Hot water, soap, and Dag’s kit waited by the hearth as well. It seemed he was expected to take on the injured, which he was willing enough to do. It was mostly cuts and scrapes, which he set Hod to washing with strong soap. Whit helped bandage, with a little instruction. The flattie leader was the worst off, and Dag set him on a stool before the fire and borrowed Fawn’s hands to help clean the odd injuries on his torso.
“What in the wide green world happened to you?” Fawn asked him as she started in with rags and soap. “Did that bear claw you?”
The fellow smiled back at her the way most sane fellows did, despite his winces from her scrubbing. “Not this time, missy.”
“Why didn’t you bring back the bear, too?” demanded Hawthorn of Whit, both pausing to watch this process.
“It wasn’t a cub, Hawthorn,” Whit said impatiently. “It would’ve sunk the skiff, if it didn’t try to eat us.”
Boss-or-Captain Chicory told Hawthorn kindly, “Bears can swim fine, if they’ve a mind. It’ll get itself off that island when it gets bored.” He whispered to Fawn, “I’ve got a boy about that size at home, and his little brother to keep him in trouble in case he runs out. Which he never has yet, I admit.” He raised his voice, “No, see, how it was—ow!”
“Sorry,” said Fawn, folding a cloth to pat new blood leaks from a scrubbed scab.
“Keep on, missy, I can tell you’re doing me good. How it was, was, we’d come up shorthanded just before we reached the Grace, because three of our fellows got scared at the size of the river and run off with our skiff. So we lashed the boats together, but now I think that wasn’t such a good idea, as the rig was mighty obstinate after that. We pretty much gave up and just went with the river, figuring we’d get a chance to sort out and maybe hire on a real pilot downstream a ways.”
“Had any of you been on the river before?” asked Berry, joining the circle.
“No, not down this far. Some of my hands had worked the upper Beargrass a time or two, but boats are a new start for me. My main line is hunting—bear and wild pig mostly, though my missus keeps her garden. I’m no hand at farming. Tried it once. If things are mainly going to die on a man anyway, hunting’s a more natural trade for him, I figure.” He took a long swallow of tea, warming to his tale.
“I was sitting down by the fire last night in the trailing boat, trying to get my feet thawed and wishing I was back hunting bears on hard land, where a man can at least pick his own direction, when I heard the fellows running and yelling over my head. Then we struck that towhead, thunk! I knew right off we were getting sucked under tail-end first, because the upstream side o’ the floor tilted down like a rooftop. I bolted for the hatch, which was in the middle of the roof, but the river was already a-pouring in like a regular cataract. The only other opening was this little window in the side, which we’d mainly used for dipping up water before we’d lashed the boats together.”
Berry glanced fore and aft to the Fetch’s two exits, and its generous pair of windows. “I see. You boys make those boats yourselves?”
“Not exactly. I bought ’em from a widow woman whose man was killed in that ruckus in north Raintree this summer. Seemed a way to help her out. He’d been in my company, was how it was.” He took another swig and continued, “I scrambled over to our dipping hatch, but it was plain to see it was too small for me. But with the river pouring in, it was plainer it was go through it or be drowned, and my papa always said I was born to be hanged, so I chucked out my good ash spear, stuck my arms through, and yelled for Bearbait and the fellows to grab me and pull with all their might or I was a goner.”
The man with the battered hat—Dag trusted that Bearbait was a nickname—nodded earnestly. “We didn’t so much pull, as just hang on tight and let the boat get yanked off around you. I was mainly thinking how much I didn’t want to go back to your wife and explain how you was drownded, after all that. She being strongly not in favor of this whole scheme in the first place,” he added aside to Fawn, who nodded perfect understanding.
“That little hatch scraped off my shirt and skinned me like a rabbit, but they got me through!” Chicory beamed around at his crew, who grinned back despite their fatigue. “We all scrambled onto the towhead before the second boat went after the first, and spent part of the night clinging to the wrack like wet possums, till it started to break up, too. Then we waded back and found some trees that were right-side-up and not moving. You know, I suppose I should have been glum, having lost my boats and lading and all my trouble, not to mention my clothes and skin, but I felt prime, up in that fine tree. Every once in a while I’d break out chuckling. Couldn’t help it. It felt so good to be breathing air and not river.” He sighed. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever see my poor boats again.”
“You never know,” said Berry. “If they weren’t busted to pieces when they went under the towhead, sometimes they come up again all waterlogged and get picked up downstream by folks. What was your cargo?”
“Barrel staves, mostly, and bear and pig hides. Kegs of bear grease and lard. I don’t care for the staves, but I regret the other. A passel of bears and pigs, those were, and not easily come by.” He glanced at his ash spear, leaning in a corner.
“Your staves would likely be too warped to be anything but firewood, later, and the hides, well, it’ll depend on how long they soak, and if they can be dried again without going moldy. Some of your kegs might make it, if they’re good and tight.”
Chicory brightened at this news; his partner Bearbait looked less enthusiastic.
Fawn finished washing and drying the wounds, then traded places with Dag, who bent in for a close inspection with both eye and ground-sense. Dag reported, “You’re well gouged and scraped, and your joints are wrenched sore, but nothing’s dislocated or broken. Bleed pretty freely last night, did you?”
“He was a sight,” confirmed Bearbait. “I was ready to bust him in the jaw for laughing like that while looking like that.”
“But the bleeding’s mostly stopped on its own, now.” Dag gently worked out a few deep splinters with his ghost hand and tweezers. “The rips are too ragged to make stitching you up worthwhile, I think.” He fingered a hanging ribbon of skin, considered whether to detach it with knife or scissors, then, on impulse, ripped its ground crossways in a slice as thin as paper. The strip fell away into his hand; he pitched it into the fire. “Did that hurt?”
“What?” said Chicory, trying to crane his sore neck to see over his shoulder.
The tiny bit of the Raintree man’s ground in his own felt little different than a normal ground reinforcement; not even as odd as a mosquito or an oat. Dag removed the other two bad strips the same way, trying for as fine a slice as he could. They did not bleed. Better stop here and think about this one, eh? “You’re going to have scars there.”
Chicory snorted indifference. “I’ve done worse to myself.”
Dag didn’t doubt it. “Give me your say-so, and I’ll put a little Lakewalker-style ground reinforcement in the deepest gouges to fight infection, which is the biggest danger left. Then have Fawn put some ointment on and wrap them up so the scabs don’t crack when you move. In a few days, a clean shirt should be enough to protect them while they finish healing.”
Chicory’s brows arched wryly. “If I had a shirt, I could wash it, sure, if I had a bucket. And soap.” He hesitated. “What’s that thing you say you want to put in me?”