Read Online Way of the Wolf by Bear Grylls - Free Book Online

think he was laughing at him so he tried to keep it quiet. He stood staring at the ground, slightly cross-eyed with the effort of smothering his laughter, and his shoulders shook.
    ‘What?’ Tikaani sounded cold at first. But then: ‘Wha-at?’ The laugh was infectious, spreading to the other boy in spite of himself. Tikaani probably realized that if Beck was just standing there giggling, then there wasn’t any danger.
    ‘Look.’ Beck, still trembling, knelt down and poked the ground with his stick. There was a small pile of droppings and a line of footprints the size of cat paws heading away. Each one was divided in two.
    Beck followed them with his eyes, and then pointed. A smaller pair of eyes was looking at them through the undergrowth about ten metres away. Their owner was about the size of a dog. It turned and fled in a flash of brown fur, speckled with white.
    ‘It was a deer,’ Beck said. The laugh was still bubbling inside him. ‘About as harmless as you can get.’
    ‘A
deer
!’ Tikaani exclaimed. ‘I was frightened by a
deer
?’
    ‘Well’ – Beck poked the droppings – ‘it might have been more frightened by you.’
    Tikaani looked at the little pile, then up at Beck, and his own expression started to crumble. Then both boys burst out laughing again, and they laughed until they were sagging against each other.
    Finally, still with the occasional snigger, they made their way back to the shelter and finished it off. Slim branches thick with pine needles, propped between the ground and the big horizontal branch, gave their shelter a windproof rear wall that they could huddle behind.
    ‘Dinner time!’ said Beck. ‘A starter of berries, followed by berries and mushrooms, topped off by a dessert of berries. Let’s see what we’ve got . . .’
    As they had walked along, they had gathered food up and divided it between what they knew was safe and what only might be. The definitely safe food went into their left pockets, the ‘maybe’ food into the right. Now they turned out their pockets to make two piles.
    ‘OK,’ Beck said as they explored the second little heap. He poked the berries and leaves apart with his finger. ‘Let’s decide what’s OK to eat . . .’
    ‘What happens if it isn’t but we still eat it?’ Tikaani wanted to know.
    ‘Symptoms may include anything from stomach pains and vomiting and diarrhoea, to death.’ Beck said it conversationally, as if he was delivering aircraft safety instructions.
    ‘OK, I’m all ears,’ Tikaani agreed earnestly.
    ‘Right. Anything with yellow or white berries – best avoid to be sure. Just chuck them out.’ Beck flicked a couple of specimens to one side. ‘Plants with shiny leaves, ditto . . .’
    That helped them whittle the pile down.
    ‘Next, smell them. If the smell is bitter or sort of almondy . . .’
    ‘Chuck them,’ Tikaani said happily, getting the idea. He put a leaf to his nose and breathed in thoughtfully.
    That made the pile a little smaller still. Beck looked at what was left. Ideally, testing food should take twenty-four hours or more. They couldn’t really do that. He was only going to let them eat stuff he was as sure of as he could be. He picked out examples of different kinds of plant.
    ‘Crush these,’ he said, demonstrating, ‘and rub the juice on the inside of your wrist, here, where it’s tender. I’ll do it with these ones here, you do it with those. Rub it on different places . . . if your skin becomes inflamed or you get a rash, we don’t eat them. Give it five minutes.’
    ‘What do we do for five minutes?’
    Beck smiled and passed Tikaani a pile of the ‘safe’ berries. ‘We eat the good ones!’
    It wasn’t much of a feast but it filled the empty holes inside them. None of the tested berries seemed to do them any harm either.
    ‘On the whole, blue and black berries are usually OK,’ Beck told Tikaani; ‘red ones should always be approached with caution. And if you do eat anything that