Near the damned river, I saw a white-tailed deer. It was a young male, with enough meat to feed Andre and me. Mostly me. It took quite a bit of effort to track it down, but in the end I set a trap for it by the riverbank. The effort left me exhausted and weak, bleeding again. Well, maybe I shouldn’t have pushed myself like that, but Andre could never have brought down a ninety-kilo deer on his own.
When we returned to the den, we found a frustrating scene: a wild animal (a cougar or a bobcat—it smelled feline and feral) had found the shelter and attacked our belongings. It had torn the bag apart. I figured the smell of blood—my blood, dried blood—must have attracted it. In that comfortable hollow it was easy to smell like dead food waiting to be taken, and of course many animals become sc
