Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1953 (15 page)

           
He held out the knife to show it to
Otter, but his friend had turned away. Otter stood straight up, facing toward
the west where the sun had travelled. His head was flung back, his arms hung at
his sides. After a moment he looked around and then came close to Sam again so
that they could talk in whispers.

           
“I prayed to the spirits who are
friends of the Twilight People,” he explained at Sam’s ear. “You, my brother,
had better pray to the spirits who are your friends. Pray hard.”

           
“I will do so,” Sam promised him.
“Now what do you do?”

           
Otter was unslinging his quiver from
his back. He hung it, together with his bow, among some small, close-growing
stems of wild cherry. Then he took his stone tomahawk from his girdle, and
unfastened his knife sheath and his belt pouch as well. It was a more complete
stripping away of weight than he had performed before his race with Sam, and
Sam grunted softly in surprise. Otter glanced up, and smiled.

           
“When you and I ran against each
other,” he said, “we came to the end of the race side by side. I can not run
that kind of a race against Giluhda. I must run faster than he runs, all the
way from the drinking place to this place where I run between the oak trees.
That is why I put aside everything that may make me run slower.”

           
“Run well,” Sam urged him. “Run far
ahead of him.”

           
A single shake of
Otter’s head.
“No. That is not the way. I must let him come very close
behind me. If I am too far in front of him when I go between the oak trees, he
will see them in his way. He will remember that he was caught there once, and
he will run to one side and go around them. Giluhda is wise. I must make his
heart bad against me, and let him run so close to me that he will not take time
to think.”

           
“You speak the truth,” admitted Sam,
“but it is a big danger.”

           
“I know it, brother.”

           
Otter looked toward the river. “Now
I will go to him. I will throw stones, and make him turn around and see me.
When he starts after me, I will run back here. When I am coming close, I will
shout at you once, so that you will be ready. How long will you need before I
come back here and bring Giluhda after me?”

           
Sam looked up at his spear once
more. Then he whispered, “When you get to the edge of the clearing, stop and
count sixty in your heart. That will give me time to get up into the tree and
make ready with my knife, to cut the straps that hold the spear.”

           
“I will do that.” Otter put out his
hand, and Sam clasped it hard. “I go,” said Otter.

           
“Go, then,” Sam bade him.

           
Otter took the path toward the
river. He glanced back once, and lifted his arm in a gesture of
encouragement—or of farewell. Then he went around a bend of the trail, and Sam
could not see him any more.

s
OTTER vanished from sight, a weight
descended upon Sam’s heart. That weight seemed as heavy as all three of the
big, crude bags of stones hung to the spear haft. He slung his bow behind him
and climbed up the oak, slowly and painfully under that burden of worry for his
friend.

           
“I should have gone to make Giluhda
follow me back here,” he told himself in his mind. “I should have forced Otter
to trade places. I would be half as frightened down on the ground as I am up
here in this tree.”

           
He caught hold of the horizontal
branch, hoisted himself upon it, and crept out along its top. He sat with a leg
on each side, just in front of the place where the spear was fastened. With his
fingers he tested the rawhide bindings. They had dried out again, and gripped
the oaken branch and the ashen haft as tightly as though they had grown into the
bark of both.

           
Sam drew his knife. He slid its
point under the rawhide strips where they crossed on top of the branch, and
kept hold of the handle. Now he was ready.

           
He waited, holding himself astraddle
the branch, and it seemed that all the forest fell silent to wait with him. The
slight breeze that had blown from the direction of the river had died—it was
like a holding of breath by some forest spirit. Around him the leaves of the
two oaks hung as heavily motionless as so many thin scraps of green metal. Sam
listened for the song of a bird, the busy scramble of a squirrel, to break that
uncanny silence, and he heard nothing. He tried to tell himself that the small
dwellers in the branches had fled away from that part of the upper forest as he
climbed the oak, but it was no comfort.

           
For the quiet and the heaviness
seemed like magic. Every tree around Sam’s oak might have been alive and aware
and waiting for Giluhda to come to Sam’s trap. And did the trees wait
hopefully, or did they take sides with Giluhda, the monstrous child of the
wilderness who had lived so long in their shadows?

           
Despite himself, Sam felt a strong
sense that he was both reckless and foolhardy to dream that he could destroy
that angry giant. What had he heard from Otter and Eagle Wing and others of
Twilight
Town
? Giluhda had lived a long, long life—perhaps he had lived forever.
Perhaps, as Eagle Wing had hinted so maliciously, Giluhda would go on living
forever. Perhaps there was some truth to the Indian belief in a life-protecting
medicine, and the spear would fail as Sam’s rifle bullet had failed.

           
“Anyway,” he told his own worries
and fears, “I’ve proved that there was a big thing, like a hill that lived and
moved, with a hairy coat and white tusks and a snaky trunk for a nose. Captain
Brooke and Lycur-
gus
Meehaw were wrong when they said
there couldn’t be any such thing. He’s alive, he’s here, and I’ve got to kill
him.”

           
How long, Sam now wondered
,
had he been in this oak tree? Otter had promised to go to
the spot where the trail opened into the clearing, and then pause long enough
to count sixty. To Sam, the time seemed to have dragged out into hours. Maybe
Otter had gone very slowly toward the monster. Maybe Otter was waiting, so as
to muster all his strength and wind for that coming dash for life. Or maybe
something had happened. Might Giluhda have found out that Otter was coming,
might Giluhda have moved silently to a place from which he could dart out his
trunk and strike Otter dead without a sound?

           
Sam stifled a groan at the thought.
He wished he could leave his post and see what was happening. He stared toward
the bend of the trail where Otter had waved to him. He closed his hand on the
hilt of the knife, and his sweaty palm made his grasp wet and slippery.

           
“I wish they’d come,” he thought.

           
And instantly his wish was granted.

           
From the path toward the river
suddenly pealed a braying squeal, both high and hoarse—Giluhda’s roar of anger.
Blending into it
rose
a loud, quavering whoop, the
signal Otter had promised. Sam, still looking toward the path, saw a quivering
of the leafy branches that had been so raptly silent.

           
Otter sprang into view, around the
bend of the trail where he had vanished earlier. His body leaned forward as his
bare knees churned and his moccasins belabored the ground. His bent arms worked
back and forth as though his hands pulled him through the air. No need for him
to slacken speed so as to keep Giluhda at his heels. Almost behind him came
Giluhda’s hurrying mass, like a tremendous, shaggy boulder bounding down a
hillside.

           
Giluhda did not gallop. His four
massive legs moved with an ungainly stiffness of joints, his fleshy bulk heaved
and shook as it pursued Otter. The monster did not seem to be running swiftly,
but he was. With all his efforts, Otter could not draw ahead. He kept barely
ten feet in front of his pursuer. Giluhda’s trunk was lifted high above the
great double curve of his white tusks, almost over Otter’s head.

           
All of this Sam saw in the first
instant of the pair’s appearance. Then Otter
came
racing down the path, cutting across it as he ran, and heading for the space
between the oaks as a fugitive rabbit heads for his burrow. Even as Otter did
this, Giluhda seemed to gain upon him by a giant stride. The trunk shot
downward and outward, almost touching Otter’s shoulder in its flailing effort.
But Otter flashed between the tree stems just beneath Sam, made half a dozen
leaps beyond—and tripped over an extended root, to fall in a headlong sprawl!

           
Giluhda had driven himself after
Otter and, just as before, he was jammed between the oak trees.

           
Sam found himself looking down at
the shaggy back as it strained and heaved beneath him. Its great thatch of hair
seemed to stand on end, like the fur of a fighting wolf or cat. Even as he
stared, Sam tightened his grip on the knife in a powerful, dragging pull toward
himself.

           
Before the pressure of that keenly
whetted edge, the crossed straps of rawhide slit away. With an abrupt
suddenness the spear haft dropped from in front of Sam, and with the release of
the weight the branch bounded and snapped so that Sam almost fell from it. At
the same moment, from below, came a sound like an enormous axe striking deep
into rotten wood, and the grating rattle of the big stones in the three bags. Loud
and ear-piercingly shrill rang the voice of Giluhda in furious pain.

           
Clinging to the vibrating branch,
Sam saw that the spear point had struck into Giluhda’s back, just to the left
of the ridged spine. The metal had buried itself in the hair, and so had the
lashings that held the head to the haft. But the weight of stones had not
driven the weapon to its full depth. Perhaps a bone had held it back. Wounded
and crippled, Giluhda nevertheless kept his feet, and battled with crazy fury
to burst from between those clamping, imprisoning trees. His trunk flung itself
backward as though to catch the spear and wrench it out of the wound. Then it
stretched forward again, pointing and groping toward where Otter had fallen.

           
Otter had not risen to his feet. He
remained on hands and knees, shaking his head as though half stunned. Another
heaving struggle, thought Sam despairingly, and Giluhda might win free of his
trap and seize his prey.

           
Sam dropped his knife, swung his leg
up and across the branch. He threw himself down toward Giluhda, shooting out
his arms to embrace and hug the upstanding butt end of the spear. Clasping it
to him, he hung there like a monkey on a stick.

           
His active young weight, falling
from the height above, drove the spear deeper down. He felt it sink with him,
as a strongly rammed pole sinks into stiff mud. He saw the bundles of stones
strike hard against Giluhda’s body, burst their fastenings, and pour out their
contents in thudding avalanches down either hairy flank. Next moment, he
himself set his feet on the tossing hide, lost his balance, and fell flat. He
slid down Giluhda’s thick coat as down a haystack, landed upright somehow, and
ran around the oak tree on that side.

           
He sprang to where Otter was at last
getting up, shaky and trembling. He threw an arm around his friend and forced
him into a staggering run. Behind them the oaks creaked as Giluhda finally
forced them apart and won clear.

           
Sam urged Otter into a faster
scramble, guided him past the punished maple where Giluhda had once treed him,
and deep into a thicket of small trees with broad leaves. Now he took time to
glance back.

           
Giluhda did not follow them. Was the
wounded beast trying some trick? Sam paused, and Otter pulled free from his
arm.

           
“It has been done,” Otter wheezed
painfully. “Giluhda is dying.” Otter caught his wrist and pulled him around and
pointed through the leaves.

           
Just forward of the oak trees,
Giluhda had stopped. Slowly he sank to his broad knees. He flung his trunk high
and uttered a choked
roar, that
seemed to break in the
middle.

           
Then, while Sam and Otter stared
through the rivers of sweat that drenched their faces, Giluhda rolled slowly
over on his side.
All four of his big, round feet pawed at
the air.
His trunk squirmed on the ground like a wounded snake. Once he
lifted his head, his broad ears cocked and his small, bright eyes wide open and
insanely rolling. Then he relaxed, head and legs and body all at once. His
muscles seemed to go flabby. His sides panted twice and subsided, and he lay
motionless. Thus stretched out, he looked even vaster than when he had stood
and strained between the trees.

           
“Be careful,” cautioned Sam in a
whisper. “He may be trying to fool us. He may try to look dead. He may hope
that we will come within his reach to make sure,
then
he will strike at us.”

           
“Let me have this.” Otter tapped his
finger on the bow that still hung at Sam’s back.

           
Sam unslung the stout stave and
passed it to Otter, who had already selected an arrow from Sam’s quiver.
Without pushing himself from among the sheltering leaves, he aimed quickly and
sent the arrow to pierce Giluhda’s foreleg. Giluhda did not
so
much as stir.

           
“Another arrow,” said Otter, and Sam
passed it to him. This shaft Otter launched into the bulging, upturned side of
the fallen beast. Still Giluhda lay as still as a log.

           
“He does not breathe,” Otter
announced. “Come, we will go closer to him.”

           
They moved from their concealment
and approached Giluhda with slow, watchful steps. They saw that the spear had
been driven for more than half of its length into Giluhda’s back, just to the
rear of the left shoulder. Giluhda’s mouth drooped loosely open, and blood had
gushed from it, soaking into the ground.

           
“That is bright blood,” observed
Otter.

           
“Yes, I see it,” nodded Sam. “The
spear struck through his lungs. It killed him quickly.”

           
“But not so quickly that he did not
almost kill me first,” reminded Otter. “I thought he would come from between
the trees and catch me while I was lying on the ground.”

           
Sam breathed deeply. He was just
beginning to feel a great triumph, to realize that Giluhda was surely dead.

           
“I thought he would catch you, too,”
said Sam. “My heart inside me was as heavy as those bags of stones. I saw your
danger, while I was up the tree, safe from Giluhda.”