The Trickster by Muriel Gray

Author:Muriel Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008134730
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-10-08T10:43:55.937000+00:00

33

Alberta 1907 Siding Twenty-three

Even as the snow fell, the wind was blowing it from those two straight rail tracks, and in the thick pillow of white that covered every other trace of topography it was as though two infinite charcoal black lines had been drawn on a white sheet.

Tall pines, fronted by scrub birch, formed a lugubrious wall on either side, and Hunting Wolf felt them imprison him as he staggered along between the tracks, his chest heaving for breath as though it would explode.

Over the pounding of his own heart and the rasping of his elusive breath, he could hear this new abomination gaining ground behind him. He could hear its paws beating in the snow, its breath grunting with every bound. Great Spirit, he had no prayers left for these poor creatures. How much more? He lurched forward and his foot caught a sleeper, pitching him forward, spread-eagled into the snow. He could run no further. And running was a pointless conceit. Hunting Wolf lay gasping, waiting for his torment.

A bear cub this time. A bear cub roused from winter slumber by its mother’s side for this atrocity. It bounded a few feet ahead of the Indian’s body, lying half-submerged in the crystalline snow, and stopped in front of him.

‘Look at me, you worthless scum.’ The voice was forced from the bear’s unwilling and violated vocal cords, grumbling in its throat like a growl of pain.

Hunting Wolf kept his eyes shut and began chanting a prayer for the bear’s soul to the Eagle God, his outspread palms grasping the snow into balls.

‘LOOK AT ME!’

He chanted louder, grimacing as the cold of the snow started to burn his face with its sting. A theatrical pause, as the evil in the animal enjoyed the wait, and then that noise – the ripping of animal flesh, the snapping of bone and the sickening wet slick of fur being torn by teeth from the viscous membrane that attaches it to skin. The animal roared in agony as it devoured itself, and Hunting Wolf felt its hot blood splash his face and hands.

He threw his hands to his ears, but his frozen fingers could not muffle the sound of the creature in such torturous pain. It bellowed and screamed and the snow churned around its doomed body as it writhed in the pincer of its own jaws and talons.

It was worse this time. He knew it was going to leave the creature half-alive. Hunting Wolf felt the Trickster leave the cub’s body and the animal ceased its frenzy of self-destruction. But it was still screaming. He opened his eyes and pulled himself up out of the snow. The cub was propped up on the edge of a crater of snow it had created with its own death throes, and it sat looking grotesquely comical, like an old man in a hammock. It had torn its stomach open and bitten off both its feet, the bone protruding in sharp spears of ivory from the seeping dark stumps.

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