The dried meat was gone. The corn was running low. Hunger settled over the camp. It was a dull, gnawing ache in the belly. Luke saw it in the eyes of the children who stopped playing and sat listlessly by the fires.
A council was held. The hunters had to go out. It was dangerous. The snow was deep, and the animals would be yarded up in the dense timber, hard to reach. Luke stood up from his place at the edge of the circle.
"I'll go." He said. Nantan looked at him. "You have no snowshoes. You have no weapon." "I can make snowshoes." Luke said. "Willow branches and rawhide, and I can track." Taza, who was leaning on a crutch, his leg stiff but healing, spoke up.
"He has good eyes, Father. I will take him." "You cannot walk the deep snow, Taza." Nantan argued. "I can ride to the lower ridge." Taza said, "The white man will flush the game. We will shoot." Nantan hesitated, then nodded. "Take three others.
Bring meat or we do not survive the moon." The hunting party set out at dawn. It was brutal work. The snowshoes Luke had fashioned kept him on top of the crust, but his legs burned with every step. The cold was intense, freezing the moisture in his nose. They found nothing for hours.
The land seemed empty, stripped of life. Then, Luke saw it, a disturbance in the snow near a stand of aspens. He knelt, touching the broken crust. "Elk, a small herd, moving heavily." He signaled to Taza, who sat on his horse 100 yards back, rifle ready. Luke moved forward, quiet as a ghost.
He tracked them for a mile, the signs getting fresher. He could smell the musk of the animals now. He came over a rise and saw them, five elk trapped in a pocket of deep snow against a cliff face, a large bull, three cows, and a yearling. Luke signaled the warriors. They moved into position.
Gunshots cracked the silence. Two cows went down instantly. The bull panicked. It turned, thrashing through the drifts, its eyes rolling in terror. It charged directly toward a young warrior named Che, who had missed his shot and was fumbling to reload.
The snow was too deep for Che to run. The bull, 700 pounds of muscle and antler, lowered its head to crush him. Luke didn't think. He didn't have a gun. He had a knife at his belt, one Taza had returned to him for the hunt.
He lunged. He threw himself off the small ridge, tackling the snowbank in front of the bull. He shouted, waving his arms, a frantic human explosion of noise. The bull swerved. It was a fraction of a second, but it was enough.