Adrian's War

by Lloyd Tackitt

  He had fully penetrated the mountains. They were everything he had expected and hoped for—and more. The cool air carried soft scents of pines and flowers. Everything was still green except the hardwoods—they had started turning and the colors were spectacular. He traveled deeper into the mountains every day, not knowing when or where he would stop for the winter. But he would stop when he found the right place.

  During his trip he had avoided people and any sign of civilization by giving them a wide berth. This had slowed his trip considerably, but after encountering the folks in the canyon he knew he was not fit company for others, and felt no desire to be around people. However, his curiosity was piqued when he came across the signs of a village deep in the mountains. He worked his way into a position to watch. He saw a well-organized village of about sixty people. Four days he watched them; they were a curiosity. They had a good farming system using mules and horses. He also noticed that the village put out sentries and hid their livestock deep in the woods at the first sign of anyone approaching.

  The homes were all of log construction. There was no sign that there had ever been electricity in the village, no wires or poles of any kind could be seen in the little valley. The road leading through the village was gravel, an all-weather road, but he saw no cars or trucks of any kind, and no garages either. After two days he was convinced that these people had adopted an 1800s lifestyle before the grid went down. They could have been Amish, except they didn’t dress Amish. They dressed in normal, modern clothes. The village was a busy place with two stores that apparently took in trade, selling and buying by barter. It had a blacksmith shop, a small tannery, and a gristmill on the banks of a nearby stream.

  Apparently they had been little affected by the grid dropping, having their means of livelihood already worked out in advance. They were not reliant on electricity or outside trade. By some quirk of fate, and their remote location and distance from cities, they had survived well. He silently wished them continued good luck as he traveled on.

  He didn’t travel much further, only about twenty miles. He found himself in a remote valley with a good stream running through it. The weather had begun to turn cold and nasty. It had snowed a little the previous day, and he knew it was time to set up a winter camp. He scouted the valley and found no signs of people. There were elk and black bears roaming the area. The stream had fish in it. Everything he needed was right here, especially solitude. He began to settle in.

  Chapter 7

  ADRIAN THRUST THE SPEAR INTO the bear’s open mouth, cutting its tongue badly. The bear roared and flung its head from side to side at the stinging pain, then charged again, furiously snapping its jaws like huge steel traps, and swinging at him with long, sharp claws. Adrian backed up carefully, ducking and dodging, continually stabbing the spear at the bear’s nose and face.

  He had been startled to find a grizzly bear in these mountains this time of year; most bears were in hibernation. The bear had looked at Adrian as though he were food, and Adrian had instantly seen the bear as a life or death challenge. They both refused to back down from this fight to the death. Almost on first sight, they charged at each other. Adrian was armed with a flint-tipped spear. It was a tiny weapon against the two thousand pound bear, but Adrian wasn’t concerned with losing. If he lost, he lost. That was all there was to it. He’d had no intention of losing, but was well aware that he could.

  Adrian felt the back of his thighs press against a large fallen log. He was pinned. He couldn’t back up any farther without taking the time to climb over the log, and that would be all the opening the bear needed to finish Adrian off.

  He kept prodding at the bear with the spear. The cut tongue had given the bear a small measure of respect for this little animal it was intent on eating. Adrian lunged at an opening after ducking another huge paw swiping at his head. He had an open shot at the bear’s head and lunged in with the spear, hitting the bear squarely in its left eye.

  The bear roared and backed up, pawing at its head, trying to understand the stinging pain and darkness that had suddenly over took the left side of his field of vision. Adrian took full advantage of the bear’s partial blindness by circling around it, staying within the bear’s new blind spot. He had opening after opening now to attack, and lunged and stabbed with the spear each time. He was wounding the bear, wounds that might eventually bring it down, but if they did it wouldn’t be during this fight. Adrian kept circling, stabbing the bear, but the shallow wounds served more to enrage it than to hinder it. He was counting on that rage to cause it to make a mistake, and it did.

  The bear tried to whirl rapidly to get Adrian in sight again, but tangled its legs and fell heavily. Adrian rushed in and drove the spear as deep into the bear’s chest throwing his full weight onto the spear. He felt the flint point scrape between ribs, and then suddenly it was past the muscle and bone resistance and plunged deep into the chest. The bear would die now, and soon. Adrian backed off and stood ready to run if necessary. The bear, mortally wounded, snapped and bit at the spear shaft protruding from its chest. It moved slower and slower as the wounded heart pumped blood into the chest cavity. Adrian watched as the bear roared for the last time, king of the mountains no more, then lay down, twitched, and became still.

  Now t was time to tend to his own wounds. He had been badly slashed by the bear’s claws. They cuts would be filthy from the claws and become infected if not cleaned and patched up immediately. Shaking from the adrenalin still flooding into his bloodstream, but now with no physical outlet, he pulled the remainder of his shirt off and inspected the slashes. There were four of them, deep and long. Before the grid went down he would have been given antibiotics and about a hundred stitches. The best he could do now would be to clean the wounds. As he looked around for a creek he noticed that the bear had been trying to knock down a large tree.

  Curious as to why, Adrian studied the tree for a moment. He saw a hole in the trunk about halfway up. Adrian thought perhaps a colony of bees had made their nest within it. Maybe the bear had smelled honey and was trying to get at it when Adrian surprised him. Honey was good news, if he could find a way to reach it. Honey was a good wound preserver. Coating a wound with honey not only kept it clean, but honey had natural antibiotic properties. This was why honey could be stored forever without ever going bad. He climbed the tree and found he could reach the hole. Although he knew it was risky to reach into a place he couldn’t see, he did and came out with a piece of honeycomb grasped in his hand. About a dozen bees came with it, stinging him all over. They hurt like blazes!

  Dropping to the ground, he put the honeycomb into his shirt to keep it clean, climbed back up, and came back with more honey. Once more he went up and came down. He wanted enough honey to put on the wounds every day until they healed over, and he wouldn’t be talking himself into climbing up and getting stung like this again, not after the wounds stiffened up. To soothe the bee stings he used a finger nail to scrape out the stingers and then coated the spots with the raw honey. Honey, he knew, contained enzymes that counteracted the stingers venom and stopped the pain within five minutes. With the honey wrapped in his shirt, he walked back to his camp. He needed to boil water to clean the wounds. After that he would skin the bear and butcher it. With the freezing weather he had time, the meat wouldn’t spoil.

  He had set up a winter camp by building a wickiup—a simple structure built by burying the ends of saplings in a circle then bending their tops over and tying them together. Once they were tied together, smaller poles were woven in between the bent poles, and then smaller ones until a dense mat had been formed. At that stage it looked like a large, upside down basket. This he then covered with pine boughs laid on the skeleton in a circle from the bottom up, shingle style, the better to shed water. He wove brush and grass bundles in until there was a dense covering of material over the entire framework, then forced a small slit in one spot as the entry.

  It served as a good windbreak, and was fairly dry in a light rain. He
had tanned the hides of elk and deer he had killed, and sewn them together with overlapping edges. After greasing them with fat, he laid them over the top of the brush on the wickiup. Once covered with hides it was rain proof. A small hole in the roof let out smoke from the fire that he kept inside. Fire had to be carefully controlled or the thing could go up in a blaze with him in it. To prevent a spark from causing the wickiup to go up in flames, he gathered clay from the creek and plastered the inside framework with a coating of clay mixed with dry grasses. This also kept the inside air trapped in place, creating a warm, dry shelter. It had been easy to make—a few of days of labor plus the time to get the skins. It wouldn’t last long, but it would last the winter, and that was enough. The clay coating required almost daily maintenance, but that was a small chore.

  Carrying on with the Stone Age lifestyle, he made a cooking pot out of deer hide. He tanned it, removed the fur, and then tied it to a hoop rim he had made. When filled with water it could be suspended over a fire and the water inside prevented the hide from burning, even as the water boiled. As long as the flames stayed below the waterline it worked. It was difficult to keep clean and sanitary, but it made excellent stews. He carefully washed it out after each use, and then refilled it with water, which he boiled to sterilize it. He also dug a pit that the hide fit into, then put fire-heated rocks in the stew to boil it. This had the advantage of leaking less, but also required constant changing of the heated rocks. He had learned not to use rocks from the creek; they contained water and sometimes exploded in the fire as they heated.

  Adrian had built an underground oven for cooking small game quickly, smaller but similar to the ones used to cook the Sotol plants in the Palo Duro canyon. It was a quick and efficient method of cooking. He had made a wooden bowl by burning out the center of a burl with hot coals and scraping. It was the work of one evening and made eating easier, especially stew. His wooden bowl and spoon were thoroughly washed after each use and sterilized with boiling water. Sanitation was paramount to survival.

  Lye soap was easy to make and a great boon to sanitation. Water leached through hardwood ashes picked up the lye. This solution was then boiled down to concentrate the lye. Elk tallow was melted and mixed with the lye solution, then the whole thing was left to set and harden for a few days.

  In good weather he sat by a fire outside until he was sleepy. Sometimes he would play the harmonica after dark. He played blues style, riffing up and down, crossing over the notes to create melodies that came close to expressing his grief. The music helped and at the same time hurt, just as it had when he had lost his parents. He could express his feelings out loud with this music in a way he never could otherwise. He had played often for Alice after she gave it to him, happier music to be sure, but once in a while something like these. Alice had loved his music. At times he hoped she could somehow hear him playing now, but he didn’t really believe it.

  When he got back to his wickiup, he boiled water. He didn’t have a needle or thread fine enough to stitch the wounds, but he did have an old shirt that he could use for bandages. He cleaned the wounds with the water after it boiled, then soaked the shirt in boiling water. While the shirt was soaking he used some of the honey to saturate the wounds, covering them with as much honey as possible. When the shirt was clean he tore it into strips and wrapped them around his arm and chest as best he could. He rewrapped the surplus honey, took it two-hundred yards from his camp and stored it in suspending it on a cord as high as he could reach on a tree limb. He didn’t want the smell of honey to draw a bear to his wickiup.

  Having accomplished these chores, it was time to skin the bear. The real work was about to start. Adrian had killed a black bear in the fall, and found the eating superb. The fat was especially good and packed a load of calories. This bear was too big to eat unless it was preserved. With the winter’s cold to keep the meat from spoiling he had time to make it into pemmican, his favored trail food.

  It took Adrian two days to skin and butcher the bear completely. It took him a week to cut and hang the meat on drying racks. In the meantime, he feasted on bear steak dripping with fat three times a day. He used the bear’s brains to tan the hide; it would make an excellent robe for the winter. He rendered the fat from the meat before drying it, and extracted the marrow from the bones. When the meat was as dry as he could get it, he pulverized it between two rocks. The lard was heated and the pulverized meat mixed in until a thick paste was achieved. This was then pressed into sewn skin bags while the concoction was hot. When it cooled it hardened. It would be softer in warmer weather, but it would remain good for years if kept cool and dry. A man could get fat eating pemmican.

  By the time Adrian had prepared the bear meat, a week had gone by and he was sick and feverish from the wounds. The honey had helped, but the wounds still showed signs of infection. Adrian had twice boiled water and treated the wounds with the boiling water, trying to get the poison out, then covering them again with honey. It was a tedious and painful procedure. Adrian slept a lot while healing. He had fever dreams about Alice. He was half delirious and believed that she was with him in the wickiup. When he awoke each morning he was forced to learn all over again that she was gone.

  Adrian’s grief had not abated. He didn’t think it had gotten any better either; it seemed to him that each new day he had sunk deeper into hell. He recalled Roman’s warnings, and knew them to be true. Adrian hadn’t reached the part Roman had predicted, where the pain would level off. When he had first gotten to the mountains that fall he had spotted and bypassed three small tribes and the village. He had discovered in the Palo Duro that being around people intensified the pain. He had no interest in people. He wanted nothing to do with them.

  Adrian went to sleep on the eighth night after the bear fight. He was sick, his wounds were infected, and he had a high fever. He didn’t know it, but he would nearly die within the next twenty-four hours, and would soon be dealing with people again, whether he wanted to or not.

  Chapter 8

  ADRIAN AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING with a high fever. He needed water to treat the wounds again. He staggered when he tried to get up. He grabbed his spear to use as a walking stick to steady himself. The sky carried omens of a blizzard. The clouds were thick, dark gray, and low. Wind blew out of the North. Adrian, in a semi-delirious state, didn’t notice these ominous signs. His fever made it seem warmer than it was. He left the wickiup in buckskin pants, shirt, and moccasins, leaning on his spear, carrying the hide kettle to fetch water. He left the bearskin robe in the wickiup, stumbling frequently as he walked. He didn’t take his handmade snowshoes with him as he normally did.

  When he stooped to get water he became extremely dizzy. He sat down, then passed out. When he came to he didn’t know where he was. He was in a full fever delirium, and couldn’t remember that he had gone to the creek for water. He didn’t recognize the creek or any of the familiar landmarks near his camp. Struggling to walk he used the spear to lean on. He crossed the creek and began moving further and further away from camp. He had not noticed the hide kettle, and left it where it dropped.

  Snow had started falling and the temperature was dropping rapidly. Instinctively he was following an elk trail through the forest. He was looking for shelter; he knew he needed shelter. In spite of his spiking fever, he had become bitterly cold. The cold was slowing his thinking, and the fever was distorting it. After two hours of halting travel he could go no further. He found a large tree and sat against it, on the downwind side. It made a poor windbreak. Adrian began to lose consciousness. He dreamt of Alice, convinced she was with him. Adrian was dying rapidly from exposure, but there was a trace of a smile on his face. He hadn’t been so happy since before Alice died.

  While Adrian was stumbling away from his camp, Marian and her son were walking along a cross trail. They had been away from their cabin all day, hunting for game. They had not killed anything. Despite being so near to starvation, Marian still recognized the storm that was coming and had headed
for home. Her cabin was six miles across rugged terrain from Adrian’s camp. Neither of them were aware of the other’s existence. Marian’s husband had died months earlier. She hoped to make it through the winter, then find a village or tribe that would take them in. Jerod was seven years old and weak with hunger.

  They were miles from the cabin and quickly losing the trail under the deepening snow. Marian had decided to begin looking for temporary shelter from the storm when she literally stumbled over Adrian. He had fallen sideways onto the ground and was almost as pale as the ground he lay on. Snow was sticking to his hair and beard and clothing. Marian was shocked to find him. She checked his throat for a pulse. His skin was ice cold, but there was a faint beating in his neck.

  “Jerod, fetch wood—quickly!” They gathered fire wood and she built three fires in a triangle in front of the tree and Adrian. She left only enough room inside the fires for the three of them to huddle. They were going to get wet, but if they could keep the fires going they could stay warm enough to survive, if not comfortably. The fires would also help to warm Adrian. She and Jerod propped Adrian up and they sat on each side of him, making as much contact as possible to share their body heat. It got dark early because of the storm. It would be a long night.