The moon set, ever so slowly. Best not to look, it went so slow. But he did look. The stars creeping down blinked out over the furred black horizon, one after the next. He danced from time to time, in a kind of waking, standing sleep. Let it all settle into one’s breathing. Let Crouch do the talking.
At some point he opened his eyes and saw that the eastern sky just over the horizon was a pale gray. Just a fist or so to sunrise. Always coldest before dawn. But he could endure. He felt the life in him, barking like Crouch.
When it was light enough to see, he limped across the plateau, downslope to a trickle of a creek that ran to a drop into the gorge of their river. He braided some tallgrass and set a small snare near a grass bank marked with hoof and paw prints. After that he stood behind a downed tree that served as a blind, rock in hand, and waited.
The sun rose. A pale watery light filled the air over the plateau. Where sunlight struck his skin he could feel the warmth like the burn from a fire. Please prosper, oh radiant god. Come back to summer again.
For a long time he sat there, sleeping lightly in the sun. Then a crashing sound launched him to his feet and when he saw the deer in the snare he threw the rock in his hand as hard as he could, and hit the deer in the rear leg at the knee, a solid clunk that buckled the deer just long enough for Loon to throw himself across the log onto her. He grabbed her short antlers from behind and twisted as violently as he could, trying to break her neck or choke her. She rolled to keep her neck from breaking, and he rolled with her, snatching up the same rock he had thrown and swinging it hard onto her head between the antlers, trying for a clean hit. He missed the spot and hit again, over and over as fast as he could while the deer thrashed and rolled, but his were glancing blows, while he took a hard kick on the thigh, then missed outright with the rock, and then at last connected: a desperate swing crunched into the skull. The deer slumped, and he smashed her on the forehead several more times, just to be sure. The deer lay there quivering as she breathed her last breaths, bleeding from her eyes and a big gash on her forehead.
— Thank you sister! Loon cried, joy filling him like a drink of water.-Good deer!
Immediately he set to breaking her apart. A young doe. He would not be able to defend the whole body, indeed he needed to leave the scene as soon as possible, and without dripping blood as he went. He wanted the rear legs still linked at the spine, so he could carry them over his shoulders; then also the skin and the heart and kidneys. He ate as much of the brains as he could while he cut away with his clumsy choprock, frustrated at the lack of a good blade, which would have made this work ever so much easier. As it was he had to bash away. It was a ruination of the poor deer, and he apologized to her, explaining his need for speed. He smashed and pulled and cut as best he could with the tip of his bad chopper. He was going to take the hide with him, no matter what kind of scent it cast. He would find a good place and hide in this hide, and although uncured it would keep him warmer.
Even at speed the skinning and breaking up took a couple of fists, and when he was done he was sweaty, bloody, exhausted, but full of food. He had had to cut away the skin in two big parts. The doe’s heart and kidneys he bundled in the two pieces of hide, which he could tie to each other and hang over his shoulder with the two legs. He was almost completely covered with blood. Under a dead pine he found a walking stick to help keep Crouch happier. In his other hand he held Chopper, large enough to crush but small enough to throw, a nice heft to feel in one’s hand. A rain of thrown rocks could make even a solitary man dangerous. No animal is safe from a man with a good arm! He was floating a little with the joy of the kill.
He limped downstream with the deer’s rear legs and her organs wrapped in her hide, all slung over his shoulders. Sometimes he walked in the little creek itself. His walking stick he named Prong. When he was far enough away, he stopped and washed the deer’s hide in the creek, and the legs too, also himself.
He had taken the hide off in two sections, because given the bluntness of his chopper, he could not get the hide cleanly off the spine. But two pieces was fine. He would probably cut the leg skin off later to make patches. He chewed away at a bite of the deer’s heart. Normally hearts were cooked, but this wasn’t bad. Raw meat had to be chewed for a long time, and starting with small chunks was best. Loon liked the taste of heart, and enjoyed chewing for such a long time.
The creek was cold, and he sat on its bank and wiped his legs dry before working further on the hides. Uncured as they were, it was not so easy to cut them straight. Nevertheless, out of one half of the deerskin he cut parts for a rough vest and a skirt. The remaining half would serve as cape and blanket.
This day was almost done, it had flown by as if the sun were a bird headed west. He needed to find a place where the night hunters on the plateau couldn’t reach him, and that was going to be hard. A cave with an entry he could block with a rock would be so nice; or a tree that only he could climb. These were both very unlikely things to find. But where the plateau began to break toward its drop into the canyons, it did ledge off in a way that provided low walls and wind-gnarled trees. If he could find a good refuge before night, this would have to be counted a great day; but now the sun was tilted hard west, the half moon palely visible in the afternoon sky, just east of overhead.
Under one little bluff dropping toward the river gorge, he found an overhang. There was no cave at its back, so it was exposed, but only to half the world, and that half was really on the opposite side of the gorge. A tiny abri, in effect. And in fact someone had painted a bison and horse on the flat back wall at the bottom of the overhang. Loon was heartened to see this, and examined the paintings closely. The painter had smudged the animals’ coats to a very handsome blackened red or reddened black, the same color for both bison and horse. Thorn always kept the two colors separate. It was good to know that another human had been here.
Looking down toward the gorge, which was not visible except as a line between the foreground and the next stretch of plateau, he saw under him a broad squat bush pine that had broken off and then grown again, in a swirl around the break point, which had become a hollow of exposed heartwood all filled with leaves. That hollow would not be out of the reach of climbing cats, but he might be able to defend it from them; and nothing looking up at the tree from below would see him. He would have to try climbing it to see if he could, so he pronged down to its foot and looked up at it. Climbing was not an activity that Crouch was going to like.
Loon did his best to work around the hurt, using his left leg only to hold positions, never to lift him higher. That put a lot of strain on his good leg, but that one could take it. Eventually he grunted up into the high hollow and slumped there, pleased to find that it must have been cracked at its bottom, for it was dry. Indeed it would make a comfortable bed of leaves and duff. And good views in all directions. Awkwardly he moved around his nest, and with his choprock broke off a large dead branch to use for protection. Refuge! He thanked the Raven, and curled around like a cat until he had found the least bumpy position.
That night a wolf pack howled at the half moon, and Loon listened with his skin goose-pimpling, as silent as the rest of the animals out there listening. The old ones would not be out and about on this night, not with wolves nearby. And tucked in the wrap of his big piece of deer hide, he was warmer than he had been since being forced to give up his fire. That night he slept as well as he had during the entire wander.
What to do?