Jay brought him the prize. “I hope it’s all right.”
“It’ll do fine.”
Jay beamed at him and retreated to his post and Mackenzie hefted the branch: it was a strong stick with a crook in it, a little shorter than a baseball bat and considerably lighter in weight; not heavy enough to do service as a club. A twisted strand of flexible bark hung from its end where Jay had had to rip it loose. Mackenzie wondered if the bark had enough tensile strength to make a thong. Then he rejected it; he couldn’t afford to experiment and have it fail. Instead he set the food pouch beside him on top of the ledge and pulled the hide drawstring out of it. Pouch, string, breechclout and moccasins all were stiffening to an uncomfortable hardness and his shoulder was badly welted where the tough strap had chafed it. He foresaw no improvement in that situation; they’d just have to make the best of it. Even if they did manage to kill a javelina its hide would be far stiffer than the jackrabbit skins and in any case they’d need the pig hide for a water bag; it would harden up to the consistency of wood but that wouldn’t affect its usefulness as a vessel.
He pulled his mind back to the immediate problem and focused on the attempt to solve it. There was no point speculating about the use of javelina skin until you had a javelina.
Jay’s efforts to tear the club off the bush had left one end of the stick split clear through. The split ran down into the wood a few inches and one side of it had curled back. Mackenzie took the split ends in both hands and pulled with steady pressure. The split ran farther along the wood and he pulled the ends apart carefully with continuing effort until he judged it deep enough.
As an interim weapon he’d been clutching a stone; he’d picked it up from the foot of the cliff. It was a shale slab with the shape of a wedge-butt end as thick as his wrist, blade considerably thinner. It was irregular and not quite as heavy as he’d have preferred but he didn’t want to waste time hunting for a better one. He rammed it down into the split stick and used the rawhide thong to tie the wood tight around it. If he struck a bad blow the rock probably would fly right out of the wood but in the meantime it made for a rudimentary ax-stone blade, wood handle. Not as effective as his ancestors’ tomahawks but then he hadn’t had weeks to craft it.
He gripped it in his right fist and clutched the knife in his left and lay along the cliff above the game trail waiting for the pigs to finish their pleasure.
23
Time ran by-the slice of moon gave him a rough gauge-and it was midnight and Mackenzie listened to the approach of the javelina, small hoofs clicking on the rock as they came.
His muscles gathered and he saw Jay cock an arm, ready to throw if the peccaries tried the wrong side of the rock they’d rolled across the path.
The leader came into the light and paused when it came on the rock: snuffled and swung its neckless head from side to side. The pigs bunched up behind it and finally the leader came into the passage between rock and cliff: it burst through quickly and trotted under Mackenzie’s position and went on to the open where it began to run sideways, circling, making a little dance of agitation while it waited for the others to brave the pass.
Mackenzie’s scheme was artlessly direct: to fall with his club upon the last pig in line.
But the bunch herded together and he regretted having moved the rock; they knew the trail and the alteration had nerved them up-now they hesitated and finally they all tried to squeeze through at once.
The weaker ones gave way; the bunch came crowding through the neck. Mackenzie poised to spring. But the last two pigs came through abreast, hurrying to catch up.
Mackenzie swung the club ferociously. It tipped him off the ledge and he fell. But the head of the ax took the nearer pig somewhere on the shoulders; it was still underneath when Mackenzie fell on it.
It wasn’t much of a drop and he wasn’t hurt but confusion welled in him and he wasn’t certain of his bearings for a moment: he was in a tangle with the stricken javelina and he felt something strike his flailing ankle. It must have been a hoof of the second pig: he had a glimpse of it reeling out, dodging away from the cliff, bolting toward the rear of the pack, and then the pig under him began to squirm: it got free and its short legs scrabbled with frantic energy-it got away from him amazingly quickly.
Mackenzie brandished the tomahawk and slithered for footing.
The pig was clattering along the base of the cliff like a crab on a rock jetty: pushing itself along the face of the cliff, crippled, sliding its shoulder along the wall.
He went after it and felt a stab of squeezing fright that maybe the other peccaries were after him from behind but he leaped at the struggling javelina. He gripped the ax in both hands and brought it down with all the might in his shoulders.
He felt it jar his hands when it broke. The light was poor; he wasn’t sure whether it had hit clean.
There wasn’t time to examine it. Mackenzie whirled in a crouch, knife in his left hand and broken stick in his right to meet the assault of the pack.
But the pack was making a run for it: Jay across the trail hurled rocks at them with mighty overhand heaves that flew in wild directions and clattered like enfilading fire. The commotion spooked the mob into a brief terrorized gallop that soon became a disorganized trot. Mackenzie watched the pack dwindle up the run until the night absorbed it. He dropped the stick and examined the stricken peccary and saw that he’d broken its neck with his blow.
A neat kill after alclass="underline" a blaze of crafty preternatural pride made him lightheaded and he looked at Jay with fierce excitement. “Old-fashioned redskin ingenuity does it every time. Stick with me, son.”
Jay gave him a strange frightened glance and Mackenzie laughed to show he’d been joshing him.
He laid out the carcass on its side. Let’s see now: you cut slits down the hind legs between the bones and the strong tendons. Then you jam the front legs through the slits. Break the forelegs and turn them sideways like cross-pins: you’ve made a sling of the animal-put your arms through and carry it on your back like a knapsack. Leaves your hands free.
Then he brought himself back from fantasy. No need to sling the pig for a long carry: they’d be skinning it out right here.
He remembered how his father had carried deer that way. The silversmith’s teachings were close to the surface now: he realized what was happening to him-more and more he was finding the capacity to make the right moves without having to stop and think them out first. It pleased him. “-but you can’t take the desert out of the Navajo.”
“What?”
He realized he’d spoken aloud, dismissed it with a gesture and went in search of a stone flat enough to hone the knife. He moved off the trail and began to skin the javelina and dress it out. Jay said, “How about the water hole?”
“No point risking our necks trying to get down there before dawn.”
The meat was tough and the knife too flimsy; in the end they had to tear the meat. They ripped it into strips as thin as possible so that the sun would dry it quickly. Mackenzie pegged out the hide fifty yards beyond the game trail-they didn’t need to be trampled. They scraped the hide, working with knives and rocks, and it consumed muscle and time because they had to be certain they left no traces of fat or meat on the skin: anything that went rancid could spoil the water or rot a hole through the bag.
At random intervals an animal or a small group would enter the tanque for a while and then emerge from the cliff shadows and return toward the hills. Two coyotes came; later a fox and finally something that moved with quick dark stealth-Mackenzie thought it might be a bobcat.