Soul Catcher (25 page)

***

Charles Hobuhet’s dream, as recounted by his
aunt:

When I was small I dreamed about Raven. It
was the white Raven I dreamed about. I dreamed Raven helped me
steal all of the fresh water and I hid it where only our people
could find it. There was a cave and I filled it with the water. I
dreamed there was a spirit in the cave who told me about creation.
The spirit had created my cave. There were two entrances, a way to
enter and a way to leave. There was a beach in the cave and waves
on it. I heard drums there. My dream spirit told me there really is
such a place. It is clean and good. I want to find that place.

***

Katsuk sat with his back against a tree,
praying for the earth to forgive him. The bow lay in his lap with
the arrow and it was dark all around him, a cold wind blowing
dampness onto his skin. The bow was not as well made as those of
the ancient people. He knew this, but he knew also that the spirit
in the wood of this bow would compensate for the way he had hurried
the making of it. The arrow in his lap had been fitted with the
stone tip from the beach village where his people no longer were
permitted to live. The ancient times and the present were tied
together.

Clouds hid the stars. He felt the nearness
of rain. The cold wind made his flesh tremble. He knew he should
feel the chill of that wind, but his body possessed no sensation
except the loss of Hoquat.

Hoquat had run off. Where?

Katsuk’s mind slipped into the spirit chase
of which his ancestors had spoken. He would search out Hoquat’s
spirit. That would lead him to the boy.

Katsuk stared into the darkness. There was a
small fire somewhere and he could not tell if he saw it with the
inward vision or outwardly. Flames from the fire cast ruddy light
on raw earth and a tangle of roots. There was a figure at the edge
of the firelight. It was a small figure. Now, Katsuk knew he was
having the spirit vision.

Where was that fire?

Katsuk prayed for his spirit to guide him,
but nothing spoke to him from Soul Catcher’s world. It was another
test then.

A small animal ran across Katsuk’s
outstretched legs, fled into the darkness. He felt the tree behind
him growing, its bark searching upward. The damp earth and the cold
wind moved all through him and he knew he would have to fight a
spirit battle before he could reclaim Hoquat.

“Alkuntam, help me,” he prayed. “This is
Katsuk. Help me send my message. Lead me to the innocent one.”

An owl called in the night and he sensed its
tongue bringing rain. It would rain soon. He was being called to an
ordeal within an ordeal.

Slowly, Katsuk got to his feet. He felt his
body as a remote thing. He told himself:
I will begin walking. I
will find Hoquat in the light of day.

***

From an interview with Harriet Gladding
Morgenstern in the San Francisco
Examiner
.

My grandson is a very brave lad. He was
never afraid of the dark or any such nonsense as that, even as a
small child. He was always thoughtful of his elders. We taught him
to be respectful and considerate of those around him, no matter who
they were. I’m sure these are the qualities which will bring him
through his present trial.

***

Shortly before nightfall, David found a
sheltered place where a tree had been uprooted by a storm. The tree
had fallen almost parallel to a small stream and its roots formed
an overhang whose lip had been taken over by moss and grass.

David crouched in the shelter for a moment,
wondering if he dared build a fire. Katsuk had made a fire bow and
showed the captive how to use it as a diversion, but David wondered
if smoke and fire might lead Katsuk here.

It was late, though. And there was a cold
wind. He decided to risk it.

Bark had been ripped from the tree by its
fall. David found long lengths of bark and leaned them in an
overlapping row against his shelter to make a heat pocket. He
collected a pitch deposit from beneath a rotten log as Katsuk had
taught him. A dead cedar lay along the slope above him. David
slipped on wet salal and bruised his forehead getting to the cedar,
but found, as he had hoped, that the tree’s fall had splintered it,
leaving long dry sections underneath which could be torn off by
hand. He assembled a store of the dry cedar under the roots,
brought in dead limbs and more small pieces of bark, then went in
search of a short green limb for a fire bow. It would have to be
short to fit a shoestring.

“Preparation, patience, persistence,” Katsuk
had told him in explaining this way to make fire.

David had wanted to give up in his first
attempt with Katsuk’s fire bow, but the man had laughed at “hoquat
impatience.” Goaded by that laughter, David had persisted, running
the bow back and forth across its driver stick until friction made
a spark in the dry grass tinder. Now he knew the careful way of
it.

With a slab of cedar notched by pounding
with a stone, with a shoestring bow to drive the tinder stick, with
pitch and cedar splinters ready at hand, he persisted until he had
a coal, then gently blew the coal into flame which he fed with
pitch and cedar. When it was going well, he thought:
Katsuk
should see me now.

The thought frightened him, and he peered
out of his shelter at the forest. It would be dark soon. He
wondered if he would be safer from Katsuk in the night. The man had
strange powers. Hunger gripped his stomach. He looked down at the
stream. There would be trout in that stream. He had seen Katsuk
build a weir. But the night would be cold and he knew he would get
wet trying to trap a trout. He decided to forego the trout.
Tomorrow ... tomorrow there might be hikers or the people he knew
must be searching for him. They would have food.

It was a long night.

Twice, David went out to replenish his
firewood, dragging back dead limbs, bark. It was raining lightly
the second time and the wood sizzled when he put it on the fire.
His shelter turned the rain and most of the wind, though, and it
was warm by contrast with the night outside.

Several times he dozed, sitting up with his
back against the earth which had been exposed by the upheaval of
roots. Once, he dreamed.

In the dream, he was running away, but there
was a long brown string trailing behind him. It was tied around his
forehead the way Katsuk wore the braided cedar around
his
head. David sensed the string trailing him wherever he ran. The
string went up the mountain to Katsuk and the man up there spoke
along its length. Katsuk was calling for help. “Hoquat, help me.
Help me. Hoquat, I need you. Help me.”

David awoke to find dawn breaking and his
fire almost out. He covered the coals with dirt to extinguish them
and prevent telltale smoke. An attack of shivering overcame him
when he went out into the misting dawn.

I’ll keep following the stream down,
he decided.
There have to be people downstream.

As he thought this, he stared upstream,
searching for any sign of pursuit. Where was Katsuk now? That had
been a crazy dream about string. Was Katsuk really in trouble up
there? He could have fallen in the night or broken a leg or
something, Crazy Indian.

Still shivering, David set off down the
watercourse.

***

Sheriff Mike Pallatt:

Sure, some of these Indians can do strange
things. Make your hair stand on end, some of them. I tell myself
that if you live close to something like this wilderness you get a
feeling for it that others don’t have. I guess that’s it.
Maybe.

***

In late afternoon David worked his way
through a stand of big-leaf maples in a creek bottom. His little
stream had become a torrent more than ten feet across. A thick
carpet of moss covered the ground beneath the maples. David thought
how soft a bed the moss would make. He had found a few berries to
eat and he drank water frequently, but hunger was a persistent ache
now. It had moved from his stomach to a tight band around his head.
David wondered if the ache in his head could be real. Was it really
that brown string he had dreamed about? Was Katsuk up there
somewhere holding the other end of that string? He was tired and
the moss invited, but when he pressed his hand into it, water ran
up between his fingers.

He noted then that his feet were soaking
wet.

The wind had turned to the southwest. That
meant rain. Patches of blue showed in the sky, but gunmetal clouds
were scudding toward the peaks behind him.

He paused beside a beaver-downed cottonwood,
studied his surroundings: trees, trees, trees ... the river, a
black pier of rocks buffeted by gray current ... a squirrel running
on a log. Was Katsuk out in that forest nearby, silently watching?
It was a thing he might do. He could be there.

David put this fear out of his mind. That
wouldn’t help. He plunged on, masking his passage wherever he could
in ways he had learned from watching Katsuk: walking on rocks, on
logs, avoiding muddy places.

For a time, he wondered if he had used
sufficient care in putting out his fire. If Katsuk found that fire
... Would Katsuk know his escaping captive was following the
water-course? David considered leaving the stream, striking out
over the hills. But the hills went up. They might go right back to
Katsuk.

A small stream entered the larger one he was
following. It came in from a ravine and barred his way with a thick
growth of salal and devil’s club along the watercourse. David
worked his way up the small stream, found a green hole through the
barbed thicket, a footlog scarred by the passage of many hooves. He
peered across the footlog at the water, saw fish flicker in the
current. They reminded him of his hunger, but he knew he dared not
take the time to try catching one.

He crossed the footlog, skirted a nettle
patch. The trail branched upstream and downstream. David went
down-stream, avoided the upthrust and twisting roots of a recently
fallen tree. Brown dirt there to take his footprints. He climbed
the steep hillside above the tree to conceal his passage.

David began to wonder at his escape. It
didn’t seem possible, but he was daring to hope. He knew he was in
a place called the Wilderness Area. Katsuk had described it in
general terms. There were park trails at the edge of the area. If
he found park trails, there would be signs to tell him he was going
in the right direction.

There would be hikers.

There would be food.

He paused to drink from the stream before
going oh.

There was the smell of mint along the stream
and many patches of nettles. The back of his left hand burned from
brushing the leaves. The game trail he was following twisted away
from the stream and back to it, up the hill to avoid trees on the
bank, back down to the mossy rocks in the water. He could see no
farther than fifty feet down the watercourse.

Bright yellow skunk cabbages glistened in
shadows downstream. The water would be slower there.

David found himself preoccupied with the
many things he could sense about his surroundings, things he had
learned from being with Katsuk: where a stream would run slower and
deeper, where to seek a footlog, how to avoid leaving signs of his
passage.

Just beyond the skunk cabbages, he returned
to the larger stream he had been following earlier. A muddy elk
trail ran parallel to the stream, fresh tracks on it. Some of the
tracks had not yet filled with water. A patch of elk droppings
still steamed on the trail.

He studied the trail ahead, the hillside,
looking for the yellow patches of elk rumps. No sign of them,
except the trail with its tracks and droppings.

David stayed in the trees just off the
trail, moved downstream, keeping the water in sight. Trees and
undergrowth became thicker. He caught occasional glimpses of the
opposite shore, strips of gray water. His feet were wet and cold.
His toes ached.

How far have I come from Katsuk?
he
wondered.

David knew Katsuk must be seeking him by
this time. The question was how? Was Katsuk tracking the fugitive?
Was there another way to find him?

He stopped to rest beside a cottonwood whose
base had been partly chewed out by beaver. Yellow chips covered the
ground. They were at least a week old from the color of the wood. A
thick spruce towered into the sky across the muddy elk trail from
him. He looked down, saw the puddles in the trail reflecting the
spruce’s brown bark, the sky, painted with branches, his own wet
feet. The vision filled him with a sense of his own smallness in
all of this immensity.

Where was Katsuk?

David wondered if he dared build another
fire to dry his feet. They throbbed with the cold. There was plenty
of dry cedar around, lots of dry wood under the fallen trees. The
cottonwood chips would burn easily. But Katsuk might see the smoke.
Others could see it, too—but who would arrive first?

He decided against a fire. It was too much
of a gamble even for the sake of warm feet.

Movement helped him to stay warmer, he knew.
David resumed his cautious passage through the trees. There was a
blister forming on his left heel and he tried to ignore it.

Once, he heard a raven call. He cowered for
five minutes under the sweeping limbs of a cedar before daring to
go on. Even so, he kept a cautious outlook on the sky, wondering if
those were Katsuk’s ravens.

The elk trail turned, angled up a steep
hill.

David chose to stay with the river and
abandon the trail.

He leaped across the trail to avoid leaving
tracks, forced his way through underbrush along the river, worked
his way around a thin rock ledge above a waterfall taller than
himself. Logs left by the last high water lay in a red-brown tangle
across from him, swept up onto a muddy beach beneath an alder
copse.