Chapter 3

Slowly my mind came back. I could feel something on my face. Was it wet? Was it water?

It was sweat! Had I fever? Or just exhaustion and sun? I managed to sit up, but I felt like fainting again immediately. It took me several minutes to steady my mind and manage to stand up again and, half walking and half falling, I carried on. I didn’t make it very far before I saw a safe conifer with a wide ring of low branches brushing the floor, and I crawled in under it. I managed to get my pack off and get my bow out in front of me, facing back the way I came, in the hope I could be awake and alert enough to get an arrow off on the first Indian to reach me. With my hatchet in easy reach by my side I rested, panting. And then, again, I passed out.

I have hazy recollections of waking up in the dark, still under the conifer, seeing stars twinkling through the canopy, before passing out again and again.

And in the morning I awoke and looked around. There, in front of me, lying beside me, facing me, was a face. I struggled to focus. Whose face? The roundness of the face swam in focus, never sharp enough for me to see whose face it was! Was it an enemy? The face was brown, very brown. Indian? I couldn’t move a muscle. I couldn’t reach for the ax. My arms wouldn’t obey. I squinted and tried to force my eyes to work. Then a hand reached out and brushed something cold and wet across my brow and, slowly, things started to get an edge and definition. My vision began to clear.

There, laying beside me, watching me intently, was a very concerned Mataoka. The world dropped away again, and faded to black, as I fell into another deep sleep.

I don’t know how long I had a fever and Mataoka cared for me. It could have been a day, it could have been longer. I lost all track of time. But then, one morning, I awoke feeling much better, and chewed some thin, cold porridge that Mataoka spooned into me, and slowly I could stand up and stretch.

I was still weak, but Mataoka set about getting my strength back. She was never gone for long, always returning with arms full of forage she knew how to make good use of. Clearly, for an Indian, this was a land of plenty. At least, a land of plenty enough. And to think I had been starving! All for not knowing what nor how to eat!

Mataoka and I hadn’t said a word to each other. It felt like we were hiding, scared to talk and make a noise. She left a complicated arrangement of twigs, some kind of sign, a warning not to follow us I think, as she broke our camp and led me onward, even further west. It felt like she was on the run, too. And now we were on the run together.

She had built some strength up in me again, and now we were making good progress together. Mataoka took a much more meandering route, often going from tree to tree rather than walking in the open between them, and I began to appreciate that we were now leaving far fewer signs that we’d passed. Were we still being tracked? If Mataoka had been the Indian behind me whom I had seen on the ridge, where there more behind her? Was it her they were chasing? Why had Mataoka come to me?

And still we didn’t talk. We just crept on, into the vast endless backcountry, in silence.

The river whose snaking cut I had seen from the highest ridge turned out to be a deep canyon, much too big to cross. Mataoka led me south beside it until we found a place where not only could we get down, but also it looked like we could ford it at the bottom and there might be a way up on the other side. She pointed it out in silence, signing her intent, and then we started to clamber down, knowing that now we couldn’t talk because of the loud noise of the rapids in the gorge and no longer from fear of us being overheard or scaring some birds.

We managed to get up the other side without too much difficulty and hardly getting wet despite our packs. And now, that first night on the move together, we pitched camp again on the far side of the first big river we’d crossed. We stopped just before dusk and I collapsed, my back to a log, and rested. Mataoka poked around in her pack and disappeared silently into the tangled brambles around us. I don’t know how long it took her to put out her snares, as I fell asleep.

“How you feeling?” she asked me tenderly in the morning. I slowly opened my eyes to find her round face studying mine intently. The blanket she’d thrown over me sagged as I stretched. It was the first words we’d had since we’d met again. I smiled at her. She had a sweet lilt to her voice, a pleasing accent, but good basic English.

“Are we being followed?” I asked, that being the single most important question that immediately came to mind now the silence was broken.

She shrugged, and nodded, and said she thought it possible, and that we really had to get on. We had to be at least another day away from home, she said. She said we were only four days from home so far, and I realized that a day’s walk for an Indian was a lot further than I had ever managed to make in a day. She fed me some uncooked meat; I wasn’t used to eating it, but I was hungry and desperate and ready to eat anything. I chewed it urgently. Mataoka was packing up her snares and making ready to strike off and I didn’t want to hold her up.

And so, again, we got up and marched on west. Now, we were going up the other side of the valley and it was mostly uphill and the going was slower again and the backs of my legs ached, but I kept at it, uncomplaining. We had to get away. From what, I wasn’t sure, but I was sure we had to get away.

We reached almost as far as the ridge by sundown and this time Mataoka dared make a small fire in a natural hollow between some big rocks, well sheltered and out of sight from all but the closest approach. She had heard I could make fire quickly from the stories about it on the hunt, and I showed her how striking flint against metal made sparks. This time I was even better prepared and had a small tub of dry charred cloth to spark into, and I managed to start fire on the first attempt.

We crouched down in the warmth of the fire and looked up at the cloudless sky, the stars all sparkling, and marveled at nature and, for a moment, forgot our pursuers. I glanced across at Mataoka, studying her as she carried on studying the stars. She must have sensed my gaze, for she grinned and I saw the corner of her eye flicker in my direction as she secretly looked back at me, just like we used to do in church on Sundays when we were children.

“Where are you going?” I asked her eventually, desperate to have a conversation after the solitude.

“With you,” she said, now looking me full in the face and piecing me with her bright, black eyes.

“But you can’t; it’s not safe,” I mused, disturbed, scared of myself.

“Not safe?” she asked keenly.

“I, ... I...” I stuttered, unable to form the words, admit my fears about my own temper.

“Harvey, you are not a monster,” she remonstrated, getting straight to the heart of my concern. I looked at her, lost. How did she know? How did she know my mother’s word for me?

“You are not a monster,” she repeated, “you were protecting Eliza then and I know you’ll protect me. Now you have become a man. Now,” she paused and grinned, “you are a brave!”

And that made some sense. In Indian terms – in non-praying Indian terms – killing people could be justified. Now, I had become a real man. I was a brave.

Mataoka’s pack was as big as mine. One of the things she had was a leather bladder. She carefully picked out some smooth, round stones from a nearby gully and cooked them in the fire. After a while she carefully plucked them out of the fire using some green wood sticks and plonked them into the cold water she’d filled the bladder with. And the hot rocks boiled the water quickly. She’d added some spruce shoots to the water and the tea tasted lovely. I had expected a piney taste, but the spruce had a distinct, sweet taste all of its own. I felt the strength and recuperation coursing all through me. We just grinned at each other happily and then, eager, packed up camp and headed on up to the top of the ridge.