Kim Robinson - Shaman

So they stayed in camp that summer, and some of them went to Cedar Salmon River for the fall run, and some went out to hunt the herds of horses that came through the gorge, driving them up kolby canyons from which they could not escape. Those who stayed in camp trapped deer. They had to gather enough food to get through the winter, and also have enough to give back to the Raven pack what they had given them in the hunger spring, plus a little more as thanks. It was quite a task, given the loss of the caribou harvest, and it was interesting as the fall months passed to find that they could do it; all but the return to the Ravens, anyway.

—We may have to wait on that a year, Schist admitted.—Or see what happens in the spring, and decide then.

—We’ll have to make a compensation to the northers, too, Thorn warned him.—When we go to the eight eight next year. Even if it was their fault. The corroborators will make the judgment, and it could be against us. So we need to be ready for that too. But that shouldn’t be food, it has to be something else.

Loon had an idea about that.—We took some of their snowshoes when we escaped, and broke the rest. So we could give the snowshoes back, but better.

—Better?

—I can make snowshoes better than theirs, and we could give them those.

Thorn nodded thoughtfully.—That’s the kind of thing the corroborators like. We’ll tell them that we forgive the northers for stealing Elga, so they have to forgive us for whatever we did to them when we got you two out of there. We’ll give back the snowshoes we took, but they’ll be even better. Then let bygones be bygones, or else we’ll fight them to the death. And the corroborators don’t like fighting at the eight eight.

Schist said,—It sounds good. No one wants the ice men thinking they can push around the corroboree. So it might work. And we need to go back.

After that, as part of his fall foraging, Loon kept an eye out for wood to use in making snowshoes. They had stolen four pair, so he intended to make that many, ignoring the memory of the many more he had broken. The ones he made were going to be better than the jende’s snowshoes. He had thought about this sometimes while tromping over the snow by the great salt sea, hauling the jende’s sleds. They had to make their snowshoes out of the gnarled little spruce trees that filled the nearby ravines, and with occasional pieces of driftwood they collected from the shore. Little trees made for little lengths of wood, and so their snowshoes were strapped-together things. Down here under the sun, the trees were so much more big and various that there were all kinds of tough woods that could be used.

And Loon now had an image in his eye, which he painted on a flat rock. He was quite sure that the most important thing for a snowshoe was that the foot be held steady, while the frame was still free to rotate up and down over the ball of the foot. The jende had solved the problem of these contrary requirements by strapping their tall boots onto mammoth tusk crossbars that crossed the snowshoe just behind the toe hole, so that the toe of the boot could angle through the snowshoe into the snow when you went uphill, and the snowshoe would stay flat when you took a stride on flat ground. Their crossbar tie worked well enough on flat snow, and when going straight up or down a slope, but on any kind of a traverse the boot would twist and slide, and a great effort had to be made to place the foot as flatly as possible on the snowshoe, and the snowshoe also as flat as could be on the snow. On traverses this couldn’t really work, so one was always slipping, and it was easy to tear straps, or break the bar under the foot away from the rounded frame. A broken snowshoe makes a bad day, as the saying went; and yet it happened pretty often.

The way to secure the foot on the snowshoe, Loon had decided, was to lash a wooden boot sole to a tough crossbar stick across the back of the toe hole, with a wrap made of bear leather sewed to this boot sole, so that the whole thing was a permanent part of the snowshoe. One would then place one’s boot on the wooden sole and tie the wrap over it. One’s foot would be stabilized on the wooden sole, which would make traverses very much easier. With a strong frame made of a single curve of ash wood, and wide cross straps of leather, or spruce roots, tied to the frame, the result would be very strong. He could consult with Heather and Sage about the best knots to use. Also, antler tips lashed or glued to the front end of the wooden soles would give them more grab going uphill, which would be a great thing, and they would be almost retracted when the sole was flat to the shoe, which it would be during a downhill glissade.

He could see it so well, he easily drew it: the best snowshoes ever. The northers simply didn’t have the ash trees to make them, even if they did suddenly think up Loon’s design, which he doubted they would, having not done it before. They lived on a coastal plain, while Loon was a hill person; maybe that explained it and maybe it didn’t, but when the time came and the northers tried Loon’s snowshoes, they would see they were better, and never make them the old way again. Maybe. It was worth a try.

So all that fall and winter, while Thorn was struggling with Click’s ghost, and the rest of them were packing on their winter’s fat by eating and sleeping as much as possible, Loon spent a lot of his time in camp working on snowshoes. Quite a few of the pack got interested in what he was doing, because whenever the snow was soft they themselves went out on snowshoes that they had never taken much trouble to make. But there were a lot of storms that winter, and better snowshoes would be a good thing, all agreed.

Thorn was interested but dubious.—You need to make sure they have some give. If they’re too rigid they’ll break under a strain, and then you’ve got no snowshoe at all. Better to give a little over and over than give it all at once.

Loon nodded. It was true that his design would only work if the foot bar was very strong and well attached to the frame, and the wooden sole well attached to the foot bar. These were the parts that would be tested the most, time after time in the ordinary course of walking, and with extra force during traverses and step-throughs and glissades. So he did a little jumping up and down on them while they were suspended between rocks, to see what they could handle. They performed pretty well. Some he found difficult to break no matter how hard he tried. That was really pleasing.

Heather took an interest in these tests, because she liked tests. She came over and watched Loon closely, and even made some jumps herself.—Try making them a few different ways, she said,—and see how they do before you make any more. Different shapes for the shoe, different attachments and bindings. I wonder, could you reinforce where the foot bar fits into the frame? Make frame sockets out of tusk or antler?

Loon tried various things. There was a lot of time that winter around the fire, during the long nights and the stormy days, so much time that it was hard to sleep through all of it. Elga was sewing new clothes for him and Lucky, and all in all, there was little he was needed for once night fell. So he worked on the shoes. Eventually Thorn came to agree that the wider variety of trees in their region, especially ash, and the sheer number and size of trees, should allow for the making of snowshoes superior to the northers’, and any design improvements would be good too. Being better would make them an excellent compensation, because they would compensate while also being a little put-down. There was no doubt they were going to be locking horns with the northers at the eight eight one way or another, so a little poke in the eye was always a good thing. You had to front up to such crass barbarians, he said, especially if you happened to have scalded some of them for their badness.—But they can’t be so stiff they break, he said more than once.—You can always deal with a little slip and slide on a traverse, but a break can be a really bad thing.