Desperately, I rolled over and as the cat leaped I rolled over again and came up sitting. The cat knocked me back to the ground, its teeth going for my throat. With my left hand I grabbed the loose skin of its neck and we fought, desperately, the cat to reach my throat, I to hold him back. At the same time I swung again with my knife.
The blade sank deep, and as it did so I turned my left fist which gripped the loose skin, turned it so my knuckles pressed hard against the cat's neck. A paw came up, clawing at my hand. It ripped the buckskin of my jacket, tore the flesh on my forearm, but to let go was to die. I stabbed again and again with the knife.
It was ripping with one hindleg, but the fierce claws were digging the earth, not me. There were only short, convulsive movements from the other hind foot.
I stabbed again, and it seemed the struggles grew weaker. Again and again--suddenly I threw the cat from me.
It lay there, bloody and exhausted, staring at me with all the insane fury such a beast contained. The grass and leaves were spattered with blood. Some of mine was mingled with it, but my knife had stabbed deep, again and again. The cat stared, tried to move, and then fell over. Once more it tried to come to itself and failed to rise. The wild eyes glared their hatred, and the beast died.
My one good leg was ripped and raw, with deep lacerations. My arm had been bitten, when I did not recall, but my forearms and shoulder had also been clawed. My scalp was also torn by teeth, and a string hung near my eye. Yet I was conscious and aware.
Whatever had been my troubles before, they were more than doubled now. The claws and fangs of a wild beast are poisoned from the fragments of decaying meat around them. I needed to get to the stream, cleanse myself, and try to patch up this poor creature I had become.
Taking my bow and quiver, I started to crawl, and then I stopped. I had come for meat, and I was leaving meat behind me. A Catawba whom we knew had once said that panther meat was best of all, and Yance, who had eaten it on one of his forays into the deep woods, agreed. So I peeled back the hide and cut a fair-sized chunk from the panther. Then, on my feet and with my crutch and bow, I hobbled back to my camp.
Falling on the ground I crawled to the stream and lay in its shallow waters near the edge, letting the cool water run slowly over me. And when I looked up, there were stars. My fingers dug into the mud of the stream and I plastered my wounds with it.
Weak from exhaustion and loss of blood I crawled from the stream applying more mud to my wounds. Somewhere I had been told mud was useful, but I did not remember why. I cared only that it was here and that somehow the bleeding must be stopped.
Crawling to my bed I pulled the blanket over me and lay shivering. Whether I simply lost consciousness or slept I do not know, but when I opened my eyes I fumbled some sticks into the fire before passing out again.
It was daylight when my eyes opened. A few tendrils of smoke lifted from my coals and I coaxed them to flame once more, dipped water into the bark dish, and suspended it above the fire. I cut a piece of the meat and dropped it in with some other things gathered when crawling about.
After a long time I opened my eyes and the water had boiled down leaving a kind of mush of my stew. With my wooden spoon I managed a few mouthfuls before passing out again.
There was a long while then when I fought wild battles with gigantic cats, when buffalo stampeded over me and Kapata returned with his spear. It was delirium, and I knew it, and from time to time I crawled to the stream and drank. Once I made chicory coffee and then passed out still again.
Once I chewed on raw meat, and finally I slept, a deep, long sleep almost like the sleep of death.
In it I felt gentle hands--my wounds were being treated and I was home again.
Consciousness returned and my eyes opened. I was clearly awake and there was no delirium. I turned my head. An Indian sat by the fire, eating.
It was Keokotah.
Chapter Eleven.
'One leg no good,' Keokotah said, and took another bite from the meat in his hands.
'I fell,' I explained.
'Not you.' He pointed into the brush where I had fought the panther. 'Him.' He chewed for a minute. 'No catch deer, catch you.'
'You mean that cat had a bad leg?' I struggled to sit up.
He motioned for me to be still. 'You stay. You much scratch. I fix.'
With gentle fingers I felt of my wounds. Where the flesh had been torn by the panther's talons my wounds were bound with some kind of poultice. It had not been a dream, then. My wounds had been treated. 'I'm obliged,' I said. 'Are you a medicine man, too?'
He chuckled and gave me a wry look. 'No medicine man. All know.' He showed me the slender trunk of a young pine no thicker than two of my fingers. Then he indicated the inner bark of the plum. He had pounded them together with some wild cherry bark also, boiled the concoction, and made a poultice.
'You no come. I know something wrong. I come to look.' He pointed. 'I find him. He dead. Some meat gone, so I look for you.'
He had killed a deer, and he made a broth of the meat, bone marrow, and some herbs. I ate it slowly, savoring every bit. Then I was tired and I lay back, resting and willing to rest.
'Kapata was here?' said Keokotah.
When I had told my story he shrugged. 'I find tracks. They go to Great River.' He chewed in silence and then glanced at me again. Then he placed my bow and quiver close at hand and lay down and went to sleep.
It was night and I was tired, but no longer wished to sleep. Keokotah had come back to look for me, and a lucky thing. Could I have survived? I think so. I knew of herbs to treat wounds. I could have survived, yet he had returned. He was my friend.
Listening to the night I heard no sounds but those natural to the forest and the night--only the wind in the long grass of the cove and the chuckling sound from the stream near the cave mouth. I closed my eyes but not to sleep, only to think.
When I was up and about, we must move with speed. Kapata would seek Itchakomi and might find her before we could. He was a hard, stubborn man and not to be frustrated by any woman, yet from what Ni'kwana had said this was no ordinary woman. Still, we must hurry. I would deliver the message from Ni'kwana and protect her from Kapata if that were necessary, and then go on about my business.
It was a new land out there, and I wished to see it. I wanted to wander down the long hills, seek out the wooded canyons, follow its running streams. I wanted to live from the country, breathe the air of the high mesas, and climb where the streams were born from under the slide rock.
Now I must become well quickly. It was no time to be lying here. I finished what remained of the broth. I would need strength for the bow, strength for walking the long miles, strength for the paddle of my canoe.
Did Kapata have a canoe? Perhaps not. In that might lie an advantage.
Wind bent the tall grass, stirred among the leaves, fluttered the small flame of my fire. I closed my eyes. A morning would come.
Gently, I eased my broken leg. I could manage that leg in a canoe. I would have to sit and not kneel as I most often did, but the bone would knit as well in a canoe as lying here.
How many days had passed? I had kept no record, had only the vaguest idea. I had slept and awakened, but how long had I slept? Was I not unconscious a part of the time? No matter. It was time to move on and I would move, if only a mile a day.
How long had Keokotah been with me? Again I had no idea and when I asked he merely shrugged.
Yet for two days longer I rested, gathering strength, moving about the camp, making a better crutch, planning our move. Of one thing I was sure. Someday I would return to this place, to this grassy cove.
There was a trail that led through it, and Keokotah was convinced the stream in the cave was the same that issued far below in the Sequatchie valley. I had seen but little of the valley, yet it was a place I could come to love. It was a place where we Sacketts belonged.
On a tree near the cave I carved an A, but this time I carved an arrow beneath it, pointing down.
