Down The Path Page 9
Lupe was sniffing the fish intently. She even licked the wound he had made to kill the fish, but apparently it was to her disliking. He pulled her back as she went in to sniff those black tendrils coming out from around its mouth.
It took him very little time to gut the fish. For safety, he also removed the strange tendrils, but while he wasn’t looking Lupe ate them. Perhaps he had overplayed the danger these whiskers posed.
The timing of the catch was unfortunate, since he had just eaten lunch, but he decided to hang it in the smoke from the fire. By the time it was done cooking, he would be hungry again.
Using a diagram from his survival binder, he quickly built a simple rig out of sticks that would allow the fish to dangle in the smoke, just out of the main heat of the fire. Enough heat was hitting it to cook it; it would just take a long time. The hardest part, he assumed, was going to be keeping Lupe away from it.
He spent the rest of the afternoon digging for crawdads along the banks of the river and salting them for preservation. With his energy much higher, he planned on trying to cover more ground and reach the bend in the river where it began its journey south.
He got a good deal salted and was very careful to limit the amount of salt that hit the wound on his hand. The little bit that got in there nearly made him cry out in pain. It still throbbed and Cooper was beginning to worry about infection, but he was keeping the dressing clean and reapplying red liquid every time.
When the sun began turning the sky that familiar shade of orange, he noticed he was hungry for dinner. Lupe had not seemed all that interested in the hanging fish and he wondered if it was actually the thick smoke that was keeping her away.
As he pulled the fish off his contraption of sticks and twine, he could tell it was fully cooked as the flesh flaked apart when he squeezed. He could also tell that this fish had a good deal of oil in it and it smelled delicious. Cooper felt his hunger growing stronger with every second he held it.
The fish tasted so much different than the carp, it was unbelievable. Instead of being mushy and tasting of mud, it was rich and creamy and clean. It left a very delicious aftertaste in his mouth. He almost regretted taking a drink of his water for fear of washing away any of the flavors. The smoke seemed to compliment the fish greatly as well and he planned on doing that again. The smoking rig was so easy to construct, there was no reason to lug it along with him.
He made a note of keeping more bits of rodent to try to catch more of these fish along the way. It would be difficult though as this one took so long to take the bait, but if he rested every few days and tried to catch more, he could salt the extra and have plenty of this delicious and unique food.
After he had eaten his fill and tossed a few bites over to Lupe, he packed the rest in salt. He felt gluttonous having eaten so much. His stomach was so full it nearly hurt. It felt good to be this full and happy once again. His hand still hurt, and looked to be swelling slightly, but he was keeping an eye on it and would make a decision on what to do in the morning.
After his luxurious meal, he crawled back into his tent for another night, and drifted off to sleep.
The morning came to find Cooper with much more worry over his hand. It was significantly swollen now and was very sensitive. It almost seemed hot to the touch as well. The red liquid clearly was not working. All he had learned about the dangers of infection came flooding back to him and he knew he needed to use the salt.
He pulled out the sack of salt from his pack, proud to still have so much of it, and took a pinch in his fingers. Spreading his palm as wide as he could to open the wound, which caused a great deal of pain on its own, he pushed the salt down into the puncture.
At first it stung like it had when he was salting the crawdads, but then the pain became much worse. He yelled because of it. Lupe stuck her head inside the tent and then quickly ran out.
The pain continued to build to heights he did not know possible and grabbed one of his shirts to bite down on lest he crack a tooth from gritting so hard. He felt the blood all rush to his head and he was dizzy for just a split second; he would not pass out from this!
Just then, the pain stopped building and held at that one excruciating level for a short time before he felt it finally started to abate. As he felt the level of pain dropping, he began to get light-headed and his whole arm went numb. As he sat there, sweating profusely, for what seemed like ages; the familiar dull throbbing slowly worked its way back into his hand. Cooper took this as a good sign and decided it was time to wrap it up. He had more salt to use on it if he had to.
Having taken a day of rest the day before, he knew he had to move on. This wound was localized in his hand, so it offered no serious impediment to his travels. Cooper realized he had now done everything he could to properly clean it. He had experienced pain like he never knew possible and never hoped to experience again, and was confident it would heal. He held out hope, as well, that he would not have to use any more salt on the wound. He wasn’t worried about the usage of the salt. It had taken very little to accomplish the task, he just didn’t want to inflict that kind of pain again if it could be avoided.
After re-applying red liquid and wrapping his hand in a clean rag, he got all of his things together and headed off.
It was still very easy walking along the river as it was almost completely flat. Frequently as he was walking he noticed a very slight downhill in his direction. He was trying to take full advantage of both the terrain and his increased energy levels and speed up.
15
Several more days had passed and Cooper was anxious to find the bend in the river. He could tell the flow of the water was slowing down and up ahead he saw the river widen. He began to get worried that perhaps the maps were not correct. Could rivers change? These were all things that he had not been able to determine before leaving the city.
As he continued along, he realized his fears were in vain. The river widened because it had carved out a large elbow into the landscape where it turned south. The water slowed down because it backed up into that elbow. It barely had any flow here except for along one edge of the river and it also got very shallow.
The plan had been for him to build a raft and float down the river instead of walk. With his illness when he first reached the river, he had not been able to do that, but the situation at the rivers elbow seemed ideal for such a project. The slack water would allow him to put the raft in the water and test the balance without fear of it, or him, being swept away.
The only problem he had was that the slack water was on the opposite side of the river than he was. It was shallow here, it didn’t seem to be much higher than his knees, but he had to get through the swift moving water first, and it appeared deeper.
Thankfully, it had been getting slightly warmer nearly every day of his trip, so the cold water would actually be refreshing, but he wasn’t certain how long his pack would remain waterproof. He knew the pack did not allow in rain, but being fully submerged was a test he didn’t want to put it through.
Cooper settled on the river bank to think about the problem. Lupe had been at his side, but grew bored and bounded off into the forest.
This was a problem that Cooper was having a serious issue with. He was aware that he had already used any luck he had on this voyage. He decided he needed more information and got a long stick to judge the depth of the deeper spot.
Just as he thought, the swift section was deeper, but not so deep as to be frightening. Measuring with the stick, it appeared it would come up to his waist.
This left him with only one way around the obstacle that made any sense to him. He had to walk through it. He decided he could use a stick to leverage downstream against the current, so as the river tried to push him, he could push back using the stick. It was a short section that was swift and he was fairly confident that he could get through it and to the rest of the river, which appeared much easier.
Cooper searched around for a nice, stout stick that was strong and not t
oo heavy. This was the most important part of his plan. If his stick broke, the entire plan, and likely his pack, was sunk.
Stepping into the current, he held onto the bank. He felt the water rush around his ankles and push desperately against thighs. The bottom felt soft and his feet sunk slightly into it. While still holding onto the bank, he slung his stick around and wedged it hard against the bottom. Leaning on his stick, he released the bank. Now was when he would determine if his plan was good. An image of his bag of salt dissolving in the river water made his heart skip a beat.
He took his first step and then quickly moved his stick. Everything seemed to be working nicely. He was feeling confident that with just a few more murky strides; he would be in the area where the river was slack and shallower.
Lupe came back to the bank and noticed him in the water. At first, Cooper didn’t think much of her. Seeing her run slightly up river and then head directly for the water, his eyes went wide with fear.
She entered the water in a grand splash, right in the swiftest area. She began her controlled paddling, but the river was sending her straight for him like some hairy bowling ball heading down the lane.
Cooper began shouting at her and waving his one free arm. He nearly slipped while doing this though. Being a dog, she had no idea why he was waving his arm and the river seemed to be whipping her towards him even faster now. He knew she would knock him over; there would be no way to stabilize against the pooch hitting him at that speed.
He tried to speed his movements through the water, he was so close to the other side of the deeper water….he decided to take a risk. Quickly he slipped his pack off and held it high in the air with his one hand. Just before she crashed into him, he pushed off with all his might. His whole body groaned trying to move that quickly while his feet were still in the soft mud. The river bottom released him though and he broke free of the swift current. Landing on his knees in the shallow side, he realized his arm was shaking from holding the heavy pack so high for so long. He had forgotten he was holding it.
Lupe paddled quietly past him as she entered the slack water. She didn’t seem the least bit worried or upset, having been slung by the river countless times.
Cooper stood up, laughing. Slipping the pack around his shoulders and onto his back, he thought he had certainly used up all his luck on that one.
It was an easy walk through the water to the other side of the river. The water was still murky, but he could see the bottom. At least he could see the bottom until he stepped anywhere near it, stirring up a massive plume of sediment with every footstep. Looking ahead of him, where the water was still clear, he could see smaller fish swimming around. These didn’t look like the scale-less whisker fish that had stung him, they were smaller and moved very fast in what seemed like multiple directions at once.
He had thought to bring a carp net on his voyage, but as he packed there was simply no room. These fish looked too small for the carp net anyway; they could probably swim out through the holes. There erratic swimming patterns reminded him of the rabbits and he wondered if he could herd them into something else and trap them? If he had enough time while building his raft, he may just give that a try.
He reached the other side and climbed out of the river with much less stress and excitement than getting in had caused. Lupe hopped out as well, and cast away most of the river from her with a mighty shake than ended at the tip of her tail. The amount of water that dog could hold in her fur never ceased to amaze him.
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The other side of the river, right here near the elbow, seemed a nice place to camp. It was good and flat as almost every place he had seen on his voyage. The trees were still thick, casting dappled shadows all over the ground. The striking thing he noticed here was that the crawdad pipes were lined up along the elbow. Most were nearly touching and only in a single row along the water. It was as if the crawdads wanted river front property or nothing!
After setting up his tent he had some light left and decided to solve the problem of his pack and things getting wet. He took every item out of his pack and lined them all up inside his tent. His pack seemed so well designed, he needed to know if it could sustain dunking in the river. By his estimate, floating down the river on a raft he hobbled together was a recipe for at least one complete dunking. He knew his pack had pockets on the inside as well as the outside, and he needed to know if water could get into all those pockets. Most had zippers but he wasn’t sure if the zippers could keep water out completely.
Cooper didn’t much mind if his pack got soaked right now since he planned on being here several days building his raft. As test items, he grabbed all his rags and stuffed them in each pocket and crevice inside his bag. Lupe was very curious what was going on here, mainly because he had left the remainder of the salt carp tucked inside the tent.
Wading back out into the river, he plunged his bag underwater and held it there, even shook it around a little. He wanted to simulate an accidental pitch into the river. After what felt like much more time than he would ever accidentally spend in the water, he pulled his bag back out and trudged through the muck back onto shore.
Upon opening his pack, the results were as feared. One rag after the other came out of the pockets sopping wet. Some pockets even seemed to be holding the water in. apparently it could get in, but not out. This was helpful if he wanted to keep one of the small fish alive, but unless Lupe wanted a fish for a companion, it served only to annoy him.
As he turned his pack upside down, he realized he had forgotten to check the pocket on the inside of the flap covering the top of the pack. He didn’t hear any sloshing, so at least that one didn’t hold any water. Unzipping that pocket, he retrieved a rag that was bone dry.
Cooper was ecstatic. He had one pocket, albeit small, that provided waterproof storage. He quickly crammed his salt and other salted foods into the pocket and it all fit well. He had never even put anything in that pocket anyway because he hadn’t need to. That would change now.
As he was growing tired from a hectic day, he reminded himself to check the pack again in the morning, completely retest, in order to be sure of his results. He didn’t want the fate of all of his salt reserves to be resting on what may have been a fluke.
Climbing into the tent, he nibbled on some salted crawdads along with some of the same crunchy, slightly bitter greens that grew all along the river, and drifted off to sleep thinking finally, the real adventure would begin soon.
16
After eating a breakfast of a fresh roasted rodent that Lupe had retrieved, Cooper set to work. He examined the plans in his binder for rafts and they were pretty basic. Mostly, they talked about the mechanics of rafts and how they should work. Christopher had never seen a river, so he had not imaged the way the water swirled and did not always move in a straight line.
The first change that Cooper needed was some kind of steering device. He drew a blank slate on that one. He had no idea how to make a raft go the direction he wanted it to go.
Then he remembered the crossing from the day before. Until he figured something else out, he could always use a stick to shove the bottom, and in turn the raft, in the direction he wanted. Of course, this assumed he would be able to touch the bottom all the time, but it was the best thing he could come up with at the moment and it allowed him to focus on the next step.
Stopping the raft was another story, but since he did not need to necessarily build a stopper into the raft, he could come back to that problem after the raft was built.
His biggest task, by far, was building the actual raft. Since he had expected to be building a raft, he had plenty of cord to lash everything together, plus he had been taught how to make more cord out of braided plants as well as the inner lining of tree bark. He had plenty of tree bark.
With his space constraints, he had no axe or saw; just his two knives, one smaller and one larger. The larger one could be pushed into a tree and then hammered on the back end of the blade with a stick to ser
ve as a type of cutting wedge, but he imagined that taking a long time.
The forest around this elbow was thick with dead, standing ulms, and he had fire. His plan was going to be to somehow knock over the smaller ulms and burn them to the size he wanted.
He didn’t need logs any thicker than his legs for the raft, and he saw plenty that were around that size and dead. The problem might be in getting them down.
He knew he needed a nice hot fire though, so he decided to stoke his up with lots of the dead wood lying around that was either too short or too thick for his purposes.
It took most of the morning, but he had found his rhythm with the trees. As it turned out, many of them were too rotten for his use. He could push them over easily, but then they would smash into dozen of pieces once they hit the ground. Many of the other trees were good and stout but he could not get them to budge. He had even tried whacking at one especially good looking one with his knife, but it was taking too long for him to ever finish an entire raft.
He had found several though that were stout and he could push over. After finding a few good ones, he knew to stop pushing them over until he needed them. His plan was to burn them into a length as long as he was tall and lash them all together. The guidebook showed a brace on each side and an ‘X’between them on the bottom. Apparently this made the raft float higher and hold together in case he hit a rock or some other obstacle.
By his calculations, he would need 16 timbers. Many of the dead trees he could get 2 timbers out of, maybe even three. He wanted to have extra timbers for repairs down river as well. Cooper did not know what the forest would look like down there and he didn’t want to assume that he could find what he needed easily. He would put these extra timbers on each side of the top of the raft, creating a lip running around the whole thing; this way things couldn’t roll off the raft into the water.