hostile, not like Larsdalen-our summer farm-or even the ranch in Montana. As if all this"-she waved a hand at the great steep snow-topped slopes all around them-"hated us, and wanted us to die."
"These mountains aren't really hostile," Havel said. "They're like any wilderness, just indifferent, and… oh, sort of unforgiving of mistakes. If you know what you're doing, you could live here even in winter."
"Well, maybe you could, Mike," she said with a grin. "What would you need?"
"A nice tight cabin and a year's supply of grub, ideally," he said, chuckling in turn.
She mimed picking up the rabbit stick and hitting him over the head.
He went on: "Minimum? Well, with a rabbit stick and a knife you can survive in the bush most times of the year; and with a knife you can make a rabbit stick and whatever else you need, like a fire drill. You can even hunt deer with the knife; stand over a little green-branch fire so the smoke kills your scent, then stalk 'em slow-freeze every time they look around, then take a slow step while they're not paying attention, until you get within arm's reach."
"That's fascinating!" she said, her blue eyes going wide. "Of course, the Native Americans did live here."
The big blue eyes looked good that way, but… He gave a slight mental wince.
I'm too fucking honest for my own good, he told himself wryly. Also I'm effectively in charge here, damnit, which means I can't play fast and loose. Not to mention her parents are watching…
"Even the Nez Perce starved here when times were bad," he said. "Nobody lived in these mountains if they hadn't been pushed out of somewhere better. I hope you don't believe any of that mystic crap about Indians and the landscape."
"Oh, of course not," she replied, obviously lying, and equally obviously wanting to correct him to Native American.
"Indians have to learn this stuff just like us palefaces," he went on. "It's not genetic. But some of Grandma's relatives were hunters and trappers, real woodsmen, and I used to hang around them. Learned a lot from my own dad too, of course. Though I figure the Ojibwa part is why I'm so chatty and talkative. It's perverse for a Finn."
He scrubbed down his hands and forearms with some of the snow lying in the shade of a whortleberry bush, trying not to think about hot showers and soap. She passed him his coat again, and winced a bit doing it, pulling her hands back protectively and curling the fingers as he took the garment.
"Damn, let me look at that."
He took her hand in his and opened it. The palms looked worse than they were, because the strings of skin from the burst blisters had turned black. Havel drew his puukko again, tested the edge by shaving a patch of hair from his forearm, then began to neatly trim the stubs of dead skin; that should help a little, and reduce the chafing. There hadn't been time for her to really grow any calluses yet.
"I told you to put more of the salve on them," he scolded. "You're pushing it too hard. When something starts bleeding, say so and someone will spell you on the stretcher."
"I'm doing less than Eric is, Mike," she said.
"You're also forty pounds lighter than Eric, and most of that's on his shoulders and arms," Havel said bluntly. "I thought you had more between your ears than he does, though. You've got nothing to prove." And you're certainly not the cream-puff airhead I thought you were, he thought. Massively ignorant, but not stupid.
She learned quickly, rarely had to be told how to do something twice, and didn't stand around waiting to be found work.
And she's no quitter or whiner. Complains less than her brother.
"Eric may be bigger, but I'm a lot younger than Dad-I don't like the way he looks," she went on, leaning a little closer and lowering her voice. "Mike, he goes gray sometimes when he's been on the stretcher for twenty minutes, especially on the steep parts. The doctor's warned him about his heart. What will we do if he… gets sick… out here? Carrying him and Mom-"
There she's got me, he thought, looking over at the elder Larsson.
The flesh had melted away from him, but it didn't make him look healthy, just sort of sagging, and his color was as bad as Signe thought. Cold and the brutal work and lack of proper sleep or enough food was grinding him down, and he wasn't a young man or in good shape.
And this isn't the way to get into shape at his age. Much more of this and I wouldn 't bet on him coming through. But I can't take him off carrying the stretcher for at least some of the time. There's too much else to do and I'm the one who knows how to do it.
"By the way, Mike," Signe said, obviously pushing the worry aside with an effort of will. "There's something you should consider about 'mystical crap,' as you put it."
His brows went up and she continued by putting her hand out, fingers cocked like a pistol and making a ffff-fumph between lips and teeth, uncannily like the way his gun had sounded when he tried to fire it.
Have to admit, you've got a point, he thought, and was about to say it aloud when he heard Eric's voice, cracking with excitement: "A deer! She got a deer, and it's running away!"
Havel was on his feet and running forward in an instant, scooping up the rabbit stick and tumbling Signe on her backside with a squawk; she was up and following him half a heartbeat later, though.
He passed Eric, but the twins were right on his heels as he flashed into the clearing; their legs were long and their hightops were better running gear than his solid mountain boots. Astrid was a hundred yards ahead, sprinting fast with the bow pumping back and forth in her left hand; and the blood trail was clear enough for anyone to follow- bright gouts and splashes of it on snow and mud and last year's dry grass sticking through both. He pushed himself harder, knowing all too well how the tap could turn off suddenly on a trail like that, unless-
He went through a belt of lodgepole pines, like seventy-foot candlesticks; the ground beneath them was fairly clear, and the wounded animal was following the trail; that wasn't too surprising, since it was on level ground and would make for maximum speed. Massive tree boles flashed by him, and then they were out into bright sunlight with mountain ridges rippling away to the west and south like endless green-white waves on a frozen sea. Thin mountain air burned cold in his chest; Astrid's hair was like a white-silk banner as he pulled past her. Then the trail jinked a little higher.
Good! he thought exultantly. Make him work at it!
The blood trail wasn't dying off; getting thicker, if anything. Then he saw the animal in a patch of sunlight not far ahead.
That's no by-God deer, he thought.
It was an elk; a three-year bull still carrying his rack, a six-pointer, and he knew it must be badly wounded-a healthy elk could do thirty-five miles an hour in a sprint, and twenty all day long. As Havel neared it staggered, gave a gasping, bugling grunt of pain, and began to collapse by the rear. Blood poured out of its nose and mouth; the forelegs gave way, and it lay down and groaned, jerked, and went still with its thick tongue hanging out of its mouth.