Soul Catcher

  “Alkuntam, help me,” he prayed. “This is Katsuk. Help me send my message. Lead me to the innocent one.”

  An owl called in the night and he sensed its tongue bringing rain. It would rain soon. He was being called to an ordeal within an ordeal.

  Slowly, Katsuk got to his feet. He felt his body as a remote thing. He told himself: I will begin walking. I will find Hoquat in the light of day.

  ***

  From an interview with Harriet Gladding Morgenstern in the San Francisco Examiner.

  My grandson is a very brave lad. He was never afraid of the dark or any such nonsense as that, even as a small child. He was always thoughtful of his elders. We taught him to be respectful and considerate of those around him, no matter who they were. I’m sure these are the qualities which will bring him through his present trial.

  ***

  Shortly before nightfall, David found a sheltered place where a tree had been uprooted by a storm. The tree had fallen almost parallel to a small stream and its roots formed an overhang whose lip had been taken over by moss and grass.

  David crouched in the shelter for a moment, wondering if he dared build a fire. Katsuk had made a fire bow and showed the captive how to use it as a diversion, but David wondered if smoke and fire might lead Katsuk here.

  It was late, though. And there was a cold wind. He decided to risk it.

  Bark had been ripped from the tree by its fall. David found long lengths of bark and leaned them in an overlapping row against his shelter to make a heat pocket. He collected a pitch deposit from beneath a rotten log as Katsuk had taught him. A dead cedar lay along the slope above him. David slipped on wet salal and bruised his forehead getting to the cedar, but found, as he had hoped, that the tree’s fall had splintered it, leaving long dry sections underneath which could be torn off by hand. He assembled a store of the dry cedar under the roots, brought in dead limbs and more small pieces of bark, then went in search of a short green limb for a fire bow. It would have to be short to fit a shoestring.

  “Preparation, patience, persistence,” Katsuk had told him in explaining this way to make fire.

  David had wanted to give up in his first attempt with Katsuk’s fire bow, but the man had laughed at “hoquat impatience.” Goaded by that laughter, David had persisted, running the bow back and forth across its driver stick until friction made a spark in the dry grass tinder. Now he knew the careful way of it.

  With a slab of cedar notched by pounding with a stone, with a shoestring bow to drive the tinder stick, with pitch and cedar splinters ready at hand, he persisted until he had a coal, then gently blew the coal into flame which he fed with pitch and cedar. When it was going well, he thought: Katsuk should see me now.

  The thought frightened him, and he peered out of his shelter at the forest. It would be dark soon. He wondered if he would be safer from Katsuk in the night. The man had strange powers. Hunger gripped his stomach. He looked down at the stream. There would be trout in that stream. He had seen Katsuk build a weir. But the night would be cold and he knew he would get wet trying to trap a trout. He decided to forego the trout. Tomorrow ... tomorrow there might be hikers or the people he knew must be searching for him. They would have food.

  It was a long night.

  Twice, David went out to replenish his firewood, dragging back dead limbs, bark. It was raining lightly the second time and the wood sizzled when he put it on the fire. His shelter turned the rain and most of the wind, though, and it was warm by contrast with the night outside.

  Several times he dozed, sitting up with his back against the earth which had been exposed by the upheaval of roots. Once, he dreamed.

  In the dream, he was running away, but there was a long brown string trailing behind him. It was tied around his forehead the way Katsuk wore the braided cedar around his head. David sensed the string trailing him wherever he ran. The string went up the mountain to Katsuk and the man up there spoke along its length. Katsuk was calling for help. “Hoquat, help me. Help me. Hoquat, I need you. Help me.”

  David awoke to find dawn breaking and his fire almost out. He covered the coals with dirt to extinguish them and prevent telltale smoke. An attack of shivering overcame him when he went out into the misting dawn.

  I’ll keep following the stream down, he decided. There have to be people downstream.

  As he thought this, he stared upstream, searching for any sign of pursuit. Where was Katsuk now? That had been a crazy dream about string. Was Katsuk really in trouble up there? He could have fallen in the night or broken a leg or something, Crazy Indian.

  Still shivering, David set off down the watercourse.

  ***

  Sheriff Mike Pallatt:

  Sure, some of these Indians can do strange things. Make your hair stand on end, some of them. I tell myself that if you live close to something like this wilderness you get a feeling for it that others don’t have. I guess that’s it. Maybe.

  ***

  In late afternoon David worked his way through a stand of big-leaf maples in a creek bottom. His little stream had become a torrent more than ten feet across. A thick carpet of moss covered the ground beneath the maples. David thought how soft a bed the moss would make. He had found a few berries to eat and he drank water frequently, but hunger was a persistent ache now. It had moved from his stomach to a tight band around his head. David wondered if the ache in his head could be real. Was it really that brown string he had dreamed about? Was Katsuk up there somewhere holding the other end of that string? He was tired and the moss invited, but when he pressed his hand into it, water ran up between his fingers.

  He noted then that his feet were soaking wet.

  The wind had turned to the southwest. That meant rain. Patches of blue showed in the sky, but gunmetal clouds were scudding toward the peaks behind him.

  He paused beside a beaver-downed cottonwood, studied his surroundings: trees, trees, trees ... the river, a black pier of rocks buffeted by gray current ... a squirrel running on a log. Was Katsuk out in that forest nearby, silently watching? It was a thing he might do. He could be there.

  David put this fear out of his mind. That wouldn’t help. He plunged on, masking his passage wherever he could in ways he had learned from watching Katsuk: walking on rocks, on logs, avoiding muddy places.

  For a time, he wondered if he had used sufficient care in putting out his fire. If Katsuk found that fire ... Would Katsuk know his escaping captive was following the water-course? David considered leaving the stream, striking out over the hills. But the hills went up. They might go right back to Katsuk.

  A small stream entered the larger one he was following. It came in from a ravine and barred his way with a thick growth of salal and devil’s club along the watercourse. David worked his way up the small stream, found a green hole through the barbed thicket, a footlog scarred by the passage of many hooves. He peered across the footlog at the water, saw fish flicker in the current. They reminded him of his hunger, but he knew he dared not take the time to try catching one.

  He crossed the footlog, skirted a nettle patch. The trail branched upstream and downstream. David went down-stream, avoided the upthrust and twisting roots of a recently fallen tree. Brown dirt there to take his footprints. He climbed the steep hillside above the tree to conceal his passage.

  David began to wonder at his escape. It didn’t seem possible, but he was daring to hope. He knew he was in a place called the Wilderness Area. Katsuk had described it in general terms. There were park trails at the edge of the area. If he found park trails, there would be signs to tell him he was going in the right direction.

  There would be hikers.

  There would be food.

  He paused to drink from the stream before going oh.

  There was the smell of mint along the stream and many patches of nettles. The back of his left hand burned from brushing the leaves. The game trail he was following twisted away from the stream and back to it, up the hill to avoid trees on the bank, back do
wn to the mossy rocks in the water. He could see no farther than fifty feet down the watercourse.

  Bright yellow skunk cabbages glistened in shadows downstream. The water would be slower there.

  David found himself preoccupied with the many things he could sense about his surroundings, things he had learned from being with Katsuk: where a stream would run slower and deeper, where to seek a footlog, how to avoid leaving signs of his passage.

  Just beyond the skunk cabbages, he returned to the larger stream he had been following earlier. A muddy elk trail ran parallel to the stream, fresh tracks on it. Some of the tracks had not yet filled with water. A patch of elk droppings still steamed on the trail.

  He studied the trail ahead, the hillside, looking for the yellow patches of elk rumps. No sign of them, except the trail with its tracks and droppings.

  David stayed in the trees just off the trail, moved downstream, keeping the water in sight. Trees and undergrowth became thicker. He caught occasional glimpses of the opposite shore, strips of gray water. His feet were wet and cold. His toes ached.

  How far have I come from Katsuk? he wondered.

  David knew Katsuk must be seeking him by this time. The question was how? Was Katsuk tracking the fugitive? Was there another way to find him?

  He stopped to rest beside a cottonwood whose base had been partly chewed out by beaver. Yellow chips covered the ground. They were at least a week old from the color of the wood. A thick spruce towered into the sky across the muddy elk trail from him. He looked down, saw the puddles in the trail reflecting the spruce’s brown bark, the sky, painted with branches, his own wet feet. The vision filled him with a sense of his own smallness in all of this immensity.

  Where was Katsuk?

  David wondered if he dared build another fire to dry his feet. They throbbed with the cold. There was plenty of dry cedar around, lots of dry wood under the fallen trees. The cottonwood chips would burn easily. But Katsuk might see the smoke. Others could see it, too—but who would arrive first?

  He decided against a fire. It was too much of a gamble even for the sake of warm feet.

  Movement helped him to stay warmer, he knew. David resumed his cautious passage through the trees. There was a blister forming on his left heel and he tried to ignore it.

  Once, he heard a raven call. He cowered for five minutes under the sweeping limbs of a cedar before daring to go on. Even so, he kept a cautious outlook on the sky, wondering if those were Katsuk’s ravens.

  The elk trail turned, angled up a steep hill.

  David chose to stay with the river and abandon the trail.

  He leaped across the trail to avoid leaving tracks, forced his way through underbrush along the river, worked his way around a thin rock ledge above a waterfall taller than himself. Logs left by the last high water lay in a red-brown tangle across from him, swept up onto a muddy beach beneath an alder copse.

  Below the waterfall, the rock barrier forced him to cross the stream. He got wet to the waist doing it, almost lost his footing. He floundered through a pool, frightened a big trout from beneath a cutbank. The trout went arrowing downstream, half of its back exposed across a rocky shallows before it plunged into deeper water.

  David followed the trout across the shallows, the river loud in his ears, climbed into the forest on the other side, and found a game trail there.

  He estimated three hours to nightfall. The stream down which he moved now was a wide and roaring river, its edges lost in the shadows of steep banks. Hemlocks and cedars on both banks hid the upper ridges. Vine maples bowered the water in places.

  For a time, he found relatively easy passage along a dry slough back from the stream. Bleached-white alders lined the slough, scrawling sharp lines against the evergreen background. He came on a logjam at the lower end of the slough. There were rough gray trunks of long-dead trees to cross, another maple bottom on the far side of the jam.

  Fatigue and hunger forced him to a stop before crossing the logjam. He sat on a log. His chest heaved. Beneath his fear and fatigue, he felt the growth of elation. All during the night he had nurtured his hope as he nurtured the tiny fire. All through this day, he had lived in the shadow of signs and portents. But there had been no evidence of Katsuk except that brief flurry of ravens, and even they were gone. The sounds all around him were dominated by the river working its way under the edge of the logjam.

  Katsuk had said once that this river sound was the voice of Water Baby, a monster who could take human form. The man’s words had given a sense of reality to the monster which David had found it hard to discount. Water Baby trapped your soul by getting you to tell it your name. David shuddered at the memory, listened to the water. There were voices in the water, but no words.

  David looked up at the sky. It was getting darker. The light had dropped markedly and the wind possessed a new chill. Rain began to fall—big drenching drops. David got up, looked for shelter. There was only the steep hill beyond the maples, the logs. He was soaked to the skin in a minute, shivering with cold.

  As swiftly as it had come, the rain passed.

  Blue patches could be seen in the scudding gray clouds.

  Once more, David set off downstream. He longed for shelter, despaired of finding it. The river ran beside him, flowing noisily in its canyon. There were more patches of blue sky, but he felt no sunlight.

  An osprey took off from a gray snag ahead of him. It climbed out over the watercourse, circled. David stared up at the bird, letting his mind fly high, but his feet still blundered through the rocks beside the river.

  Osprey.

  David recalled Katsuk describing a tribal chief of the old times: blanket of dog wool, raven’s beak headdress, osprey feathers in his headband.

  The river made a wide curve to the left, debauched from a spruce copse into a meadow full of blue camas.

  David stopped within the tree shadows.

  The river grew wider out there, moved slow and meandering through the meadow before it plunged into thick green darkness of brush and trees at the far side. A flood-scoured bar marked the nearest river bend. Milky wavelets clawed at sand there.

  David let his gaze traverse the meadow’s rim, right to left, gasped as he saw a sign. He saw the park trail then, off to the left. A small stream came down into the meadow there, reaching out to the river. A man-made footbridge crossed the small stream. Big letters on the sign beside the bridge read KILKELLY SHELTER 2 MI.

  Shelter!

  David felt his heart beting faster. He and Katsuk had stayed in shelters. One had been in a deep stand of cedar, water running down the trail beside it. There had been a wet smell of ashes, a fire pit under an overhanging porch. The shelter’s lower logs had been rotten, chipped out at the bottom by hikers in search of dry fuel.

  The arrow on the sign pointed to the right, downstream.

  David thought: There may be hikers!

  He stepped from the tree shadows, stopped in confusion at a great flapping of wings and bird cries overhead. A flock of ravens had leaped into the sky at sight of him, filling the air with their uproar. David stared up at them, terrified.

  Ravens! Hundreds of them!

  They darkened the sky, wheeling and calling.

  As though the birds had summoned him, Katsuk emerged from the trees across the meadow on the far side of the river. He stood a moment beside a great spruce, his headband dull red, a black feather in the back. He came straight then toward the river, one arm brushing aside silken green leaves at the bank. He stopped only when he was thigh deep in the water. The river around him ran milky with snowmelt.

  David stared at Katsuk, unable to move.

  The ravens continued to wheel and call.

  Katsuk waited in the water, holding his bow and arrow high, staring up at the birds.

  Why is he waiting? David wondered.

  At the river’s near shore, David saw the silvery white of raindrops on reeds, then gray rocks, then the river, and Katsuk standing in the water like an anim
al startled into stillness, undecided which way to turn, waiting.

  Why?

  The ravens whirled out over the trees beyond the meadow, went away with diminishing noise, grew abruptly silent. They had settled down.

  As the birds fell silent, Katsuk plunged into motion, crossed the river, climbed dripping into the meadow. He came straight on to where David stood, walking with slow, deliberate steps. The strung bow was carried in his left hand, a single arrow clutched to it with two fingers. He wore the obsidian knife in a loop of his rope belt near the pouch. His loincloth was stained with brown earth. Water ran from it down his legs.

  Katsuk stopped a pace from David, stood staring into the boy’s face.

  David trembled, not knowing what to do or say. He knew he could not outrun Katsuk. And there was that bow with an arrow ready for it.

  “Raven told me where you would be,” Katsuk said. “I came straight here after I had made my arrow. You followed the river as Raven told me. That is the long way here.”

  David’s teeth chattered with cold and fear. There was an oddly deliberate pacing to Katsuk’s words.

  Katsuk held up the bow and the arrow. “You see—they are finished.” He nodded. “But I did not feel it when you lured me to that arrow tree. I thought the arrow wood was a gift and took it. I thanked Cedar. But you tricked me. It was a trick.”

  Katsuk coughed, deep and racking. When the spasm passed, he stood trembling. The skin of his jaws and cheeks was pale.

  What’s wrong with him? David wondered.

  “You have put the Cedar sickness upon me,” Katsuk said. “You and Tskanay.”

  David thought: He really is sick.

  Katsuk said: “I am cold. We must find a place to be warm. Cedar takes the heat of my body and sends it to the sky.”

  David shook his head, tried to still the chattering of his teeth. Katsuk had been waiting here at the meadow with his birds. But he sounded so ... strange. The sickness had changed him.

  “Take this sickness from me,” Katsuk said.

  David bit his lip, seeking pain to help stop the chattering of his teeth. He pointed to the sign. “There’s a shelter. We could—”