The Dark Place

skull was whole.

'Ya'a hushol!' he shouted at the forest, trying to make his voice friendly, but how the hell did you sound friendly in Yahi?

* * * *

'There,” Julie said, pressing the adhesive strip into place with cool fingers. “It's not going to hold very well on account of your hair, but it'll do. You'll live.'

Gideon nodded vacantly. He was sitting on a tree trunk in front of the tent. During the cleaning and dressing of the wound he had been docile and dreamy.

'Gideon, you are all right, aren't you?'

'All right? Julie, I'm wonderful! Paleolithic people! That could have been a Cro-Magnon looking at me, or even a Mousterian Man...except for the race, of course,” he emended properly, “which wouldn't have been Mongoloid. But, my God, a stone ax, a deerskin breechclout, a body greased against the cold...'

She laughed. “Somebody sneaks up behind you and whomps you on the head, and you couldn't be more pleased.” She snapped the first-aid kit shut, straddled the log, and sat down at his side. “Gideon,” she said seriously, “what would be the point of hitting you on the head?'

'I must have gotten too close to their village. Maybe they thought I saw them.'

'But then why not kill you? What good would it do just to hit you and then leave you to tell the tale? All they had to do was bop you again while you were unconscious.” She illustrated with a dip of her wrist. “Bop.'

'It seems to me,” he said, gingerly fingering the bandage, “you're taking a rather cavalier attitude about my head. Bop, indeed. Anyway, they probably thought I was already dead.'

'I doubt it. With all due respect to your head, it isn't that bad a wound, and you didn't bleed a lot. I don't think you could have looked very dead. Do you think it was the old man who bopped you—'

'Julie,” he grumbled, “I wish you wouldn't keep saying ‘bop.’ It trivializes a very painful—'

She leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. “You're funny. How about ‘clobber'?'

He kissed her back and nodded judiciously. “'Clobber’ is acceptable.'

'All right, do you think it was the old man who clobbered you? Do you think he was creeping up on you to finish the job when you woke up?'

'No, I don't think so. He was scared to death. I think somebody else must have hit me earlier. Then the old man came along and saw me lying there and was just having a very tentative, careful look when I terrified him by waking up. How long was I gone altogether?'

'Not even ten minutes, before I heard you yelling those funny Yahi words. So you couldn't have been unconscious very long.'

'Hmm,” Gideon said. “It seemed longer.'

'Well,” Julie said after a pause, “what do we do now?'

'I go find them—'

'Find them? After they've clobbered you—'

'A mere bop. If I could talk to them—'

'You talked to the old man, and that didn't get you anywhere.'

'He was too frightened. But he understood me; I could see that in his eyes.'

'All right,” she said, “so we go and find them—'

'I go and find them. You walk back to North Fork and get in your car and go to Lake Quinault.'

'You'd send me off, walking all alone, defenseless and vulnerable, in a forest full of naked men with axes and spears?'

'Hmm. That's a point.'

There were other points: She knew the rain forest infinitely better than he did, knew how to read it and use it; two heads were better than one; and she was a reasonably expert tracker. Of the last point he was courteously skeptical, but the others made sense.

In the end, they agreed to look for the Yahi together. They would leave the tent and cooking equipment where they were and carry their personal gear with them. If they didn't encounter the Indians in a few hours, they would turn back so they could reach North Fork before dark. John could take over the quest the next day. They took Julie's sleeping bag with them in case they lost their way and had to spend the night.

They began by searching for signs of the old man where Gideon had last seen him. Julie quickly found some vague depressions in the ground cover and announced that they were human tracks made within the past two hours, possibly by a person with one crippled foot.

'And,” she said, pointing downstream through the dense trees, “they lead that way. Let's go.'

Gideon followed, impressed by her confidence but still not convinced of her expertise. His doubts were removed half an hour later, however. They had laboriously followed the faint indentations for about a hundred feet when they came to a large expanse of granite covered only by a skin of moss on which an accumulation of damp leaves had collected. Without soil, nothing remotely resembling a footprint was visible.

'Okay, expert,” he said, “what now?'

Julie got to one knee, then lay full length on the ground and pushed herself about on her elbows to study the area from different angles. After a few minutes she emitted a self-satisfied “aha,” stood up, and brushed the leaves from her. “He went thataway,” she said.