Well, this was awkward. Sam stood very still, not moving a muscle. They might not yet have seen him. His body was partially hidden behind the trunk of a white cedar, and there was a windfall between him and them. The noise of the brook he’d been approaching, tinkling in the background, might have hidden the noise of his approach.
Two men, standing together, wrapped in buckskin and carrying stone tipped spears with smallish heads. One took a knee, examining the ground at his feet, lifting his gaze to look off downstream.
Sam would be in his peripheral vision now, so he dared not so much as breathe heavily. The receptors in that portion of the eye were far apart, and specially developed to detect movement.
When the man turned to his companion to speak, Sam took half a step backward and further behind the bole of the tree. He wasn’t ready to meet the neighbors just yet.
He watched them for the few moments they remained in place, and when they moved off, no doubt following the tracks of whatever their prey might be, he watched that too, edging around the tree to keep himself concealed.
That had been too close, he decided after they’d disappeared and he’d given them some time to get well away. Two minutes in either direction, and he’d have run right into them.
They’d been dressed in rough pants and cloaks, their heads shaved around the sides, with the hair on top left to grow out. He’d been too far away to tell much else. He pondered for a moment whether it might be worthwhile to cross the brook and check their tracks, but decided against it. If they were outbound, they might be back, and possibly concerned at his tracks having appeared out of nowhere.
He turned back and moved steadily for half an hour over his own tracks before stopping to check his map. He’d been aiming for some forested high ground to the west and a little south. That was out now. To have run across those guys at this time of day, he’d probably be well within their hunting radius, which meant that he didn’t want to set up anywhere near here. He figured them for having come from somewhere to the west, as he hadn’t seen anything like fresh tracks since his arrival.
Now what? He was concerned that if he moved farther south, he’d run into other groups. By his best calculation, he was walking the line between the territories of two branches of the Massachusett. Or, in any case, two branches as they’d exist in another thousand years. There really was no telling whether those boundaries would mean anything at all at this moment.
Going north would bring him into the territory of what would become the Agawam. Of course, he’d been in their territory since the grand council of the game had dumped him in the drink, and he hadn’t seen anybody until just now, so that wasn’t saying much. It would also bring him further into the grip of the nor’easters that should be starting to rip down from the arctic in a couple of weeks.
He was beginning to regret not bringing that forty-two pound folding plastic kayak he’d briefly considered before discarding the notion. Bringing that thing would have certainly required the balloon scheme he’d also discarded as comically impractical. Of course, that balloon would also have given him— no, it didn’t matter. He’d brought neither, and so he was stuck out here on Cape Anne in the winter without a boat, or the tools to realistically attempt the building of one.
He turned north, but stopped almost immediately. By all accounts, he’d be heading directly into their territory. The area wasn’t all that large, after all. and north of the Merrimack River, he’d start to be into the lands of the future Iroquois. He had to face facts. His original plan was completely pooched. Time to improvise.
He turned west. Everything in his campsite was as stowed and hidden as he’d been able to make it, and he’d have to hope that it would keep. He needed to find a place to start something more permanent. Someplace with game and resources the cape just didn’t have.
He moved carefully as he passed the place he’d seen the natives earlier, taking great pains to avoid leaving traces. They’d see if they were actively looking, but he hoped they wouldn’t be.
He kept moving long after the sun had gone down, using the NVGs and slowing even further. He had the spear staff with him this time, settling himself with keeping the rifle slung ready. He was in more danger from falling into a bog than of falling from enemy action.
He was trying to keep track of his distance, but it wasn’t really possible. He spent too much time moving laterally or backwards, taking short, shuffling steps, or jumping across narrow waterways to keep any sort of pace count.
Much of this land was bog or swamp. He’d never realized that about Massachusetts before. His picture of it in his mind, when he’d bothered to think about it at all, had always been either the megalopolis of Boston, or the Berkshires. Two opposite ends of the state, he now realized, with a lot of marshy sludge in between.
He was aiming for a wooded rise thirty miles inland. In modern times, it was a state park. In five hundred, it may well be the site of a village or just more empty forest. He’d have to see.
He wasn’t having much luck not leaving tracks, even in the half frozen ground. He was starting to see rougher terrain as he moved inland. There was a certain amount of sliding, which left gouges in his wake that were impossible to conceal.
Morning found him hunkered at the base of a towering birch, half hidden in a blowdown, the tarp spread over the opening. He hadn’t built a fire nor unpacked the bivvy, so he was cold as hell. He thought he might be getting close to an area he could use, though. There was water a couple of hundred yards away, though only a narrow brook. The trees were thick, and the brush uncleared. Over the last mile or so, he’d seen several tracks that indicated deer frequented the area, and what had looked like the pawprint of a fox.
He’d give it a day and see whether he could detect any signs of human activity. He was looking for smoke or movement, unnatural looking gaps in the canopy that might indicate harvested trees, signs of agriculture.
He’d taken bearings against the stars, or what stars he could see through the canopy, before hunkering down, and spent some time this morning verifying his position with what natural terrain features he could identify. Easier said than done without climbing a tall tree. He’d aimed at thirty miles. He was closer to forty-five, he thought. It had taken him four days to get here by the way he’d come, and he was remembering why he’d always hated iodine-dosed water.
He’d been here in the game for over a month now, he thought. Maybe a bit less. The watch, perversely, didn’t display dates, and he kept forgetting to check the tablet. He was forgetting a lot of things these days. Another thing he hadn’t expected. He’d assumed his mind would have plenty of time to run free to contemplate things and make plans. Instead, he found himself often lost in memories as he performed rote actions.
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It had snowed again during the night, and the day was overcast. Far off to the north, what might have been smoke rose into the grey sky. Or it might have been his imagination.
The heavy air carried no sounds. The birds were hunkered down and silent. He napped off and on throughout the day, dozing for half an hour or an hour and then rising to circuit the hilltop he’d chosen as his observatory. Like any other wild animal with the possibility of predators in the area.
He needed to find some clay deposits. His two steel pots weren’t going to allow him much leeway in how he rendered materials, particularly if he wanted to keep one for food preparation. If he didn’t supplement them, there was no way he’d be able to accumulate enough of what he needed to build.
He made his decision as he stood watching the sun sink over the western horizon. This would be the place, for good or ill. His home for the next year, God help him.
Now came the dicey bit, as if what had come before hadn’t counted. He’d need to run that invisible gauntlet six more times, only carrying a load. With each trip out or back, his risk of discovery would go up exponentially. He’d mitigate the risk by traveling exclusively at night, using the NVGs and some care. If he was lucky, it would take him a couple of weeks. If he wasn’t....
Twice more in the next three weeks, he happened across native hunters. Both times, they were encamped and he was able to steer a wide path around them at some great cost in time. In each case, he’d encountered them a little farther south and west than the last time. His third encounter had been a little less than twelve miles from his new camp.
His gear, as he moved it, was being stored in a small cave he’d found at the base of the hill he’d claimed. It wasn’t more than ten or so feet deep, and not big enough to stand in. While it felt long unoccupied, with no signs of recent use, it had the look of an old bear cave. He’d have to keep an eye on that. At the moment, he wasn’t too worried. Any bear that wasn’t sleeping by this time of year wasn’t sleepy.
He was laying back against the rock face of his old hootch, listening to the fire and munching on dried fish when it hit him that he was going to kind of miss the place. With raised eyebrows, he looked around the smokey brush pile and realized that, in the short month or so he’d called it home, it had grown on him. Like the first camping trip he’d been on as a boy, it would forever hold a special place in his heart.
The wind was blowing bejeezus outside and rattling the walls, snow pelting in through the ill-fitting door and down the irregular smoke hole, but he’d piled enough dirt and debris over the pile long enough ago that it was holding. In any case, he wasn’t about to go out in it to make adjustments.
He had food, he had clean water, and he was warm enough. The Biolite was charging batteries, and he had enough wood to last until morning easily, and midday if necessary. Beyond that, if it was still snowing, he was going to be in a bit of trouble. He was carrying the hatchet, but the axe was already in the cave at the new site.
He was down to his last load, which consisted mostly of trade goods, spare clothes that were of absolutely no use In the coldest month of the year, and the items he’d packed for supplemental personnel. The Shandry plan stuff. Still heavy enough to be a problem. He was dog tired after three weeks of hauling heavy loads while playing hide and seek with people he was eventually planning on walking right up to.
He’d been laying groundwork to that end. He wasn’t sure whether it had been a good idea, or if he was clevering himself in the ass, but it had seemed like a sound idea at the time. The time, of course, had been just before dawn, and him goofy tired, so it hadn’t been the most thoroughly contemplated plan he’d ever executed.
He’d spotted a deer moving through a thicket all alone. A young buck, who’d apparently struck out with the ladies and was wandering by himself. While Sam had been crazy for the meat and hide, he’d also been in no position to do anything with it. But it had been the same night he’d seen a couple of hunters encamped. He hadn’t smelled anything cooking when he’d passed them, and he knew that February was one of the lean months.
So he’d taken the shot. The buck had stumbled, taken a step, and collapsed. Sam had had to finish him with the knife, slitting his throat. Now what?
Fading back away from the direction of the hunters, he’d doffed the ALICE and propped the rifle up against it, wrapping one of the straps around the action in case somebody who wasn’t him happened across it first.
He’d gutted the animal by headlamplight, not bothering to skin it out. Let them do it. Who was he, Mother Theresa? Looking around for a likely candidate, he’d spotted a pine sapling a bit over two inches thick, maybe fifteen feet high. With the skin crawling at the back of his neck over the noise he was making, he’d grabbed hold of the trunk as high as he could reach, seeing could he get it to bend. He could.
Taking a couple of loops of rope around the upper trunk, he’d looped the other end around his rump, leaving the remainder of the hundred feet trailing along the dirt. Using his body as leverage, he’d hauled the tree over until he could reach up and grab the peak. A couple of pulls and he’d thought it would support the weight of the buck, who’d only go about one-twenty-five hollowed out, he’d figured.
The axe had made short work of the upper branches, giving him a sort of cleaned dowel less than an inch thick at its tip.
Releasing the tree slowly, he’d moved over and dragged the buck’s carcass closer, swinging it around and slitting its hind legs between bone and tendon. He’d been breathing hard at this point, sweat beading on his face, which wasn’t a good thing in the middle of winter. But he was being all clever and mysterious and shit, so it was totally worth it, right?
Dragging the tree down as tight as he could, he’d struggled to get the buck’s hind legs up and thread the tree’s peak through the tendon slits. Easier said than done. But clever and persevere went hand in hand in Tucker Shandry land, so he’d worked until he’d got it done.
The tree hadn’t been stout enough to lift the buck all the way into the air, and he’d stopped with his nose still in the loam. It would have to do.
Still no company, and dawn was too close for comfort, so he’d had to hurry. Working none too carefully, he’d hacked some suckers from the surrounding pines, adding them to what he’d cut from his impromptu dear rack. Ol’ Mister ‘coon had been turned into a possibles bag, and had been carrying his fire makings among other things. He’d ponied up some fatwood slivers to get things going. For added impact, he’d piled some dead leaves over the top, braced on a teepee of twigs that would burn quick and collapse them into the fire once it got going, sending up a nice, thick pillar of smoke for anybody curious to follow.
He’d re-donned his pack and retrieved the rifle before he’d struck spark to the fire. It had been crackling merrily away as he’d moved carefully to the east. A few minutes later, the watch started pinging.
There was no way they’d know what to make of his boot tracks, and no way to hide his being in the area. Maybe they’d come looking for him now. Hell, maybe they wouldn’t find the damned buck, or would be afraid to investigate, and it would still be hanging there when he passed back through. It had been a gamble.
They weren’t his enemies, and they were hungry. What else had there been to do? Whatever. It was done, and second guessing himself was a worthless pastime.
The deer was gone when he passed through a few days later with his final load, taking even more care than he had been. Properly, he should have given the place a wide berth, but he’d been curious, and so here he was. The night —of course it was night, he was curious, not stupid— was dark as pitch, and he’d timed it so that he’d strike the area just after midnight.
The tree from which he’d suspended the buck had been broken at about shoulder height. Not all the way through, but enough to leave the upper reaches of the small tree hanging. Sam shucked his pack and stashed it, taking up the rifle and swinging in a wide, cautious loop fully around the tree. He picked up a couple of heat signatures, but didn’t suppose the mice were here to ambush him.
Finally, he moved in, looking to the ground for freshly disturbed areas that might be pit traps. When he eventually reached the tree, he took a chance and shone a light on it. Dangling from the tip of the trunk where the deer had hung, was a thong necklace strung with shells and ceramic shapes. He smiled. “Paid in full,” he whispered to himself.
The short happy didn’t mean he was going to let his guard down, though. He knew they were in the area, and now they knew he was. This would be a delicate dance for awhile.