The Eden Hunter by Skip Horack Read Free Book Online Page B

dead pioneer woman, and the prophet knelt with it beside the fire and examined himself for a long while.
    At last Morning Star dropped the mirror and rolled his head in a wide, slow circle. Kau heard a popping sound, and was not sure whether it came from the fire or from somewhere deep inside the body of the prophet. Little Horn had a beefsteak cooking on a hot rock in the coals, and Morning Star grabbed the rare meat in his big hands. He turned to Kau, then bit off a chunk of the sizzling steak and smiled. Pink blood-juice spilled from the corners of his mouth as Little Horn let out a series of war whoops. “He likes it,” said Blood Girl in a low voice. “He likes it very much.”

     
    EVENTUALLY THEY CHANGED their direction from west to north, and though he saw no real difference in the land, the redsticks told him that they had crossed back over the border and were once again traveling through the territory of Mississippi. After several days the pinewoods fell off into an immense canebrake, a great green sleeve that choked both banks of the dark and peaceful Conecuh. They made their way through the slender cane, following a confusion of game trails. The serried stalks rose fifteen, twenty feet from the moist black soil, filtering out the sun so that Kau came to feel as if he had joined with some party of burrowing tunnel-dwellers.
    The canebrake teemed with deer and bear that crashed off unseen before them, and in an ancient salt lick Little Horn found the large and gnawed bones of what Kau thought must be more wild cattle. But then Morning Star crouched beside them and traced a long finger in the dirt. The prophet drew the crude outline of some big, short-horned animal, and in Kau’s mind those bleached bones took proper shape. Morning Star whispered to Blood Girl and she began to describe a creature that seemed so much like the forest buffalo of Africa that Kau felt his heart quicken. “ Tupi ,” he whispered.
    “ Yuh-nuh-suh ,” said Blood Girl.
    Kau stared at her. “Are there many here?”
    Blood Girl shook her head and told him that even Morning Star had seen only two in his entire life, a cow and calf in the rocky foothills far to the north. “But that was very long ago,” she said.
    Kau knelt among the familiar bones. He figured this could only be a message from the forest, a sign that he was on the proper
path, that perhaps he was indeed meant to try this angry killing life. He searched the scattered remains until he found a long bone half buried in the loam. He pulled the bone free of the earth and brushed it clean.
    “What do you want with it?” asked Little Horn.
    Kau slapped the bone against his palm and then pointed to the war-club that hung from Little Horn’s waist. The redstick smiled, and that night they helped him dye the bone in a crimson broth made from boiled pieces of oak bark and root that Blood Girl had went off to collect in the uplands. The bone was painted with thin coats of pine resin, then placed by the fire to dry and strengthen until morning. They slept and at dawn Little Horn tested the reddened bone against the thick skull of the buffalo. The skull cracked and he handed the bone to Kau. “Now take it to Morning Star,” said the redstick. This was done and after the prophet had mouthed some silent blessing or curse over the virgin weapon it was returned. Kau fixed a hard loop of rawhide to the back of his belt and then slid the bone club into place.
     
    HE WAS LESS than a mile from the salt lick yet again he was alone, separated from the riders. Along a wet section of trail he saw where Morning Star had paused to draw another buffalo in the mud, that and a little stick man Kau realized was meant to be him.
    He was studying his image when there was an eruption in the canebreak. He full-cocked his longrifle, then watched as a velvet-horned buck stumbled out into the path with a tawny and growling panther attached to its back. The cat raised its head from the buck’s
neck and