Brian's Hunt by Gary Paulsen Read Free Book Online Page A

food.
    Thank you, Brian thought, thank you again, and still he stood and still the other deer did not run although the bigger buck came over and smelled the young one as it lay dead.
    Then Brian stepped out into the clearing and the whole world blew up. The deer exploded in huge bounds that had them out of the clearing and gone in fractions of a second. Brian moved to the small buck.
    He poked it with his bow to make sure it was truly dead. The arrow had gone clean through and lay in the grass on the other side ten or twelve feet away. Brian picked it up and used his fingers to wipe the blood off and squeegee the feathers so they could dry straight.
    Then he cut the deer’s throat to bleed it and began the drag back to camp. He would normally have dressed the deer out and left the guts but he wanted them for the dog, especially the heart and liver.
    It was four hundred yards to camp, not very far, but through thick brush. It was almost dark by the time he had dragged the deer back.
    The dog whimpered when he arrived and wagged her tail and Brian put a pot of water on to boil—he was dying of thirst—and gathered wood for a long fire. He would be dressing and skinning and cutting the deer after dark and would need light.
    “Big feed,” he said to the dog, taking out his knife and the stone. “Big feed tonight and tomorrow. We’ll stay here and eat.”
    And from the way the dog was wagging, so hard she nearly fell down, she agreed completely.

Chapter 8

    But in the morning Brian had changed his mind and couldn’t explain why. . . .
    He had skinned the deer and rolled the hide to stretch later—it would keep for a day or two—and the dog had eaten the heart and liver and lungs in one sitting. Easily five pounds of meat. And then chewed on scraps while Brian cut the rest of the deer into manageable hunks, two back legs and two front, the meat from along the spine—the tenderloin—which was the best meat but on this buck very small.
    He had read somewhere that wolves could eat up to twenty pounds of meat in a single meal and he thought the dog was coming close. She . . . just . . . kept . . . eating.
    Brian cut pieces of raw meat off and threw them to the dog and even when her stomach was so distended Brian was worried about it stretching her skin and opening the wound, she still ate.
    He put a stick by the fire and hung meat to cook and ate the tenderloin, probably three pounds, until it was gone and then roasted a front shoulder and ate some of that, but the dog didn’t stop until Brian finally quit handing her meat.
    Then she dropped like a stone and was asleep when her head hit the ground, sound asleep, gone. Brian smiled and squatted by the fire and studied the dog sleeping.
    He had watched her during the day, learning about her, amazed at how the dog keyed to him and he keyed to the dog. When the dog was sitting up, looking around, Brian found himself watching her, watching for a reaction, depending on her for warning in case something came. It was all new, the bond, and he wondered how he could have lived his whole life and never had this, never had this closeness with another species, with a dog. It had been a great loss. He decided he would never be without a dog again.
    In some way, the dog filled a hole in his life, filled a loneliness he hadn’t even known existed, and he wondered if it had always been the same for men; if somewhere back in time in a cave a man took a wolf pup and sat him down and thought, There, my life is better now. Well, not that way exactly. But something like it, something ancient man had recognized, some connection, because when he thought about it, it seemed that almost all cultures had dogs with them to work and enjoy or—and he shuddered—to eat. He went to sleep sitting by the fire thinking that the next day they would lie around, eat more of the meat and then dry, or try to dry, into jerky what little there was left.
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    Dawn, first light, found him packing the canoe to