The sound tore Mack out of a restless sleep.
“Gunshot?” he wondered, “no, it lasted too long”
He made his way past Curly, the short haired Indian cur who had wintered over with him in the cave. Partly to keep him from talking to the walls and partly as a last resource for fresh meat if the traps didn’t yield. The winter had not disappointed however and Mack’s stack of hides was tall and wide. So tall and wide in fact, that he would have to return to the Indian village upstream and barter for a second canoe to lash together with his own when the river ran clear yet again.
Another long CRACK pierced the darkness and then a rushing sound followed by a screech….the river was giving up her ice. Pushing aside the soot caked piece of canvas that served as a door, Mack took a bearing from the stars….4 a.m. near about. Carefully, he returned the rock weights to the bottom of the door and returned to the ancient sleeping shelf carved from the stone at the back of the cave and crawled under the thick bear hide. The bear hide had been here in the cave when Mack discovered it, of course it was attached to a bear at that time.
He had killed that bear, smoked some of the meat, rendered some of the fat into grease, cleaned and fleshed the hide, kept some bones for Curly and then loaded the rest into his canoe and rowed it upstream to the Native village. He presented it to the old men who met him at the waters edge. He was sure that the braves were watching closely, but none approached. One elder, wearing a severely damaged bowler hat told him in a halting combination of English and French to tie off and wait.
Several minutes later a young boy came back to the canoe and gestured Mack to come…..
Mack was led through the camp major and then into a section of more ragged shelters at the rear of the camp. Here he was greeted lovingly by an old woman who seemed to peer around some unseen object to see him through hazy dark eyes.
“MaMaKeeAh” he sighed as he embraced her. KeeAh was not really his mother, no, his mother was back on the the edge of the eastern ocean with his father, if the old bastard hadn’t gotten himself beaten to death in some pub yet. KeeAh had been a much younger and more beautiful woman when she had found Mack, face down in his canoe riddled with fever. She had taken him back to the village and tended to him. Her husband NahAli~KeeAh was a proud strong man who respected his wife and although he did not like the white man, he allowed KeeAh to fight the white mans fever. Soon, he too had the fever as did KeeAh.
NahAli~KeeAh lived only two weeks following the arrival of the white man. KeeAh was not so lucky as to find death…instead the fever simply took her eyes. A curse for this life and the next to come.
Now all she had was the strange white man who refused to leave the area of the tribe. He could not be part of them, and yet his debt to KeeAh was so that he could not leave either, so for many seasons now he had lived nearby bringing his savior, MaMaKeeAh as much as he could provide. Food, hides, trinkets from the traders and in return, the tribe had not yet killed him as he had seen them do with other trappers who wandered into this valley.
Today KeeAh held in her arms a squirming puppy. “Kahlay” she called him and thrust him into Mack’s arms. Knowing better than to argue, he softly brushed his hand against her cheek. A sign of thanks. Then turned and headed back to his canoe.
That had been two years ago last fall and KeeAh had died that following winter. Now “Kahlay” or “Curly” as Mack had adjusted the name too were a couple.
