As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me by Josef M. Bauer

Author:Josef M. Bauer [Josef Martin Bauer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780332864
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2011-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

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The winter with all its severities was now upon them. It was so cold that any sudden movement of hand or arm made the air crackle like thick paper and as soon as they left the camp fire in the mornings the men’s boots became as hard as bone. Before they could take them off, or use reindeer skins as a covering for the night, they had laboriously to thaw everything out in front of the fire. The fire, indeed, was the only source of comfort in a frost-bound world, and in its circle of warmth, a man could at least suspend for a while the grim struggle to survive and turn his thoughts to other things.

Owing to the cold and the necessity of allowing time for the reindeer to find grazing, progress was painfully slow and a fortnight had passed before the men were once more in wild and uninhabited regions where the risk of undesired encounters was small. In that time, they had met with three parties of hunters, on each occasion being treated with open mistrust and hostility. What it was about them that aroused suspicion they were unable to define, and to be cold-shouldered without apparent reason was doubly disturbing. Their equipment was correct – that they could see by comparing it with the others’. Their clothing was not unduly shabby. The other men must have sensed that they were bogus, rather than seen any positive evidence. Their manner of speech, perhaps, had given them away, their lack of cordiality, their guilty conscience, or some trick of gait that only a genuine hunter would have or recognize.

By each party, they had been asked the same question: where were they heading for? There were only two possible answers. They could say they were on their way to some recognized hunting ground, or to some new territory where the game was still intact. These were the only answers that Anastas or his companions could give, for they represented the sole alternatives open to men who professed any serious intention of hunting. But in the first case, they might be looked on as undesirable intruders, in the second, as pioneers whom it would be worth joining to exploit whatever opportunities might arise. Yet the truth was that they had only one desire: to avoid the sight of their fellow men and the obligation to give even a false account of themselves to anyone, for now that they were allegedly hunters, they knew from experience how much harder it was to lie convincingly. On one occasion, for example, they had found themselves on a busy main road, far from any possible hunting ground, a prey to the more than idle curiosity of passing M.V.D. men. That experience they were not anxious to repeat.

Their first object, then, was to live and not be seen and only in so far as they had to hunt to stay alive did they pursue their adopted calling. Otherwise their energies were devoted to chasing a strange kind of will-o’-the-wisp.

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