AT FIRST, LITTLE Fuzzy was only aware of utter misery. He was
cold and wet and hungry, and he hurt all over, not in any one place
but with a great ache that was all of him. It was dark, and rain
was falling, and all around him he could hear the gurgling rush of
water moving, and, finding that he was clinging tightly to
something, he clung tighter, and felt the roughness of bark under
his hands. His knees were locked around something that must be a
tree branch, and he wondered how he had come here.
Then he remembered—hunting for shining-stones where the Big Ones
had been digging, going down into the deep-place beside the river;
he wished he had listened to Pappy Vic and Diamond and stayed out
of there. Falling into the water. He remembered clutching something
that had hit him in the water, and he remembered the small tree
that the Big Ones had uprooted and thrown down over the edge. It
must have gone into the water when he did.
Then everything had gone black, and he had known nothing more,
except once, for just a little, he had seen the sky, with black
clouds angry-red at the edges, and once again it had been dark and
he had seen lightning. It had been raining then.
But the tree was not moving now. He thought he knew what had
happened; the river had carried it against the bank and it had
stopped. That meant that he could get onto ground again. He
clutched tighter with his hands and loosened his knee-grip, putting
one foot down and touching soft ground with it. He decided to
remain where he was until it became light enough to see before he
tried to do anything. Then, gripping tightly with his knees and one
hand, he felt to see if he still had his shoulder bag. Yes, it was
there. He wanted to open it to see if water had gotten into it, but
decided not to until it was light again. He wriggled to make
himself more comfortable, and went back to sleep.
It was daylight when he woke. Not whole daylight, and it was
still raining and there was a fog, but he could see. The river,
yellow and rapid, rushed past on both sides. The tree was caught on
a small sandbar, and there was water on both sides of it. A little
grass grew on the sandbar, and there were bits of wood that the
river had left there at other times, and a whole big tree, old and
dead. Climbing off the little tree, he walked about until some of
the stiffness left his muscles.
He would have to get off this sandbar soon. The rain was still
falling, and when it rained rivers became more, and this river
might come up over the sandbar before long.
On one side, the river was wider than he could see in the fog;
on the other, the left side as it flowed, it was not much more than
a stone-throw to the bank, and the bank looked low enough for him
to climb up out of the river. He picked up some bits of wood and
threw them in the water to test the current. It was faster than he
liked, but he noticed that the wood was carried toward the bank. He
threw in many sticks, watching how each one was carried. Then,
making sure that the snaps that held his knife and trowel in their
sheaths were closed, he waded into the water. As soon as he was
carried off his feet, he began swimming against the current.
He was carried downstream a little, but always in the direction
of the bank, and soon his feet touched bottom. He struggled out of
the water and up onto the bank, and then looked back at the sandbar
he had left. “Sunnabish river,” he said.
It was still raining, but he was so wet that he did not notice
it. He was tired, too; it had been a hard swim, even that little
distance. The river was very strong; it made him happy that he had
fought it and won. Then he walked to a big tree and sat down on an
exposed root, opening his shoulder bag. Everything in it was dry;
not a drop of water had gotten in. He had a cake of estee-fee; he
broke it in half, put one half back in, and then ate half of the
other. Maybe he would not be able to find anything to eat before he
would be hungry again. It made him feel good. Then he put away what
was left and got out his pipe and tobacco and lit it. Then he took
out the flat round thing that had the blue pointer-north in it, the
compass, and looked at that. The river flowed almost straight
north; that was what he had expected. Then he looked at the other
things he had.
Beside his pipe and tobacco and the lighter and the compass,
there was a whistle. He blew that several times. That was a good
thing to have. Maybe he could use it to call attention to himself
if he saw a Big One far away. He put it away, too. And he had his
knife and his trowel, and he had the little many-tool thing which
the nice Big One with the white hair had given him in Big House
Place. It had a knife in it too, a small one, very sharp, and a
pointed thing to punch, and a bore-holes thing, and a file, and a
saw, and a screwdriver, and even a little thing in two parts that
would pinch like the jaw of a land-prawn and cut wire. And he had
wire, very fine but strong—one had to be careful, or it would
cut—and a ball of strong string, fishline the Big Ones called it,
and short pieces of string that he had saved. He always carried
plenty of string; it had many uses.
He finished his pipe, and wondered if he should smoke another,
then decided not to. He had plenty of tobacco, but he must not
waste it. He didn’t know how long it would take to get back
to Yellowsand. If he followed this river, he would get there sooner
or later, but it might be a long way. The river had been very fast,
and he had been in it on the tree a long time. And when he got to
where it came out of the mountain, he would have the mountain to
climb. He wasn’t going into the deep-place again, he was sure
of that.
He wished he had his chopper-digger; he would have to kill
animals for food on the way. At first, he thought of making himself
a wooden prawn-killer, but decided not to, at least now. So he
found three large stones, smooth and rounded, each bigger than his
fist. One he carried in his hand, and the other two he carried in
the crook of his other elbow. He started north along the bank of
the river.
Once, he saw a big bird in a tree, its head under its wing. It
was too far to throw; he wished he had one of the bows Pappy Jack
and Pappy Gerd had taught how to make, and some arrows. That bird
would have been good to eat. He wished he were back at Hoksu-Mitto,
with Pappy Jack and Mamma and Baby and Mike and Mitzi and Ko-Ko and
Cinderella . . . and Unka Pancho, and Auntie Lynne, and Pappy Gerd
and Mummy Woof, and Id and Superego and Complex and Syndrome, and . . . as he walked, he said all the names of all his friends at
Hoksu-Mitto, wishing that he was with them again.
Sometime, he thought, after sun-highest time—noon, lunchtime—he
saw a zarabunny sitting hunched into a ball of fur. It didn’t
like the rain any more than he did. He hurled a stone and hit it,
and then ran to it before it could get up, and stabbed it in back
of the ear with his knife. Then he squatted and skinned it. At
first, he thought of making a fire and cooking it on a stick, but
it would take too long to find dry wood and make the fire and cook
it, and he was hungry again. He ate it raw. After all, it had only
been very short time that he had eaten anything at all that had
been cooked.
One thing, he would have to make himself better weapons than
stones to throw.
The third time he came to a stream and crossed over it, he found
hard-rock, not black like the shining-stone-rock of Yellowsand, but
good and hard. He hunted until he found two pieces the right size
and shape, and put them in his shoulder bag. By this time, the rain
had stopped and it was getting foggier and darker, and he thought
that dark-time was near.
He made a sleeping-place in the next hollow, beside a stream and
against the side of a low cliff. First he found a standing dead
tree and cut at it with his knife until he had cut off all the wet
wood and made fine shavings of the dry wood. These he lit, and put
sticks on the fire; as they dried, they caught, until he had a good
fire, warm and bright. By this time it was growing dark, and the
fire made light on the rocks behind him. He gathered more wood,
some pieces so big that he could hardly drag them, and stacked it
where the fire would dry it. He did this till it was too dark to
see, and then he sat down with his back to the rocks and took the
two pieces of flint out of his shoulder bag.
One, he decided, would be an axe: he could chop wood with it for
other fires and kill landprawns with it. The other would be the
head of a spear, which he could throw or stab with. For a long time
he looked at the stone, making think-pictures of what the axehead
and the spearhead would be like when he had finished them. Then he
took out his trowel, which had a handle of made-stuff, plastic, and
began pressing with it on the edge of the stone. The stone gouged
and scarred the plastic, but the rock chipped away in little
flakes. Now and then he would lay it aside and go to put more wood
on the fire. Once, he heard a bush-goblin screaming, far away, but
he was not afraid; the fire would scare it away.
The spearhead was harder to do. He made it tapering to a point,
sharp on both edges, with a notch on either side at the back; he
knew just how he was going to fasten it to the shaft. It took a
long time, and he was tired and sleepy when he had finished it.
Laying it and the axehead aside, he put more wood on the fire and
made sure there was nothing between it and him, so that it would
not spread and burn him, and curled up with his back to the rock
and went to sleep.
THE FIRE HAD burned out when he woke, and at first he was
frightened; a bush-goblin might have come after it had gone out.
But the whole hollow smelled of smoke, and bush-goblins could smell
much better than people. The smoke would be frightening in
itself.
He dug his hole with the trowel and filled it in; he drank from
the little stream, and then ate what was left of the half cake of
estee-fee he had eaten the day before. Then he found a young tree,
about the height of a Big One, and dug it up with his trowel and
trimmed the roots to make a knob. The other end he cut off an
arm’s length from the knob and split with his knife and
fitted the axehead into it and made a hole in it below the axehead
with his bore-holes thing. He passed wire through that and around
on either side of the stone, many times, until it was firm and
tight. Pappy Jack and Pappy Gerd and the others said this should be
done with fine roots of trees, or gut of animals, but he had no
time to bother with that, and wire was much better.
Then, with the axe, he cut another young tree, slender and
straight. The axe cut well; he was proud and happy about it. He
fitted the shaft to the spearhead, using more wire, and when that
was done he poked through the ashes of the fire, found a few red
coals, and covered them with his trowel. Pappy Jack and Pappy
George and Pappy Gerd and everybody always said that it was a bad
never-do-thing to go away and leave a fire with any life in it.
Then, making sure that he had not forgotten any of his things, he
picked up his axe and spear and started off through the woods
toward the big river.
A little before noon he found another zarabunny, and threw the
spear, hitting it squarely. Then he finished it with a chop on the
neck. That made him happy; he had used both his new weapons, and
they were good. He made a small fire here, and after it had burned
down to red coals he put the back-meat of the zarabunny on sticks
and cooked it, as he had learned at Hoksu-Mitto.
Pappy Jack was wise, he thought, as he squatted beside his
little fire and ate the sweet hot meal. He had wondered why Pappy
Jack had insisted that all Fuzzies learn these things about living
in the woods, when they would have Big Ones to take care of them.
This was why. There would be times like this, when Fuzzies would
lose their Big Ones, or become lost from them, just as he had. Then
they could do things like this for themselves.
He decided not to eat all the zarabunny. He had taken the skin
off carefully; now he wrapped what was left of the back-meat and
the legs in it, and tied it to his shoulder bag. He would cook and
eat that when he made camp for the night.
The fog was still heavy, with thin rain sometimes. He made camp
this time by finding two big bushes with forks about the same
height and cutting a pole to go between them. Then he cut other
bushes to lean against that, and branches to pack between. There
were ferns here, and he gathered many of them, drying them at the
fire and making a bed of them. He was not so tired today, and all
the soreness of his muscles had gone. After he had cooked and eaten
part of the zarabunny, he smoked his pipe and played with some
pebbles, making little patterns of what he had done that day, and
then went to sleep.
It was still foggy and rainy the next morning. He cooked one of
the hind legs of the zarabunny that he had saved, and then killed
the red coals left of his fire and went on. Toward the middle of
the morning, he found a land-prawn and chopped off its head and
cracked the shell. He did not make a fire for this; land-prawns
were best raw; cooking spoiled the taste. Big Ones ate many things
without cooking them, too.
About the middle of the afternoon, he found a goofer chewing the
bark off a tree. This was wonderful luck—meat for two whole days.
He threw the spear and caught the goofer behind the shoulder with
it, and then used the axe to finish it. This time he did build a
fire, and after he had gutted the goofer, he began to think about
how he would carry it; it weighed almost as much as he did. He
decided not to skin it here. Instead, he spitted the liver and the
kidneys and the heart, all of which were good, and roasted them
over the fire. After he had eaten them, he cut off the head, which
was useless weight, and propped the carcass up so that the blood
would drain out. When this was done, he tied each front and hind
leg together with string, squatted, and got the whole thing on his
back, the big muscles of the hind legs over his shoulders. It was
heavy, but, after he got used to it, it was not uncomfortable.
Some time after this, when he was close to the river, he saw
through the fog where another river came into it from the east; it
was a big river too. After that, the river he was following was
less because it had not yet been joined by the other one. This was
good, he thought. It looked not much bigger than it had when it had
come out of the deep place in the mountain. He must be getting
close to Yellowsand. He was sure that if it had not been for the
fog he could have seen the big mountains ahead.
He made camp that night in a hollow tree which was big enough to
sleep in, after cooking much of the goofer. He ate a lot of it; he
was happy. Soon he would be back at Yellowsand and everybody would
be happy to see him again. He smoked a second pipe before he went
to sleep that night.
The next day was good. The rain had stopped and the fog was
blowing away, and there was a glow in the sky to the east. Best of
all, he could hear the sound of aircars very far away. That was
good; Pappy Vic and his friends had missed him and were out hunting
for him. The sound was from away down the river, though, and that
wasn’t right. He knew what he would do; he would stay as
close to the river as he could. If they saw him, they would come
and pick him up; then he wouldn’t have to climb the
high-steep mountain. Maybe, if he found a good no-woods place, he
would build a big fire beside the river. They would be sure to see
the smoke.
The sounds of the aircars grew fainter, and finally he
couldn’t hear them at all. He found another land-prawn and
ate it. This was the fourth day since he had been in this place,
and he had only found two of them. He knew that land-prawns were
more to the south, but he was surprised at how few there were
here.
The wind blew, and then it began to rain some more. It often did
this before the clouds all went away. But the rain came from in
front of him and to the left, and before it had come from the
right. The wind could have changed, but this troubled him. Finally,
he looked at his compass, and saw that he was not going north at
all, but west.
That wasn’t right. He got out his pipe; Pappy Jack always
smoked his pipe when he wanted to think about something. At length,
he walked over to the river and looked at it.
With all the sand from Yellowsand, it should be yellow, but it
wasn’t; it was a dirty brown gray. He looked at it for a
while, and then he remembered the other river he had seen coming in
from the east. That was the river that came out of the mountain at
Yellowsand, not this one.
“Sunnabish!” he almost yelled. “Jeeze-krise
go-hell goddamn sunnabish!” That made him feel a little
better, just as it did the Big Ones. “Now, must go
back.” He thought for a moment. No, it was no use going back;
he could not cross this river where it met the other one. He would
have to go all the way up this go-hell river till he could find a
place to cross, and then all the way down again.
“Sunnabish!”
AT FIRST, LITTLE Fuzzy was only aware of utter misery. He was
cold and wet and hungry, and he hurt all over, not in any one place
but with a great ache that was all of him. It was dark, and rain
was falling, and all around him he could hear the gurgling rush of
water moving, and, finding that he was clinging tightly to
something, he clung tighter, and felt the roughness of bark under
his hands. His knees were locked around something that must be a
tree branch, and he wondered how he had come here.
Then he remembered—hunting for shining-stones where the Big Ones
had been digging, going down into the deep-place beside the river;
he wished he had listened to Pappy Vic and Diamond and stayed out
of there. Falling into the water. He remembered clutching something
that had hit him in the water, and he remembered the small tree
that the Big Ones had uprooted and thrown down over the edge. It
must have gone into the water when he did.
Then everything had gone black, and he had known nothing more,
except once, for just a little, he had seen the sky, with black
clouds angry-red at the edges, and once again it had been dark and
he had seen lightning. It had been raining then.
But the tree was not moving now. He thought he knew what had
happened; the river had carried it against the bank and it had
stopped. That meant that he could get onto ground again. He
clutched tighter with his hands and loosened his knee-grip, putting
one foot down and touching soft ground with it. He decided to
remain where he was until it became light enough to see before he
tried to do anything. Then, gripping tightly with his knees and one
hand, he felt to see if he still had his shoulder bag. Yes, it was
there. He wanted to open it to see if water had gotten into it, but
decided not to until it was light again. He wriggled to make
himself more comfortable, and went back to sleep.
It was daylight when he woke. Not whole daylight, and it was
still raining and there was a fog, but he could see. The river,
yellow and rapid, rushed past on both sides. The tree was caught on
a small sandbar, and there was water on both sides of it. A little
grass grew on the sandbar, and there were bits of wood that the
river had left there at other times, and a whole big tree, old and
dead. Climbing off the little tree, he walked about until some of
the stiffness left his muscles.
He would have to get off this sandbar soon. The rain was still
falling, and when it rained rivers became more, and this river
might come up over the sandbar before long.
On one side, the river was wider than he could see in the fog;
on the other, the left side as it flowed, it was not much more than
a stone-throw to the bank, and the bank looked low enough for him
to climb up out of the river. He picked up some bits of wood and
threw them in the water to test the current. It was faster than he
liked, but he noticed that the wood was carried toward the bank. He
threw in many sticks, watching how each one was carried. Then,
making sure that the snaps that held his knife and trowel in their
sheaths were closed, he waded into the water. As soon as he was
carried off his feet, he began swimming against the current.
He was carried downstream a little, but always in the direction
of the bank, and soon his feet touched bottom. He struggled out of
the water and up onto the bank, and then looked back at the sandbar
he had left. “Sunnabish river,” he said.
It was still raining, but he was so wet that he did not notice
it. He was tired, too; it had been a hard swim, even that little
distance. The river was very strong; it made him happy that he had
fought it and won. Then he walked to a big tree and sat down on an
exposed root, opening his shoulder bag. Everything in it was dry;
not a drop of water had gotten in. He had a cake of estee-fee; he
broke it in half, put one half back in, and then ate half of the
other. Maybe he would not be able to find anything to eat before he
would be hungry again. It made him feel good. Then he put away what
was left and got out his pipe and tobacco and lit it. Then he took
out the flat round thing that had the blue pointer-north in it, the
compass, and looked at that. The river flowed almost straight
north; that was what he had expected. Then he looked at the other
things he had.
Beside his pipe and tobacco and the lighter and the compass,
there was a whistle. He blew that several times. That was a good
thing to have. Maybe he could use it to call attention to himself
if he saw a Big One far away. He put it away, too. And he had his
knife and his trowel, and he had the little many-tool thing which
the nice Big One with the white hair had given him in Big House
Place. It had a knife in it too, a small one, very sharp, and a
pointed thing to punch, and a bore-holes thing, and a file, and a
saw, and a screwdriver, and even a little thing in two parts that
would pinch like the jaw of a land-prawn and cut wire. And he had
wire, very fine but strong—one had to be careful, or it would
cut—and a ball of strong string, fishline the Big Ones called it,
and short pieces of string that he had saved. He always carried
plenty of string; it had many uses.
He finished his pipe, and wondered if he should smoke another,
then decided not to. He had plenty of tobacco, but he must not
waste it. He didn’t know how long it would take to get back
to Yellowsand. If he followed this river, he would get there sooner
or later, but it might be a long way. The river had been very fast,
and he had been in it on the tree a long time. And when he got to
where it came out of the mountain, he would have the mountain to
climb. He wasn’t going into the deep-place again, he was sure
of that.
He wished he had his chopper-digger; he would have to kill
animals for food on the way. At first, he thought of making himself
a wooden prawn-killer, but decided not to, at least now. So he
found three large stones, smooth and rounded, each bigger than his
fist. One he carried in his hand, and the other two he carried in
the crook of his other elbow. He started north along the bank of
the river.
Once, he saw a big bird in a tree, its head under its wing. It
was too far to throw; he wished he had one of the bows Pappy Jack
and Pappy Gerd had taught how to make, and some arrows. That bird
would have been good to eat. He wished he were back at Hoksu-Mitto,
with Pappy Jack and Mamma and Baby and Mike and Mitzi and Ko-Ko and
Cinderella . . . and Unka Pancho, and Auntie Lynne, and Pappy Gerd
and Mummy Woof, and Id and Superego and Complex and Syndrome, and . . . as he walked, he said all the names of all his friends at
Hoksu-Mitto, wishing that he was with them again.
Sometime, he thought, after sun-highest time—noon, lunchtime—he
saw a zarabunny sitting hunched into a ball of fur. It didn’t
like the rain any more than he did. He hurled a stone and hit it,
and then ran to it before it could get up, and stabbed it in back
of the ear with his knife. Then he squatted and skinned it. At
first, he thought of making a fire and cooking it on a stick, but
it would take too long to find dry wood and make the fire and cook
it, and he was hungry again. He ate it raw. After all, it had only
been very short time that he had eaten anything at all that had
been cooked.
One thing, he would have to make himself better weapons than
stones to throw.
The third time he came to a stream and crossed over it, he found
hard-rock, not black like the shining-stone-rock of Yellowsand, but
good and hard. He hunted until he found two pieces the right size
and shape, and put them in his shoulder bag. By this time, the rain
had stopped and it was getting foggier and darker, and he thought
that dark-time was near.
He made a sleeping-place in the next hollow, beside a stream and
against the side of a low cliff. First he found a standing dead
tree and cut at it with his knife until he had cut off all the wet
wood and made fine shavings of the dry wood. These he lit, and put
sticks on the fire; as they dried, they caught, until he had a good
fire, warm and bright. By this time it was growing dark, and the
fire made light on the rocks behind him. He gathered more wood,
some pieces so big that he could hardly drag them, and stacked it
where the fire would dry it. He did this till it was too dark to
see, and then he sat down with his back to the rocks and took the
two pieces of flint out of his shoulder bag.
One, he decided, would be an axe: he could chop wood with it for
other fires and kill landprawns with it. The other would be the
head of a spear, which he could throw or stab with. For a long time
he looked at the stone, making think-pictures of what the axehead
and the spearhead would be like when he had finished them. Then he
took out his trowel, which had a handle of made-stuff, plastic, and
began pressing with it on the edge of the stone. The stone gouged
and scarred the plastic, but the rock chipped away in little
flakes. Now and then he would lay it aside and go to put more wood
on the fire. Once, he heard a bush-goblin screaming, far away, but
he was not afraid; the fire would scare it away.
The spearhead was harder to do. He made it tapering to a point,
sharp on both edges, with a notch on either side at the back; he
knew just how he was going to fasten it to the shaft. It took a
long time, and he was tired and sleepy when he had finished it.
Laying it and the axehead aside, he put more wood on the fire and
made sure there was nothing between it and him, so that it would
not spread and burn him, and curled up with his back to the rock
and went to sleep.
THE FIRE HAD burned out when he woke, and at first he was
frightened; a bush-goblin might have come after it had gone out.
But the whole hollow smelled of smoke, and bush-goblins could smell
much better than people. The smoke would be frightening in
itself.
He dug his hole with the trowel and filled it in; he drank from
the little stream, and then ate what was left of the half cake of
estee-fee he had eaten the day before. Then he found a young tree,
about the height of a Big One, and dug it up with his trowel and
trimmed the roots to make a knob. The other end he cut off an
arm’s length from the knob and split with his knife and
fitted the axehead into it and made a hole in it below the axehead
with his bore-holes thing. He passed wire through that and around
on either side of the stone, many times, until it was firm and
tight. Pappy Jack and Pappy Gerd and the others said this should be
done with fine roots of trees, or gut of animals, but he had no
time to bother with that, and wire was much better.
Then, with the axe, he cut another young tree, slender and
straight. The axe cut well; he was proud and happy about it. He
fitted the shaft to the spearhead, using more wire, and when that
was done he poked through the ashes of the fire, found a few red
coals, and covered them with his trowel. Pappy Jack and Pappy
George and Pappy Gerd and everybody always said that it was a bad
never-do-thing to go away and leave a fire with any life in it.
Then, making sure that he had not forgotten any of his things, he
picked up his axe and spear and started off through the woods
toward the big river.
A little before noon he found another zarabunny, and threw the
spear, hitting it squarely. Then he finished it with a chop on the
neck. That made him happy; he had used both his new weapons, and
they were good. He made a small fire here, and after it had burned
down to red coals he put the back-meat of the zarabunny on sticks
and cooked it, as he had learned at Hoksu-Mitto.
Pappy Jack was wise, he thought, as he squatted beside his
little fire and ate the sweet hot meal. He had wondered why Pappy
Jack had insisted that all Fuzzies learn these things about living
in the woods, when they would have Big Ones to take care of them.
This was why. There would be times like this, when Fuzzies would
lose their Big Ones, or become lost from them, just as he had. Then
they could do things like this for themselves.
He decided not to eat all the zarabunny. He had taken the skin
off carefully; now he wrapped what was left of the back-meat and
the legs in it, and tied it to his shoulder bag. He would cook and
eat that when he made camp for the night.
The fog was still heavy, with thin rain sometimes. He made camp
this time by finding two big bushes with forks about the same
height and cutting a pole to go between them. Then he cut other
bushes to lean against that, and branches to pack between. There
were ferns here, and he gathered many of them, drying them at the
fire and making a bed of them. He was not so tired today, and all
the soreness of his muscles had gone. After he had cooked and eaten
part of the zarabunny, he smoked his pipe and played with some
pebbles, making little patterns of what he had done that day, and
then went to sleep.
It was still foggy and rainy the next morning. He cooked one of
the hind legs of the zarabunny that he had saved, and then killed
the red coals left of his fire and went on. Toward the middle of
the morning, he found a land-prawn and chopped off its head and
cracked the shell. He did not make a fire for this; land-prawns
were best raw; cooking spoiled the taste. Big Ones ate many things
without cooking them, too.
About the middle of the afternoon, he found a goofer chewing the
bark off a tree. This was wonderful luck—meat for two whole days.
He threw the spear and caught the goofer behind the shoulder with
it, and then used the axe to finish it. This time he did build a
fire, and after he had gutted the goofer, he began to think about
how he would carry it; it weighed almost as much as he did. He
decided not to skin it here. Instead, he spitted the liver and the
kidneys and the heart, all of which were good, and roasted them
over the fire. After he had eaten them, he cut off the head, which
was useless weight, and propped the carcass up so that the blood
would drain out. When this was done, he tied each front and hind
leg together with string, squatted, and got the whole thing on his
back, the big muscles of the hind legs over his shoulders. It was
heavy, but, after he got used to it, it was not uncomfortable.
Some time after this, when he was close to the river, he saw
through the fog where another river came into it from the east; it
was a big river too. After that, the river he was following was
less because it had not yet been joined by the other one. This was
good, he thought. It looked not much bigger than it had when it had
come out of the deep place in the mountain. He must be getting
close to Yellowsand. He was sure that if it had not been for the
fog he could have seen the big mountains ahead.
He made camp that night in a hollow tree which was big enough to
sleep in, after cooking much of the goofer. He ate a lot of it; he
was happy. Soon he would be back at Yellowsand and everybody would
be happy to see him again. He smoked a second pipe before he went
to sleep that night.
The next day was good. The rain had stopped and the fog was
blowing away, and there was a glow in the sky to the east. Best of
all, he could hear the sound of aircars very far away. That was
good; Pappy Vic and his friends had missed him and were out hunting
for him. The sound was from away down the river, though, and that
wasn’t right. He knew what he would do; he would stay as
close to the river as he could. If they saw him, they would come
and pick him up; then he wouldn’t have to climb the
high-steep mountain. Maybe, if he found a good no-woods place, he
would build a big fire beside the river. They would be sure to see
the smoke.
The sounds of the aircars grew fainter, and finally he
couldn’t hear them at all. He found another land-prawn and
ate it. This was the fourth day since he had been in this place,
and he had only found two of them. He knew that land-prawns were
more to the south, but he was surprised at how few there were
here.
The wind blew, and then it began to rain some more. It often did
this before the clouds all went away. But the rain came from in
front of him and to the left, and before it had come from the
right. The wind could have changed, but this troubled him. Finally,
he looked at his compass, and saw that he was not going north at
all, but west.
That wasn’t right. He got out his pipe; Pappy Jack always
smoked his pipe when he wanted to think about something. At length,
he walked over to the river and looked at it.
With all the sand from Yellowsand, it should be yellow, but it
wasn’t; it was a dirty brown gray. He looked at it for a
while, and then he remembered the other river he had seen coming in
from the east. That was the river that came out of the mountain at
Yellowsand, not this one.
“Sunnabish!” he almost yelled. “Jeeze-krise
go-hell goddamn sunnabish!” That made him feel a little
better, just as it did the Big Ones. “Now, must go
back.” He thought for a moment. No, it was no use going back;
he could not cross this river where it met the other one. He would
have to go all the way up this go-hell river till he could find a
place to cross, and then all the way down again.
“Sunnabish!”