Lord Grizzly, Second Edition by Frederick Manfred

Author:Frederick Manfred [Manfred, Frederick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FICTION
ISBN: ISBN-9780803235236
Publisher: UNP - Bison Books
Published: 2013-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

He woke by midafternoon in blinding sunlight. His first thought was of Fitz and Jim and of how sweet revenge would be.

His next thought was of his belly and of how hungry he was. “This child could right now eat the wild hairs out of a bear, he could. A she-rip at that. Gladly.”

And his next thought was of how refreshed he felt after the sleep. It amazed him that his old creaking beat-up body could come back like a young man’s after a good sleep. “This child’s been in many a tough fix, with his body all in one piece and no bones broke, and it carried him out on two legs. But I’ll be dog if this don’t beat all the way it’s carryin’ me out this time.”

To quiet his belly he jammed a piece off his buckskin shirt; pummeled the piece to shreds; chewed it until leathery juices revived his saliva buds. “‘Tain’t exactly buffler boudins but it’ll do until I catch me some.”

He made a final sighting down the long undulating rock-cropped slope toward the creek ahead with Thunder Butte as the mark to go by.

Compared with the day before, the going was wondrous easy. There were still many sharp stones and rockjuts the first ways, but it was all downhill, and most places he could slide and coast.

The gullyhead widened into a ragged irregular gash. Volcanic ash showed black ribs in the pinkyellow clay cuts. Soon clumps of rusty red bunch grass began to appear; then cactus beds; and then anthills again. He had himself a few geranium-flavored acrid cactus ears, munching and chewing them thoroughly to get out every last drop of moisture and sustenance. He thought of having another but was afraid of getting the misery skitters. The misery skitters could weaken a man faster than a double dose of galloping consumption.

He crawled along steadily.

He was halfway down toward the Thunder Butte creek when night began to race in a dooming black from the east. The sun went down in a brilliant throw of colors, an explosion of yellows and whites and peony-pink glories, limning the whole irregular, jagged, scissored horizon from far southwest to high west to low northwest with a glowing white-hot gold.

Despite his terrible hunger, his emaciation, his parched throat, the nauseating pervading stench of his rotting back, Hugh couldn’t help but marvel at all the spectacular colorings. “With a little salt and some pepper to flavor it, a man might almost make a feast on it.”

He hurried on, every now and then looking out at it, and finding himself strangely exalted by the swift transformations of the marching, retreating, rioting glories, by the violent struggle between the shafts of light and the clouds of darkness.

At last darkness won out, absolutely, except for twinkling stars and a lazy recumbent quartermoon in the west.

With darkness, too, came easier terrain. Keeping well away from the gully and taking the ridges along the falling sloping draw, Hugh found the ground smooth again and easy to crawl on.

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