Read Online Guts by Gary Paulsen - Free Book Online Page A

area—and I found some dead birch skirting the grass area. With my knife I cut bark from one of the dead trees and used it for kindling. Then I covered the bark with small pine twigs broken off from the underside of dead limbs that were still relatively dry. I had matches, of course. I would not go out without matches. I had waterproofed them with melted wax and I carried them in a waterproof case. I used one of them to start the birch bark and at length had a sputtering half-fire going. I added what partially dry wood I could find under trees, stacked more wet wood on top and soon had a good-sized blaze crackling away, which did much to bring my spirits up.
    Of course I was starving, but I had plenty of meat. I cut strips of rib meat off the buck and cooked them, tallow and all, draped over the fire on green sticks (green so that they would not burn), and ate them when they were just short of burnt. They tasted—without salt or pepper or bread—incredibly fine and I must have eaten four or five pounds of meat before I was at last full, my mouth and tongue caked with venison tallow. Then I gathered all the wood I could find by firelight, until I had enough for several nights. I lay near the fire, dozing and adding wood all night.
    The wolves came not too long after midnight, brought by the smell of blood and meat. I could see their eyes in the firelight, and for a few moments I was afraid and missed my bow terribly, but the fire kept them well away. They probably would not have bothered me, but I still had some broadheads, which I determined to use as hand spears if necessary. This comforted me.
    The wolves left well before first light and when it was bright enough to see I went to work on the carcass. I skinned part of it down the side and used the raw skin to make a better harness than just the belt around my waist. After a meal of cooked rib meat and peaty-tasting water from a spring nearby, I set off dragging again.
    I dragged until I couldn’t stand it any longer, until every muscle in my body was on fire. Then I tried to haul the carcass in an over-the-shoulders fireman carry, but I only made about fifty yards before my legs buckled, so I stopped and took a break, building another fire and cooking some more rib meat. It actually occurred to me only half in jest that perhaps the best solution was just to stay out in the woods until I had cooked and eaten the whole deer. It was the weekend and my folks probably wouldn’t miss me—they didn’t know where I was half the time and would probably think I was staying at a friend’s house. But at school, where I was mostly flunking, they would notice that I wasn’t there.
    So I had to get back, and I worked all that day, dragging and stopping, and finally, completely exhausted, I arrived at the road just short of dark. By then most of the hair was gone off one side of the carcass. My bicycle was still there and I lugged and pulled at the carcass until it was across the seat and the handlebars and started pushing it down the road. It was nearly impossible—the carcass kept falling off to one side or the other—but the wheels made it infinitely better than dragging. After a few hundred feet I worked out a balance point and it became slightly less difficult.
    It was an almost-deserted back road but there were some farms out along the edge of the forest and I thought, or dreamed, or hoped and prayed, that somebody, anybody, would come along in a truck and give me a lift to town.
    It did not happen. I wobbled and rolled down the road at about a mile an hour, stopping often to rub my legs, more often to get the deer back on the bike. It was well after midnight when I pulled into the driveway of the apartment. I found some rope and pulled the deer carcass—rubbed and torn, half-skinned, ragged but still there—up on one of the rafters in the old garage near the apartment until it hung with its back feet just touching the floor. Then I