The Canyon by Jack Schaefer

Author:Jack Schaefer [Schaefer, Jack]
Format: epub
Published: 1953-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

He sat crouched with the fire between him and the doorway. The flames were low and would not leap up. The smoke rose slowly as if it were reluctant to drift out the smoke hole into the outer darkness. There was no sound except the small whisperings of the fire yet his muscles twitched and an awareness grew in him and suddenly there was a rushing of sounds. The buffalo were snorting and whistling through their nostrils and they were running. They were ploughing through the snow along the rock wall down the canyon. The sounds faded and the silence returned yet the awareness was still strong within him. The puma was there. It had not followed the buffalo. It was outside and it was very near.

He listened. Drops of cold sweat dripped from his chin as he listened. He heard the sound of claws on rock. It was trying to rip the stones away from his storehouse. He shouted. He stirred the fire so that sparks flew upward. He thumped the ground and screamed and screeched wordless sounds. He seized a stick from the fire and thrust the burning end up through the smoke hole in the roof and jumped over the fire and as he jumped pushed his hand with the burning stick up through the hole and flung it so that it fell outside hissing in the snow.

He crouched on the ground inside with the bow in his hand and an arrow notched and listened. There was no sound. The immediate awareness died away within him. He put more wood on the fire and crouched by it and gradually his muscles ceased twitching. The canyon outside with a big bowl filled with a dark silence. He crouched by the fire and dark shadows filled his mind.

Then the bellowing began. It was deep and rumbling. It rose and fell and rose again. It stopped and it began again and it stopped again and began yet again. There was silence and then there was bellowing and once the great cat screamed, a high climbing scream that held a fearful fierceness and a fearful fury. And the hours passed, slow and dragging, and he crouched by the fire and the dark shadows whirled in his mind…

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