Bonesetter (35 page)

They went through the baskets and pebbles routine to decide who would be their leader.
Gia, Tando, Donte and Deltin assigned the initial pebbles to decide worth.
Pell was greatly relieved to find his basket did not contain tiny pebbles.
In fact, he realized with surprise, his basket contained four of the largest pebbles in the initial pile!
The next night when they redistributed the pebbles to decide leadership Pell was again surprised to find some pebbles in his basket but he quickly passed them on, giving half to Tando and half to Agan, just as he had his original pebbles.
Soon Tando and Agan had most of the pebbles.

Pell thought that Agan had more than Tando but before he could really see who had the most, Tando stood and carrying his basket over, poured its contents into Agan’s.
“I thank those of you who gave me pebbles, but in the short time we have been together I have come to recognize Agan’s wisdom.
That first night when she admitted that she was wrong about Pell and the treatment of Panute, I was startled.
I had never been around a leader who admitted to being wrong and I thought it a sign of weakness.
I have come to recognize it, not as a sign of weakness, but of wisdom.
She will make a better leader than I.”
Though Pell had, out of loyalty, felt compelled to give half of his pebbles to Tando, secretly he agreed that Agan would make the better leader.

Over the next few days, Agan talked with everyone,
everyone
, even including Falin, about whether or not to move.
Gradually the sentiment shifted towards a move to the Aganstribe winter cave for safety’s sake.
Pell began to realize that he really wanted to stay at the Cold Springs site, as he considered it “his” but by the time he began to muster strong arguments for staying, talk had shifted from “whether to move,” into “how to move.”
They had a lot of smoked meat and other stored food to move, as well as Panute and Agan.
It appeared that it would take several trips.
In fact, as they talked about it, it began to look so difficult that Pell commenced hoping that they would abandon the move.
Manute suggested making a stretcher for the move, to carry supplies if not the invalids.
Deltin made an excellent one from two spear shafts, between which he stretched some skins, sewn together where necessary.
While trying it out, Pell stumbled, dropping the back end.
Apologizing, he reached down to pick up his poles again but Manute jokingly pulled the poles ahead, just out of his reach.
When Manute had done this several times, Pell suddenly realized that a person could drag a litter by himself, without needing two people to each carry an end.
With excitement, he explained his idea.
They tried loading the litter.
When loaded, without someone holding the back ends of the poles apart, they slid closer together so that the leather between the poles dragged on the ground.
Deltin solved this problem by lashing a short pole between them to hold them apart.
In no time, they had a one-person stretcher-travois that they could load with a large quantity of supplies.

Eventually they worked out a plan to take the two invalids and some food on one trip, returning for more of their stores later.
Falin would stay at the new camp to help the invalids while the adults returned on their second trip.
Anything at the Cold Springs cave that they couldn’t move, they planned to hide for a possible third trip later in the winter.
The third trip could be made if they ran low on supplies but otherwise might not be necessary.

While they were eating dinner the evening before they planned to begin the move, Ginja began growling and rose up from her place beside the fire.
Bristling, she stalked toward the opening of the cave/shelter where Manute had hung a patchwork cover of large skins to keep the cold
late autumn
breezes out.
Looking at each other the men quickly rose and got their spears.
Tando unlashed the stack of spears near the door and took a second spear in his left hand.
He offered a second spear to the other men but only Manute took a second.
Tando whispered to Donte and she and Gia lifted the quilt of small animal furs off Panute’s bed and held it between the fire and the door to cast the cave opening in darkness.
After all their talk, Pell felt in his bones that raiders must be coming to attack.
With some embarrassment, he realized that he was shaking in trepidation.
After his eyes had adjusted to the dark, Tando moved to the edge of the door and carefully peered out through one of the gaps between the opening and the hanging leather.
After a moment he said, “Boro?”

“Tando?”

Sure enough, it was Pell’s former friend Boro.
When they let him in Pell was shocked at his appearance.
The boy shuffled in, emaciated, shivering and foul smelling.

As well, Boro remained small, especially in comparison to Pell whose adolescent growth spurt had been enormous, fueled by his ability to eat all he wanted this past summer.
They had some difficulty getting Ginja to let Boro into the cave and more difficulty convincing the boy that it was OK to come into a dwelling with a growling, angry looking wolf.
Eventually they got him settled in front of the fire.
They fed him the remnants of their “moving feast.”
They had cooked up all of their unpreserved meat as well as all the odd bits of food that hadn’t fit into the big moving baskets packed earlier that day.
They had been trying unsuccessfully to eat it all before the move.
Boro’s eyes were ravenous and gleamed at the food laid out before him, roast boar, boiled roots, Gia’s bread cakes and a little stewed grain.
Though Agan advised him to eat slowly, he wolfed the food down—then bolted for the cave mouth to vomit.
When he returned, he ate a smaller quantity at a slower pace under Agan’s watchful eye.

Once Boro had some food in him, they began to ply him with questions.
His story was grim but as it unfolded it made them all, even Pell, glad that they had decided to move from the area for the winter.

Boro’s father Bonat had been killed in a hunting accident, his arm mangled on the tusks of a boar the Aldans had chased into a small ravine.
Boro attributed his father’s death to cowardice on Denit’s part.
The boar had been cornered by Bonat and Denit but had turned the tables on them, trapping Bonat instead when his spearpoint broke.
Denit had a good angle of attack as the boar focused on Bonat but had been frightened by the boar’s rage and timidly held back.
He only surged in to spear the boar as Gontra arrived to spear it as well. Before Denit got up his courage, the boar had severely tusked Bonat’s arm.
Bonat hadn’t died immediately, instead lingering for several days while the tusk lacerations developed wound fever.
Delirious at the end, he had openly and repeatedly accused Denit of cowardice before he died.

Roley had become morose upon hearing someone describing his son’s attributes honestly for the first time.
So morose that for some time he practically stopped taking the band out on hunts.
They had eaten fairly well, on what the women gathered, but everyone was nervous because it was the “fat” part of the summer when they customarily gorged themselves on kills, building up their stores of fat for the long hard winter.
When they did begin hunting regularly again, Roley’s detachment resulted in more
disorganized
hunts
with disastrous outcomes
.
Roley lost his sure command of the group.
Hunt after hunt was unsuccessful.
When someone had timidly suggested that, to change their luck, someone else should lead a hunt, Denit had volunteered and Roley had acquiesced!
Astonishment engulfed the Aldans’ hunters at finding themselves led out on an important hunt by such a young and inexperienced hunter.
However, as they had all feared that Roley would refuse to let
anyone
else lead a hunt, it was initially viewed as somewhat of a success.

However, Denit’s hunt strategies were unusual, confusing and poorly understood by the other hunters.
Something always seemed to bolt the animals before anyone even came close to getting a spear into one.
Frustration mounted as, unexpectedly, their bellies growled in the summer.
Frustrated, Denit acted even more arrogant
ly
than usual and never even considered letting someone else lead a hunt.
Roley backed Denit’s decisions with his formidable strength.
So,
as
much as the other hunters would have liked to choose another hunt leader, their fear of Roley prevented it.

After Pell had been cast out, Denit had turned on Boro, making him the new brunt of the ill-tempered teasing
and bullying
that had been his lifelong
inclination
.
As Denit’s mood darkened through hunt after ill-considered hunt, he began to deride Boro, blaming him for each thing that went wrong.
One day Denit had accused him of alerting a small herd of antelope.
In anger, Boro made the ultimate mistake of repeating his father’s accusations regarding Denit’s cowardice.

By that time Denit seemed only to be bullying rather than leading the hunters, and this only under the threat of his increasingly irrational father’s violence.

Upon
Boro’s explos
ion Denit had cast him out. N
o one had
had the courage to
tak
e
Boro’s side.
This had occurred several hands of days ago.
Boro, cast out at the difficult beginning of winter, rather than the beginning of spring as Pell had been, had not had a boar’s carcass to start his isolation with.
He had unearthed a few fat tubers on occasion but didn’t really have a clue
as to
how he should find them
or other plant foods
.
The tubers alone made a poor diet, even when mixed with the relatively abundant wild onions.
Boro had hung around the periphery of the Aldan’s camp, hoping that they would take him back.
But after a bit, Denit had organized
stone throwing
parties to chase him away
, accusing him of bringing bad luck
.

Boro’s mother had covertly taken some grain out to him once or twice, but that was a dangerous undertaking in Roley’s unstable state of mind.
Especially with the vindictive Denit steering Roley’s actions.
The last time Boro’s mother contacted him, she passed on a suggestion made by one of the other women, “Go to Cold Springs Ravine, where it is said that Tando and Donte went to find Pell.
Maybe Boro would be able to join them?”

Pell, whose emotions had been mixed on first seeing Boro, virtually exploded.
“You!
You
come to
my
camp asking for help! Did you help me when Roley was casting
me
out?
No!
You chanted ‘ginja’ alongside the others!
I ‘set’ Gontra’s finger— you and he should have stood by me!
But you should have especially!
We swore an oath!
You
were supposed to
leave
with me.”

Boro blanched with terror.
Pell realized with a sick feeling that Boro’s life surely hung in the balance—if they didn’t take him in, he would, certainly starve to death before long.
Boro dropped, scrabbling, at Pell’s feet, begging piteously for Pell’s forgiveness.
Dismayed, Pell looked up at the other members of their newly formed tribe.
He saw expressions ranging from mild distaste over the emotional outbursts, to the outright horror that registered on Gia’s face.
Pell wasn’t sure whether Gia’s dismay emanated from what Boro had done to Pell or from Boro’s fate as she contemplated Pell’s driving the boy out.
As Pell stood looking at the other members of his new tribe, he recognized that they
would
leave Boro to whatever fate Pell decided.
But, at the same time, Pell realized that he would lose the admiration his new tribe had for him.

He realized then, that he would lose respect for himself.
“Oh, for spirit’s sake!
Boro, get up.
I won’t turn you aside just because you didn’t prevent Roley from casting me out—you couldn’t have kept me in the tribe anyway.”
Gasping, Boro rose to his knees, clasping his arms about Pell’s thighs and thanking him repeatedly.
Pell couldn’t believe how small his old friend’s wasted arms felt as they wrapped about his own legs.
He still loathed Boro for chanting “ginja” with the others, but felt glad that the boy’s starvation would not rest on his conscience.

Boro’s tale made the group even more determined to move out of the area.
Unfortunately, the boy’s addition to the tribe posed a problem in that he was not in very good shape for the move.
It wasn’t just his poor health, though they could ill afford to move the two invalids they already had, much less three.
For one thing, Boro had no moccasins.
It
was getting colder and colder and the boy had no warm clothing.
He had made it this far by only traveling during the warmest part of the day.
The rest of the time he spent dug into drifts of fallen leaves.
The leaves at least insulated, and in some cases actually heated him through decomposition.
The group decided to hold the move at least another day while Manute made him some moccasins and the others patched him together a makeshift cloak/wrap.