The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

upstream to the cave. He left the older man outside while he cleaned up the floor of the cave and then made his companion as comfortable as he could on a bed of bracken. The fire Ross had longed for was built. They stripped off their sodden clothing and hung it to dry. Ross wrapped a bird he had shot in clay and tucked it under the hot coals to be roasted.
    They had surely had bad luck, he thought, but they were now undercover, had a fire, and food of a sort. His arm ached, sharp pain shooting from fingers to elbow when he moved it. Though Ashe made no complaint, Ross gauged that the older man’s discomfort was far worse than his own, and he carefully hid all signs of his own twinges.
    They ate the bird, saltless, and with their fingers. Ross savored each greasy bite, licking his hands clean afterward while Ashe lay back on the improvised bed, his face gaunt in the half light of the fire.
    “We are about five miles from the sea here. There is no way of raising our base now that Sandy’s installation is gone. I’ll have to lay up, since I can’t risk any more loss of blood. And you’re not too good in the woods—”
    Ross accepted that valuation with a new humbleness. He was only too well aware that if it had not been for Ashe, he and not the white wolf would have died down in the valley. Yet a strange shyness kept him from trying to put his thanks into words. The only kind of amends he could make for the other’s hurt was to provide hands, feet, and strength for the man who did know what to do and how to do it.
    “We’ll have to hunt—” he ventured.
    “Deer,” Ashe caught him up. “But the marsh at the mouth of this stream provides a better hunting ground than inland. If the wolf laired here very long, she has already frightened away any large game. It isn’t the matter of food which bothers me—”
    “It is being tied up here,” Ross filled in for him with some daring. “But look here, I’ll take orders. This is your territory, and I’m green at the game. You tell me what to do, and I’ll do it the best that I can.” He glanced up to find Ashe surveying him intently, but as usual there was no readable expression on the other’s brown face.
    “The first thing to do is get the wolf’s hide,” Ashe said briskly. “Then bury the carcass. You’d better drag it up here to work on it. If her mate is hanging around, he might try to jump you.”
    Why Ashe should think it necessary to acquire the wolf skin puzzled Ross, but he asked no questions. His skinning task took four times as long and was far from being the neat job the shock-haired man of the record tape had accomplished. Ross had to wash himself off in the stream before piling stones over the corpse in temporary burial. When he pulled his bloody burden back to the cave, Ashe lay with his eyes closed. Ross thankfully sat on his own pile of bracken and tried not to notice the throbbing ache in his arm.
    He must have fallen asleep, for when he roused it was to see Ashe crawl over to mend the dying fire from their store of wood. Ross, angry at himself, beat the other to the task.
    “Get back,” he said roughly. “This is my job. I didn’t mean to fail.”
    Surprisingly, Ashe settled back without a word, leaving Ross to sit by the fire, a fire he was very glad to have a moment or so later when a wailing howl sounded down-wind. If this was not the white wolf’s mate, then it was another of her kin who prowled the upper reaches of the small valley.
    The next day, having provided Ashe with a supply of firewood, Ross went to try his luck in the marsh. The thick drizzle which had hung over the land the day before was gone, and he faced a clear, bright morning, though the breeze had an icy snap. But it was a good morning to be alive and out in the open, and Ross’s spirits rose.
    He tried to put to use all the woodlore he had learned at the base. But it was one thing to learn something academically and another to put that learning into practice. He was uncomfortably certain that Ashe would not have found his showing very good.
    The marsh was a series of pools between rank growths of leafless willows and coarse tufts of grass, with hillocks of firmer soil rising like islands. Ross, approaching with caution, was glad of it, for from one of those hillocks arose a trail of white smoke, and he saw a black blot which was probably a rude hut. Why one should choose to live in the midst of such country he could not guess, though it might be merely