Way of the Wolf (8 page)

They climbed for two more hours after leaving the river. They talked, but not much. It was more important to save their breath for walking. Beck kept an eye on his friend. He remembered how every muscle in his legs had been screaming the first time he climbed a mountain; that was probably how Tikaani was feeling now.

Beck showed him the way: put one foot in front of the other, maintain a steady rhythm and just keep going. Every hour you stopped for five minutes – which was enough to rest your limbs without allowing them to stiffen up. You needed mental discipline to get going again immediately the rest period was over.

‘Just push through the pain barrier,’ he urged his
friend. ‘You’ll always find you can take one more step. And then you find you can take another. And then your body gets used to it.’

And so the ground passed slowly in front of their eyes as they trudged up the side of the mountain. The cold wind, which just on its own could cause frostbite, was behind them and their rucksacks helped absorb its attack. But Beck remembered a figure he had been taught once – for every hundred metres you go up, the temperature drops by two degrees Celsius. By that reckoning they would be at freezing point before they reached the top of the mountains – which was why the peaks were clad in snow and ice.

It also meant that once they were heading downhill again, the temperature would go
up
two degrees for every hundred metres of descent. That was something to look forward to.

Beck wondered about making a noise to scare off any bears, but as the trees thinned out it seemed less important. He couldn’t believe any bears would be hanging around up here when there would be so much more for them down on the plain. Animals
have a big advantage over humans, he thought ruefully; they know where they’re better off and they stay there.

Finally he decided it was time to call a halt for the day.

‘This’ll do,’ he said. The non-stop uphill terrain had actually dipped a little and the ground was flat. They were among the very last of the trees. Above them was just rock, with a very thin covering of soil. And soon after that, just snow and ice.

To mark the spot he ceremonially undid his rucksack clips and let it fall to the ground behind him. Tikaani did likewise.

‘Thank you,’ his friend said earnestly, then took a few steps to ease his aching legs. ‘I really couldn’t have taken—
Wow!
’

Tikaani had looked back the way they had come. Beck came to stand beside him and together they looked proudly out over Alaska.

Beck estimated they had climbed a good thousand metres since they had crossed the river. Below them, trees and tundra merged together into a patchwork quilt flung all the way to the horizon,
where it merged into a grey sky. Maybe they had been higher than this in the plane, but when you were up there you felt cut off from the scene. Now, standing on the ground, the two boys actually felt part of this astonishing landscape.

‘We did all that today?’ Tikaani asked, amazed. ‘
We
did
that
?’

‘Yup,’ Beck agreed. ‘We did that.’

He looked out at the incredible vista with less enthusiasm. Normally he would have loved to enjoy the view. But somewhere down there was Uncle Al in his makeshift shelter, and he wasn’t getting any better. So while Tikaani looked at the tundra far below, and marvelled at the awesome beauty, Beck thought of it as one third of their journey. With two thirds still to come.

He patted Tikaani on the shoulder. ‘Come on – we need to make a shelter while it’s still light.’

He looked around, considering. Ideally he would have liked to make an A-frame shelter, like the one he had built in Colombia for himself, Marco and Christina. It would be sturdy and give the best protection against the elements. But it would need
good strong branches cut off a tree, and he only had the Bowie knife, not a saw.

‘We’ll make a lean-to,’ he decided, ‘and we’ll make it here.’

He stood between a pine tree and a boulder that came up to his shoulders. At about the same height on the tree there was a fork in the branches. ‘We need to find a branch that’s good and straight.’ He tapped the fork, then the rock. ‘We put it across here, and lean other branches and stuff against it. It’ll block out the wind and we can sleep in its shelter.’

‘There’s still one side open,’ Tikaani pointed out.

‘Yup. The fire goes that side. Trust me – we’ll be snug as a bug in a rug.’

‘Any bugs in my rug,’ Tikaani muttered, ‘get squished.’

They soon found the main branch for the shelter, still attached to a tree nearby. The wood was too thick to cut with the knife, but by hanging on it with their combined weight they made it sheer off until it was only attached by a few strands which the knife could handle. They laid it across from the fork in the
tree to the rock, and started to look for other branches on the ground that they could prop against it.

‘What do we do tomorrow?’ Tikaani asked as they searched. He jerked a thumb upwards, pointing up the mountain. ‘No trees up there.’

‘We’re not going to spend a night in the snow,’ Beck promised. ‘Not if I can help it. This time tomorrow we’ll be up and over and down in the trees on the other side of the mountain. So we’ll probably do the same again. OK, we need foliage – plenty of it. If it’s going to be windproof, we want it at least ten centimetres thick . . .’

‘OK,’ Tikaani said. ‘I think I saw some loose branches over here . . .’

He ducked behind some trees, out of sight for a moment. Beck decided he would start gathering wood for a fire. There were plenty of dry, dead twigs that could be used for kindling, and he crouched down to scoop up a handful.

‘
Beck! Beck!
’

Beck jumped to his feet as Tikaani burst back through the trees. The two boys almost collided.

‘Beck!’ Tikaani grabbed hold of him, effectively pinning his arms to his side. ‘It’s a bear! I think it’s a bear. It was brown and . . .
it’s a bear!
’

Beck’s heart plummeted. A bear? He had been so sure they were out of bear territory. Their little shelter wouldn’t stand up to an inquisitive bear for a second. If they had to sleep with bears around, then one of them would have to stand watch while the other slept – but they both needed a good night’s rest.

‘Brown?’ he asked, carefully working himself free of Tikaani’s grip. ‘Not black?’

‘Um . . .’ Tikaani swallowed. His face was pale and he was sweating. ‘Yeah. I think so. I . . . uh . . .’

Good, Beck thought. At least there would be a chance of scaring it off. But black . . . black bears attacked. If it was a black bear, they would have no choice. They would have to scare it off and move on before it summoned up the courage to come after them. They would have to move up into the snow and ice and their night would be a lot less comfortable.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Bring your rucksack and be prepared to wave it about.’

‘What?’ Tikaani looked at him like he was mad. ‘We’re going looking for it?’

‘Maybe we can drive it off. We can’t let it hang around. It’s got all the mountains to spend the night in – we need to do it here.’ Beck took a firm grip on the knife with one hand and held a stick in the other. ‘And start shouting.’

‘W-what should I shout?’

‘Something. Anything! Sing a song!’

And so they pushed into the undergrowth as noisily as they could. Beck banged his knife against the stick and shouted out all the nursery rhymes he could remember. Tikaani gave a tuneless rendering of
America the Beautiful
.

‘It was here,’ Tikaani said a couple of minutes later. ‘Just over there by those rocks . . .’

Beck pressed slowly forward. He glanced down at the ground . . .

. . . and burst out laughing. It was like a sudden sneeze that caught him unawares. He couldn’t have kept it in if he’d tried. He didn’t want Tikaani to think he was laughing at him so he tried to keep it quiet. He stood staring at the ground, slightly cross-eyed with the effort of smothering his laughter, and his shoulders shook.

‘What?’ Tikaani sounded cold at first. But then: ‘Wha-at?’ The laugh was infectious, spreading to the other boy in spite of himself. Tikaani probably realized that if Beck was just standing there giggling, then there wasn’t any danger.

‘Look.’ Beck, still trembling, knelt down and poked the ground with his stick. There was a small pile of droppings and a line of footprints the size of cat paws heading away. Each one was divided in two.

Beck followed them with his eyes, and then pointed. A smaller pair of eyes was looking at them through the undergrowth about ten metres away. Their owner was about the size of a dog. It turned and fled in a flash of brown fur, speckled with white.

‘It was a deer,’ Beck said. The laugh was still bubbling inside him. ‘About as harmless as you can get.’

‘A
deer
!’ Tikaani exclaimed. ‘I was frightened by a
deer
?’

‘Well’ – Beck poked the droppings – ‘it might have been more frightened by you.’

Tikaani looked at the little pile, then up at Beck, and his own expression started to crumble. Then both boys burst out laughing again, and they laughed until they were sagging against each other.

Finally, still with the occasional snigger, they made their way back to the shelter and finished it off. Slim branches thick with pine needles, propped between the ground and the big horizontal branch, gave their shelter a windproof rear wall that they could huddle behind.

‘Dinner time!’ said Beck. ‘A starter of berries, followed by berries and mushrooms, topped off by a dessert of berries. Let’s see what we’ve got . . .’

As they had walked along, they had gathered food up and divided it between what they knew was safe and what only might be. The definitely safe food went into their left pockets, the ‘maybe’ food into the right. Now they turned out their pockets to make two piles.

‘OK,’ Beck said as they explored the second little heap. He poked the berries and leaves apart with his finger. ‘Let’s decide what’s OK to eat . . .’

‘What happens if it isn’t but we still eat it?’ Tikaani wanted to know.

‘Symptoms may include anything from stomach pains and vomiting and diarrhoea, to death.’ Beck said it conversationally, as if he was delivering aircraft safety instructions.

‘OK, I’m all ears,’ Tikaani agreed earnestly.

‘Right. Anything with yellow or white berries – best avoid to be sure. Just chuck them out.’ Beck flicked a couple of specimens to one side. ‘Plants with shiny leaves, ditto . . .’

That helped them whittle the pile down.

‘Next, smell them. If the smell is bitter or sort of almondy . . .’

‘Chuck them,’ Tikaani said happily, getting the idea. He put a leaf to his nose and breathed in thoughtfully.

That made the pile a little smaller still. Beck looked at what was left. Ideally, testing food should take twenty-four hours or more. They couldn’t really do that. He was only going to let them eat stuff he was as sure of as he could be. He picked out examples of different kinds of plant.

‘Crush these,’ he said, demonstrating, ‘and rub the juice on the inside of your wrist, here, where it’s tender. I’ll do it with these ones here, you do it with those. Rub it on different places . . . if your skin becomes inflamed or you get a rash, we don’t eat them. Give it five minutes.’

‘What do we do for five minutes?’

Beck smiled and passed Tikaani a pile of the ‘safe’ berries. ‘We eat the good ones!’

It wasn’t much of a feast but it filled the empty holes inside them. None of the tested berries seemed to do them any harm either.

‘On the whole, blue and black berries are usually OK,’ Beck told Tikaani; ‘red ones should always be approached with caution. And if you do eat anything that starts to make you feel sick,’ he added, ‘swallow charcoal from the fire. That’ll bring it back up in an instant.’

‘Oh, how I love living rough . . .’ Tikaani murmured.

Now that they had a reasonable idea of what was safe to eat and what wasn’t, they used the last half-hour of sunlight to search for more food – enough to get them over the mountains the next day and down into the trees on the other side.

And finally they could sleep. They lay back-to-back for warmth with their heads pillowed on the rucksacks and hats pulled down over their eyes. Judging by the sound of his breathing, Tikaani was asleep almost at once. The shelter was snug, as Beck had promised. The wind knocked against it from the other side, but none of it got through. The air inside the shelter was still, retaining its warmth, and the fire radiated heat. Beck lay on his side and listened to the wood crackling gently.

And then he thought of Uncle Al, alone in a shelter not much bigger than this. Had he kept his fire going? Did he still have any strength? How was he?

Suddenly Beck sat bolt upright. Two eyes twinkled back at him from the dark. Beck’s heart was pounding.

The eyes had gone but he could have sworn . . .

They had been close together, reflecting green in the light, the way dogs’ eyes did. Or wolves’.

Were there wolves up here? He had been half asleep: maybe he was imagining it . . .