Mountain Storms by Max Brand Page B

Yet, every day, in spite of that diminishing strength, he forced himself to get up and go into the great outdoors to see if he could sight some animal, some beast of prey, that he might kill with a rifle bullet to clothe himself in the pelt.
    Once he sighted a great timber wolf, but his shaking hands could not hold the weapon firm, and the bullet flew wide while the wolf trotted out of sight with the slowness of contempt for this puny hunter. He failed thus, on the only occasion when he sighted a pelt worth having. Now the time came when he went out more and more seldom. Finally for three successive days he did not leave the cave.
    It was only a sudden reflex of will that drove him out at length. He wakened one afternoon from a stupor. He hardly felt hunger now. A haze hung before his eyes. The same haze hung over his very mind. But there was a sudden parting of the veil as he saw his hand raised before him, a mere, withered claw rather than a hand.
    The horror brought him erect. There he stood, shuddering in the cold and realizing that, when he lay down again, it would be to fall into a sleep from which there was no waking. Fear drove him on more strongly than dread of the cold could keep him back. Presently swathed in blankets, he staggered weakly out of the cave. A side draft of the wind caught him and knocked him flat. He rose again and went on blindly through the forest, the rifle dragging down in his hands as though it were of a ton’s weight. He knew that, even if he saw a fur worth having, he could not shoot the wearer, and yet on he went, driven simply by a horror of the cave and the death to which he would be returning if he went back to it.
    He found himself stumbling across a raw, bare patch of earth from which a recent landslide had torn the trees and shrubs. Tripping on a loose stone, he fell headlong for the tenth time. He was stunned by the fall. When he roused again, he found that he was half frozen, so frozen that, when he leaned and picked up the gun, the weapon fell from his numbed fingers and, striking a rock, knocked out a bright spark.
    Tommy stared with vague agony down at the stone. In the very rock there seemed to be fire. He alone in all creation was without warmth. He was still half dazed, half stupid, but that spark had fascinated him. Regardless of the harm that might be done the barrel, he dropped the rifle again, and again the spark jumped from the piece of flat, black stone.
    Suddenly he picked it up with a wild hope growing in him. Sparks will light fire. This must be a flint. What had the Indians used for centuries before him? With the stone hugged to his breast, with the rifle trailing behind him, he made on toward the cave as fast as his weak knees would support his strides.
    So, muddy from his falls, with a ringing as of bells in his ears, he entered the cave and looked about him for tinder. He found something excellent for his purpose—a pile of dried bark that he had used to start his fires while the matches lasted. Some of this he shredded to a bundle of small fibers, so brittle that they threatened to crumble to a powder. He gathered larger wood nearby, and then he took the revolver, as a handier bit of steel, and, the flint dropped at an angle, he began to knock a shower of sparks upon the tinder.
    They fell all over the bark. A faint smoke arose, but, when he ceased striking the flint, the smoke died out. He worked until his weak arm ached. Then, as despair was coming over him, there was a new thought. He hammered again with all his might and main, tossed aside the battered gun as soon as he saw a small spot glowing on the bark, and began to fan this with his breath.
    He blew till his lungs threatened to burst, till his head grew dizzy, and, behold, the smoldering spot of dark grew in width, ate into the bark. Hastily he placed more of the shreds of the crumpled bark upon the spot. Again he blew. Now a thin column of smoke rose. To Tommy it was the most blissful sight he had