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because it was his mate I'd killed. So, all of a sudden there he was, not only
with his mate dead, but with a sick, two-legged trapper to care for and all
the responsibility to the rest of the tribe for keeping me alive."
Cary laughed suddenly, one of his rare, soundless laughs.
"You know-it was me, sick as I was, who tried to take care of him? Instead of
him, me? Until he came to; and I really folded up, of course."
"Did you really know he'd saved your life then?" Mattie asked. She was
looking at him penetratingly.
"Why sure," said Cary. "Maybe I couldn't whistle-talkwith them then-I can't
really now, for that matter. But I was pretty well conscious through the whole
thing. When a gang of black demons with teeth as long as your middle finger
start dancing all around you and taking nips, and another black demon jumps up
on your chest and whistles at the rest until they all back off, after a big
hullabaloo-you get the idea. True. Fact is, when I first passed out and came
to for a bit to see him lying there like he is now. I thought his people'd
come back and killed him for backing me up."
"You keep saying you can't hardly talk to him," Mattie said. "Seems to me you
understand him pretty well.''
"Well, that's right enough," said Cary "But it's not so much from talk, or
sign language, or anything. You just get to know a person after a while, and
you pick up a lot of stuff about him without him having to tell you."
He stopped talking and gazed at Charlie for a moment.
"Nothing to do but wait," he said. "Morn'll bring us the answer, one way or
other. Meanwhile, you and I can get that raft floated and loaded right and
everything ready for downriver."
They woke next morning to a warm and cloudless day and the white, dead ashes
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of the campfire. Beyond the fire, where Charlie had lain, the ground was
empty. Cary climbed out of his sleeping hammock and saw Mattie, still in hers,
her eyes on him.
"Nothing to do with me. if that's what you're thinking," Cary said. "I didn't
get up in the night and put him some-wheres else. He's come to on his own and
gone off a bit, that's all."
In fact, before breakfast was fairly started, the waters of the pool parted
to reveal the head of Charlie, carrying in another bivalve shellfish in his
mouth. He climbed out ofthe water with it, sat down by his mudpile, and
started covering the mollusk with the mud.
Cary whistled to him.
"Let's look at that shoulder, Charlie," he said
Charlie finished mudballing his shellfish and came up to Cary.
"Good enough," said Cary, examining the wound. He patted the bandage back in
place. "No inflammation, hardly. Never tell how a native animal's going to
take doctoring. Right; well load what's left and travel."
They finished breakfast, got the rest of their gear aboard, including
Charlie's mudballed shellfish, and floated the raft, which they had loaded
with the statue and dragged into the shallow water at the pool's edge the
night before. The raft rode evenly; the statue, still in its wrappings of rope
and ax-trimmed boards, lay a little to the rear to counterbalance the weight
of the pile of gear up front.
"On our way," said Cary.
They poled across the pond, then had to get off and half-drag, half-push the
raft through the shallow water where the pool spilled out to begin the stream.
Once past this, the raft floated well again, with Cary and Mattie aboard.
Charlie swam alongside for perhaps the first half-mile or so downstream, then
climbed aboard and lay in the sun, occasionally examining the bandage on his
shoulder with his nose and delicate touchings with his teeth.
"You think there's something wrong with that bandage?" asked Mattie, watching
the otter, the tenth or eleventh time he did this.
Cary shook his head.
"Just itching him probably," Cary said. "I'll look at it again at noon, or
after."
Bynoon, the character of the mountain stream they were following had changed
markedly. From a slow, meandering thread of water in spots hardly deep enough
to float a raft, it had increased in average depth to nearly a meter and had
widened to perhaps thirty meters. It was now taking a more direct route down
the slope of the mountainside. The current was fast and the water mounded up
as it passed over submerged boulders, or broke into swollen collars of foam
and turbulence around large, half-submerged boulders.
Mattie stood at the back, holding a steering oar made of two ax-trimmed
boards wired to a long pole fastened between a pair of upright pegs in the end
of the center log. Cary rode up front with his pole to fend them off from the
black, gray, and darkly reddish-brown boulders rearing like granite trolls out
of the swiftly swirling water. Charlie, although he seemed tempted to get into
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the water less than a meter from him. lay on the deck by the statue, nosing
its boards and ropes from time to time.
The river widened further and increased its pace. The roar of its waters was
like a wall around them now. and the spray thrown up from the water-assaulted
boulders at times hid the clumps of briar and variform oak on the rocky
shores. A faint sound began to worry Cary, demanding his attention, and after
a second, he realized it was Mattie shouting to him from the back end of the
raft.
He turned his head. "What?" he called.
"Can't we slow down a bit?" her voice came to him, thin and thready amid the
steady water sounds, which did not seem that loud, but which muted everything
else. "1 can hardly steer it!"
He frowned and shook his head at her.
"River's higher'n I figured!" he shouted back. "Water get'seven faster the
next three klicks or so. Tie yourself to something, so you don't slip off-and
stick with that oar!"
She nodded, saving her breath apparently; and he turned back to his poling.
Just in time, for a reddish boulder the size of ten statues was looming before
them, all but dead in the path of the raft.
As he had predicted, the waters increased their speed. The raft was not into
real rapids, even now, but it leaped and plunged among the boulders like an ox
unbroken to saddle or harness. Once again, Cary got the small, irritating
feeling that Mattie was calling to him; but he could not turn around now, with
boulders appearing in front of him in every direction. Then the raft's front
end was lifted over a drowned boulder from which Cary had not been able to
pole them clear. It pitched up at an angle-
And a scream brought Cary whirling about.
Behind him, dwindling in the distance, the statue, half of its boards and
matting knocked away, sat in the river, propped half-upright against the
boulder. Mattie clung to the statue, and he heard her scream again. Bits of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]